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free solid geometry to enhance awareness of their spacial properties as forms as well as to emphasize their place, again as forms, in the pictorial design.

Although La Fresnaye did not systematically investigate new principles of representation, as did Braque and Picasso, he is related to the origins of the cubist movement by his admiration for the work of Cézanne, whose phrase, "You must see in nature the cylinder, the sphere, the cone," influenced the pioneer work of Braque and Picasso. Cézanne's influence on La Fresnaye carries through the artist's work up to the beginning of the War and is perhaps best reflected in the fact that his forms are solid and conservative in spirit, and never too far from visual appearance. His work is also generally related to the main line of cubist development as established by Braque and Picasso in the character of his forms, derived from the quasi-geometric idiom of his two contemporaries, and, perhaps more important, in a graceful lyrical quality in the forms themselves and their relationships which was one of the main objectives of the leading artists of the movement during the "research" period between 1907 and 1910.

The relationship of La Frensaye's work to cubist methods is perhaps more apparent in the treatment of specific forms. These are simplified by use of rectangles, circles, arcs and straight lines, consistently used by Picasso in his "scaffold" studies of 1910. La Fresnaye uses this idiom, however, in a less radical manner, retaining the visual aspect of the figure and spreading his geometric lines over all parts of the canvas so that they act more as a supplement to the main forms of the composition than as an independent design scheme in themselves. Another device of early cubism was the use of passage, or the interruption of outlines so that the painting of the inner parts of the form could be carried into surrounding areas. This was one of Picasso's major discoveries, making it possible to gain plastic emphasis without forcing the outward aspect of his subject into abnormal distortions. La Fresnaye's application of it can be seen in the right arms of both figures. Simplification by flat overlapping planes was a further method of simplification for plastic emphasis developed by Picasso in his later analytical period and "La Vie Conjugale" shows the use of it in the face of the left figure and in the steeply sloping table top in the background.

In spite of these close relationships with the work of Picasso and Braque, relationships which make "La Vie Conjugale" important in the evolution of the cubist point of view, La Fresnaye's special significance is that of a master composer of pictures rather than the pioneer analyst in search of a new method. His claim to this place lies in his achievement of a lyrical quality and orderliness in the structure and relationships of plastic forms, qualities which convey a serene and ingratiating beauty of style that transcends as it assimilates the elements of a new idiom. He is, as Dorival has suggested in his introduction to the catalogue of the artist's 1950 Paris exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, a painter in the great French intellectual tradition of Poussin and Ingres, a tradition interrupted by the latter nineteenth century painters of "temperament," Courbet and Monet, and which he, with his cubist associates, with the help of Cézanne, renewed.

Flor Quartet To Play

The third appearance of the Flor String Quartet in its series of public evening concerns offered this season at the Institute

91 Minneapolis Institute of Arts