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Cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early
twentieth century. The Cubists tried to create a new way of seeing
things in art. Many of their subjects
were represented as combinations of basic geometric shapes, sometimes
showing multiple viewpoints of a particular image. This approach was
related more to the way we see images in our 'minds-eye' rather than in
real life. cubist pictures
are often described as looking like pieces of fractured glass. Cubism was begun by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1907. They were greatly inspired by African sculpture, by painters Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat, and by the Fauves. The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term Cubism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cézanne. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes." Other influences on early Cubism have been linked to Primitivism and non-Western sources. The stylization and distortion of Picasso's ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon painted in 1907, came from African art. Picasso had first seen African art when, in May or June 1907, he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris.  The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy
nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of
perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They wanted instead to
emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and
fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within
a shallow, relief like space. They also used multiple or contrasting
vantage points. A Cubist's canvas resembles "a field of broken glass" as
one vicious critic noted. This geometrically analytical approach to form
and color, and shattering of object in focus into geometrical
sharp-edged angular pieces baptized the movement into Cubism. A close
look reveals very methodical deconstruction into
angular 3-dymensional shaded facets, some of which are caving others
convex. Cubism distrusts whole images perceived by the retina and considers them artificial and conventional.
Cubism rejects these images and recognizes that perspective space
is an illusory, rational invention, or a sign system inherited from
works of art since the Renaissance.English art historian Douglas Cooper describes three phases of Cubism in his seminal book "The Cubist Epoch". According to Cooper "Early Cubism" lasted from 1906 to 1908. This is when the cubism movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque. The second phase is called "High Cubism", lasting from 1909 to 1914, during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent. Cooper referred to "Late Cubism", from 1914 to 1921, as the last phase of Cubism. The last stage of Cubism was considered a radical avant-garde movement. Though primarily associated with painting, Cubism also exerted a profound influence on twentieth-century sculpture and architecture. The liberating formal concepts initiated by Cubism also had far-reaching consequences for Dada and Surrealism, as well as for all artists pursuing abstraction in Germany, Holland, Italy, England, America, and Russia. |
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