Jessica Patrick

Mind Map

Mood Board

Research

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality and the first abstract style. Different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented or abstracted (similar to a collage). Subjects are analysed, broken up and resembled in abstract form, presenting all different angles. Cubism is a very important art movement, because it opened up almost infinite new possibilities for the treatment of visual reality in art and was the starting point for many later abstract styles including constructivism and neo-plasticism.

Cubism is presented not only in paintings, but in photographs, literature, architecture and music.

Cubism was also influenced by African curiosities and many artists used African art and African hunting masks for inspiration when creating paintings and photographs influenced by cubism, like Pablo Picasso.

Types of Cubism

Cezanian Cubism – Cezanian cubism was heavily shaped by Cezanne’s geometric simplification. The cubists adopted this method of dissecting objects into geometric forms and reassembling them from multiple view points.

Analytic Cubism (Pre 1911) – Analytic Cubism is a style of painting Pablo Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and “analysed” them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque’s paintings at this time share many similarities.

Synthetic Cubism (Post 1912) – Synthetic Cubism saw the reintroduction of colour, while the actual materials often had an industrial reference (e.g., sand or printed wallpaper). Still lifes and occasionally heads were the principal subjects for both artists.

What Influenced Cubism

Cubism began in 1907 with Picasso’s painting Demoiselles D’Avignon which included elements of cubist style. However, the name ‘cubism’ seems to have derived from a comment made by the critic Louis Vauxcelles who, on seeing some of Georges Braque’s paintings exhibited in Paris in 1908, described them as reducing everything to ‘geometric outlines, to cubes.’

Picasso was inspired by Seurat and cezanne. George Seurat was a painter, who painted using dots, which made his paintings appear to have lots of texture and shapes within them, which inspired Picasso’s cubist paintings with different shapes and angles within them.

Paul Cezanne was a French Post-Impressionist painter and was best known for his landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain near his hometown of Aix-en-Provence, France. His landscape includes a range of features that relate to cubism, such as all the different angles of the mountain, ground, homes etc. as well as the colours used within his landscape.

Pablo Picasso created cubism, so that he could challenge the traditional ideas about art and to create more abstract and expressive paintings. He also wanted to ‘express what was inside of us.’

Artists

Pablo Picasso – Born 25th October 1881 and died 8th April 1973 and was a Spanish painter and sculptor, who felt most of his adult life in France. He is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for the co-founding the cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

George Braque – Born 13th May 1882- Died 31st August 1963 and he was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor. During his early years he trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather and he also studied artistic paintings. His most notable contributions were his alliance with fauvism from 1905 and the role he played in the development of cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 – 1912 is closely associated with his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubists works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame of Picasso.

Braque’s paintings of 1908–1912 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image.

In 1909, he began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar proto-Cubist style of painting. At the time, Picasso was influenced by Cezanne and African masks, whereas Braque was more interested in developing Cezanne’s ideas of multiple perspectives, resulting in a joint effort between them both of cubism. Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic colour and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.

A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and Braque invented the papier collé technique (type of collaging technique, where paper is adhered to a flat mount).

Analysis of 2 Images

This painting by Pablo Picasso uses different light and dark shades/ paints to create elements of light and shade within the painting, so that Picasso could present different angles throughout his painting. He uses warm shades, like the orange and browns, as well as using cooler shades, such as the blues and greens to also create this element of different angles and perspectives.

In this image he uses orange, brown, blue, green, black and white paints in all different shades. He also adds texture to his painting by using different brush strokes to leave patterns in the paint that creates texture. He also uses a range of 2D shapes to create a flat image that has 3D elements due to the different shapes, shades, colours and textures he has used. He also uses repetition in this image, as he uses multiple shapes multiple times (2 African masks).

The layout of this painting includes 2 African masks, which are arranged next to each other with the mask in the background resting his arm on the shoulder of the mask in the foreground. Only their upper body (shoulders up) is inside the frame. The masks are the main viewpoint of this painting, specifically the mask in the foreground. There is also lots of contrast in this image, due to all the different lighter and darker shades and the different textures and shapes used.

Pablo Picasso was very inspired by African masks, which is what he has painted in his image. African masks play an important role in the Cubism Art movement. This painting is a cubist painting, due to the different angles and perspectives used in this painting and it following the Cubism manifesto.

This painting displays African masks, but I think they are to represent humans, due to the human characteristics used in the paintings (the resting of an arm on the others shoulder). The painting also uses human features, such as the masks representing human faces and the shoulders, arm, hand and fingers.

This painting by George Braque uses different light and dark shades/ paints to create elements of light and shade within the painting, so that Braque could present different angles throughout his painting. He uses mainly neutral shades, like brown, black and white rather than a range of warmer and cooler tones. However, he uses texture in his painting to create different angles and perspectives in his painting, by using different brush strokes and painting techniques to create different patterns in the paint. He also uses a range of 2D shapes to create a painting that looks 3D, even though the painting is on a flat surface.

The layout of this image includes a range of different shapes, with the main viewpoint being the centre of the image. Braque also creates a depth of surface illusion in his paintings, by having the shapes in the centre of the image smaller and the shapes on the outside of the image slightly larger. This is to create depth in the centre of the image, which leads the eye to the centre of the image (the viewpoint).

This painting plays an important role in the Cubism Art movement, as it follows the cubism manifesto and displays an abstract painting with lots of different angles and perspectives.

Manifesto

The cubist manifesto is a seminal text that outlines the principles and objectives of Cubism, emphasising the importance of abstraction and the representation of multiple perspectives within a single work of art.