JAN MOHAMMAD ALI: CHARACTERISTIC OF CUBISM

CHARACTERISTIC OF CUBISM

(c.1907-14)

Introduction : Revolutionary Abstract Art

Largely a type of semi abstract art - although at times it approaches full-blown non-objective art - Cubism is traditionally classified into three stages:

(1) Early Cubist Painting (1907-9)
(2) Analytical Cubism (1909-12)
(3) Synthetic Cubism (1912-14)
What Are the Characteristics of Cubism ?

Ever since the Renaissance, if not before, artists painted pictures from a single fixed viewpoint, as if they were taking a photograph. The illusion of background depth was created using standard conventions of linear perspective (eg. objects were shown smaller as they receded) and by painting figures and objects with rounded shaded surfaces to convey a 3-D effect. In addition, the scene or object was painted at a particular moment in time.

In contrast, Braque and Picasso thought that the full significance of an object could only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view and at different times. So, they abandoned the idea of a single fixed viewpoint and instead used a multiplicity of viewpoints. The object was then reassembled out of fragments of these different views, rather like a complex jigsaw puzzle. In this way, many different views of an object were simultanously depicted in the same picture. In a sense, it's like taking 5 different photographs (at different times) of the same object, then cutting them up and reassembling them in an overlapping manner on a flat surface.

Such fragmentation and rearrangement of form meant that a painting could now be regarded less as a kind of window on the world and more as a physical object on which a subjective response to the world is created. As far as artistic technique was concerned, Cubism showed how a sense of solidity and pictorial structure could be created without traditional perspective or modelling.

Thus the Cubist style focused on the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, and rejected the traditional conventions and techniques of linear perspective, chiaroscuro (use of shading to show light and shadow) and the traditional idea of imitating nature. Instead of creating natural-looking 3-D objects, Cubist painters offered a brand new set of images reassembled from 2-D fragments which showed the objects from several sides simultaneously. If Fauvists and Impressionists strove to express their personal sensation of a particular object or scene, Cubists sought to depict the intellectual idea or form of an object, and its relationship to others.

Greatest Cubist Paintings

Pablo Picasso
Houses on the Hill (1909) Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Woman with a Fan (1909) Pushkin Museum.
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1910), Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (1910) Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Still Life with Chair-Caning (1911-12) Picasso Museum, Paris.
Three Musicians (1921) Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Guernica (1937) Reina Sofia Art Museum, Madrid.
Weeping Woman (1937) Tate Collection, London.

Georges Braque
Houses at L'Estaque (1908) Kunstmuseum, Bern.
Large Nude (Nu) (1908) Musee National d'Art Moderne, Pompidou Centre.
Still Life with Herrings/Fish (1909-11), MoMA, NY.
The Portuguese (1911) Kunstmuseum, Basel.
Fruit Dish and Glass (1912) private collection.

Juan Gris (1887-1927)
Portrait of Maurice Raynal (1911) private collection.
Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1912) Art Institute of Chicago.
Violin and Guitar (1913) private collection.
Still Life with Fruit, Bottle of Water (1914) Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo.
Pack of Coffee (1914) Ulmer Museum, Ulm.