CUBISM Revolutionized the visual arts Do not present a unified view of life Developed out of explorations inspired by Cezanne’s painting & African tribal.

CUBISM

Revolutionized the visual arts

Do not present a unified view of life

Developed out of explorations inspired by Cezanne’s painting & African

tribal sculpture.

WHERE: Paris, France

WHEN: 1907 -- 1914

WHO: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Ferdinand Leger

* Cubism = Term was coined by critic -- Louis Vauxcelles.~ Referred to ‘cubes’ in his review of

Braque’s work (Houses at L’Estaque, 1908) & used the term ‘bizarreries cubiques’ in his review article.

Georges Braque, Houses at L’Estaque,1908

WHAT: Abandoned the 500-year-old system of perspective & related conventions for representing reality.

Cubism = A visual language that was fragmented, simultaneously disintegrating & reforming.

To construct, not to copy reality.

~ Shared one fundamental aspect with Fauvism:

- To replace perceptual by conceptual reality.

Cubism = A sophisticated game of building up the idea of a tangible solid object out of flat fragments on canvas?

INFLUENCED BY:

- Cezanne- 1907: Retrospective at the Salon d’Automne. - Studied the structural relationships in Cezanne’s paintings.(Used planes found in objects to construct a form, shown by

means of colour)

- Cezanne’s interest in the still-life made it a major subject for Cubist painters.

- Primitive (African) sculpture- Offered possibility of developing a new pictorial language. - Possibility of building up an image of an object out of a few

simple elements.

* Picasso:

“…(I am) struck by the fact that Negro artists attempted to make a true representation of a human being & not just present the idea, usually sentimental, that we have of him.”

~ Combination of the 2 influences led to the most important, complete & radical artistic revolution since the Italian Renaissance.

~ The 2 main influences could be found in a major Cubist painting by Picasso -- Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

~ Represented a violent revolt against the traditional treatment of form.

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon1907

- Violent restlessness pervades the picture & it disregards any conventional canon of beauty

- Represented a materialization of the new space.

- Woman in profile on left -- eye is drawn full-face; conventions of Egyptian sculpture are combined with the heavy drawing of Gauguin’s later work.

- Staring, black-rimmed eyes & schematic features of the central women come from pre-Roman Iberian sculptures.

-Right: Distorted faces, with nose treated as concave, strongly shaded planes, resemble African carvings from the French Congo & the Ivory Coast which Picasso admired & collected.

- Broad surfaces of African sculpture, meeting at sharp angles affected Picasso’s treatment of the figures, whose breasts & limbs are drawn in angular planes which in some places are almost detached from their bodies.

- The tendency of the separate surfaces to slip from their natural positions & slide towards & even into each other, & the angular treatment of the reddish curtain on the left & the blue walls beside & between the figures create the specifically conventional perspective which henceforth was to distinguish Cubism from all previous compositional systems based on Renaissance perspective.

- There is no free, originally unoccupied space in which the women have been discovered. Such space has been generated by their bodies & by the intervals between them, & even then it is broken into jagged facets, as if it were a substance as dense as flesh itself.

- Space exists as a function of the forms rather than an environment for them.

Cubism

A complex, visual language but the end is NOT

complete abstraction BUT a new kind of

realism.

* 1909-10:

- Braque & Picasso depicted objects with a mixture of conventional illusionist techniques & of facetting to suggest space, mass, depth & shape.

- Viewers are only given details necessary for the identification of objects.

- Works contained references to characteristics of the object that we could only be aware of through moving round the object & seeing it from different positions, & all these multiple observations are all recorded on the same canvas.

~ This approach reflects a dissatisfaction with the illusion of appearance & reflects philosophical ideas influential at the time.

- Both artists depicted similar subject matter:

~ Glasses, bottles, newspapers, musical instruments

~ Figures & portraits

~ A desire to establish a process whereby shapes, colours & brushmarks described the characteristic of objects but at the same time they could be seen as separate from that function.

* Analytical Cubism:

Aim:

- To render reality more completely than it had ever been rendered before.

~ Viewer is offered the sensation of actually walking round a person/group of objects, seeing them in all their aspects.

Picasso, Portrait of Ambrose Vollard1910

Picasso, Portrait of Ambrose Vollard

1910

- The sitter is presented from a variety of viewpoints.

- Appear fragmented into a crystalline structure of interlocking planes.

- Little variety of colours & textures.

- Perspectival effects are replaced by a shallow, ambiguous sense of space.

Braque, Violin & Pitcher

- Cubist paintings introduced the element of time

- The viewer does not see what is depicted in a single all comprehensive glance but apprehends what is there piece by piece, looking at it from different points of view, at slightly different moments.

* Sacrifices:

-No immediate comprehensive image; works were compositionally complex.

- Facetted composition gradually simplified to become abstract.

- Subject matter no longer important; instead the way of presenting it becomes more important.

- Monochromatic colours- Use of sober colour schemes of grey & brown, lightly touched with ochre, black & green.

- Reduction of palette was in part a reaction to Fauvism & Impressionism.

PicassoAccordionist

1912

BraqueThe Portuguese

1911

Cubism = An intention to return to tangible reality.

Therefore, troubled by visual complexity of method. As the works became too complex

to the point of illegibility, the Cubists invented radical new devices to draw attention to commonplace subjects --

single figures or still-life.

* Synthetic Cubism

- Introduced the use of stencilled letters on canvas

(Affirmation of the material existence of painting as an object.)

* 1912:

- Introduced actual fragments of reality into designs, such as: newspapers, wood-grained paper

- Introduction of collage.

Picasso, Still-Life with Chair-Caning1912

Braque, Still-Life with Violin

1912

* Implications of Synthetic Cubism:

- De-mystify art -- bringing it back to reality again.

- Opportunity for visual & verbal punning/Ironic commentary on situation.

- Suggest whole of contemporary life subject to rupture & change.

- New way of organizing pictorial space:

- Floating, overlapping planes against shallow, indeterminate space.

CUBISM

Analytic Cubism1909 -- 12

Synthetic Cubism1912 -- 14

- Still-lifes/portraits in muted shades of green, gray, or brown.

- Analysis of object: Subject is depicted as if seen from several angles at once.

- Subject & space broken into interlocking facets.

- Perspectival effects replaced by a shallow, ambiguous sense of space.

- Tested boundaries between reality & illusion.

- Created collages/added stencilling & lettering.

- Use of more vibrant colours.

- Wanted to achieve a balance between the depiction of reality & the autonomy of the painting as a physical object.

INFLUENCES OF CUBISM:

- Fractured visual language of Cubism influenced:

- Futurism- Orphism (Delaunay)- Constructivist sculpture in Moscow- Piet Mondrian

PABLO PICASSO1881 -- 1973

- Most original of 20th century artists.

- Worked with different styles & media; most significant contribution = development of Cubism (which paved way for later developments for abstract art)

- 1881: Born in Malaga, Spain.

- At an early age, his parents encouraged his artistic talents. Started drawing in the academic discipline.

- 1895: Moved to Barcelona -- a literary & artistic centre receptive to the ideas of the European avant-garde.

- 1900: Arrived in Paris~ Studied Greek, Roman & Egyptian works in the

Louvre.~ Made friends with Toulouse-Lautrec~ Quickly assimilated the fundamentals of every

avant-garde style.

- Period of extreme poverty, cold & despair.

- Further depressed by the suicide of an old friend, Carlos Casagemas (due to an unhappy love affair)

- All his trials & sufferings were reflected in the haunting pictures of the Blue Period (1901 - 4/5)

* 1901 -- 1904: BLUE PERIOD

- Dominant use of cold tones -- cobalt & indigo.

- Painted the themes of poverty, blindness, alienation & despair through his depiction of the social outcasts -- beggars, outcasts, circus people.

- The blue period is a marvelous expression of poetic subtlety and personal melancholy and contributes to the transition of Picasso's style from classicism to abstract art.

Self Portrait

The Old Guitarist1903

The color blueSome people believe that, by nature, man associates colors with emotions, the color blue being associated with melancholy. In the Anglo-Saxon culture blue is still interpreted as such and so it was in France during the nineteenth century when the color blue was particularly fashionable among artists and the general public. In Christian iconography blue represents the divine and in a rather more secular (non-religious) sense it stands for the super-natural as well as the erotic.

Poor people on the seashore (see notes below)

For Picasso the blue period was an exercise in painting scenes of low light conditions. He would borrow from the Spanish painter El Greco, the light-yellow, almost white, macabre skin color that adds to the mystique and sense of death of Picasso's blue period paintings, see ‘Two Sisters’, above and ‘Poor people on the seashore’.

Two Sisters (see notes below)

The Old Guitarist1903

Although Picasso's blue period melancholy was sincere, the people he painted have an element of pathos and melodrama. The reason for the starving artist myth having become so popular, is that intellectuals and artists at the beginning of the twentieth century would like to see themselves as such. To them an artist was a social outsider by definition and they would indulge in cultivated depression and romanticize their own supposed martyrdom. Typical of this is the comment of Picasso's friend and poet Rainer Maria Rilke when he saw Picasso's painting the acrobats (family of saltimbanques):

Life (La Vie)

1903

This theme returns in one of Picasso's last blue period paintings, called Life. Casagemas had shot himself in a Parisian café after having been refused by a woman he was in love with. The Life painting shows Casagemas, again with a lover and a mother with child, but this time Picasso shows a Casagemas who is alive, the faces of the company of people still melancholic, but the left leg of Casagemas treading forward and a left finger pointing upward, showing an undefeated Casagemas. It seems that this painting marks the end of Picasso's trauma and his blue period. The main theme of both Evocation - the burial of Casagemas and Life is that they contain Picasso's best wishes for his friend and may be related to the the reason of Casagemas' suicide: in both paintings Casagemas is surrounded by lovers and the family that Picasso would have wished him.

* 1904 -- 1906: ROSE PERIOD

~ Met Fernande Olivier; gradually banished the starving figures of the Blue Period.

- Paintings done in this period were filled with graceful serenity & sensuality.

- Stylistic extension of his early work, but with warmer colours & more enigmatic meaning.

~ Favourite subjects = Acrobats, dancers, romantic harlequins & other circus performers.

- Paintings of the Rose Period sold well & days of poverty were over. The Rose Period has been considered French influenced, while the Blue Period more Spanish influenced, although both styles emerged while Picasso was living in Paris.

The Family of the Saltimbanques1905

Child & Actor1905

Girl in a Chemise1905

Family of Acrobats with Monkey

1905

Seated Female Nude1905

In the artistic spirit of his time: it's not the subject and its content that matters most, but the painting itself. Picasso goes on to experiment in a style that renders his subjects anonymous, resulting in an artistic matrix of a person, rather than a person.

See for instance ‘Seated Female Nude’ (1905). The type of person is recognizable, not the person itself. The subject is characterized, not portrayed. This, although a step in the direction of abstract art, is not most important feature of Picasso's Rose Period.

* 1905 -- 1906: Proto-Cubism - Detected a way of organizing formal elements in primitive art & the art of Cezanne.- Worked towards a less naturalistic, more geometrical style. Encouraged to use totem figures & masks in his paintings.

Portrait of Gertrude Stein1906

- Used Cezanne’s method -- carefully analysed forms into simple planes, making contours strong & precise.

- 2 sides of the mask-like face don’t fit -- ambiguous perspective.

- Breaking up of smoothly continuous volumes into separate but interlocking planes leads to a concept of design independent of nature.

Self-Portrait1907

The Beginnings of Cubism…

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon1907

- Depicted figures in a brothel.

- Divested of former associations of figures with beauty.

- Influence of African masks.

- Figures are fractured; ambiguous silhouettes.

- Challenged the traditional concept of an orderly, constructed, unified pictorial space that mirrors the world.

Portrait of Ambrose Vollard1910

* 1907 -- 14:

- Worked to Braque to develop Cubism

Portrait of Henry Kahnweiler1910

- Intersecting planes that suggest the form of a man & a bottle on a table.

Effect = a new kind of pictorial reality

- We are confronted with the many aspects of a person/object that has been disintegrated & then re-integrated to offer us a greater variety of views from different angles.

Ma Jolie

1911

- Revealed complexity of form & clarity of pictorial discipline.

Accordionist1912

Still-Life with Chair-Caning1912

Still-life with Violin

The Three Musicians1921

Mother & Child1921

* 1917: Went to Rome

~ Designed backdrop, scenery & costumes for Parade.

~ Studied Michelangelo & Raphael in the Vatican & Sistine Chapel.

* 1920 - 5:

- Wife, Olga, became pregnant.

- Painted a series of mother & child paintings & voluptuous nudes in a classicizing style. Works were of massive substance, poise & authority

* 1920s & 1930s: Continued to paint in alternating styles.

- Was aware of the new developments in modern art-- Surrealism, Expressionism & abstract painting.

- Searched for new means of expressing the human condition & the human form.

The Three Dancers

1925

- First of his paintings to show violent emotion & distortion of the figure.

- These human ‘monsters’ continued to appear throughout the late 20s & 30s.

* 1930s:

- Worked with a variety of styles with emphasis on curvilinear & sculptural forms.

- First experiments with metal sculpture.

Bull’s Head

1943Construction

1930

* 1936: Civil war broke out in Spain

* 1937: Nazi bombers razed the town of Guernica, with 2000 dead & thousands more wounded.

~ Picasso took this outrageous crime as his subject for the painting Guernica.

Guernica1937

* A response to Spanish Civil War

~ Devastating attack on man’s cruelty & folly

1950s & 60s:

- Started several series of variations on old masterpieces.

Painter & Model1963

The Man with the Golden helmet (after Rembrandt)

1969

Rembrandt, Man with Golden Helmet

1650

Guitar Construction