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Francis Picabia \ Biography

Born in Paris (France) on 22 January 1879, artist, poet and theorist Francis Picabia is recognised as a key figure in the development of abstract art and the avant-garde in the 20th century.

Influenced initially by Fauvism and Cubism, in 1911 Picabia joined the Puteaux Group, where he first met Marcel Duchamp and Guillaume Apollinaire. Between 1913 to 1915 Picabia made several visits to New York, where he was active in avant-garde circles and took part in the Armory Show of 1913. In 1917 he published his first volume of poetry and founded the celebrated avant-garde periodical 391, which ran for 19 (irregular) issues until publication ceased in 1924. Other contributors to 391 included Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Robert Desnos, René Magritte, Edgard Varese and Max Jacob.

Picabia continued his involvement in Dada through 1919 in Zürich and Paris, producing numerous machine drawings and two issues of Cannibale (1920), but broke with Tzara in 1921, and then with the Surrealist faction lead by Andre Breton three years later. However Picabia remained on good terms with visionary composer Erik Satie, collaborating with him on the 'Instantanéist' ballet Relâche in 1924. Picabia refused to be categorized, and after 1925 worked in a variety of styles, but during the 1940s resumed abstract painting and writing poetry. He died of arterial sclerosis on 30 November 1953. A lover of fast cars, Picabia is said to have owned no less than 150 different vehicles.

So far as is known Picabia composed just one piece of music, an antagonistic piece performed for the first - and seemingly the last - time at a Festival Dada held at the prestigious Salle Gaveau, Paris, on Wednesday 26 May 1920. On this occasion La Nourrice Américaine was performed by Marguerite Buffet, and according to his then-partner Germaine Everling consisted of "three notes repeated to infinity". In reality the motif was probably played for a few minutes only, since the program featured at least 18 other contributions from Tzara, Breton, Soupault, Eluard, Ribemont-Dessaignes and others. Furthermore The American Nurse seems not to have been mentioned in any contemporary review of the event, despite the presence of many reporters.

It is quite possible that Picabia was inspired to conceive The American Nurse by his friend and future collaborator Erik Satie. Picabia was one of the first to link Satie to Dada, and Satie in turn would contribute to 391. Their theatrical collaboration on Relâche came comparatively late, in December 1924, but Picabia had already championed Satie as the inventor of Musique d'ameublement ('furniture music') in issue #3 of Der Dada in April 1920, and may also have been aware of Vexations, Satie's remarkable composition from 1893. Vexations consists of just three lines of music, but repeated 840 times, so that a complete performance might last 14 hours.

However Vexations remained obscure until 1963, when John Cage organized the first complete performance of the piece, and if Picabia knew of the piece at all before the Festival Dada in May 1920 it would seem unlikely that he had actually heard it. Nonetheless, Satie-esque inspiration can also be inferred from the unsubtle subtitle Musique sodomiste ('sodomist music'), applied just a few weeks after Picabia praised Satie as the originator of Musique d'ameublement in Der Dada.

Another likely inspiration was Marcel Duchamp, a close friend of Picabia since 1911. Both men endorsed chance as a component of the creative process, and Duchamp's extraordinary 'musical erratum' of 1913 (La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même) allowed for a random method of composition utilizing balls, a funnel and a model train. It is possible that Picabia elected to employ composition par hasard for The American Nurse - true Instantanéisme if made up on the spot. Inevitably, Picabia must also have discussed music theory with another fellow French expatriate in New York, Edgard Varese, and with Marguerite and Gabrielle Buffet, the latter Picabia's first wife.

What is certain is that The American Nurse was intended to provoke rather than to entertain, its anti-art intent emphasized by the subtitle Musique sodomiste. However, whether his artistic intent was truly serious is more difficult to determine. Since Picabia seems not to have referred to the piece in subsequent writings or interviews, the suspicion remains that the piece was more in the nature of an ironic, nihilistic prank. Nonetheless, it remains a rare example of Dada music properly so called, and is a perfect aural counterpart for Picabia's oft-quoted Manifeste Cannibale Dada, published in Dadaphone (#7, March 1920).

As well as the first recording of La Nourrice Américaine, this CD and download anthology also includes a recording made by Picabia for French radio on 25 July 1945, when writer Henri Goetz visited his atelier in Paris.

James Hayward

November 2007

Francis Picabia