1932 (Au Chat Botté)

Ben Nicholson 1894 - 1982

Summary

A stylised, cubist-inspired still life composition, made up of a female head, a jug, a bowl and a guitar or mandolin on a square tabletop. In the centre of the table towards the back, a white block is inscribed ‘AU CHAT / BOTTE / DIEPPE’ in large upper case letters. On the far left a drawn curtain frames the scene. Ben Nicholson explained this painting Au Chat Botte (Puss in Boots) in an article by the artist in 'Horizon' October 1941. It was reprinted, with revisions by Nicholson, as 'Notes on Abstract Art' (Lund Humphries, London, 1948). 'About space construction: I can explain an aspect of this by an early painting I made of a shop-window in Dieppe, though, at the time, this was not made with any conscious idea of space but merely using the shop-window as a theme on which to base an imaginative idea. The name of the shop was Au Chat Botte, and this set going a train of thought connected with the fairy tales of my childhood and, being in French, and my French being a little mysterious, the words themselves had also an abstract quality - but what was important was that this name was printed in very lovely red lettering on a glass window - giving one plane - and in this window were reflections of what was behind me as I looked in - giving a second plane - while through the window objects on a table were performing a kind of ballet and forming the eye or life-point of the painting - giving a third plane. These three planes and all their subsidiary planes were inter-changeable so that you could not tell which was real and which was unreal, what was reflected and what unreflected, and this created, as I see now, some kind of space, or an imaginative world in which one could live.' Although Au Chat Botte was a shoe shop, Nicholson painted conventional still life objects rather than a display of shoes: table, jug, bowl, guitar and portrait bust. The head may be a reflection of his companion, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

Display Label

Gallery text panel Tradition and Experiment Early Twentieth-Century Art 1900 - 1939. In Britain, the beginning of the 20th century coincided with the end of the Victorian age. Artists and designers experimented, challenging traditional ways of seeing and making; now trying to create a new art for a modern era. In painting, it was often traditional subject matter such as portraits, landscapes and interiors that would be tackled in new ways. The bustle and the brutality of urban life was an inspiration or something to escape from. Boundaries became increasingly blurred between design and decoration, painting and making and individual expression replaced academic authority. Art was made to be affordable and at a scale that would fit into ordinary homes. Some called the celebration of the modern into question after the horrors of the First World War. Traditional imagery was simplified or became childlike and slowly broke down into fragmented visions. Dream and chance tapped into subconscious anxieties and in 1939, world war intervened once again.