Visual Art: Cubism

Cubism
(1907-1922)

bio_picasso_pablo
Pablo Picasso

“Cubism was one of the first truly modern movements to emerge in art. It evolved during a period of heroic and rapid innovation between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The movement has been described as having two stages: ‘Analytic’ Cubism, in which forms seem to be ‘analyzed’ and fragmented; and ‘Synthetic’ Cubism, in which newspaper and other foreign materials such as chair caning and wood veneer, are collaged to the surface of the canvas as ‘synthetic’ signs for depicted objects. The style was significantly developed by Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, but it attracted a host of adherents, both in Paris and abroad, and it would go on to influence the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Willem de Kooning.

And, “it lies at the root of a host of early modern styles such as Dada, Constructivism, and De Stijl, whilst also being the impetus for the later, romantic reactions such as Surrealism, which rejected Cubism’s sometimes quasi-scientific approach to perception. The ideas in the movement also fed into more popular phenomena, like Art Deco design and architecture” (“Cubism”).

More specifically, Cubism “arose out of the need to define and represent the then new modern reality. This new reality was complex and ambiguous, shaped by new inventions, philosophical speculation and cultural diversity. The new technology and scientific discoveries were radically changing the pace of life and the way society perceived the nature of things. Whereas in the past, life had been static, science and technology were now forcing modern man to experience time, motion and space more dynamically. […]

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Braque’s Houses at l’Estaque (1908)

Furthermore, the ambiguity and sense of uncertainty generated by this new rush of stimuli was interpreted by the theory of relativity that evolved through F. H. Bradley, Whitehead, Einstein, and the new mathematics. What these philosophical theoreticians suggested was that we live in a world of shifting perspectives, where the appearance of objects is in a constant flux depending on the point of view from which it is seen.

Finally, the experience of reality was also being altered by the cultural interactions taking place between the East and West, the primitive and the industrialized. In other words, each culture brought along with it a new, idiosyncratic way of looking at things, and the interchange occurring between cultures obscured the perception of truth. Relativity became everything” (“New Vision”).

Of course, art is one way to deal with changing times. “The problem facing the modern artist became how to formally depict this new dynamic vision of life. For the painter, specifically, the dilemma became representing the flux of time, motion and space in a medium that lent itself to the mere capture of the fleeting moment. Cubism was born as a response to this predicament, and it is no accident that the movement was a Parisian phenomenon, considering the city’s artistic legacy and its magnetic ability to attract the most gifted young artists and writers from all over the world. Paris offered them great art museums, a tradition of moral and artistic freedom, and an artistic bohemia where they could live cheaply on the margin of bourgeois society” (“New Vision”).

Key Ideas

  • Analytic Cubism staged modern art’s most radical break with traditional models of representation. It abandoned perspective, which artists had used to order space since the
    three-musicians
    Picasso’s The Three Musicians (1921)

    Renaissance. And it turned away from the realistic modeling of figures and towards a system of representing bodies in space that employed small, tilted planes, set in a shallow space. Over time, Picasso and Braque also moved towards open form – they pierced the bodies of their figures, let the space flow through them, and blended background into foreground. Some historians have argued that its innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world.

  • Synthetic Cubism proved equally important and influential for later artists. Instead of relying on depicted shapes and forms to represent objects, Picasso and Braque began to explore the use of foreign objects as abstract signs. Their use of newspaper would lead later historians to argue that, instead of being concerned above all with form, the artists were also acutely aware of current events – in particular WWI.
  • Cubism paved the way for geometric abstract art by putting an entirely new emphasis on the unity between the depicted scene in a picture, and the surface of the canvas. Its innovations would be taken up by the likes of Piet Mondrian, who continued to explore its use of the grid, its abstract system of signs, and its shallow space.

Key Innovations

At the end of Cubism, we see the major innovations solidified:

  • bringing together familiar scraps and unfamiliar forms in order to give shape to a particular sense of urban life
  • exploring the individual experiences associated with public spaces and urban recreation
  • using the language of publicity and commerce in an ambiguous manner to suggest a multiplicity of contradictory meanings, especially through puns
  • capturing the new sense of simultaneity of diverse experiences-the fusion of objects, people, machines, noises, light, smells, etc.

Major Artists

  • Pablo Picasso
  • Georges Braque
  • Fernand Léger
  • Juan Gris
  • Robert Delaunay
  • Sonia Delaunay

Pablo Picasso 
(Spanish, 1881-1973)

“Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the first half of the twentieth century. Associated most of all with pioneering Cubism, alongside Georges Braque, he also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism. He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and ceramics.

It was a confluence of influences – from Paul Cézanne and Henri Rousseau, to archaic and tribal art – that encouraged Picasso to lend his figures more weight and structure around 1906. And they ultimately set him on the path towards Cubism, in which he deconstructed the conventions of perspectival space that had dominated painting since the Renaissance. These innovations would have far-reaching consequences for practically all of modern art, revolutionizing attitudes to the depiction of form in space.
Picasso’s immersion in Cubism also eventually led him to the invention of collage, in which he abandoned the idea of the picture as a window on objects in the world, and began to conceive of it merely as an arrangement of signs that used different, sometimes metaphorical means, to refer to those objects. This too would prove hugely influential for decades to come.
Picasso had an eclectic attitude to style, and although, at any one time, his work was usually characterized by a single dominant approach, he often moved interchangeably between different styles – sometimes even in the same artwork” (“Picasso”).
Analytical Cubism:
As its name implies, the paintings associated with the Analytical Cubism phase show evidence of a methodology through which Picasso and Braque used to “break down” the surface of the objects being represented into basic, geometrical shapes. Picasso’s Woman with a Fan (1908) is a volumetric study of a woman whose features are simplified into spheres and triangles and suggests a sculptor at work, as indeed Picasso was” (“New Vision”).
.picasso_woman_fan
Synthetic Cubism:
Picasso’s Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle [(1914)] is typical of his Synthetic Cubism, in which he uses various means – painted dots, silhouettes, grains of sand – to allude to the depicted objects. This combination of painting and mixed media is an example of the way Picasso “synthesized” color and texture – synthesizing new wholes after mentally dissecting the objects at hand. During his Analytic Cubist phase Picasso had suppressed color, so as to concentrate more on the forms and volumes of the objects, and this rationale also no doubt guided his preference for still life throughout this phase. The life of the cafe certainly summed up modern Parisian life for the artists – it was where he spent a good deal of time talking with other artists – but the simple array of objects also ensured that questions of symbolism and allusion might be kept under control.
picasso-fruit-dish-bottle-violin-NG6449-fm

Georges Braque
(French, 1882-1963)

‘Braque’s work throughout his life focused on still lifes and means of viewing objects from various perspectives through color, line, and texture. While his collaboration with Pablo Picasso and their Cubist works are best known, Braque had a long painting career that continued beyond Cubism. Braque was also often dedicated to quiet periods in his studio rather than to being a personality in the art world” (“Braque”).
Even though Braque worked to develop Cubism with Picasso, he said that his work differed from his friend’s in that “his work was ‘devoid of iconological commentary’ and was concerned purely with pictorial space and composition.

Braque sought balance and harmony in his compositions, especially through papier collés, a pasted paper collage technique that Picasso and Braque invented in 1912. Braque, however, took collage one-step further by gluing cut-up advertisements into his canvases. This foreshadowed modern art movements concerned with critiquing media, such as Pop art.
Braque stenciled letters onto paintings, blended pigments with sand, and copied wood grain and marble to achieve great levels of dimension in his paintings. His depictions of still lifes are so abstract that they border on becoming patterns that express an essence of the objects viewed rather than direct representations” (“Braque”).
Analytical Cubism:
“Braque depicted both bottles and fishes throughout his entire painting career, and these objects stand as markers to differentiate his various styles. Bottle and Fishes is an excellent example of Braque’s foray into Analytic Cubism, while he worked closely with Picasso. This painting has the restricted characteristic earth tone palette rendering barely perceptible objects as they disintegrate along a horizontal plane. While there are some diagonal lines, Braque’s early paintings tended to work vertically or horizontally” (“Braque”).
bottle-and-fishes-1910
Collage:
“Although it was Braque who invented the idea of collage, it was Picasso who first executed it.  However, Braque invented and executed the first papier collé, a kind of collage consisting of papers that are glued onto the canvas. Braque’s inclusion of paper seems to be analogous to the addition of the oilcloth.  But Braque’s use of wallpaper does this and more.  What Braque has discovered here is that there are ready-made materials that simulate “woodness,” that do not have to be drawn or painted and that can be cut up and manipulated, that are always the same no matter what the “light” in the picture, and that can appear independently of the shape of the object of which they are meant to be a part. Braque has added the element of materialism into painting.  So instead of painting something onto the canvas, he just glued it on–whether it be newspaper scraps, wallpaper, paper printed to resemble something else, advertisements, etc.  Furthermore, Braque used all kinds of decorative painting techniques learned from his days as a house painter.  He incorporated combing, faux graining, and adding sawdust and sand for texture. Braque also added shadows with graphite and charcoal thereby mixing drawing and painting techniques.
A case in point is Braque’s Woman with a Guitar (1913) in which the artist assembles a woman playing a guitar from different layers of shapes, colors, and ready-made materials stacked to create her essence” (“New Vision”).
woman-with-a-guitar-1913

Assignment:

Analyze Juan Gris’s painting Still Life before an Open Window: Place Ravignan (1915). In two paragraphs, discuss how the painting reflects the ideas and style of Cubism.

On deck: Surrealism

Works Cited

“Cubism.” The Art Story: Modern Art Insight. Web. 29 June 2015.

“Cubism: A New Vision.” Miami Dade College. Web. 29 June 2015.

“Georges Braque.” The Art Story: Modern Art Insight. Web. 29 June 2015.

“Pablo Picasso.” The Art Story: Modern Art Insight. Web. 29 June 2015.

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