Modernism refers to a global movement both philosophical and art, in the western society that sought a new orientation with the experience and values of modern life, transformations and cultural trends during the late 19th and 20th century.
Modernism is a very important movement it made a great impact on the society it focused on the traditional activities such as art, architecture, religious faith, social organization and daily life.
Cubism was truly a revolutionary art movement that evolved in the beginning of 20th century, developed by the two very great artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques. Cubism was an attempt to revive the traditional western art, the artists challenged perspective which ruled since Italian renaissance.
Cubism strike the end of the era subjugated by the Renaissance and the beginning of modern art. Picasso got inspired from ancient sculptors and primitive masks, and he took great inspiration from the French painter Paul Cézanne.
Picasso admired Cézanne immensely and the impact of the Paris retrospective exhibition after the death of Cézanne had surely strived a change in Picasso’s art. The aim of cubism was to move away from the representations of things to instantly capture an object from different angles. It paved the way for pure abstraction.
In the four-year span from 1870-1910, western culture had more mechanically and technologically advanced than in the past four centuries. During this era, advances, such as, photography, recordings, cinematography, the phone, the automobiles declared the establishment of another era.
Photography had initiated to replace painting. Artists desired a more essential approach, a new way that prolonged the possibilities of art in the same way that technology was outspreading the boundaries of communication and transport at that time
A Cubist painting depicts people, places or objects, but not from a fixed viewpoint. Instead it shows several parts of the subject at one time, viewed from different positions and angles, and reconstructed into planes, forms and colors.
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed and conceived Cubism but other artists also embraced the style. The Spanish artist Juan Gris, who is often referred as the Third Musketeer of Cubism, refined and developed the Cubist expressions into his own instantly recognizable visual language.
Other remarkable artists associated with Cubism were Fernand Leger, Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Louis Marcoussis and Marie Laurencin.
Jaun gris famous artwork ‘Flowers’ in 1914. Gris and other Cubists began incorporating collage elements, such as newspaper and wallpaper, into their paintings. Flowers represents a woman’s marble-topped vanity table with a vase of roses, a coffee cup, and the morning paper.
A tilting oval mirror reflects wallpaper printed with stylized Art Nouveau orchids. The literal scrapings of everyday life force us to consider the subject through the lens of modernity. Gris was particularly known for hidden messages in his artworks. Upon close inspection, a glimpse of second coffee cup and pipe camouflaged by the table, evidence that the lady is not alone.
Cubism had two distinctive stages. The early stage lasted until about 1912 which was known as Analytical Cubism. The artist analyzed the subject from various perspectives and viewpoints and reconstructed within a geometric framework or image that evoked a sense of the subject.
These imageries were cohesive by the use of a sombre and limited palette of colors. Around 1912, the styles of Picasso and Braque were getting predictable. Their images had been so similar that their paintings were often difficult to tell apart. Their work was less recognizable as the subject of their labels.
Cubism was running out of creativity. In an attempt to revitalize the style and total abstraction, Picasso began to glue printed images from the real world onto his still life paintings.
His painting ‘Still Life with Chair Caning’ was the first instance of the ‘collage’ technique and it opened the door for himself and many artists to the second stage of the Cubist style: Synthetic Cubism.
Influenced by the introduction of bold and simple collage shapes, Synthetic Cubism moved away from the unified neutral surfaces of Analytic Cubism to a straighter, colorful and decorative style.
Interchanging lines, colors, patterns and textures that switch from geometric to freehand, dark to light, positive to negative and plain to patterned, advance and recede in rhythms across the picture plain.
Cubism was born in France but it spread across Europe and integrated with several countries. It emerged as Futurism in Italy, Vorticism in England, Supremacism and Constructivism in Russia, and Expressionism in Germany.
It also influenced several of the major design and architectural styles of the 20th century and prevails to this day as mode of expression in the language of art.
Cubism greatly influenced architecture. It was against architecture that was very utilitarian, materialistic, spiritual and not theoretical enough. They thought that architecture should be more poetic, expressive and full of drama.
Intense, provocative, disturbing, and captivating, the legendary artist Pablo Picasso led a life of restless brilliance. About some time ago I watched ‘Genius – Picasso’ short film series which touches upon in favor of covering a wide swath of the Picasso’s life and how cubism came into being.
There are two stories running in parallel to each other: One is of Picasso in his early twenties, depicting a passionate artist finding his vision. The other, largely framed around the Nazi occupation of Paris, follows an older Picasso. Cubism is considered to be the most important pictorial expression of the movement.
Cubism was a short but very important movement, it outshined the contemporary styles of Europe. Picasso also got into Realist and Surrealist Styles. He painted ‘Guernica’ in1937 after the massacre in the Basque town Picasso’s palette grew somber with the onset of World War II and death was the subject of numerous works.
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.
On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world’s attention.
Georges Braque Co-Father of Cubism is perhaps one of the best known of 20th century French Artists. He initially began his experiments with geometric forms and the effects of light and color, he discovered Picasso was developing themes along the same line.
Along with Cubism, Braque used the styles of Impressionism, Fauvism and collage. Through his career, his style reformed from somber themes during wartime and lighter, freer subjects in between. He never strayed far from Cubism, as there were always aspects of it in his works.
Braque depicted both bottles and fishes throughout his entire painting career, and these objects stands to differentiate his different styles. Braques famous painting Bottle and Fishes in 1910 is an excellent example of his venture into Analytic Cubism, while he worked closely with Picasso.
This painting has the restricted characteristic earth tone palette rendering barely perceptible objects as they disintegrate along a horizontal plane. While there are some diagonal lines, Braque’s early paintings tended to work vertically or horizontally.
Picasso started his Black Period or Negro period in 1907. In his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon the faces of the three women on the left are based on the Iberian sculptures.
And the two women on the right were based on the African totem art, later in his life, Picasso denied he had been inspired by African art, while making the Demoiselles, partly because of political, patriotic reasons. Picasso preferred to emphasize the Iberian nature of the painting.
African influenced period was followed with the style, Analytic Cubism, which had also developed from Les Mademoiselle Mignonne’s. Specifically, Picasso’s interest was sparked by Henri Matisse who showed him a mask from the Dan region of Africa.
The subject matter of nude women was not in itself unusual, but the fact that Picasso painted the women as prostitutes in aggressively sexual postures, also suggesting that their sexuality is not just aggressive, but also primitive.
Picasso abandoned the Renaissance illusion of three-dimensionality, instead presenting a radically flattened picture plane that is broken up into geometric shards. For instance, the body of the standing woman in the center is composed of angles and sharp edges.
Cubism was the most influential art movement major source of inspiration and a major turning point in evolution of modern art. It was Cubism that tied all the loose ends of innovation together.
Braque and Picasso separated, both initially embracing a more conservative and classical aesthetic immediately after the war, the legacy of cubism remained in their work and the work of others after them.
Up until Cubism, art reflected life back at us in a recognizable, centralized order. Things had essences that painters and sculptors captured in a kind of virtual reality called “art”. Cubism is a fragmented, fluid and life changing experience.
Cubism teaches us that our experience of things is fragmented and momentary, and that our “self” is only the sum of our actions and environment, not an essence beneath the surface of our skin.
