Francis Picabia
The Broadcaster of Visual Dada
Early Experiments
Francis Picabia was never afraid to shift styles. Between 1915 and 1916, he abandoned Cubism and embraced mechanomorphic drawing, publishing a stream of ironic, machine-inspired compositions through 291 and later 391.
These works challenged convention, but they did not yet destabilize it. They were clever, often satirical, but still controlled—contained within line and language.
Then, something changed.
Jeanne Marie Bourgeois (1917)
In Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, Picabia applied something entirely different.
Gone were the tidy diagrams. In their place: oil, fingerprinted drips, scumbling,
and scraping. The glamour of the subject was actively undercut. The surface was violated. This was not irony—it was sabotage. Every mark seemed to push
against the image’s coherence. For the first time, Picabia wasn’t just mocking tradition; he was dismantling it from within.
This was the first major painting (after Morée) to encode at least three of the Coded Gestures:
- Parody of Glamour
- Drips as Sabotage
- Artistic Citation
Jeanne Marie Bourgeois: The Direct Echo
Picabia’s Jeanne Marie Bourgeois is the only known artwork created in direct visual response to Morée while likely having access to the original. This is no distant citation. Jeanne Marie Bourgeois echoes Morée’s formal logic with uncanny precision:It is as if Morée had been held up for study, then dismantled and reimagined. No other Dada work—before or after—so closely mirrors Morée’s visual structure. Later echoes may inherit its tactics, but Jeanne Marie Bourgeois seems to stand beside it.
The Broadcast Begins
After this moment, Picabia’s work diverges again. He publishes prodigiously, spreads chaos in 391, and contributes to the spread of New York Dada. But the clarity of his 1917 visual engagement with Morée fades. It’s as if he had seen the source code, understood it—and then scattered it.Conclusion
Picabia was not just a follower of Dada, nor merely a provocateur. He was one of its earliest broadcasters, transmitting visual sabotage into the bloodstream of modern art. But for one brief moment, in Jeanne Marie Bourgeois, he wasn’t just transmitting.He was replying.