CUBISM

Cubism is one of the most significant art movements of the twentieth century, Cubism was created by Pablo Picasso who was Spanish and lived from the years 1882-1973, and George Braque who was French and lived from the years 1882-1963. They were greatly inspired all around the world.

In Cubism the object is broken up, analyzed, and put back together in random positions. Picasso and Braque began the movement when they followed the advice of Paul Cezanne, who in 1904 said artists should treat nature “in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone.”

There were three phases in the development of Cubism: Facet Cubism, Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.

The term ‘Cubism’ came about after an exhibition of landscapes with simplified shapes which Braque and Raoul Dufy produced in 1908 on a trip to L’Estaque. An art critic Louis Vauxcelles described the works in this way:” M. Braque scorns form and reduces everything, sites, figures and houses, to geometric schemas and cubes.”

An important root of cubism is primitivism, which emphasizes tribal representations like the flattened faces of African masks. This can be seen in Pablo Picasso’s proto-Cubist “Les Demoiselles   D ’Avignon” (1907).

Analytical Cubism was Cubism’s first movement (1908-12). During this time, it is done by pulling an object apart by depicting it from all possible angles on just one such as spheres and cones.

As opposed to analytical Cubism, which deconstructed one object, synthetic Cubism brought multiple objects into the same perspective simultaneously.

Synthetic Cubism marked the first time techniques like collage, decoupage and stuck paper were seen as art.