Cubism An Avant-Garde art movement which began in Paris circa
1907 and was pioneered by artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the
20 th century
Slide 2
What is Avant-Garde? Avant-Garde refers to pushing the
boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo in
art. The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists,
writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to mainstream
cultural values and often has a trenchant social or political edge.
Many artists aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and
still continue to do so. Avant- Garde was exciting, it was about
daring to be different. Cubist work produced at this time was
incredibly shocking to the majority of people.
Slide 3
The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface
of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of
perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro, and
refuting time-honoured theories that art should imitate nature.
Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour,
and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that
depicted radically fragmented objects. Objects are analyzed, broken
up and reassembled in an abstracted forminstead of depicting
objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a
multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater
context. The key principles of the group and their manifesto Still
Life with a Bottle of Rum, 1911 by Pablo Picasso. Painted during
the most abstract phase of Cubism, known as "high" Analytic Cubism.
In the upper center of the picture are what seem to be the neck and
opening of a bottle. Some spidery black lines to the left of it
might denote sheet music, and the round shape lower down, the base
of a glass. In the center, at the far right, is the pointed spout
of a porrn (Spanish wine bottle). This is one of the first works in
which Picasso included letter forms. It has been suggested that the
ones shown at the left, LETR, refer to Le Torero, the magazine for
bullfighting fansPicasso being one of thembut they might simply be
a pun on lettre, French for "word."
Slide 4
Influences Travelling was becoming increasingly easier and
Europeans were being exposed to art from all over the world. The
most influential art for the cubist movement was African,
Polynesian, Micronesian and Native American art. Artists were
intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles
of those foreign cultures. African masks were a huge influence for
some of Pablo Picassos cubist work. There are links between Cubism
and Primitivism which is a Western art movement that borrows visual
forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul
Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics. I
think borrowings from primitive art has been important to the
development of modern art.
Slide 5
Les Demoiselles dAvignon 1907 The work portrays five nude
female prostitutes from a brothel on in Barcelona. Each figure is
depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are
conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and
rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two are shown
with African mask-like faces and three more with faces in the
Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, giving them a savage aura.
In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in
favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a
radical departure from traditional European painting. Demoiselles
was revolutionary and controversial, and led to wide anger and
disagreement, even amongst his closest associates and friends.
Slide 6
Georges Braque Braque's earliest works were impressionistic,
but after seeing the work exhibited by the "Fauves" in 1905, he
adopted a Fauvist style. In May 1907, he successfully exhibited
works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indpendants. The same
year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced
by Paul Czanne who had died in 1906 and whose works were exhibited
in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like
retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Czanne retrospective at
the Salon d'Automne greatly affected the avant-garde artists of
Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism. Violin and Candle stick
1910 Port en Normandie 1909
Slide 7
Picasso Three Musicians 1921 is painted in the style of
Synthetic Cubism and gives the appearance of cut paper. Links to
matisse? Probably Picasso's most famous work is Guernica, which was
painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual
bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish
Civil War. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it
inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This
work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder
of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of
peace.
Slide 8
While Picasso and Braque are credited with creating this new
visual language, it was adopted and further developed by many
painters, including Fernand Lger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Juan
Gris, Roger de la Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Jean
Metzinger, and even Diego Rivera. Though primarily associated with
painting, Cubism also exerted a profound influence on
twentieth-century sculpture and architecture. The major Cubist
sculptors were Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and
Jacques Lipchitz. The liberating formal concepts initiated by
Cubism also had far-reaching consequences for Dada and Surrealism,
as well as for all artists pursuing abstraction in Germany,
Holland, Italy, England, America, and Russia.
