ART
text by ARNAULD PIERRE
all artwork by FRANCIS PICABIA
a special project by KATERINA JEBB
thanks to BEVERLEY CALTE
at the beginning of the last century, with the advent of photography, painting started to lose its aura. at the same time, the ideal of love was disrupted by the emerging pornography industry. marcel duchamp chose to abandon painting, while his close friend francis picabia never stopped painting all his life, becoming one of the most influential artists, particularly among a new generation of painters.
Francis Picabia belonged to a generation of artists that, rightly or wrongly, believed it would witness the end of painting, vanquished by the proliferation of mechanical images from photography and cinematography. The illusion-free painter saw his or her art as being irremediably cut off from all authentic experience of the real because of the ever-growing numbers of reproducible images that were beginning to interpose…