Max Weber and American Cubism

Cubism, widely regarded as the most influential style to emerge at the advent of modernism, had a home in New York and a leading figure in Max Weber. Max Weber studied under Matisse, associated with influential figures including Apollinaire, Picasso, and Delaunay, and is credited with bringing firsthand knowledge of the Parisian avant-garde to Alfred Stieglitz’s modernist circle in New York, inspiring a generation of artists. While his works are in important collections, they have not yet received the close study of the artist’s peers, such as Picasso, Braque, and Leger. William C. Agee, a veteran museum curator and renowned scholar of twentieth-century American art, and scholar Pamela N. Koob take up the challenge in a lavishly illustrated volume, gathering together a selection of Max Weber’s best cubist works. Close readings of Weber’s paintings open the most complete survey to date of American cubism, with entries on key cubist works by Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Hans Hofmann, Charles Sheeler, Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Alice Trumbull Mason, and David Smith, among many others. Filling in a missing piece of one of the twentieth century’s most influential movements, this critical reevaluation is long overdue.