Francis Picabia, Radiometers, and X-Rays in 1913

Abstract

Francis Picabia's watercolor of 1913, Mechanical Expression Seen through Our Own Mechanical Expression, draws upon two well-known scientific objects developed by the prominent British chemist William Crookes: the Crookes tube (used to produce X-rays) and the Crookes radiometer. As an extension of Willard Bohn's earlier discussion of Picabia and the radiometer, this essay interprets Picabia's watercolor in the context of the widespread public fascination with X-rays in this period. The “landscape” surrounding Picabia's central, Crookes tube-related image exemplifies the new form language with which he sought to paint interior essences and a higher, four-dimensional reality. Like the art and theory of his Cubist colleagues and his friend Duchamp, Picabia's goals were part of the quest for the invisible encouraged by the discovery of X-rays and their demonstration of the inadequacy of human sense perception.