Cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century.
It was created by
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963) in Paris between 1907
and 1914. The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term Cubism after seeing the landscapes
Braque had painted in 1908 at L’Estaque in emulation of Cézanne. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms
in the highly abstracted works “cubes.” Other influences on early Cubism have been linked to
Primitivism and non-Western sources. The stylization and distortion of Picasso’s groundbreaking Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), painted in 1907, came from African art.
Picasso had first seen African art when, in May or June 1907, he visited the ethnographic museum in the
Palais du Trocadéro in Paris.
The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that artists should
adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They wanted instead to
emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric
forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relieflike space. They also used multiple or contrasting
vantage points.
In Cubist work up to 1910, the subject of a picture was usually discernible. Although figures and objects
were dissected or “analyzed” into a multitude of small facets, these were then reassembled, after a
fashion, to evoke those same figures or objects. During Analytic Cubism (1910–12), also called
“hermetic,” Picasso and Braque so abstracted their works that they were reduced to just a series of
overlapping planes and facets mostly in near-monochromatic browns, grays, or blacks. In their work
from this period, Picasso and Braque frequently combined representational motifs with letters
(1999.363.63; 1999.363.11). Their favorite motifs were still lifes with musical instruments, bottles,
pitchers, glasses, newspapers, playing cards (1997.149.12), and the human face and figure. Landscapes
were rare.
During the winter of 1912–13, Picasso executed a great number of papiers collés (1999.363.64). With
this new technique of pasting colored or printed pieces of paper in their compositions, Picasso and
Braque swept away the last vestiges of three-dimensional space (illusionism) that still remained in their
“high” Analytic work. Whereas, in Analytic Cubism, the small facets of a dissected or “analyzed” object
are reassembled to evoke that same object, in the shallow space of Synthetic Cubism—initiated by
the papiers collés–large pieces of neutral or colored paper themselves allude to a particular object,
either because they are often cut out in the desired shape or else sometimes bear a graphic element
that clarifies the association.
While Picasso and Braque are credited with creating this new visual language, it was adopted and
further developed by many painters, including Fernand Léger (1999.363.36), Robert and Sonia Delaunay,
Juan Gris (1996.403.14), Roger de la Fresnaye (1991.397), Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Jean
Metzinger (59.86), and even Diego Rivera (49.70.51). Though primarily associated with painting, Cubism
also exerted a profound influence on twentieth-century sculpture and architecture. The major Cubist
sculptors were Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Lipchitz.
The liberating formal concepts initiated by Cubism also had far-reaching consequences for Dada
and Surrealism, as well as for all artists pursuing abstraction in Germany, Holland, Italy, England,
America, and Russia.
1.
Candlestick and Playing Cards on a
Table
Artist: Georges Braque (French, Argenteuil 1882–1963 Paris)
Date: spring 1910
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 25 1/2 × 21 1/4 in. (64.8 × 54 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: The Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls Collection, 1997
Accession Number: 1997.149.12
Rights and Reproduction: © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York
Description: In their quest to upend tradition in art, Braque and Pablo
Picasso remained somewhat ironically committed to long -established
subjects in European painting: portraiture, the human figure, and still
life. Here, Braque’s still life seduces the viewer with fragm ents of
recognizable objects. In the lower center of the composition, a table
corner emerges from the painting’s tonal palette of grays, browns, and
blacks. Farther back, the base of a brass candlestick appears atop a
table. To the right float two playing cards: the ace of hearts and the six
of diamonds. The oval canvas concentrates and compresses the
painting’s energy.
2.
Still Life with a Bottle of Rum
Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)
Date: 1911
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 1/8 x 19 7/8 in. (61.3 x 50.5 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998
Accession Number: 1999.363.63
Rights and Reproduction: © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Description
Description: Picasso painted this work in Céret, a small town in the
foothills of the French Pyrenees, where he worked alongside Georges
Braque (1882-1963). Their joint development of the painterly style
called Cubism has become the stuff of legend.
Made during the most abstract phase of Cubism, known as "high" or
Analytic Cubism (1910-12), this work-which depicts a round tabletop
with a stemmed glass at left, the bottle of rum at center, and a pipe in
the right foreground-is among the first of Picasso's pictures to include
letters. These may refer to the town, Céret, or, alternatively, to the title
of a poster or newspaper.
