The man who brought Cubism to New York

The American Jewish artist Max Weber (1881–1961) was born in Belostok in Russia (now Bialystok in Poland), and although he visited this country twice (he came to London in 1906 and 1908), it was the experience of continental Europe — and particularly Paris — that was crucial for his development. The title of this exhibition is thus rather misleading: Weber never lived in England, and his ‘presence’ here is based upon a collection of his work made by his friend Alvin Langdon Coburn. Coburn (1882–1966), a boldly experimental photographer attached to the Vorticist group, was another American, but one who opted to settle in England in 1912. Weber and Coburn probably met in New York in 1910, two years later exploring the skyscrapers of the capital together, which became for both men a fruitful subject. Although Weber is not much known in this country, in America he has long been recognised as the man who brought Cubism to the States. He is best known for his early Cubo-Futurist works; after 1920, he abandoned Modernism for a more descriptive style.

The display in the ground-floor gallery at Ben Uri is slightly tepid: there’s a gouache of Coburn by Weber making him look likeD.H. Lawrence after a heavy night out; also a couple of rather dreadful sub-Matissean oils by Weber and a much better pencil portrait of a Jehovah-like Matisse, two good mixed-media New York views, and several of Coburn’s photos. The best is ‘The Octopus’, an aerial shot of Madison Square Park.

Most popular

Stephen Daisley

Could this photo cost Mark Carney victory in Canada’s election?

Downstairs the show shifts gear in a partial recreation of the 1913 avant-garde Grafton Group exhibition, organised by Roger Fry and including much better work by Weber (a couple of landscape gouaches, an energetic pastel and chalk drawing of dancers and a couple of still-lifes) and fine things by Wyndham Lewis, Winifred Gill and Frederick Etchells, with Duncan Grant’s enjoyably decorative screen of blue sheep.