Updated December 10, 2014

Georges Braque 1882-1963

Cubism

For this presentation you will need: (Available reproductions and supplemental boards in the vertical art storage rack to the right of the cabinet.) • Still Life: Le Jour (1929) (large mounted reproduction) • Elements of Art Board • Other printed materials for reference that are in the white binder: Road Near L’Estaque

(1908), Violin and Palette (1909), Piano and Mandolin (1909-1910), Man With Guitar (1911), Fruit Dish and Glass (1912).

• Supplemental prints in the white binder to refer to his brief period of Fauvism: Landscape at L’Estaque (1906); A comparison to Cezanne: L’Estaque (1883-1885); a comparison to Matisse: Woman With A Hat (1905); and his later work in the Ateliers series: Ateliers VIII (1954)

In the black cabinet you will find a white binder with a copy of the current presentation and the additional materials listed above for reference.

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 Personal Information   Name: Georges Braque Nationality: French Born: May 13, 1882, Angenteuil (near Paris, France) Died: August 31, 1963 in Paris, France Lived: Braque was born into a family of painters. Both his father and grandfather owned

a prosperous house-painting business and young Braque would travel on assignments to learn. By 1902 he moved to Paris to study fine art. While in Paris, Braque studied for two years and frequently visited the Louvre. He became interested in architecture, and Egyptian and Greek works.

Braque was the first living artist to exhibit at the Louvre. Professional Information

Type of artist: Cubist (with Picasso, Braque is considered a founding father of Cubism). Style/Technique: Cubism is a style of art in which natural forms are broken into geometric shapes

such as squares, triangles, or circles. The paintings are executed in muted colors. The objects are fragmented or cubed geometrical patterns and are organized on a grid. The early stage of Cubism rejected the normal conventions of linear perspective and instead it was shown by a means of color, reddish browns for foreground and warm blues for background. Also, in Cubist canvases, there are multiple light sources, Cubist canvases light appears to enter the composition from numerous different angles thus confusing the viewer as to whether shapes are convex or concave. Braque described "objects shattered into fragments… [as] a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space”. He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.

His paintings consist primarily of still lifes. A still life is a picture of an arrangement of objects. They are known for their robust construction, low-keyed color harmonies, and serene, meditative quality. Braque began his career as a Fauvist. Fauvism is another style of art that originated in the early twentieth-century. It consisted of Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, this artistic style only lasted a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. One of the leaders of the movement was Henri Matisse. (You can show the Matisse sample of Fauvism to compare

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with Braque’s early works). Already, however, his art was displaying a growing fascination with geometric patterns and solid, defined forms that was out of step with the canon preached by Matisse.    As the Fauvism movement was coming to an end, Braque was greatly influenced by the work of Paul Cezanne, and his ideas of multiple perspectives which led Braque to initiate a type of prototype Cubist painting (the first set of cubist paintings) in landscapes he completed at L'Estaque. You can see this in the painting Road Near L’Estaque in the white binder. The town of L’Estaque had been a favorite subject for Paul Cézanne, whose 1907 memorial exhibition in Paris had a great impact on Braque. After this he worked closely with Picasso with whom he formulated Analytical Cubism and later, Synthetic Cubism. Analytical Cubism focused on breaking down one image and showing it in many different perspectives, Synthetic Cubism focused more on a collage, utilizing different surfaces, textures and subject matters. (see characteristics and definitions in the white binder).

Artist Biography Georges Braque, the most representatively French of this century’s painters, was born in Argenteuil, France, one of the centers of the Impressionist movement in the later half of the nineteenth century. He was the son of a painting contractor who was also a Sunday painter. He had his first art lessons from his father, from who he learned to imitate marble, wood and gilt surfaces in paint (this would come in handy in his later years as he incorporated this decorative style into his paintings). At 15, Braque then studied at the School of Fine Arts at Le Havre before going to Paris to begin a lifelong exploration of color and space, searching for the most beautiful combination of the two. In, 1902, after a year of military service and with the financial support of his family, Braque made the decision to become an “artist”. This meant enrolling first in a private art academy in Paris, and then attending the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He spent two more years as an official student of art, regularly attending the Louvre for inspiration and exploring the different approaches to color and form used by the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He did not copy the work he saw in the art schools and in the museums. Braque searched for a new way to paint and one said “I am far more concerned about being in tune with nature than copying it.” Early in his work Braque was influenced by the Impressionists and by his contemporaries, Matisse and Derain, and joined the Fauvre movement in about 1905. Even in this period, his work showed characteristics of his later style, for he painted some works in monochrome using angles as well as curves with a flatter, more transparent pigment, than that of his colleagues. By 1907 the architectural influence of Cezanne had asserted itself and Braque, with Picasso, founded the Cubist movement. Braque began to paint in muted colors and in geometrical patterns. He and Picasso worked closely together until the outbreak of World War I, sometimes producing works so similar that the two artists themselves could not tell which one had painted a given picture if had not been immediately signed.

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In 1912, after courting is wife-to–be, Marcelle, Braque began a lengthy experiment with collage and overlay. Although Cubism was created jointly by Braque and Picasso, it was Braque who was first to introduce lettering, to make use of a paint comb, to introduce imitation wood graining and marbling, to vary the texture of his paint by mixing it with sand and other ingredients and finally to discover the technique of “papier colle” (paper collage). Alongside Cubist paintings by Picasso, Braque’s appear more painterly, and serene. In 1914, Braque was mobilized in the French Army, and a head wound he received in 1915 made him temporarily blind so he could not paint again until 1917. At this time he began to develop a new and more personal style, using a brighter palette and freer manner that was less angular and more luminous. During the decade 1918-28 (after his head injury in 1915) Braque maintained his mastery of Cubism by constantly varying the size and shape of his canvases: horizontal alternate with verticals, large with small, square with elongated. His paint is sometimes luscious, sometimes dry. Braque’s color harmonies and his handling of form also varied constantly, even with groups of works of the same date: somber changes to light, compressed to flabby and extended, angular to rounded and free flowing. During the wartime period, the work he put together would change in order to represent the somber, dark period the world was going through. In between wartime, he would also change the style and themes, to represent lighter times, and happier things, which were taking place around him. By 1931, he had found a marvelous balance between intelligence and sensitivity, technique and inspiration. Between 1930 and 1936, Braque’s basic concern was with the decorative aspects of painting. His repertoire of still life objects remained the same, but temporarily Braque relinquished his interest in space, volume and tactile values in favor of seductive surface play of meandering lines. Natural objects virtually lost not only their value for Braque, but also even their right to material existence. The colors he used alternated between a heavy range of black, dark brown, blue and yellow, white, orange and purple. This was an easygoing interval of Braque’s career. Between 1941 and 1944, when he was able to return home to France in Normandy after more than four years of absence due to World War II, Braque’s subject matter was related almost exclusively to food and the daily routine of housekeeping. One after another, Braque’s still lifes are of kitchen tables with a sparse arrangement of objects.

From 1956 on, Braque’s health and strength were constantly on the decline. He made no paintings of importance after this date, although he labored away and brought to completion a few beautiful works which he had begun in the early 1950s. He worked primarily during his declining years in the graphic media, illustrating books for friends or making lithographs in color as well as black and white. He became interested in stained glass and also accepted a commission for the ceiling of the Etruscan Room at the Louvre. He also worked on a series of paintings called Ateliers in which he carries a bird motif throughout and this theme reappears as the decoration for the Etruscan Hall in the Louvre. There are several theories about why he included birds in these paintings. Two years before his death he became, in the whole history of France, the first artist to be consecrated during his lifetime by an exhibition organized at the Louvre. He continued to paint until the time of his death on August 31, 1963. He was 81 years old.

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Featured Artwork Still Life: Le Jour (1929) (Still life, oil on canvas) Style: Synthetic Cubism Braque’s favorite genre, remained still life (nature morte), as exemplified by his numerous Cubist works. The subject matter of his still life paintings were things that he saw every day. In this case, his kitchen and items he may have found there. He also included an instrument as well as he is also known for painting instruments in his cubist paintings and still lifes. He is showing more color here like he does in his earlier pieces and incorporated the texture of the wood and wallpaper as characterized by the definition of Synthetic Cubism. He also includes letter type to add to the decorative nature as well. Although Braque began his career painting landscapes, during 1908 he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting still lifes instead. Braque explained that he “… began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them… In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life” A still life was also more accessible, in relation to perspective, than landscape, and permitted the artist to see the multiple perspectives of the object. Braque's early interest in still lifes revived during the 1930s. Show: Large mounted reproduction Ask:

• What do you think Still Life means? (a picture of an inanimate object, such as fruit or flowers)

• What are the objects in the painting? (table, newspaper, guitar, knife etc.)

• Which objects are pictured as though they were broken and then put back together in an unusual way? ( newspaper)

• How does the painting make you feel?

Discussing the Art Show the Elements of Art board.

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Color

• What kinds of colors did Braque use? (Cool colors, black, brown, purple, green, gray)Can you see the stokes he used in these painting to create the lines?

• Which colors go well together? Shape A shape is a line that encloses itself. Use a pipe cleaner or draw the shapes in a piece of paper to demonstrate what happens when two ends of a line meet. A shape is created. Name some shapes (square, circle, ova cube, rectangle, cylinder, semicircle, etc) that are in the paintings.

• Do you see more geometric or free-form shapes? (Geometric) • What shapes do you see? (rectangles, squares, diamonds) • What objects do you see? (Guitar, knife, fruit, newspaper, table, pitcher

Texture • What kinds of textures are depicted in the painting? (Wood , marble, stone)

Line

• Where do you see straight lines? (table, knife, newspaper, guitar) • Are the lines clean and hard or soft? (clean and crisp)

Light

• What kind of light is depicted? (natural) • Do you see any shadows? (yes, the table, guitar)

Space

• Which objects seem most important? • Identify objects in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Foreground: The objects and land that are “before” or in front of everything else in the picture. Middle ground: The objects and land in a picture that are mid-distant, in front of the background. Background: The farthest away objects in a picture, usually near the top of the picture plane. In a landscape it is the sky and the farthest land.  

Activities

• Have the children use geometric shapes (circles, squares, triangles, etc) cut from different colored paper(or magazine) to suggest objects in still life. They can arrange the shapes on their desks or tabletops. Encourage the children to use their imagination to create a still life that is all their own. Time permitting, you can also have the children use the shapes to suggest human and animal figures the way the Cubists pictured them.

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• Have the children look at the reproduction provided and play the “eye spy” game to describe the objects in the painting.

Other Noteworthy Paintings Road Near L’Estaque (1908) Style: Prototype Cubism Road near L'Estaque, 1908 makes visible Cézanne's influence on Braque's developing later Cubist style. Braque employs Cézanne's progressive gradations of color and flattened, inaccessible spaces. As Cézanne often did, Braque left an area of canvas unpainted, in the limb of a tree. Road near L'Estaque looks forward to Cubism in its significantly restricted palette of colors, crowded space, and sharp geometric forms. Violin and Palette (1909) Style: Analytic Cubism In Violin and Palette, 1909 Georges Braque fragmentalized the objects in the painting into pieces, which are then meshed into the background. Viewers thus see fragments of the objects in the picture that seem broken amidst other pieces of the painting, as if hidden in a jigsaw puzzle.    Stare at the various shades of color and we will find fragments of the violin at the bottom left side of the painting against the backdrop of what appears to be music scores, all aligned vertically along the length of the painting. Stare hard at the violin and we will see the fragmented strings and the carved S and inverted S shapes that are typical of violins. Stare harder and the pieces seem to float before our eyes.  The muted colors allow the play of light and shadows so that as we move from side to side or stare hard at the painting, the various pieces seem to move or merge with other pieces. Examine each piece, and we will be amazed at how detailed Braque had been in examining a violin, so that we are able, as a violin maker would, to identify the pieces that go into making a violin.

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Piano and Mandola (1909-1910) Style: Analytic Cubism Analytic Cubism is also seen in Piano and Mandola. Similar to Violin and Palette, objects are still recognizable in the paintings, but are fractured into multiple facets, as is the surrounding space with which they merge. The compositions are set into motion as the eye moves from one faceted plane to the next, seeking to differentiate forms and to accommodate shifting sources of light and orientation. In Violin and Palette, the segmented parts of the violin, the sheets of music, and the artist's palette are vertically arranged, heightening their correspondence to the two-dimensional surface. Ironically, Braque depicted the nail at the top of the canvas in an illusionistic manner, down to the very shadow it cast, thus emphasizing the contrast between traditional and Cubist modes of representation. The same applies to the naturalistic candle in Piano and Mandola, which serves as a beacon of stability in an otherwise energized composition of exploding crystalline forms: the black-and-white piano keys all but disembodied; the sheets of music virtually disintegrated; the mandola essentially decomposed. Man With Guitar (1911) Style: Analytic Cubism Braque painted Man with a Guitar in a mode that came to be called Analytic Cubism. In works created in this style, he and Pablo Picasso experimented with different types of representation to challenge the orthodoxy of illusionistic space in painting. Here Braque paired an accessible, lifelike rendering of a nail and rope, at left, with a nearly indecipherable rendering of a human figure playing a guitar. Braque and Picasso's collaboration was so close when they developed Analytic Cubism that Braque later compared them to two mountaineers, bound together. In order to remove the mystique of the maker from their paintings, they both habitually signed the back of their works instead of the front. Fruit Dish and Glass (1912) Style: Synthetic Cubism This painting is most notable for being the first papier collé, or collage, a technique which Braque invented. He simulated oak paneling and two kinds of printed motifs on a dark beige background. Braque may have been drawn to this paper because he was trained in a technique called trompe-l'oeil; which allowed him to create pictorial effects that resemble woodgrain and marble finishes, but are made with paint and a special wide comb. Braque then may have found it amusing to incorporate the woodgrain paper in his piece. He may also have wished to use the paper to create a visual pun about

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the nature of representation. He noticed that because the paper looks realistic and yet it is flat, and pasted on, it undermines spatial relationships. It can act as the foreground, the background, or both. When first observing Fruit Dish and Glass, one might recognize a glass filled with grapes and pears, but these elements are flattened and distorted versions of actual objects. Rather than trying to accurately represent reality, Braque is playing with textures, shapes, and composition to construct a painting that is half recognizable and half symbolic.

Resources http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/georges-braque-man-with-a-guitar-ceret-summer-1911-early-1912 http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?oid=490612 http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51188.html?mulR=1274174306|8 http://www.theartstory.org/artist-braque-georges.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72MCQWzyD4E&noredirect=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/arts/design/georges-braque-pioneer-of-modernism-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& http://www.biography.com/people/georges-braque-92246 http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/851 http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/georges-braque-atelier-i-5790358-details.aspx http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/10328295/Georges-Braque-He-changed-Western-painting-for-ever.html http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/01/magic-studio-george-braques-atelier.html http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/cezanne-and-his-influence-on-the-cubist-movement-in-art-5782/ http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/analysis-of-georges-braque-man-with-a-guitar-3826/ http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/georges-braque-biography-3602/ http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/Braque/Braque.shtml http://www.georgesbraque.org/piano-and-mandola.jsp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_Dish_and_Glass Bibliography Douglas Cooper: Braque: The Great Years. The Art Institute of Chicago,1972. Edition Beyeler Berel. G Braque. Werner and Bischoff AG. Basel, 1968. Mersini, Lara Vinea: Braque. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1971. Teacher’s Guide to My Weekly Reader Art Gallery 1966-67. Shorewood Fine Art Reproductions, Inc. The Art Reference Guide and Artists Biographies Encyclopedia Britannica, Braque, Georges http://www.mod/picasso/braque/braque.html Georges Braque, Discover France http://www.discover france.net/France/ART/Braque/Braque.shtml. Biography of Georges Braque http://www.brainjuice.com Richardson, John: G. Braque Silvana Editoriale D’Arte, 1961