Study Notes: Cubism

Non-Cubists

Pablo Picasso        1881 - 1975 

Georges Braque    1882 - 1963  

Juan Gris                1887 - 1927

Cubist: Section D’Or Group 

Albert Gleizes         1881 - 1953
Jean Metzinger       1883 - 1956
Henri Laurens         1885 - 1954
Jacques Villon        1875 - 1963 

Louis Marcoussis   1878 - 1941 

Robert Delaunay     1885 - 1941
Fernand Leger         1881 - 1955 

Jacques Lipchitz     1891 - 1973

The term ‘Cubism’ was invented by the critic Louis Vauxcelles. Reviewing an exhibition of the work of Georges Braque held at Kahnweiler's gallery in Paris in 1908 for the magazine ‘Gil Blas’ he wrote, 'Braque reduces everything, sites, figures, houses, to geometric out-lines, to cubes'

As with many of the terms of art history the word cubism does not reflect Braque's real concerns. It was not his intention to reduce the world to cubes but to re-evaluate some of the major aesthetic and representational problems of his time such as the issue of reality and illusion and the use of signs and symbols. Certainly, the outcome of the work of Braque and Picasso between the year’s 1906 -1914 (what is now known as Cubism) was the greatest revolution in the visual arts since the Renaissance. There are more similarities between a painting by Renoir of 1880 and a painting of the Renaissance 300 years earlier than with a Picasso of 1910 painted just 30 years later.

The history of cubism can be divided into three stages:

1      Experimental period                      1906 - 1909

2      Analytical Cubism                         1909 - 1912

3      Synthetic Cubism                          1913 - 1914

By 1910 there was a fully developed 'school' of cubist painting in Paris and the new ideas became widespread, especially in Russia and Italy. Even though the outbreak of the First World War dispersed the artists, the influences lasted until 1925 and became generally manifest in the design known as Art Deco before other aesthetic, especially Surrealism, influences took over.

However, Cubism did not represent a complete break with the western tradition of painting but radically developed it by incorporating cultural references from a variety of sources, Picasso and Braque developed a new way of representing the world. The most important of these cultural references include the formal language of Iberian (ancient Spanish) and African sculpture; the work of El Greco; the Symbolist work of Gauguin- especially his relief carvings; naive art particularly that of Henri (the Douanier) Rousseau and especially the work of Cezanne which was highlighted in a number of major exhibitions in the early years of the C20th.

African art, introduced to Picasso by Andre Derain, offered the example of a direct and forceful expression of ideas in a non naturalistic and ‘conceptual’ way. For example, instead of describing an eye as it appears in a figure, African artists found the most direct visual sign to represent it to the viewer. The direct and powerful solutions vary greatly from sculpture to sculpture and offered to Picasso a whole range of expressive alternatives. As with the work of naive painters such as Rousseau the idea of, say, a tree was made more direct through a simplification of the means used, nothing that is not essential to the representation of the idea of the thing is included in the image.

All of these influences were manifested in a painting by Picasso of 1907 – ‘The Demoiselles d'Avignon’. Although not seen in public until 1916 it had a profound effect on other artists who saw it in Picasso's studio. Braque considered it the work of someone 'swallowing petrol and spitting fire' and responded to its primitivism by painting similar figures of his own marking the beginnings of Cubism.

During the following years the formal innovations of Cezanne became the dominant influence. The cubists continued to investigate problems of representation in painting posed by Cezanne such as how to resolve real space to the surface of the canvas and, with the rejection of Renaissance spatial systems, how to record the sensations of experience in painting. Already Cezanne had to 'deform' nature to create an image with the formal strength of the art of the past. In many of his works, rather than a single perspective on a figure or object he was developing a more dynamic imagery incorporating more than one perspective of the same object into his work and flattening forms towards the painting surface.

Although it was not Cezanne's intention, the cubists developed these formal and perceptual issues by recording many aspects of an object into one image as if moving fully around it, simultaneously representing many ideas and aspects of it. This lead to images which are characterised by a fragmented, planar surface which recorded less and less of the characteristics of the objects depicted and more and more of the abstract language of pictorial form in a style that has become known as  ‘Analytical Cubism’.

In analytical cubism the image becomes so fragmented that any figure becomes all but lost in a naturalistic way. However, Picasso and Braque had no ideas of developing an abstract art and soon felt the need to reintroduce the tangible characteristics of objects such as colour and form to re-establish their identity. To do this after the period of analytical cubism required a new treatment of the subject. This took the form of introducing aspects of the objects as 'planes of  information'. Braque had trained as a house painter and initially the new information took the form of such effects as wood-graining.

But, by 1912 in the work ‘Still Life with Chair Caning’ Picasso had introduced a piece of commercially printed paper representing chair caning and the oval composition was framed with a piece of real rope - the art of collage had been born. This work was followed by drawings which had pieces of newspaper or printed material incorporated into them to stand for objects themselves or as spatial planes which created a narrative around the ordinary objects of café life by analogy  and association and including ambiguity and wit. Instead of 'taking reality apart' Braque and Picasso began to assemble images of objects from different sensory information - hence the work of this period is usually termed ‘Synthetic Cubism’.

The new spatial effects of cubism led to the art object being considered as a real object in its own right. The lack of ‘illusionistic’ recession into the canvas led increasingly to a space that began to visually and actually project into the space of the viewer. The work of art became constructed on and away from the picture plane. These innovations spread throughout Western Europe and were adopted by artists with many different ideas.  In the Netherlands, through the influence of Mondrian who had been living in Paris during the cubist years, they lead to the development of  an abstract art of coloured geometric planes known as Neo-plasticism and the design movement known as De Stijl; In Russia cubist ideas were adopted by the Constructivists; In Italy they were incorporated into the formal vocabulary of the Futurists, and the influence is present in the work of the young generation of English artists associated with Vorticism; it also affected the work of the German Expressionists

The influence is so widespread that the movement can be considered a major watershed in western European art. Many artists spent the twentieth century attempting to sweat out Cubism and it is it is possible to talk of a pre- and post- cubist pictorial space.

‘The Bateau Lavoir’ – ‘The Laundry Boat’, 1905, Monmartre, Paris, the studio’s where Picasso , Modigliani and others created modern painting.

Picasso Quotes:

“Accidents, try to change them it's impossible. The accidental reveals man."

“Action is the foundational key to all success."

“An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought."

“Art is a lie that makes us realize ze truth."