Raymond Duchamp-Villon 1876-1918

By Rosie Miller

Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Horse, designed 1914, Bronze, 99 × 61 × 91.4 cm, Art Institute Chicago

Born in the French town of Damville in 1876, Raymond Duchamp-Villon was arguably destined for artistic pre-eminence; his maternal grandfather, Emile-Frederic Nicolle, was an esteemed painter and engraver – no less than four of the six Villon siblings were to become recognised artists. Nonetheless, it was the medical profession that initially attracted Duchamp-Villon, with ill-health alone propounding the discovery of his artistic vocation.

Despite its tentative beginning, his career proved anything but. A contemporary of Auguste Rodin, Duchamp-Villon rejected Rodinesque naturalism, in which impressionist surface modelling was already considered a threat to the Académie. Rather, in a manner that arguably bore the first identifiably Cubist sculpture, he departed from discernible subjects completely.

In this vein, Horse, 1914, is widely celebrated as Duchamp-Villon’s masterpiece. Drawn from studies of a leaping horse and rider, Duchamp-Villon recalibrates his subject into an abstract evocation of dynamism and power, rehabilitating the traditional equestrian portrait into an emblem of the Industrial Age. In fact, the horse’s very anatomy is synthesised with the mechanical; organic forms are enmeshed with gears and flywheels, evoking the increasing symbiosis between Man and machine in early twentieth-century France.

Duchamp-Villon’s engagement with art-historical dialogues proved equally ground-breaking. A keen proponent of the Eiffel Tower, he championed the harmonious interplay of volumes, planes, and lines. However, Duchamp-Villon’s brand of modernism was distinctive. In a manner that contradicted the Art Nouveau, he championed the predominance of straight – as opposed to curved – lines to the extent of tyranny. Equally, he rejected more literal, Futurist interpretations of movement; hallmarked by meticulously balanced lines of force and tension, Duchamp-Villon’s sculptures are imbued with a commanding sense of potential energy. Undoubtedly, he was an emerging master.

Preceded by the disruptive influence of the First World War, Duchamp-Villon’s untimely death in 1918 is therefore all the more tragic. Thanks to the commitment of his brothers, Jacques and Marcel, posthumous casts have been taken from the remaining body of Duchamp-Villon’s plaster models. Nonetheless, given his pioneering spirit, there is no telling which masterpieces the latter half of Duchamp-Villon’s career might have borne.

Bibliography

Zilczer, Judith, “Raymond Duchamp-Villon: Pioneer of Modern Sculpture”, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 76:330, (Autumn, 1980)

Murphy, Kevin D., “Cubism and Collegiate Gothic: Raymond Duchamp-Villon at Connecticut College”, Archives of American Art Journal, 32:1, (1992)

Pradel, Marie-Noëlle, "La Maison Cubiste en 1912", Art de France, 1 (1961)