Lecture Notes
- 1. Slide One/Two (Title Page and Definition) • Cubism got its name from when Braque held a one man show in 1908 at the Kahnweiler Gallery and a critic named Louis Vauxcelles used the word bizarreries cubiques, which means cubic excentricities, and by 1911 the term Cubism had entered the English language. Slide Three (Quick Facts) • Cubism is a modern art movement that grew out of the early forms of abstraction • It was a radical, innovative, and influential art movement that chanced peoples perspectives of renaissance art • About 1907 Picasso and Braque rejected renaissance perspective and impressionist attention to light and atmosphere • Objects painted in somber shades of brown and grey, were analyzed into geometric planes with several views depicted simultaneously • After 1912 a flatter, more colorful and decorative hard-edge style emerged using collage and painted relief constructs • Most subjects are still lifes (fruit, musical instruments, and women) with the occasional landscape/townscapes • Cubism’s starting point, 1907, is regarded as the year in which the poet Apollinaire introduced Picasso to Braque who was almost as old as Picasso. It is widely known that at that time both Picasso and Braque were influenced greatly by Cezanne • The new style confused the public, but the avant-garde saw in them the future of art and new challenge. • Viewpoints before; assumed that everything in the picture is seen from a single, fixed viewpoint – that was their way of representing a 3-D reality on a 2-D surface- the cubists simply changed the way of representing it. • Cubists showed multiple sides of things, witch renaissance naturalism did not Slide Four (African Art Influences) • African Art was a large influence when it came to Picasso’s art • Picasso was interested in Iberian and African sculptures • Earth tones, similar to those typical of African art • Aesthetically different cultural form of expression Slide Five (Cezanne Influences) • Braque’s inspiration for analytical cubism • Cezanne had very geometric-style landscapes by 1907 and 1908 – Picasso and Braque extended Cezanne’s ideas • Cezanne was indeed the father of modern art because of the bridge he built between Impressionism and Cubism
- 2. • Cezanne taught us to break away from technique and concentrate more on color and the power of the single brush stroke • Picasso saw how the painting was no longer “just a picture” but a series of emergent properties that could be altered in any conceivable way • “Cezanne cracked the glass, but Picasso shattered it” • Rejected the traditional philosophy that art should copy nature Slide Six (Key Artists) • Ferdinand Leger studied Cezanne from a different angle than Picasso and Braque and tried to express modern rhythms and mechanisms by a fundamental use of cylindrical forms, and by contrasts of color and of straight and curved lines • Robert Delaunay touched upon Cubism in his series of refracted works entitled “Eiffel Tower.” He sought for a brilliant intercourse of light and colors, and for musical rhythms and set off in the non-figurative direction named “Orphanism” by Apollinaire in 1913. • Marcel Duchamp aimed at the expression of everyday dynamics, but a pursuit of dynamics to reflect the machine civilization could also be seen in Italian Futurism of the same period Slide Seven (Picasso) • Picasso was the main founder of Cubism • Some of the art styles he worked on before Cubism were realism, caricature, blue period, and rose period • Before starting Cubism Picasso had his “Rose Period.” It was known as one of the only times throughout his work when he was content. It depicted subjects in happier colors. • By the end of World War II Picasso had become the most famous living painter • Picasso’s works are among the most famous of Cubist Art. • Picasso was a child prodigy, recognized by his art teacher father Slide Eight (Braque) • Braque was the co-founder of Cubism • He was never as popular as Picasso, but he was nearly as influential with spreading the art movement • Braque’s work and Picasso’s work are very similar, and sometimes you can barely tell the difference because beyond working together they also painted the same objects • He was contracted with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who had recently opened a small Paris gallery destined to play an important role in the history of modern art. • Kahnweiler introduced him to the avant-garde poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire, who then introduced him to Picasso • The two artists’ partnership ended when Braque left Paris to fight in World War 1
- 3. • After returning from the war, he continued to paint, but alone • During the last dying years of his life, Braque was honored in December 1961 to be the first living artist to have his works exhibited in the Louvre Slide Nine (Juan Gris) • He arrived in Paris in 1906 at the age of nineteen • His subject matter was always his immediate surroundings • He was also contracted with Kahnweiler • He was not one of the inventors of Cubism, but he added his own influential touch to it • Spent time with Picasso and Braque • Died young, at the age of 40, because his health was deteriorating rapidly Slide Ten (Protocubism) • Beginning experimentation with breaking with renaissance norms Slide Eleven (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) • Said to be the first Cubist piece • Narrative brothel scene, with five prostitutes and two men–a medical student and a sailor • The painting metamorphosed as he worked on it; Picasso painted over the clients, leaving the five women to gaze out at the viewer, their faces terrifyingly bold and solicitous. There is a strong undercurrent of sexual anxiety • Two of the women have masks, which makes them appear mysterious • They all have disjointed body shapes Slide Twelve (House at L’Estaque) • This painting started the analytical phase of cubism • It was equivalent to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon but not as popular Slide Thirteen (Analytical Cubism) • Analytical Cubism uses more of a dull, monochromatic color scheme • The lack of color is so the viewer is not distracted • Some artists, like Robert Delaunay, were not satisfied with this lack of color, so they chose to introduce more color into their paintings • Right-angle and straight-line construction were often favored in these paintings • Some areas presented a sculpture-like effect • Typically forms were compact and dense in the middle of the painting, and grew more diffused toward the edges Slide Fourteen (Portrait of Ambrose Vollard) • He was one of the great art dealers of the 20th century • He was a huge fan of Cezanne, van Gogh, Renoir, etc
- 4. • His eyes appear to be closed • The first things we noticed were his big nose, and his beard which is shown with a dark triangle (which is because it’s recognizable) • Looks like a bunch of shards of glass that are fitted and overlapped together • Picasso liked this portrait the best out of any portraits he did Slide Fifteen (Girl with Mandolin) • The painting illustrates in a very concrete fashion the pull Picasso felt between the desire to give forms an explicit, volumetrical treatment, and the need to flatten them up onto the picture plane (compare, for example, the almost sculptural treatment of the breasts and the arms with that of the head, which is rendered in terms of two flat planes) • Combines two of the main subjects of cubism; a woman and a musical instrument (mandolin) Slide Sixteen (Mandora) • Note the dark, monochromatic colors and the use of a musical instrument object as the subject Slide Seventeen (The Portuguese) • This was the first piece to incorporate stenciled lettering into a painting • He stenciled the letters BAL, and under that roman numerals Slide Eighteen (Bread and Fruit Dish) • Was supposed to pick up on what Cezanne had large success with (Cezanne’s Cardplayers) • Went from cabaret scene (entertainment), to a still life • The players legs were mutated into legs for a table Slide Nineteen (Three Women) • The facets of the painting (numerous aspects) assume different meaning because their juxtapositions make a series of powerful contours (outlines), because they are shaded differently • The individual facets can be interchangeable; the chest of one woman could be seen as the leg of another • The figure at the left is the most “African” in appearance. The body of the woman to the right is modeled in softer, riper forms. The third figure is the most abstracted Slide Twenty (Synthetic Cubism) • While analytical cubism focused on depicting the various perspectives of viewing certain objects, “synthetic cubists wanted to improve reality with the creation of new tasteful objects” • Collage ws made into art
- 5. • Instead of pulling things apart, it is more of pushing things together • Use of mixed media and text • Less planes, shading = flatter space • Used papier colle – “stuck paper” Slide Twenty one (Fruit Dish and Glass) • Used wood grain wallpaper in a literal manner, to represent the texture and color of wood • Two strips of wallpaper placed in the upper part of the papier colle represent wood paneling on the wall of the café • Third strip placed horizontally at the lower edge signifies the drawer of the café table • The wood paneling of the wall refuses to remain at distance, even though it should be • For Braque, the wood grain paper can be both figure and ground at once, and is conceived as a sign for material substance independently of its location in space Slide Twenty Two (Still Life with Chair Caning) • First synthetic cubism piece • He did this while he was pretty happy (he had just met his wife) and he kept the piece with him, so it had significant meaning to him • Oil cloth pasted on the canvas • Mixes charcoal, paint, letters, and a piece of wallpaper printed to look like the caning on a chair • Had the letters “JOU” in the corner which could mean a number of things - Reference to Le Journal (Parisian newspaper) - Pun on the Frence word which means to play – pronounced jou Slide Twenty Three (The Guitar) • (no info) Slide Twenty Four (Three Musicians) • Very distinctive style and linear • Bright colors give the piece an energetic bright feeling • The piece is representational and asymmetrical in balance. Colors, texture, lines, spacing, just about all the elements are used in this work to create the mood of this painting. Implied lines are used to help create the images of the people being depicted • The positive shapes are three men playing music each with different roles. The negative shapes are surrounding them appearing to be a box or room Slide Twenty Five (Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe & Glass) • Collage of everyday household objects
- 6. Slide Twenty Six (Guitar and Glasses) • Collage incorporating musical instruments with a basic household object Slide Twenty Seven (Pears and Grapes on a Table) • Bright colors • Cubist still life Slide Twenty Eight (Cubist Literature) • Cubist ideas are applied as a way of analyzing a theory – theories should be ale to withstand “cubist analysis” and come out stronger - Many theories today are one-dimensional and created within a tight framework of conditions - When the theory is viewed from a different angle, it just falls apart - Good theories should be able to withstand multiple perspectives, just as the cubists saw subjects • Cubism was also seen in poetry – purposely dissociating and recombining elements into a new artistic entity • Tries to give digest an reorganize words, putting them into poetry that leaves the experience unaltered for the reader, which is another thing Cubism wanted to accomplish • Not easily translated • Can also be seen in books, sculptures, and architecture Slide Twenty Nine (Poem) • (no info) Slide Thirty (Cubism’s Effect) • Expressionism - a manner of painting, drawing, sculpting, etc., in which forms derived from nature are distorted or exaggerated and colors are intensified for emotive or expressive purposes. • Futurism - style of art, literature, music, etc., and a theory of art and life in which violence, power, speed, mechanization or machines, and hostility to the past or to traditional forms of expression were advocated or portrayed. • Dada - the style and techniques of a group of artists, writers, etc., of the early 20th century who exploited accidental and incongruous effects in their work and who programmatically challenged established canons of art, thought, morality, etc. • Constructivism - a nonrepresentational style of art developed by a group of Russian artists principally in the early 20th century, characterized chiefly by a severely formal organization of mass, volume, and space, and by the employment of modern industrial materials. Compare suprematism. • Orphism - a short-lived but influential artistic movement of the early 20th century arising from analytic cubism and the work of Robert Delaunay and having as conspicuous characteristics the use of bold color, the dynamic, prismatic juxtaposition and overlapping of nonobjective
- 7. geometric forms and planes, and a lightness and lyricism dissociated from its cubist origins