Cubism 1907 - 1925

Cubism 1907 - 1925

Cubism was an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. It was the first style of abstract art which 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 revitalise the tired traditions of Western art which they believed had run their course.

Cubism began as an idea and then it became a style ,as the artists tried to describe, in visual terms, the concept of the Fourth Dimension. Based on Paul Cézanne's three main ingredients - geometricity, simultaneity (multiple views) and passage. There are four periods of Cubism: Early Cubism or Cézannisme (1907-1910) , Analytic Cubism (1910-12) , Synthetic Cubism (1912-1914) , Late Cubism (1915-present)

French mathematician Maurice Princet is credited with introducing the concept of the "fourth dimension" to the cubists at the Bateau-Lavoir in the late 1900s. New possibilities opened up by the concept of four-dimensional space (and difficulties involved in trying to visualize it) helped inspire many modern artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Artists took ideas from higher-dimensional mathematics and used them to radically advance their work. Picasso and Braque developed their ideas on Cubism around 1907 in Paris and their starting point was a common interest in the later paintings of Paul Cézanne. Their work was to draw on the expressive energy of art from other cultures, especially African art. This inspiration to cross-reference art from different cultures probably came from Paul Gauguin.

The Section d'Or a group of painters, sculptors, poets and critics was active from 1911 to around 1914, coming to prominence in the wake of their controversial showing at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911. This created a scandal that brought the term “Cubism” to the attention of the general public for the first time. The Section d'Or adopted the name to distinguish themselves from the narrower style of Cubism developed in parallel by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Analytic Cubism was developed only by Picasso and Braque during the winter of 1909-10. It lasted until the middle of 1912, when collage introduced simplified versions of the "analytic" forms. Specific shapes and characteristic details that would represent the whole object or person.

Synthetic Cubism grew out of Analytic Cubism. It was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and then copied by the Salon Cubists. Picasso and Braque discovered that through the repetition of "analytic" signs their work became more generalized, more geometrically simplified and flatter. Overlapping planes sometimes shared one color (passage). Real pieces of paper replaced painted flat depictions of paper. Real scores of music replaced drawn musical notation. Fragments of newspaper, playing cards, cigarette packs, and advertisements that were either real or painted interacted on the flat plane of the canvas as the artists tried to achieve a total interpenetration of life and art. The terms "Analytic Cubism" and "Synthetic Cubism" were popularized by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (1902-1981) in his books on Cubism and Picasso.

The Key Characteristics of Cubism are:

• Geometricity, a simplication of figures and objects into geometrical components and planes that may or may not add up to the whole figure or object known in the natural world.
• Approximation of the Fourth Dimension.
• Conceptual, instead of perceptual, reality.
• Distortion and deformation of known figures and forms in the natural world.
• Passage, the overlapping and interpenetration of planes.
• Simultaneity or multiple views, different points of view made visible on one plane.

ABOVE: 'Still Life with Chair Caning' , 1912 , 27 x 35 cm., oil on canvas

Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France.Prolific as a draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker, Picasso's primary medium was painting.

Picasso is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement , the invention of constructed sculpture , the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes

Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, 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.

'Violin and Jug' , 1910 , 117 x 73 cm ,Oil on canvas

Georges Braque (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.

Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions.

Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar style of painting. At the time, Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African masks and Iberian sculpture, while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way

La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse) , 1911 , 162 cm × 130 cm , oil on canvas

Jean Metzinger (June 24, 1883 – November 3, 1956) was a French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, born in Nantes, France.Metzinger was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists.

From 1908 Metzinger experimented with the faceting of form, a style that would soon become known as Cubism. His involvement in Cubism saw him both as an influential artist and principal theorist of the movement. The idea of moving around an object in order to see it from different view-points is treated in Metzinger's Note sur la Peinture, published in 1910.

Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes wrote with reference to non-Euclidean geometry in their 1912 manifesto, Du "Cubisme". It was argued that Cubism itself was not based on any geometrical theory, but that non-Euclidean geometry corresponded better than classical, or Euclidean geometry, to what the Cubsists were doing. The essential was in the understanding of space other than by the classical method of perspective; an understanding that would include and integrate the fourth dimension with 3-space

In Woman with a Horse Metzinger has broken down the picture plane into facets, presenting multiple aspects of the subject simultaneously. This concept first pronounced by Metzinger in 1910—since considered a founding principle of Cubism—would soon find its way into the foundations of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics; the fact that a complete description of one and the same subject may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description.

'Violin and Glass' , 1915 , oil on canvas , 92 x 60 cm

Juan Gris(March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927) was a Spanish painter and sculptor born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.

Gris studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904.Gris began to paint seriously in 1911 , developing at this time a personal Cubist style.

Jean Metzinger's 1911 work, Le goûter (Tea Time), persuaded Juan Gris of the importance of mathematics (numbers) in painting.At first Gris painted in the style of Analytical Cubism, a term he himself later coined.After 1913 he began his conversion to Synthetic Cubism , with extensive use of collage.

Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse.

  Bibliography

Internet

Cubism: A History and an Analysis , Artachive.com, viewed 2013,

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/braque/v_pitchr.jpg.html

Picasso , Artachive.com, viewed 2013,

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso/chaircan.jpg.html

Cubism - The First Style of Abstract Art, Artyfactory.com , viewed 2013 ,

http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/cubism.htm

Cubism - Art History 101 Basics, ArtHistory.about.com, viewed 2013, ,http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/cubism_10one.htmh

Art History Definition: Analytic Cubism,ArtHistory.about.com, viewed 2013,

http://arthistory.about.com/od/glossary_a/a/a_analytic_cubism.htm

Art History Definition: Synthetic Cubism, ArtHistory.about.com, viewed 2013

http://arthistory.about.com/od/glossary_s/a/s_synthetic_cubism.htm

Proto-Cubism ,Wikipedia.org, viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Cubism

Cubism ,Wikipedia.org, viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism

La Femme au Cheval , Wikipedia.org,viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Femme_au_Cheval

Forth dimension in art , Wikipedia.org,viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension_in_art

Georges Braque ,Wikipedia.org, viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Braque

Still life ,Wikipedia.org, viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life

Jean Metzinger ,Wikipedia.org, viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Metzinger

Gris, Juan , Artarchive.com, viewed 2013, http://www.artchive.com/artchive/g/gris/vioglass.jpg.html

Juan Gris , viewed 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_gris

Books

Krausse , A , 1995 , 'The story of painting :the renaissance to the present' , h.f.ulliman , Germany

Kemp, M , 2000 , ' The Oxford history of western art' ,Oxford university press inc, United States

Readers Digest , 1965 , 'Great painters and great paintings' The readers digest association inc , United states

DVD and TV

'The Challenge : A tribute to Modern art' , 1977 , DVD , Quantum Leap , United States

'Cubism: Revealing the Truth through Abstraction' , 2012 , internet video , Youtube , United States