WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

"Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher,
things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view."

One of the most influential art movements (1907-1914) of the twentieth century, Cubism was
begun by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1882-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) in
1907. They were greatly inspired by African sculpture, by painters Paul Czanne (French, 18391906) and Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891), and by the Fauves. The movement itself was
not long-lived or widespread, but it began an immense creative explosion which resonated
through all of 20th century art. The key concept underlying Cubism is that the essence of an
object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously.
Cubism is a kind of Realism. It is a conceptual approach to realism in art, which aims to depict
the world as it is and not as it seems. This was the "idea."
Cubism was a truly revolutionary style of modern art developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braques. It was the first style of abstract art which evolved at the beginning of the 20th century
in response to a world that was changing with unprecedented speed. Cubism was an attempt by
artists to revitalise the tired traditions of Western art which they believed had run their course.
The Cubists challenged conventional forms of representation, such as perspective, which had
been the rule since the Renaissance. Their aim was to develop a new way of seeing which
reflected the modern age.
Picasso and Braque initiated the movement when they followed the advice of Paul Czanne,
who in 1904 said artists should treat nature "in terms of thecylinder, the sphere and the cone."
Two events marked the beginning of Cubism. The first was Picasso returning to Paris from his
home in Catalonia with his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). In its radical distortion of
the figures, its rendering of volumes as fragmented planes, and its subdued palette, this work
predicted some of the key characteristics of later Cubism. Secondly, Braque made a series of
landscape paintings in the summer of 1908, in which trees and mountains were rendered as
shaded cubes and pyramids, resembling architectural forms. It was this series that led French

art critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe them as "bizarreries cubiques," thus giving the movement
its name.
The close contact between Picasso and Braque was crucial in the style's genesis. The two
artists collaborated very closely, regularly meeting to discuss their progress, and at times it is
hard to distinguish the work of one artist from another. Both were living in Montmartre in the
years before and during World War I. The other artists who came to be associated with the
style, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Jean Metzinger and Raymond Duchamp-Villon occupied different social circles, gathered elsewhere around Paris and later exhibited together.

Textbooks often cite Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) as the first Cubist
painting.This belief may be true, because the work displays the three essential ingredients in
Cubism: geometricity, simultaneity and passage . But Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was not
shown publicly until 1916. Therefore, its influence was limited.
Other art historians argue that Georges Braque's series of L'Estaque landscapes executed in
1908 were the first Cubist paintings. The art critic Louis Vauxcelles called these pictures nothing
but little "cubes." Legend has it that Vauxcelles parroted Henri Matisse (1869-1954), who
presided over the jury of1908 Salon d'Automne, where Braque first submitted his L'Estaque
paintings. Vauxcelles' assessment stuck and went viral, just like his critical swipe at Matisse and
his fellow Fauves. Therefore, we might say that Braque's work inspired the word Cubism in
terms of a recognizable style, but Picasso'sDemoiselles d'Avignon launched the principles of
Cubism through its ideas.

DISTINCT CHARACTERISTICS with TWO GROUPS OF CUBISTS AS ADDITIONAL INFO

In Cubism the subject matter is broken up, analyzed, and reassembled in an abstracted form.

Geometricity, a simplication of figures and objects into geometrical components and

planes that may or may not add up to the whole figure or object known in the natural world.

Approximation of the Fourth Dimension.

Conceptual, instead of perceptual, reality.

Distortion and deformation of known figures and forms in the natural world.

Passage, the overlapping and interpenetration of planes.

Simultaneity or multiple views, different points of view made visible on one plane.
Abstract Form
Cubism is known for being an abstract form of art. One of the most important characteristics of
this style came about when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque realized that, in order to make
their art more unique and life-like, it would be imperative to reconstruct and break down various
art works. These works were then pieced back together with a three dimensional outlook on a
two dimensional surface. The idea was to bring out brevity and depth at the same time. In
simple terms, the idea was to get cubist artists or painters to basically show more than one view
at a time; this art form enabled them to represent their art or object on multiple plains and
surfaces.
Geometric Shapes
It is a known fact that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque popularized this style and helped
make it even more realistic with the aid of geometric shapes. The foundation of cubist artworks
is broken down into natural forms of geometrical patterns such as little cubes, edges and three
dimensional rhombuses. The idea behind using geometric shapes as a base was to portray
distorted, abstract versions that would require a discerning eye to comprehend the object and
an appetite for intangible art.
Simple Yet Bold
Cubism started off as a simplistic form of art that developed into an abstract style through the
years. During the renaissance years, most artists depicted their works on a flat surface or a
plane. Cubism was obviously in complete contrast to the conventional styles and went on to
become one of the most striking yet, unpretentious forms of art. Being abstract was the call of
the era and, with all boundaries broken, Picasso and Braque went on to create some of the
most astounding forms of art following this style. Giving up Fauvist and Pointillist arts, many
artists went on to adapt to the new cubist movement. Not only was it simple, but it also carried
depth with no logic and truth. From the use of color to flattering compositions of two dimensional
faces and watchful eyes, this style became a legendary one.

A good example can be found in Pablo Picasso's Still Life with Compote and Glass(1914-15),
where we see the circular mouth of the glass attached to its distinctive fluted goblet shape. The
area that connects two different planes (top and side) to one another is passage. The
simultaneous views of the glass (top and side) is simultaneity. The emphasis on clear outlines
and geometric forms is geometricity. To know an object from different points of view takes time,
because you move the object around in space or you move around the object in space.
Therefore, to depict multiple views (simultaneity) implies the Fourth Dimension (time).

Two Groups of Cubists:

There were two groups of Cubists during the height of the movement, 1909 to 1914. Pablo
Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque(1882-1963) are known as the "Gallery Cubists"
because they exhibited under contract with Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler's gallery.

Henri Le Fauconnier (1881-1946), Jean Metzinger (1883-1956), Albert Gleizes (181-1953),

Fernand Lger (1881-1955), Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), Juan Gris (1887-1927), Marcel
Duchamp (1887-1968), Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), Jacques Villon (1875-1963)
and Robert de la Fresnaye (1885-1925) are know as the "Salon Cubists" because they
exhibited in exhibitions supported by public funds (salons)

Cubist artists rejected traditional form and shape. A cubist artist broke down a subject matter
into geometric designs and shapes, and then reorganized and overlapped the elements.
Commonplace objects such as tables and bottles were painted from various points of view,
making them look distorted and fragmented. Others painted the human body from different
points of view. Some cubists included numbers or words in their pictures. Other artists created
collages, integrating things like newspaper clippings or oil cloth into their paintings.

The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they
should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They
wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and
fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relieflike
space. They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.

WHEN DID IT START TO FLOURISH?

How Long Has Cubism Been a Movement?
There are four periods of Cubism:

Early Cubism or Czannisme (1908-1910)

Analytic Cubism (1910-12)

Synthetic Cubism (1912-1914)

Late Cubism (1915-present)

Although the height of the Cubism period occurred before World War I, several artists continued
the Synthetic Cubists' style or adopted a personal variation of it. Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
demonstrates the influence of Synthetic Cubism in his paintingMakeup (a.k.a. Dressing Room),
1952.

Analytic Cubism staged modern art's most radical break with traditional models of
representation. It abandoned perspective, which artists had used to order space since the
Renaissance. And it turned away from the realistic modeling of figures and towards a system of
representing bodies in space that employed small, tilted planes, set in a shallow space. Over
time, Picasso and Braque also moved towards open form - they pierced the bodies of their
figures, let the space flow through them, and blended background into foreground. Some

historians have argued that its innovations represent a response to the changing experience of
space, movement, and time in the modern world.
Synthetic Cubism proved equally important and influential for later artists. Instead of relying on
depicted shapes and forms to represent objects, Picasso and Braque began to explore the use
of foreign objects as abstract signs. Their use of newspaper would lead later historians to argue
that, instead of being concerned above all with form, the artists were also acutely aware of
current events - in particular WWI.
Cubism paved the way for geometric abstract art by putting an entirely new emphasis on the
unity between the depicted scene in a picture, and the surface of the canvas. Its innovations
would be taken up by the likes of Piet Mondrian, who continued to explore its use of the grid, its
abstract system of signs, and its shallow space.
There are two kinds of cubist paintings-analytic cubism and synthetic cubism. Analytic cubism
attempted to break down objects and reassemble them into various forms. Synthetic cubism
strived to synthesize imaginative elements into new figurative forms.
In its early phase, Cubism developed in a highly systematic fashion. Later to be known as the
'Analytic' period of the style, it was based on close observation of objects in their background
contexts. Picasso and Braque restricted their subject matter to the traditional genres of
portraiture and still life; they also limited their palette to earth tones and muted silvers, better to
maintain clarity between the forms' fragmented planes. Although their work was often very
similar in appearance, over time, their separate interests showed through. Braque tended to
show objects exploding out or pulled apart into fragments, while Picasso rendered them
magnetized, with attracting forces compelling elements of the pictorial space into the center of
the composition.
In 1912 both Picasso and Braque began to introduce foreign elements into their compositions.
Picasso incorporated chair caning into Still Life with Chair-Caning(1912), initiating Cubist
collage, and Braque began to glue newspaper to his canvases, beginning the movement's
exploration of papier-colle. In part this may have resulted from the artists' growing discomfort
with the radical abstraction of Synthetic Cubism, though it could also be argued that these
experiments touched off an even more radical turn away from the real, and towards the use of
abstract signs as codes for the real. At this stage, Juan Gris began to make important

contributions to the style: he maintained a sharp clarity to his forms, provided suggestions of a
compositional grid, and introduced more color to what had hitherto been an austere style.
WHEN WAS THE DECLINE?
Cubism had run its course by the end of World War I, but among the movements directly
influenced by it were Orphism, Precisionism, Futurism, Purism, Constructivism, and, to some
degree, Expressionism.
The significance of Cubism began to decline in France in the mid 1920s as many of the style's
early practitioners would turn to other focuses. Even as the style started to disperse, it would go
on to be hugely important in seeding other movements in modern art. It lies at the root of a host
of early modern styles such as Dada, Constructivism and Neo-Plasticism, whilst also being the
impetus for the later, romantic reactions such as Surrealism, which rejected Cubism's
sometimes quasi-scientific approach to perception. The ideas in the movement also fed into
more popular phenomena, like Art Deco design and architecture.