Midterm Essay Exam Analytical & Synthetic Cubism and Modern Art Analytical Cubism, invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Baroque, is the artistic style of creating shapes and details that represent an object or person. Braque’s Violin and Palette (Figure 1 below) is a great example of Analytical Cubism. Baroque took an object, the violin, and broke it down into a series of shapes that merely represent what a violin is from multiple points of view. “l no longer believe in anything. Objects don’t exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them r between them and myself.
When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence what I can only describe as a state of peace which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry,” Georges Baroque. Figure 1, Georges Braque’s Violin and Palette Synthetic Cubism, also developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Baroque, slowly got developed through analytical cubism. They developed it by repeating analytic designs in their work thus generalizing the objects even more making them more metrically simple and flat.
Collage was a huge part of the synthetic style, replacing painted objects with the actual object glues onto the canvas. Picasso Still Life with Chair Caning (Figure 2 below) is an excellent example of synthetic cubism. Synthetic cubism’s use of art made by artists combined with art made by manufacturer and is often said to be the first Pop Art. “In Cubism, in the end what was important is what one wanted to do, the intention one had. And that one cannot paint,” Pablo Picasso. Figure 2, Picasso Still Life with Chair Caning Their are quite a few distinct differences between Analytical and Synthetic Cubism.
The first and most relevant being the use of collage in synthetic but not in analytic cubism. For example instead of Picasso painting the chair caning into the painting of his Still Life with Chair Caning, he simply attached it onto the the picture as if it belonged onto the canvas. Compare that to how Baroque made the violin in Violin and Palette, everything is painted onto the picture and is somewhat recognizable as the object from which it represents. Analytical Cubism still had an element of three dimensionality whereas Synthetic Cubism lost all sense of three dimensional space and was Just two dimensional and flat.
Analytical Cubism also involved using muted colors so the focus was on composition and the change of perspective while Synthetic Cubism used bright colors as well as graphics, words, and other media. Synthetic Cubism also had much more distinct geometrical patterns and textures. Analytical Cubism paved the way modern art breaks traditional meaner of how things are represented. It abandons perspective and dispenses with realistic enduring of figures and objects and replaces that by making representational shapes in the composition. Background is blended into foreground.
Synthetic Cubism paved the way for Pop Art using other media based matter and integrating it into the composition. “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 Piety Mandarin, who continued to explore its use of the grid, its abstract system of signs, and its shallow pace,” (Wolf). Cubism was the first step of modern art towards abstraction. Cubism focused on developing a way of viewing that reflected the modern age.
Technological advances lead to the rise of this new style, with the invention of cars, planes, cameras, phones, sound recording and cinematography, artists needed a new way of conveying these objects and advances. Cubism directly influenced Futurism, Vortices, Supremacist, Constructivism, and Expressionism. Modern art’s time period includes approximately from the sass’s to the sass’s, cubism takes place in the early sass’s so it falls into his time frame. Modern art is art that usually dissociates the traditional style of art and experimenting with new ways of seeing the world around them.
Modern art moves away from the narrative and becomes more and more abstract. This clearly fits into the cubist movement the Picasso and Baroque created. The concept of Modern Art is based on the modern thought, character, and practice of Modernism. It developed from the rise of industries, rapid growth of city life, and first world war. Modernism reflects the rise of the changes in traditional thinking that were considered to be outdated, these include art, architecture, literature, religion, social structure, and daily life.
This change in thinking resulted in the the gradual change to modern art and modernism. Both forms of cubism, analytical and synthetic, follow this practice. Seeing everyday life and life’s objects and figures in a new way is what cubism is. Braque’s violin in Violin and Palette and Picasso Still Life with Chair Caning show this style of thought process. Braque’s violin shows every view point and angle of a violin all at the same time, challenging the idea of traditional thinking.
All of the above mentioned subjects reflect on how both analytical and synthetic cubism are a part of the modern movement and how the two are different from each other. They both challenge traditional thinking and art by changing the way the world is seen and what art can be. The differences between the two include execution, the use or disuse of collage, and the color schemes involved in both. Analytic cubism doesn’t use collage techniques, has a muted color palette, and is more three dimensional. Synthetic cubism uses collage techniques, has more a more vibrant lour palette, and is very two dimensional.
Both are a part of modernism and both heavily influenced many of the art movements that appeared later in the modern art era. “Cubism came about because, in the process of analyzing form, something that lay in the form, a plane, could be lifted out to float on its own… ” Joseph Plackets). Graphic Champs De Mars: La Tour Rouge. Robert Delaney Bibliography Baroque, Georges. Cubism Art Quotes. Picasso, Pablo. Cubism Art Quotes. Plackets, Joseph. Cubism Art Quotes. Wolf, Justine. 2012. The Art Story Foundation.
