Transcript CUBISM

CUBISM
Paris 1907 - 1914
• 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.
• 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.”
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
Major Cubist Painters:
1. Pablo Picasso (Spanish) 1881 - 1973
2. Georges Braque (French) 1882 – 1963
Followers:
3. Juan Gris 1887 - 1927
4. Albert Gleize 1881 - 1953
• 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.
• In 1905,Picasso completed Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon, and showed it to
his friend and rival artist Georges Braque.
• Avignon is a city in southern France, but
the Rue d’Avignon 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.
• 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.
• 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.
Picasso – Three Musicians
• Picasso has abstracted the three figures
and their musical instruments, rendering
them as pattern and geometric shapes on
a flat surface.
• Picasso – Woman
• Here we see more
than one view of the
woman
simultaneously, in
both profile and facing
views.
• Picasso
• Portrait of Ambroise
Vollard
• This famous portrait
depicts Picasso’s
dealer, Ambroise
Vollard. Vollard took
an early interest in the
work of the Bateau
Lavoir artists.
• 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.
• Picasso
• Guitar Player
• Here is an altogether
different guitar player,
from Picasso’s blue
period, just after he
arrived, penniless and
friendless, in Paris in
1901. His paintings from
this period express his
depressed state of
mind.
• Picasso (Blue Period)
• The Visit of the two
sisters
• Picasso
• Boy with a Pipe
• As Picasso’s fortunes
improved, he moved
into his rose period,
when his palette
warmed up and he
turned to happier
subjects.
• Picasso (Rose
Period)
• Circus Performers
• Picasso
• Family of
Saltimbanques
• 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)
Guernica
• Guernica is Picasso’s 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).
• 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 painting’s 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).
Georges Braque
• Georges Braque
• House at L’Estaque
• The influence of
Cezanne is obvious
here.
• Georges Braque
• La Roche
Georges Braque - Le Jour
Georges Braque – Little Violin
• Georges Braque
• The Whole World’s a
stage