ABSTRACT
In an interesting article entitled "Hello and Goodbye, Francis Picabia," in the September 1970 issue of Art News, Philip Pearlstein recounts the vicissitudes of his research into the work of this legendary figure some fifteen years ago and its effect on his own development as a painter. Picabia was born in 1879 and died in 1953. The best of Picabia's pictures fall into two groups: the abstract, near-abstract, or semi-abstract paintings of 1912-1914, and the so-called "machine" paintings, which commence in 1915 and continue into the early twenties. William A. Camfield—a Picabia specialist from Rice University who organized the show at the Guggenheim and wrote the excellent catalogue that accompanies it—writes that the artist "participated in a prominent trend of the 1920's toward conservative adaptations of modern art to more traditional forms." Once the Dada holiday was over, there was—at least for an artist of Picabia's sensibility—no place to go but home. But for Picabia it was too late.
