Cubism

CUBISM

CUBISM. The term "cubism" was first used by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles in his review of a 1908 exhibition of paintings by Georges Braque. Cubist artists abandoned academically correct representation, which approximated the actual appearance of objects. Instead, the Cubists represented objects from multiple points of view and forms were reduced to basic geometric configurations. In theory, the Cubists justified their experiments as a search to uncover the essential structure of an object and its relation to other parts of a composition. Cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris were profoundly affected by the art of Paul Cézanne, who maintained that natural forms could be reduced to simple geometric figures such as the cube, the sphere, and the cylinder. The Cubists also admired the art of so-called primitive cultures such as those of Africa and Egypt. Cubism made a decisive break with the centuries-old Western tradition of illusionistic representation, and in so doing initiated a revolution in the visual arts that all subsequent painters dealt with in some way.

A few American painters were exposed to cubism early on—notably Max Weber, who worked in Paris from 1905 until 1909, when he returned to New York City. Weber certainly knew such cubist artists as Picasso and in New York City during the winter of 1910–1911 Weber adopted cubist theory to American subject matter in canvases such as his Rush Hour, New York (1915). Weber's urban subjects combine his interest in cubism with the Italian avant-garde futurist artists' concern for dynamic movement and nature in flux. Weber's interest in cubist-futurist experiments lasted only a few years, but had a profound impact on John Marin and Joseph Stella, both active in New York City. Marin's The Woolworth Building (1912) and Stella's Brooklyn Bridge (1917) illustrate how lessons from both the French and Italian avant-gardes could be used to express the hectic pace of big city America. Cubist painting in France after World War I was increasingly concerned with creating compositions from areas of flat, often bright colors. Artists such as Stuart Davis, who encountered cubism at the 1913 Armory Show, owed their subsequent highly individual development to their early study of cubist work.

Still other expatriate American artists such as Morgan Russell, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, and Patrick Henry Bruce formed a movement that they called synchronism, which combined cubist analysis of form with a colorful palette inspired by the work of contemporary French artists such as Robert Delaunay. By the mid-1920s, the importance of cubism for American artists was in decline, but the movement was the stepping-off point for the subsequent development of American abstract art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Golding, John. Cubism: A History and an Analysis, 1907–1914. London; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988.

Rubin, William. Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989.

Victor Carlson

See also Armory Show ; Art: Painting .