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CUBISM 1907-1914
Cubism was the most radical revolution
in art since the Renaissance.
Its pioneering discoveries and innovations
resulted from a remarkable collaboration
between two young men of different
nationalities and opposite temperaments:
The Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the
Frenchman Georges Braque
A Short introduction
to cubism:
Video:
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From late 1908 until the outbreak of World
War I in the summer of 1914, they engaged
in a creative dialogue that may well be
unique in the history of art
Cubism developed rapidly between the years 1907 and
1914.
From 1914 until about 1925 there were a great many
artists painting in a cubist mode, but this later phase
produced relatively few stylistic innovations that had not
already been anticipated to some extent during the prewar years.
Until about 1912 Cubism was exclusively a Parisian
phenomenon
It was reputedly Apollinaire who brought Braque to
Picasso’s studio. It is unlikely that Cubism as we know it
could have developed without the interaction that arose
between the two artists which was to be at its most intense
during 1910-12.
Of those years Picasso later recalled:
“Almost every evening either I went to Braque’s studio or
Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other
had done during the day.”
Georges Braque
(1882-1963)
Video: works by Georges Braque
Georges Braque
"Georges Braque developed his painting skills while working for his
father, a house decorator. He moved to Paris in 1900 to study where he was
drawn to the work of the Fauve artists, including Matisse, Derain and Dufy, as
well as the late landscapes of Cézanne. Meeting Picasso marked a huge turning
point in Braque's development and together they evolved as leaders of Cubism.
After a brief interlude in which he was called up to fight in the First World War,
Braque's style developed in the direction he was to follow for the rest of his life.
In establishing the principle that a work of art should be autonomous and not
merely imitate nature, Cubism redefined art in the twentieth century. Braque's
large compositions incorporated the Cubist aim of representing the world as
seen from a number of different viewpoints. He wanted to convey a feeling of
being able to move around within the painting. The still life subject remained his
chief preoccupation from 1927 to 1955."
Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973)
Picasso was only 6 months older than Braque.
He had settled in Paris in 1901; quick and fiery
with prodigious talent, he acquired a following
with his Blue and Rose periods (1903-05).
Picasso Video see (and scroll down to video clip):
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/hd_pica.
htm
The artistic genius of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) has
impacted the development of modern and contemporary art
with unparalleled magnitude. His prolific output includes
over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures,
ceramics, theater sets and costumes that convey myriad
intellectual, political, social, and amorous messages. His
creative styles transcend realism and abstraction, Cubism,
Neoclassicism, Surrealism, and Expressionism.
Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881, Picasso studied art briefly
in Madrid in 1897, then in Barcelona in 1899, where he
became closely associated with a group of modernist poets,
writers, and artists who gathered at the café Els Quatre
Gats (The Four Cats), including the Catalan Carlos
Casagemas(1880–1901).
Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and settled in the artist
quarter Bateau-Lavoir, where he lived among bohemian
poets and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–
1918) and Max Jacob (1876–1944). In At the Lapin Agile
(1992.391) from 1905, Picasso directs his attention toward
more pleasant themes such as carnival performers,
harlequins, and clowns. In this painting, he uses his own
image for the harlequin figure and abandons the daunting
blues in favor of vivid hues, red for example, to celebrate
the lives of circus performers (categorically labeled his Rose
Period). In Paris, he found dedicated patrons in American
siblings Gertrude (1874–1946) and Leo (1872–1947) Stein,
whose Saturday evening salons in their home at 27, rue des
Fleurus was an incubator for modern artistic and intellectual
thought. At the Steins he met other artists living and working
in the city—generally referred to as the "School of Paris"—
such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954).
Picasso’s Blue Period
Living intermittently in Paris and Spain until 1904, his work
during these years suggests feelings of desolation and
darkness inspired in part by the suicide of his friend
Casagemas. Picasso's paintings from late 1901 to about the
middle of 1904, referred to as his Blue Period, depict
themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair.
The Birth of Cubism
At the time of their first meeting, Picasso was
preparing to make Les Demoiselles d’
Avignon (1907), a major experimental effort
that occupied him for months.
The fiercely expressive painting deeply
affected
Braque and shocked other
contemporaries with its aggressive sexuality,
confusing location of forms, and it its flagrant
stylistic inconsistencies.
Analytic
Cubism
Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907.
Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Arts, New York, NY, USA.
But what makes Les Demoiselles a truly
revolutionary work of art is that in it Picasso broke
away from the two central characteristics of
European painting since the Renaissance:
1.the classical norm for the human figure
2.the spatial illusionism of one-point perspective.
During the year previous to the completion of Les Demoiselles, Picasso
had turned to various sources in his search for a new approach to the
human figure, the most influential of these being Iberian sculpture, El
Greco, and the work of Gauguin, particularly his carved sculpture.
But the decisive influence on his
thinking was African
sculpture…[which] undoubtedly
inspired Picasso to treat the body
more conceptually than was
possible in the Renaissance
tradition.
African Influence
During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture
became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an
avant-garde in the development of modern art. In France, Henri Matisse,
Pablo Picasso, and their School of Paris friends blended the highly
stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting
styles derived from the post-Impressionist works of Cézanne and
Gauguin.
The resulting pictorial flatness, vivid color palette, and fragmented
Cubist shapes helped to define early modernism. While these artists
knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and
Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized
the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to
their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined
Western art since the Renaissance.
This new approach appears most clearly in
Les Demoiselles in such details:
The reduction of human anatomy to
geometrical lozenges
and
triangles, as well as in the abandonment of
normal anatomical proportions.
*African influence is even clearer in the mask-like faces of
the two right-hand figures…
These departures from classical figure style
are more than simply a variation on an
existing tradition; they mark the beginning of
a new attitude toward the expressive
potentialities of the human figure. Based not
on gesture and physiognomy but on the
complete freedom to re-order the human
image…
Proto-Cubism
Gertrude Stein, 1905–6 Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.3 cm) Bequest
ofGertrude Stein, 1946 (47.106)© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Painted in 1906, Gertrude Stein records
Picasso's early stylistic experiments with
primitivism influenced by a new fascination
with pre-Roman Iberian sculpture and
African and Oceanic art.
Concentrating on intuition rather than strict
observation, and unsatisfied with the
features of Stein's face, Picasso reworked
her image into a masklike manifestation
stimulated by primitivism.
Picasso’s Women
A progression
The Three Phases of Cubism
1. Analytic
2. High Analytic
3. Synthetic
Analytic Cubism 1907-1909
• This phase was intellectual, logical
• Influenced by Cezanne’s view of nature;
the cone, cylinder and sphere
• Colour was muted tones from nature
Cezanne’s influence on Cubism and Modern Art
"After fifty years of the most radical change in art from images to free
abstraction, Cézanne's painting, which looks old-fashioned today in its
attachment to nature, maintains itself fresh and stimulating to young
painters of our time. He has produced no school, but he has given an
impulse directly or indirectly to almost every new movement since he
died. His power to excite artists of different tendency and temperament
is due, I think, to the fact that he realized with equal fullness so many
different sides of his art. It has often been true of leading modern
painters that they developed a single idea with great force. Some one
element or expressive note has been worked out with striking effect. In
Cézanne we are struck rather by the comprehensive character of his art,
although later artists have built on a particular element of his style.
Color, drawing, modelling, structure, touch and expression - if any of
these can be isolated from the others - are carried to a new height in his
work.
He is arresting through his images - more rich in suggestive
content than has been supposed - and also through his
uninterrupted strokes which make us see that there can be
qualities of greatness in little touches of paint. In his pictures
single patches of the brush reveal themselves as an
uncanny choice, deciding the unity of a whole region of
forms.
Out of these emerges a moving semblance of a familiar
natural world with a deepened harmony that invites
meditation. His painting is a balanced art, not in the sense
that it is stabilized or moderate in its effects, but that
opposed qualities are joined in a scrupulously controlled
play. He is inventive and perfect in many different aspects
of his art.
"The greatness of Cézanne does not lie only in the
perfection of single masterpieces; it is also in the quality of
his whole achievement.
An exhibition of works spanning his forty years as a painter
reveals a remarkable inner freedom. The lives of Gauguin
and Van Gogh have blinded the public to what is noble and
complete in Cézanne's less sensational, though anguished,
career.
Outliving these younger contemporaries, more fortunate in
overcoming impulses and situations dangerous to art, he
was able to mature more fully and to realize many more of
his artistic ideas.
Cezanne, Paul
Mont Sainte-Victoire (La Montagne Sainte-Victoire)
1885-1895
Oil on canvas
28 5/8 x 38 1/8 in. (72.8 x 91.7 cm)
The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Cezanne, Paul
Mont Sainte-Victoire (Le Mont Sainte-Victoire)
1902-04
Oil on canvas
27 1/2 x 35 1/4 in (69.8 x 89.5 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Venturi 798
Cezanne, Paul
Man with Crossed Arms
c. 1899
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 x 28 5/8 in. (92 x 72.7 cm)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Cezanne, Paul
Still Life with Plaster Cupid
1895
27 1/2 x 22 1/2 in
Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Analytic
Cubism
BRAQUE, Georges
Houses at L'Estaque
L'Estaque, [August] 1908
Oil on canvas
28 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. (73 x 60 cm.)
Kunstmuseum Bern
Romilly 14
Analytic Cubism
Braque, Georges
Viaduct at L'Estaque
[Paris, early 1908]
Oil on canvas
28 5/8 x 23 1/4 in.
(72.5 x 59 cm.)
Musee National d'Art
Moderne, Centre
Georges Pompidou,
Paris
Romilly 12
Analytic Cubism
Seated WomanPicasso, Pablo.Oil on canvas. 150x99 cmFrance. 1908
Seated Woman
Picasso's early Cubist paintings, produced in the years 1907-1908,
demonstrate how suddenly the artist departed from the creation of
a visual likeness and immersed himself in a "new reality" created
by himself, a reality which was at times frightening and repellent, at
times amazing for its innovative harmonies.
The artist painted this work in Paris in early 1908. The massive
figure of the female nude - who either drowses or simply sits with
eyes closed - is extremely schematic, the architectonics of the body
emphasized. Straight lines sharply differentiate the main elements
of the figure, volume is built up through strong schematic contrasts
of light and shade, dark ochre is the determining note in the colour
scheme. Everything combines to create the sense of some
sleeping, soulless matter, an effect which was to be characteristic
of many of the artist's works.
Comparison Braque and Picasso Nudes (Analytic Cubism)
Georges Braque
Large Nude
Paris, spring 1908
Oil on in. (140 x 100 cm.)
Collection Alex Maguy, ParisRomilly 5
Pablo Picasso
Woman
Oil on canvas. 150x99 cmFrance. 1908
Analytic
Cubism
Three Women
Picasso, Pablo. Oil on canvas. 200x178 cm France. 1908
Source of Entry: State Museum of New Western Art, Moscow. 1948
High Analytic Cubism 1910-1912
•An analysis of function of form, line, plane,
colour, fragments that seem to hang from
scaffolding
High
Analytic
Cubism
"Ma Jolie"
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Paris, winter 1911-12. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 25 3/4" (100 x 64.5 cm).
Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. © 2010
Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 176.1945
Ma jolie (My pretty girl) was the refrain of a popular song performed at a
Parisian music hall Picasso frequented.
The artist suggests this musical association by situating a treble clef and music
staff near the bold, stenciled letters.
Ma jolie was also Picasso's nickname for his lover Marcelle Humbert, whose
figure he loosely built using the signature shifting planes of Analytic Cubism.
This is far from a traditional portrait of an artist's beloved, but there are clues to
its representational content. The central triangular mass subtly indicates the
shape of a woman's head and torso, and a group of six vertical lines at the
painting's lower center represent the strings of a guitar, which the woman
strums.
In Cubist works of this period, Picasso and Georges Braque employed multiple
modes of representation simultaneously: here, Picasso combined language (in
the black lettering), symbolic meaning (in the treble clef), and near abstraction
(in the depiction of his subject).
Analytic Cubism
Braque, Georges
Harbor in Normandy
[Le Havre and Paris, May-June 1909]
Oil on canvas
37 7/8 x 37 7/8 in. (96.2 x 96.2 cm.)
The Art Institute of Chicago
Romilly 44
High Analytic Cubism
Braque, Georges Violin and Candlestick Paris, [spring 1910] Oil on canvas 24 x 19 3/4 in. (61 x 50 cm.)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Romilly 63
High Analytic
Cubism
Braque, Georges
Man with a Guitar
[Ceret, summer 1911]
Oil on canvas
45 3/4 x 31 7/8 in. (116.2 x 80.9 cm.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Romilly 99
High Analytic
Cubism
Braque, Georges
Le Portugais (The Emigrant)
Ceret [and Paris], autumn 1911-early 1912
Oil on canvas
46 x 32 in. (117 x 81 cm.)
Kunstmuseum Basel
Romilly 80
High Analytic
Cubism
Braque, GeorgesMan with a Violin[Paris, spring 1912]Oil on canvas (oval)39 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. (100 x 73 cm.)
Foundation E.G. BuhrieCollection, ZurichRomilly 125
Synthetic Cubism 1912-1914
•Papier colle, texture, pictorial art taking a
step toward relief sculpture
•A reintroduction of colour
Synthetic
Cubism
Table in a Cafe (Bottle of Pernod)
Picasso, Pablo.Oil on canvas. 45.5x32.5 cm
France. 1912Source of Entry: State Museum of New Western Art, Moscow. 1948
Synthetic Cubism
Braque, Georges
The Fruitdish
1912
Oil and sand on canvas
Private collection
Synthetic
Cubism
Braque, Georges
Woman with a Guitar
Sorgues, autumn 1913
Oil and charcoal on canvas
51 1/4 x 28 3/4 in. (130 x 73 cm.)
Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Romilly 198
Synthetic
Cubism
Braque, Georges
Glass, Carafe and Newspapers
1914
Pasted papers, chalk and charcoal on cardboard
62.5 x 28.5 cm (24 5/8 x 11 1/4 in.)
Private collection, Basel
Leger, Fernand
The City
1919
Oil on canvas
90 3/4 x 117 1/4 in. (230.5 x 297.7 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Fernand Leger (1881-1955)
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/braque/portgais.jpg.htm
Picasso and Braque Pioneering Cubism