Jeanne Marie Bourgeois — 1917
1. The Moment of Recognition
As I was researching Morée and trying to figure out if any Dada artists had ever painted any
kind of drips before, Picabia’s name kept surfacing—but I wasn’t expecting anything, so far no
Dada Artist had done any paintings that looked anything like Morée.Then I saw Jeanne Marie Bourgeois.
That long drip entering the frame from the right and running all the way to the bottom of the canvas.
I knew that drip. I had seen it—in Morée.It wasn’t identical, but it did carry the same visual DNA.
That’s when things started to click.
I thought: If Morée isn’t by Picabia—then it seems possible that Picabia may have seen this.
That possibility really began to gel, especially as I continued to find more parallels.
2. The Black Pool
What was the black pool, the one where the drips seem to originate from?
Did that connect to Morée in any way?
Well, by now I had a pretty good understanding of the process that was used to create
the pigment clearing, drip forming effect that I have decided to call “Veil Water”.The “Veil Water” term comes from the English translation of “Eau de Voilette”, which is the
name of the perfume in the famous Belle Haleine bottle.It is actually a very befitting name for “the process”.
The black pool seems to be an abstraction of the black ink wash that is the source of the drips in Morée.
3. The Upper Right Corner
Outlined in red, with three large green horizontal stripes inside, is an area that represents the
large cleared (washed out) area in Morée’s upper right quadrant.There are also some red drips coming in from the top.
The color red, as it turns out will have significance.
That is explained in the next paragraph.
4. The Red Squiggly Drip
It started with a question. Why is that long red drip squiggly, could it represent movement?
Actually. I do believe it represents movement—movement of pigment, or more specifically, the active repelling of pigment. This repelling effect is caused by differences in surface tension in fluids.
We are calling this the Veil Water effect but it is also known officially as the Marangoni Effect.
Wherever the color red intersects with another color, Picabia leaves a sort of halo around it,
simulating the other color repelling away.
This is all done in the abstract of course, Picabia does not use
the actual effect. He paints it symbolically.
5. Is this Mistinguett?
This painting has always had some attribution problems. Enough so, that it was excluded from
William Camfield’s catalog raissoné of Picabia’s known works—published in 2014.Volume II of The 1976 Guggenheim Museum Collection Paintings 1880 – 1945 estimates a date for this painting to be 1908 – 1911. They have the signature as reading 1907 and express confusion over why the painting seems later. This volume also states that the identification of Mistinguett as the sitter cannot be established with certainty.
Again, Morée points us to a plausible explanation for all of these discrepancies. And may even redefine the importance of this painting in relation to NY Dada.
