CUBISM

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CUBISM

• Paris 1907 - 1914

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• Cubism is a style of painting in which artists
  try to show all sides of three dimensional
  objects on a flat canvas.
• The Cubist artists of the early 20th Century felt
  it was more honest to depict multiple views of
  objects than to restrict viewers to a single
  point of view.

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• Cubism was an intellectual approach to art rather
  than a descriptive or emotional one. Cubist
  artists thought their way through their
  paintings, trying to show what they knew was
  there, not what they saw or felt. Pablo Picasso,
  the founder of this movement said, We have kept
  our eyes open to our surroundings, but also our
  brains.

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• Cubism owes a debt to the work of Paul Cezanne,
  who saw the surfaces of objects as geometric
  shapes that could be broken up into planes.
• When Picasso and Georges Braque (another major
  Cubist painter) met for the first time they spoke
  of their admiration for the work of Cezanne.

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• A Cubist painting can confuse the viewer, as
  objects do not necessarily sit in space the way
  we expect them to. You can never be sure when one
  shape is ahead of another, because part of it
  might seem to be in front and part of it behind
  surrounding objects.

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• Cubist painters used drab colours a significant
  contrast with the vibrant, saturated palettes of
  the Impressionists, Fauves, and German
  Expressionists.
• The Cubist palette was made up of grays and
  browns brighter colours were considered too
  romantic.

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• Textured surfaces were an important feature of
  Cubist painting, especially in the period after
  1911, when Picasso and Braque began to collage
  newspaper clippings, pieces of wallpaper and
  labels onto their canvases.

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• Major Cubist Painters
• Pablo Picasso (Spanish) 1881 - 1973
• Georges Braque (French) 1882 1963
• Followers
• 3. Juan Gris 1887 - 1927
• 4. Albert Gleize 1881 - 1953

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• The Cubist movement began in Paris, where Pablo
  Picasso, a Spaniard, settled in 1901.
• He lived with a number of other artists in a
  building known as the Bateau Lavoir, a ramshackle
  building in the Montmartre district of Paris.
  There was both rivalry and cameraderie among the
  artists and their concentration in one location
  created the conditions for innovative
  breakthroughs.

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• In 1905,Picasso completed Les Demoiselles
  dAvignon, and showed it to his friend and rival
  artist Georges Braque.

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• Avignon is a city in southern France, but the Rue
  dAvignon is also the red light district of
  Barcelona, Spain.
• The demoiselles, (the girls) pictured here are
  prostitutes. This is a brothel scene and it
  originally included a male figure.

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• These figures are not modelled in any realistic
  way.
• Picasso has broken with spatial illusion and
  allowed the figures to sit on a 2 dimensional
  plane.
• Note the repetition of geometric shapes in the
  composition.

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• The woman on the far right has a face that
  resembles an African mask. Although he denied any
  African influences in his art, Picasso is known
  to have visited museums where African masks were
  displayed.

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Picasso Three Musicians
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• Picasso has abstracted the three figures and
  their musical instruments, rendering them as
  pattern and geometric shapes on a flat surface.

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• Picasso Woman
• Here we see more than one view of the woman
  simultaneously, in both profile and facing views.

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• Picasso
• Portrait of Ambroise Vollard
• This famous portrait depicts Picassos dealer,
  Ambroise Vollard. Vollard took an early interest
  in the work of the Bateau Lavoir artists.

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• The Guitar Player
• A viewer can barely make out the forms of a man
  and a guitar in this painting.
• Note the subdued palette and geometric shapes
  that characterize Cubist art.

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• Picasso
• Guitar Player
• Here is an altogether different guitar player,
  from Picassos blue period, just after he
  arrived, penniless and friendless, in Paris in
  1901. His paintings from this period express his
  depressed state of mind.

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• Picasso (Blue Period)
• The Visit of the two sisters

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• Picasso
• Boy with a Pipe
• As Picassos fortunes improved, he moved into his
  rose period, when his palette warmed up and he
  turned to happier subjects.

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• Picasso (Rose Period)
• Circus Performers

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• Picasso
• Family of Saltimbanques

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• Picasso lived to a great age (91) and his style
  evolved throughout his life.
• This painting comes from a period in which he
  painted gigantesses in a sculptural style (1920
  1921)

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Guernica

• Guernica is Picassos famous anti war picture.
• It was painted in 1937 to protest the Nazi
  bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica.
• At the far right, a woman crashes through the
  floor of a burning building. In front of her,
  another woman dashes forward blindly in panic. A
  horse with a spear in its back screams in terror.
  A severed head with staring eyes rests on an
  outstretched arm, its hand reaching for nothing.
  Another hand tightly clutches a broken sword. A
  woman holds a dead child and raises her head
  skyward to scream out her horror at the planes
  overhead (Mittler. Art in Focus. 541).

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• Picasso uses bold blacks, whites, and grays
  instead of color to give the impression of
  newsprint or newspaper photographs. Adding to
  the look of newsprint is the stippled effect on
  the horse.
• The paintings powerful images, however, convey
  the full impact of the event far more effectively
  than could the words in a newspaper account, or
  even photographs (Mittler. Art in Focus. 542).

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• Georges Braque

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• Georges Braque
• House at LEstaque
• The influence of Cezanne is obvious here.

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• Georges Braque
• La Roche

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Georges Braque - Le Jour
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Georges Braque Little Violin
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• Georges Braque
• The Whole Worlds a stage

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