CUBISM

Definition of CUBISM
Cubism was a truly revolutionary style ofmodern art
developed by Pablo Picasso and George Braque. They develop
their ideas on Cubism around 1907 in Paris. It was the first style
of abstract art that evolved at the beginning of the 20th century
in response to a world that was changing with unprecedented
speed. Cubism was an attempt by artists to revitalize the tired
traditions of Western art that they believed had run their
course. The Cubists challenged conventional forms of
representation, such as perspective, which had been the rule
since theRenaissance. Their aim was to develop a new way of
reflecting the modern age.

History and Development of CUBISM

From 1870-1910, western society witnessed more technological progress
than in the previous four centuries. During this period, inventions such as
photography, cinematography, sound recording, the telephone, the motor car
and the airplane heralded the dawn of a new age. The problem for artists at
this time was how to reflect the modernity of the era using the tired and
trusted traditions that had served art for the last four centuries. Photography
had begun to replace painting as the tool for documenting the age and for
artists to sit illustrating cars, planes and images of the new technologies was
not exactly rising to the challenge. Artists needed a more radical approach - a
'new way of seeing' that expanded the possibilities of art in the same way
that technology was extending the boundaries of communication and travel.
This new way of seeing was called Cubism - the first abstract style of modern
art.

Two events marked the beginning of Cubism. The first was Picasso
returning to Paris from his home in Catalonia with his painting,Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon(1907). In its radical distortion of the figures, its
rendering of volumes as fragmented planes, and its subdued palette, this
work predicted some of the key characteristics of later Cubism. Secondly,
Braque made a series of landscape paintings in the summer of 1908, in
which trees and mountains were rendered as shaded cubes and
pyramids, resembling architectural forms.
It was this series that led French art criticLouis Vauxcellesto describe
them as "bizarreries cubiques," thus giving the movement its name.
The close contact between Picasso and Braque was crucial in the style's
genesis. The two artists collaborated very closely, regularly meeting to
discuss their progress, and at times it is hard to distinguish the work of
one artist from another.

The other artists who came to be associated with the style

-Robert Delaunay,Sonia Delaunay,Jean Metzingerand Raymond
Duchamp-Villon- occupied different social circles, gathered
elsewhere around Paris and later exhibited together. This group
came to be known as the 'Salon' Cubists.

Characteristics of CUBISM
Ever since the Renaissance, if not before, artists painted pictures
from a single fixed viewpoint, as if they were taking a photograph. So,
Braque and Picasso abandoned the idea of a single fixed viewpoint and
instead used a multiplicity of viewpoints. The object was then
reassembled out of fragments of these different views, rather like a
complex jigsaw puzzle. In this way, many different views of an object
were simultaneously depicted in the same picture.
That style of painting could now be regarded less as a kind of
window on the world and more as a physical object on which a
subjective response to the world is created. Cubism showed how a
sense of solidity and pictorial structure could be created without
traditional perspective or modeling.

The Cubist style focused on the flat, two-dimensional surface of

the picture plane, and rejected the traditional conventions and
techniques of linear perspective, chiaroscuro (use of shading to
show light and shadow) and the traditional idea of imitating
nature. Instead of creating natural-looking 3-D objects, Cubist
painters offered a brand new set of images reassembled from 2-D
fragments which showed the objects from several sides
simultaneously. Cubists sought to depict the intellectual idea or
form of an object, and its relationship to others and introduced
collage into painting. The Cubist painters rejected the inherited
concept that art should copy nature.

Two Distinct Phases of CUBISM

1. Analytical Cubism
Style of painting that Picasso developed with Georges Braque.
During Analytical Cubism (191012), also called "hermetic,"
Picasso and Braque so abstracted their works that they were
reduced to just a series of overlapping planes and facets mostly in
near-monochromatic browns, grays, or blacks. . In their work from
this period, Picasso and Braque frequently combined
representational motifs with letters. Their favorite motifs were Still
Life with musical instruments, bottles, pitchers, glasses,
newspapers, playing cards, and the human face and figure.
Landscapes were rare. In Analytic Cubism, the small facets of a
dissected or "analyzed" object are reassembled to evoke that same

2. Synthetic Cubism
Influenced by the introduction of bold and simple collage shapes,
Synthetic Cubism moved away from the unified monochrome surfaces of
Analytic Cubism to a more direct, colorful and decorative style. Although
synthetic cubist images appear more abstract in their use of simplified
forms, the other elements of their composition are applied quite
traditionally. Interchanging lines, colors, patterns and textures that switch
from geometric to freehand, dark to light, positive to negative and plain
to patterned, advance and recede in rhythms across the picture plain. In
Synthetic Cubism, large pieces of neutral or colored paper themselves
allude to a particular object, either because they are often cut out in the
desired shape or else sometimes bear a graphic element that clarifies the
association. Synthetic Cubism in which cut paper fragments often
wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages were pasted into
compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

Consciousness Behind the Movement

Cubism was an art-style with attitude. It was iconoclastic, challenging, and
intellectual. It focused on ideas rather than pretty pictures. But it captured
the spirit of the age - the age of challenging French musicians Claude
Debussy (1862-1918), Erik Satie (1866-1925) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937),
and analytical Cubism in particular corresponded with the ideas of the
French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose concept of
simultaneitystated that the past overlaps with the present, which itself flows
into the future. Meanwhile, fine art was at something of a crossroads.
Impressionism was yesterday's fashion, theBelle poqueof Parisian poster art
was over, Toulouse-Lautrec was dead,Art Nouveauwas in decline, and even
colorfulFauvismwas running out of steam. At the same time, the political
temperature was rising across Europe, exposing horrific possibilities of war
and chaos. In its assault on the old certainties of Renaissance art, Cubism
mirrored the calls for change in many other disciplines, as well as the world

The limitations of perspective were also seen as an obstacle to

progress by the Cubists. The fact that a picture drawn in
perspective could only work from one viewpoint restricted their
options. As the image was drawn from a fixed position, the result
was frozen, like a snapshot - but the Cubists wanted to make
pictures that reached beyond the rigid geometry of perspective.
They wanted to introduce the idea of 'relativity' - how the artist
perceived and selected elements from the subject, fusing both their
observations and memories into the one concentrated image. To do
this the Cubists examined the way that we see.

When you look at an object your eye scans it, stopping to register on a
certain detail before moving on to the next point of interest and so on.
You can also change your viewpoint in relation to the object allowing you
to look at it from above, below or from the side. Therefore, the Cubists
proposed that your sight of an object is the sum of many different views
and your memory of an object is not constructed from one angle, as in
perspective, but from many angles selected by your sight and movement.
Cubist painting, paradoxically abstract in form, was an attempt at a more
realistic way.
A typical Cubist painting depicts real people, places or objects, but not
from a fixed viewpoint. Instead it will show you many parts of the subject
at one time, viewed from different angles, and reconstructed into a
composition of planes, forms and colors. The whole idea of space is
reconfigured: the front, back and sides of the subject become

Main Proponents
1. Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973)
The most dominant and influential artist of the first half of the twentieth century.
Picasso also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and
Surrealism. Born in a poor yet creative family in southern Spain in 1881, he started as
a child prodigy and ended as the acknowledged greatest painter of his century.
Picasso began formally studying art at the age of 11. His father was a painter, and he
quickly showed signs of following the same path. His father was his first teacher.
After some early training, he showed that he had thoroughly grasped naturalistic
conventions he ways that artists make picture look "realistic" at a very young age.
His works began to attract serious critical attention and praise when he was 20. His
family moved to Barcelona, Picasso continued his art education. During the years
from 1900-1904, he began making sculpture. In 1904, Picasso's palette began to
brighten, and for a year or more he painted in a style that has been characterized as
his Rose Period. Around 1906, after he had met Georges Braque, his palette darkened,
his forms became heavier, more solid in aspect, and he began to find his way towards

Georges Braque (1882-1973)

Born on May 13th, 1882. French. Braque was the son of a house
painter, and as a teenager trained as a painter and decorator. Georges
Braque received his training at the local art school in Le Havre. From
1902 to 1904 Braque went to Paris to study at the Academie Humbert
and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in the studio
of Leon Bonnat. Braque's early works, those of 1903-05, were executed in
the mood of early impressionism. Braque started out as a member of the
Fauves, he began developing a Cubist style after meeting Pablo Picasso.
While their paintings shared many similarities in palette, style and
subject matter. He sought balance and harmony in his compositions,
however, took collage one-step further by gluing cut-up advertisements
into his canvases. Braque stenciled letters onto paintings, blended
pigments with sand, and copied wood grain and marble to achieve great
levels of dimension in his paintings. Georges Braque was guided from a

His father managed a decorative painting business and Braque's interest in

texture and tactility perhaps came from working with him as a decorator.
Braque was most interested in showing how objects look when viewed over
time in different temporal spaces and pictorial planes. As a result of his
dedication to depicting space in various ways, he naturally gravitated towards
designing sets and costumes for theater and ballet performances, doing this
throughout the 1920s. Braque joined the French Army and left Picassos side;
served during World War I and suffered a head wound. When he returned to
Paris, he distanced himself from Picasso. His paintings became more fluid,
with less hard edges; with clearer figures and interiors.

SAMPLE PAINTINGS

PABLO PICASSO

THREE MUSICIANS

GUERNICA

GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR

GEORGES BRAQUE

HOUSES AT LESTAQUE

CLARINET AND BOTTLE OF RUM

MANTLEPIECE

BOTTLE AND FISHES