Nature morte à l’horloge

Inscriptions: Signed (lower right)

Provenance: Christie’s, New York, 10 November 1999, lot 604 (dated c. 1913).

Christie’s, New York, 2 November 2005, lot 444 (dated c. 1913).

Exhibitions: Possibly, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris, 17 January – 1 February 1913, cat. no. 19, titled Nature morte (4e Dimension)

Literature: Erasmus Weddigen, Cycling, Cubo-Futurism and the Fourth Dimension, Jean Metzinger’s At the Cycle-Race Track, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2012, Fig. 68, p. 88, reproduced

Notes: Metzinger’s internally consistent synthetic methods of combining symmetries and symmetry-breaking processes, served not merely as a means of composing or juxtaposing structural elements on a canvas in an attempt to please the mind’s eye, but too, and more generally, served as a guiding concept in the representation of order and meaning. It was an act or process of concordance that allowed passage or access to something more, an institution, a thoroughfare, or new frontier, that gave way to an endless realm of possibilities.