Cubism



Cubism was sparked in 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and is one of the most potent art movements of the 20th century. The cubists were inspired by painters like Georges Seurat, Fauves, and Paul Cezanne as well as by African sculpture as you can see in many of Picasso’s works. Cubist artists believed in breaking up a subject matter, analyzing it, and then re assembling it in abstract form.

Instead of depicting an object from one angle, cubist artists were able to paint an object from multiple angles at the same time in order to represent an object in the most complete way possible. Braque and Picasso took this idea to heart after hearing the advice of Paul Cezanne in 1904: nature should be treated “in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone”. There were three main stages to the development of the cubist movement: Facet Cubism, Analytic Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism. The first controversial exhibition that gave cubism it’s initial fame was put on by Braque and Raoul Dufy in 1908, both artists having fauvist beginnings. They created a series of landscapes with limited variety of colors and simplified forms.

Art critic Louis Vauxcelles described Braque as an artists that “scorns form and reduces everything, sites, figures and houses, to geometric schemas and cubes”. Over the next couple years Braque and Picasso created works broken into planes and edges defying perspective and depth. Many cubist works have bland colors and uniform small brushstrokes which work to create vibrations of light.

Braque and Picasso conveyed elements of illusion, unconventional continuity and density. Even though the first world war stopped Picasso and Braque from working together on the Cubist movement, the cubist core continued to be active until the 1920’s. Cubism artists like Matisse, Laurens, Lipchitz, and Fernand Leger were all influenced by the works of Braque, Picasso, and Cezanne before them.


Pablo Picasso

Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor born in Malaga, Spain as the first child to Jose Ruiz y Blasco and Maria Picasso y Lopez. He is known as one of the founders of cubism along with Georges Braque. In his lifetime Picasso created about 13000 paintings or designs, 34000 book illustrations, 300 sculptures, and 100000 art prints. Picasso’s father was a painter that specialized in natural bird images and was a famous professor of art in the School of Crafts. Picasso’s father tutored him in art, teaching him drawing and oil painting. Picasso went to school for carpentry throughout his childhood, but did not finish his college courses at the Academy of Arts in Madrid. In many of Picasso’s earliest works he uses images of harlequins, which are humorous characters sporting checkered clothing. The harlequin eventually became a symbol for Picasso. In the 1930’s the painter picked up a new symbol, the minotaur to replace the harlequin motif, most likely because of his interaction with the surrealists who often used the minotaur as a symbol. You’ll find an example of this in Picasso’s Guernica painting.

Picasso’s work can be divided into 5 different periods:

1. The Blue Period – ranged from 1901 to 1904 and consisted of low intensity blue paintings that were the result of the suicide of Carlos Casagemas, a close friend to Picasso. The Blue Period features acrobats, harlequins, paupers, various artists, and women of the night.

2. The Rose Period – ranged from 1905 to 1907 and was characterized by more upbeat colors including oranges and pinks. Picasso was in Paris at the time and had befriended Fernande Olivier, a model for artists.

3. The African influenced Period – ranged from 1908 to 1909 and was influenced by African artifacts.

4. Analytic Cubism – ranged from 1909 to 1912 and featured the unique cubist style which he developed with Braque using browns and grays. The motive was to pick objects apart and analyze them in terms of shapes and components that make them up. Picasso and Braque’s paintings resemble each other’s at this time.

5. Synthetic Cubism – ranged from 1912 to 1919 in which Picasso used pieces of cut paper to create artwork. He’d paste the fragments of newsprint, magazines, and wallpaper into collages, which were the first to be presented as fine art.