| Articles by: Artist |
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| Articles by: Movement |
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| Articles by: Painting Name |
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Cubism in France 1907-1914
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Cubism is considered by some historians to be the
single most influential art movement of the 20th
Century, especially in its lasting influence on
Western art. It was not strictly a movement or a
style of one specific period since "cubism" is a
term which can be used to describe a painting or
sculpture of any period which was created following
a geometric analysis or synthesis of form.
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The Originators
Cubism in France followed closely on the heels of
the Post Impressionist painters who by the end of
1800 had firmly and finally dismantled the old standards
and techniques previously blown apart by the revolutionary
Impressionists. Paul Cézanne was experimenting in
his later work with geometric forms, favoring right
angles and a flat monochromatic palette, and Gauguin
was introducing 'primitive' African art motifs with
a strong emotional color palette.
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"Cubist" was term coined from a critic's term to
describe paintings by George Braque exhibited in
1908. Pablo Picasso, in his famous Demoiselles
d'Avignon (1907) displayed both a cubist approach
and the influence of African masks in his subject's
features. Braque and Picasso are generally credited
with being the initiators of the movement during
their Cubist phases and worked as friendly competitors
in promoting the cubist ideals, although both moved
on later to other styles.
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Techniques and Materials
Cubist work, whether painting or sculpture, rejected
single perspective (as had the Post- Impressionists)
but emphasized flat, two-dimensional planes fragmented
into geometric forms representing subjects as a
combined view from multiple perspective points.
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The earlier phase of cubism between 1905-1912 came
to be known as Analytical Cubism, illustrated in
Braque's Man With the Guitar (1911), a method
which broke down - or analyzed - forms in terms
of geometric shapes and were characterized by monochromatic
color schemes. After 1912, another form, called
Synthetic Cubism, combined - or synthesized - forms
and brought back colors and textures in the form
of collage, a technique which added paper and found
objects to the composition.
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The Artist as Social Innovator
Other painters who were among the early Cubists
were Juan Gris, Fernand Léger (also a stage designer
and film maker), and Robert Delaunay, who held to
the belief that color was an important part of cubism.
Also a gifted writer, Delaunay wrote extensively
on his theory of color and is credited with extending
the cubist ideals into the beginnings of abstract
or nonobjective art around 1915.
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Cubist thinking extended into poetry, theater, design,
and film, and many close personal associations forged
between painters, writers, and poets acted to their
mutual benefit. Appolinaire's "idiograms",
and Pierre Reverdy and Gertrude Stein's distinctively
fragmented poems were also cubist inspired.
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The fundamentals of Cubism - interlocking planes,
asymmetrical composition, multiple view points,
transparency - made an impact far greater than its
short time span would imply and formed a basis for
the much broader and longer lasting Abstract and
other Modern art movements that developed later.
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