Cubism

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CUBISM.

Cubism is neither a movement nor an identifiable group. It is an artistic tendency that appeared between 1907 and 1909, created by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963). The term comes from an article by the critic Louis Vauxcelles, published in the Gil Blas issue of 14 November 1908, about an art exposition at the Kahnweiller gallery that featured the Braque paintings that were refused by the Salon d'Automne. It became more than a simple term, as it started an aesthetic revolution that put into question the way we see and conceive of a painting.

Critics and historians agree on this point: the Demoiselles d'Avignon (1906–1907) was the first cubist painting. Picasso gave birth to a painting technique that changed the face of the twentieth century. In this painting, Picasso demonstrated common artistic concerns with Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), whose retrospective he was able to see in 1907 at the Salon d'Automne: he focused on a new way of depicting three-dimensional objects within the flat space of the canvas, without having to rely on light and shadow. Moreover, cubism was inspired by African and Iberian (particularly noticeable in the right-hand portion of the Demoiselles d'Avignon) arts, and by Cézanne's theory that advocated treating "nature in terms of spheres, cylinders, and cones." There were three distinct stages: precubism (1907–1909), analytical cubism (1909–1912), and synthetic cubism (1912–1925). These categories were established based on the evolution of the works of Braque, Juan Gris (pseudonym of Jose Victoriano Gonzalez, 1887–1927), and Picasso.

Braque's Grand Nu and the landscapes he painted at L'Estaque (Le viaduc de L'Estaque, 1908) also testify to this willingness to give solidity and density to shapes and motifs without the help of lighting effects. In 1908 Braque and Picasso changed the terms of depiction by reducing reality to fundamental shapes and volumes (such as in Braque's Guitare et compotier, 1909). These aesthetic experiments led them to analytical cubism, in which perspective is abandoned in favor of a multiplication of sight line angles in order to represent the multiple facets of an object. Picasso and Braque therefore achieved simultaneous views of an entire object through geometric forms (as in Picasso's Portrait de D. H. Kahnweiler, 1910, and Braque's Nature morte au violon, 1911). They took a decisive step in the history of representation by going beyond appearance to come up with a total vision and an art that deeply changed the face of iconography. Volumes, space, and colors find themselves balanced on a fine line between reality and abstraction.

Picasso and Braque also changed the way a painting is observed by simultaneously introducing letters or numbers (Picasso in Ma jolie, 1911–1912, and Braque in Le Portugais, 1911–1912) in trompe l'oeil while re-implementing reality in the canvas by using materials other than paint (paper reproducing wood, caning, pieces of newspaper, matchboxes). In 1910 Braque used nails. In 1912 Picasso produced the first cubist collage with La Nature morte à la chaise cannée while in the same year Braque was experimenting with the "glued paper" technique in his Compotier et verre.

Thus, the two painters created an ambiguity within the way a painting is read. This study of different planes was also noticeable in their use of oval-shaped canvases for their paintings, such as La table et la pipe by Braque (1912–1913). Their research abolished the idea of imitation of reality and made cubism a conceptual art form according to the formula invented by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918). Picasso and Braque established a new relationship between reality and representation, between the essence and the concept.

Synthetic cubism was born out of the new relationship that Picasso and Braque had with the subjects of their paintings, in the sense that the object would be completely stripped of anything superfluous (Braque, Clarinette [1913] and Violon [also 1913]). The entire representation is no longer needed, the object is depicted by a fragment—that is, its essential characteristics. Thus, Picasso migrated toward the essence of the object in order to determine its defining characteristic. The depiction of a glass in a few essential strokes in La bouteille de Marasquin in 1914, remains an emblematic example because the object is no longer three-dimensional, but flat.

During the first years of cubism, Picasso and Braque did not show their work much, except at the Kahnweiler and Uhde galleries. However, other artists such as Gris, Albert L. Gleizes (1881–1953), and Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) developed a cubism style of their own. Gleizes and Metzinger wrote a book titled Du cubisme that was published in 1912. The painters (Louis Marcoussis, Andre Lhote, Henri Le Fauconnier, Férat) became members of the "Puteaux group" formed around the Duchamp brothers (Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon), and participated in the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. Apollinaire invented the expression orphic cubism for Robert Delaunay's series Les fenêtres, in 1913. Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia would also contribute important innovations. There is also cubist sculpture, the first of which was by Picasso, and its influence was echoed in the installations of Alexander Archipenko, Duchamp-Villon, Henri Laurens, and Jacques Lipchitz.

See alsoModernism; Painting, Avant-Garde; Picasso, Pablo.