1) Cubism began in the early 20th century as artists like Picasso and Braque sought new ways to depict objects from multiple perspectives in their paintings. 2) They drew inspiration from Cezanne and sought to show multiple views of subjects simultaneously rather than from a single viewpoint. 3) This led Picasso and Braque to incorporate techniques like geometric fragmentation and collage to analyze subjects from different angles on a two-dimensional surface.

1. Chapter 7
CUBISM

2. At the beginning of the 20th century the real world had radically
changed. Modern man was being forced to live in a faster and more
complicated world. Picasso posed the problem to himself of how to
capture this new acceleration of life and consequent plurality of points
of view on a canvas. He proposed to solve this aesthetic problem by
creating a new way of representing pictorial space.
Cubism derived its name from remarks that were made by the painter
Henri Matisse and the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who scornfully described
Braque's 1908 work House at L'Estaque as composed of cubes.
In Braque's work, the volumes of the houses, the cylindrical forms of
the trees, and the tan-and-green color scheme are reminiscent of Paul
Cézanne's landscapes, which deeply inspired the Cubists in their first
stage of development, until 1909.

3. • Cubism began as an idea and then it became a style. It is based on
Paul Cézanne's three main ingredients:
• geometricity,
• simultaneity (multiple views)
• and passage
• Cubism tried to describe, in visual terms, the concept of the
Fourth Dimension.
• Cubism is a conceptual approach to realism in art, which aims to
depict the world as it is and not as it seems. This was the "idea.“
• To know an object from different points of view takes time, because
one moves the object around in space or one moves around the
object in space.
• Therefore, to depict multiple views (simultaneity) implies the Fourth
Dimension (time).

4. Barcelona and Madrid
• Picasso spent his formative years in
Barcelona, and considered it his home.
• In 1900 he went to Paris for the first time
to participate in the World’s Fair.
• he visited art galleries and frequented the
bohemian cafés, night-clubs, and dance
halls of Montmartre.
Blue and Rose Periods
Le Moulin de la Galette, his first Parisian
painting,
Picasso’s Le Moulin de la Galette is more
impressive when considering he painted it at
age 19.
Immersed in Tradition: Picasso’s Early
Career
Pablo Picasso. Le Moulin de
la Galette. 1900. Oil on
Canvas. Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, NY.

5. • Picasso's legendary Blue
Period was triggered by the
tragic circumstances brought
about by the public and
violent suicide of his best
friend, Carlos Casagemas.
• La Vie offers Picassos's
commentary on Casagemas,
and the artist's
autobiographical view of his
own life.
Pablo Picasso. La Vie.
1903. Oil on Canvas. The
Cleveland Museum of Art.

6. • Picasso’s Rose Period, when he
used cheerful orange and pink
colors, lasted from 1904 to 1906.
• It was during this period that
Picasso started to focus on
• harlequins,
• circus performers
• and clowns,
which would appear frequently
in his paintings during his long
career.
• The figure in the diamond
patterned costume is a self
portrait.
Pablo Picasso. Family of
Saltimbanques. 1906. Oil on Canvas.
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.

7. • Gertrude Stein ‘s early patronage
of Picaso was critical to his
success.
• He painted this portrait of her
between 1905 and 1906, toward the
end of his Rose Period.
• The portrait is an interpretation of
her personality.
• His simplification of forms in this
portrait foreshadowed his Cubist
style.
Pablo Picasso. Gertrude Stein
1905. Oil on Canvas. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York.

8. • This painting shows influences of
classicism through the
monumentality depicted in these
nudes.
• The two figures are closely
related to ancient traditions of
sculpture.
• The deliberate ambiguous
narrative invites many
interpretations. T
• his may be a study of the same
model from two different angles
Pablo Picasso. Two Nudes.
1906. Oil on Canvas. The
Museum of Modern Art, New
York.

9. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso, Les
Demoiselles D’Avignon. 1907.
Oil on canvas. Museum of
Modern Art in New York City.
• This is the most radical painting of the
twentieth-century. It revolutionized
modern painting by charting a new way
of depicting reality.
• In 1907 Pablo Picasso, broke all of the
rules of the art academies: he disposed
of three-dimensional perspective,
abandoned harmonious proportion,
used distortion, and borrowed from the
art of primitive cultures.
• In this painting Picasso abandons
harmonious bodily proportions. This
distortion and use of pure geometrical
shapes are not the only elements that
Picasso borrows from Cezanne.

10. • Picasso also limits his palette because he is concerned more
with the rendering of form than with the use of color.
• But this distortion and use of pure geometrical shapes are not
the only elements that Picasso borrows from Cezanne's work.
• Picasso limits his palette just as Cezanne does because both
are concerned more with the rendering of form than with the
use of color.
• To have used more colors than the blues, pinks, ochres, rusts,
and grays that he employs would have been distracting.
• Furthermore, these colors are totally flat, as though to suggest
that these women are linearly rendered, "constructed" rather
than modeled

11. • Between 1906 and 1910,
Georges Braque made several
trips to the south of France and
the port at L'Estaque.
• There, he painted landscapes
using a palette associated with
the Fauves.
• Braque was also influenced by
the art of Paul Cézanne. Braque
reduced his landscapes to
simple geometric forms.
• Two years after finishing this
painting, Braque abandoned
Fauvism and fully embraced
Cubism.
Georges Braque. The Viaduct at
L'Estaque, 1907. Oil on canvas. The
Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Beyond Fauvism: Braque’s early Career

12. • Braque’s role in the development
of Cubism is often underplayed.
• For around six years (1908-1914),
Braque and Picasso were basically
inseparable.
• After Picasso and Braque parted
ways, they never discussed their
time together.
• This dedication and respect, is an
indication that they felt their time
together was very important.
“Two Mountain Climbers Roped Together”: Braque, Picasso,
and the Development of Cubism
Pablo Picasso, Three Women.
1907-08. Oil on canvas. The
Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg.

13. Analytic Cubism 1909-11
At the turn of the century, linguists in Europe and the United States had
begun to study what language really was and how language described
reality. In this analytical phase Picasso and Braque were interested in
superimposing fragments one on top of another to simulate walls
plastered with posters as well as stacked newspaper displays at kiosks.
They no longer concerned themselves with the representation of space
because now the emphasis was on digesting multiple layers of
information and shapes.
The technique consisted of bringing together familiar scraps, and
unfamiliar forms in order to give shape to a particular sense of urban
life exploring the individual experiences associated with public spaces,
and capturing the new sense of simultaneity of diverse experiences-the
fusion of objects, people, machines, noises, light, smells, etc.

14. Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the first
half of the twentieth century. Associated with creating Cubism,
alongside Georges Braque, he also invented collage and made major
contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism.
He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly
influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and
ceramics.
Finally, he was a famously charismatic personality; his many
relationships with women not only filtered into his art but also may
have directed its course, and his behavior has come to embody that of
the bohemian modern artist in the popular imagination.

15. • Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table, 1909
• reflects Picasso’s dialogue with
Georges Braque.
• The canvas’ unusual shape for a still
life is the result of the fact that
Picasso adapted the composition
from studies for his Carnival at the
Bistro, which consisted of costumed
figures seated around a drop-leaf
table.
• His change to a still life, which
involved eliminating all narrative,
reinforces Braque’s influence.
• Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table also
reflects Cezanne's influence.
Pablo Picasso. Bread and
Fruit Dish on a Table, 1909.
Kunstmuseum, Basel

16. • Picasso made Woman's Head
(Fernande) out of clay in Paris in
the fall of 1909. Earlier, in the
summer of the same year Picasso
painted numerous portraits of
Fernande Olivier.
• Woman's Head (Fernande) shows
Picasso’s ideas that would
become central to Cubism. The
sculpture, although it maintains
the basic shape of a head, reflects
the different points of view typical
of Cubism.
• With this portrait, Picasso
introduced the Cubist style into
sculpture.
Pablo Picasso Woman's Head
(Fernande) Paris, fall 1909.
Bronze. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York.

17. • In 1908, inspired by Paul Cézanne,
Georges Braque abandoned his bright
Fauve palette and adopted geometric
composition, and muted colors.
• During the following few years the
new style developed rapidly from its
initial stage to high Analytic Cubism.
• The painting Violin and Palette Is a
very good example this new
approach.
• The nail at the top of the canvas
points to the contrast between
traditional and Cubist modes of
representation.
Georges Braque. Violin and
Palette. Oil on Canvas. 1909.
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York

18. • By the winter of 1910 Picasso’s
paintings were becoming more
abstract but not entirely so.
• In this paining, the fragmentation of
form is pushed to its limits.
• The mandolin is easy to identify, but
the figure has been broken into
geometrical shapes.
• The palette is dominated by brown,
beiges, and blue-greys, and is
organized by dark lines that provide
structure.
Pablo Picasso. Girl with
Mandolin. 1910. Oil on canvas.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York.

19. • Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a
German-born art dealer, writer, and
publisher, who opened an art gallery
in Paris in 1907. In 1908 Kahnweiler
began representing Picasso.
• Kahnweiler, a great supporter of
Cubism, wrote an important book,
The Rise of Cubism, in 1920, which
offered an interpretation in
semiological terms, as a language of
signs.
Pablo Picasso. Portrait of
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler,
1910. Oil on canvas. The
Art Institute of Chicago.

20. • According to the title, this painting
depicts a man playing an accordion.
Painted in the style of Analytic
Cubism, this painting distorts the
plane but maintains the typical use
of the color.
• In this painting the color is almost
monochromatic which makes it hard
to determine the subject matter
Pablo Picasso. Accordionist.
Summer 1911. Oil on canvas.
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York.

21. Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair
Caning, 1912, oil on oil-cloth over
canvas edged with rope. Musée
Picasso.
Synthetic Cubism 1912-14
• Synthetic cubism began when artists
started adding to their artworks
different materials that had textures
and patterns.
• Synthetic cubism was about
flattening out the space and
eliminating the last traces of illusion
of three-dimensional space.
• When Picasso placed industrially-
produced objects ("low" culture) into
the realm of fine art ("high" culture)
he questioned the role of technical
skill in art-making, and of unique and
mass-produced objects.

22. • This work is possibly the first Cubist
papier collé (collage).
• In the summer of 1912, Braque, who was
wandering around in Avignon,
discovered a roll of fake wood wallpaper
in a shop.
• Braque incorporated pieces of the
printed, fake wood grain paper into a
series of charcoal drawings.
• The pieces of wallpaper add significant
meaning to the fictional world of the
artwork.
• This collage also marked a new direction
in Cubism.
Georges Braque. Fruit Dish and
Glass, 1912. Charcoal and
printed wallpaper with gouache
on white laid paper; mounted on
paperboard. The Metropolitan
Museum, New York.

23. • In this collage called “Guitar, Sheet
Music, Glass, there’s no paint at all.
• Pictorial realism, with its illusion of
space, texture, motion and more, is
absent.
• Here Cubist reality, consisting of stuff
glued to other stuff. Here’s an allusion
to the shape of a guitar, a cut out, but
no attempt to represent reality.
• The process of incorporating scraps of
everyday materials into their
compositions was a move away from
Analytical Cubism, and a change in
direction towards a different aesthetic.
Pablo Picasso. Guitar, Sheet
Music, Glass.1912. Papers and
newsprint pasted, gouache and
charcoal on paper. McNay Art
Museum, San Antonio, TX

24. • This painting by Picasso
shows the direct influence
of collage on Synthetic
Cubism.
• Picasso directly
incorporated here the new
aesthetic by painting a
collage instead of making
one.
Pablo Picasso, Card
Player, 1913-14. Oil on
canvas, Museum of
Modern Art, New York

25. In painting, Cubism created depictions of objects
to show parts from multiple viewpoints. Despite
modernist aesthetic developments, sculpture as a
medium remained traditional.
Braque and Picasso
• Between 1907-1914, Picasso and Braque
worked very closely that their works from this
period are sometimes difficult to tell apart.
• Braque was a reserved, systematic whose
artistic process was dictated by reason and
balance.
• By contrast, Picasso was egotistical,
outspoken, and unpredictable individual, who
never stuck to one painting style for a long
period of time.
Georges Braque. Paper
Sculpture Construction is
known only from a
photograph taken in
Braque's studio
Constructed Spaces: Cubist Sculpture

26. • Toward the end of 1912, Pablo Picasso
made a guitar from cardboard, paper,
string, and wire, he cut and glued.
• In 1914 the artist created a similar guitar
in a more durable material.
• These two Guitars marked the beginning
of a period of prolific experimentation in
Picasso’s work.
Pablo Picasso. Guitar. 1912.
Cardboard and oil. Museum of
Modern Art, New York

27. Archipenko
• Ukrainian-born artist Alexander
Archipenko is regarded today as one
of the greatest sculptors of the
Cubism movement.
• His innovative use of "negative
space" in sculpture was used to
create a new way of looking at the
human figure, by allowing several
simultaneous views.
• This represents his greatest
contribution to the history of
sculpture. In 1923 Archipenko
emigrated to America in where he
continued to develop new forms of
modern sculpture.
Alexander Archipenko. Médrano
II. 1913. Mixed media. Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York

28. Duchamp-Villon
• Raymond Duchamp-Villon was
born on November 5, 1876.
• He served in the army in a medical
capacity during the World War I.
• He contracted typhoid fever in late
1916 and died from it on October 9,
1918.
• The Horse, is a composite image of
the horse, a symbol of power, and
the machine that was replacing it,
reflecting the awareness of the new
technological age.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon.
The Horse. 1914. Bronze.
The Museum of Modern Art,
New York.

29. Jacques Lipchitz
• Lithuanian born, Lipchitz is
synonymous with Cubist sculpture.
• He transformed Cubist themes into
sculptural works that interacted with
their surroundings.
• The landscape became an important
component of his sculptures when they
were displayed outdoors.
Jacques Lipchitz. Man with a Guitar.
1915. Limestone. The Metropolitan
Museum, New York.

30. Laurens
• Born in Paris, Henri
Laurens began to sculpt
in the Cubist style in
1915, after meeting Pablo
Picasso, Georges
Braque, Juan Gris and
Fernand Léger.
Henri Laurens. Guitar and
clarinet. 1920. Paint on
limestone. Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden,
Washington, D.C.,

31. • Paris was the center of the artistic
world at the beginning of the 20th
century.
• Marie Laurencin's painting, "Group
of Artists“, depicts Picasso in a blue
suit, his model Fernande Olivier,
Apollinaire, and Laurencin with a
rose in her hand.
• Although Laurencin exhibited with
the Cubist artists, she did not
subscribe to the movement’s style.
• Her paintings are stylized depictions
of pale, people painted in pastel
colors.
An Adaptable Idiom:
Developments in Cubist Painting in Paris
Marie Laurencin. Group of Artists.
1908. Oil on canvas. The Baltimore
Museum of Art.

32. Gris
• In The Table, Gris glued a page
of a detective novel to his
drawing of an open book.
• He also used a fragment of a
real newspaper headline to his
canvas. These collage elements
require the viewer to distinguish
the true and the false.
Juan Gris. Still Life: The Table.
1914. Collage of plain and printed
papers with watercolor and crayon,
on paper mounted on canvas.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

33. Albert Gleizes and Jean
Metzinger wrote the first major
treatise on Cubism, Du
“Cubisme", 1912
Albert Gleizes
• was a French artist,
theoretician, philosopher, a
self-proclaimed founder of
Cubism.
• In this painting, the
traditional harvest scene is
transformed by the new
Cubist process of analysis
and interpretation.
Albert Gleizes. Harvest Threshing.
Oil on canvas, 1912. National
Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.
Gleizes and Metzinger

34. Jean Metzinger
• was the first to publish his
observation that Picasso
and Braque had rejected
traditional perspective and
represented multiple views
of an object in a single
image.
• Metzinger’s article on this
subject appeared in Pan in
1910.
Jean Metzinger. The Bathers,
1913. Oil on canvas.
Philadelphia Museum of Art,

35. Leger
Fernand Léger. Nude
figures in a wood. Oil
on canvas. 1909-10.
• Trained as an architect turned artist, Léger admired Paul Cézanne for
the structures and order of nature in his work.
• Leger thought that all natural shapes can be reduced to a sphere, a
cone or a cylinder. Léger was also inspired by the cubism of Picasso
and Braque.
• Leger developed a very distinctive cubist style, in which he reduced
reality to rhythmic compositions of cylinders, tubes and cones.
• The influences of Cézanne, Picasso and Braque are evident in this
painting.

36. • Robert Delaunay explored Cubist
fragmentation in a series of
paintings of the Eiffel Tower.
• In these artworks, the artist
represented the tower and the
surrounding buildings from various
perspectives.
• Delaunay chose the Eiffel Tower
because it allowed him to explore
the space, the atmosphere, and the
light, while reflecting modernity
and progress.
• The Eiffel Tower is a French
symbol of invention and aspiration.
Other Gendas: Orphism and Other
Experimental Art in Paris, 1910-14
Robert Delaunay. Eiffel Tower.
Oil on canvas. 1910. Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York,

37. • Sonia Delaunay was a key
figure in the Parisian avant-
garde. Alongside her husband,
Robert Delaunay, she pioneered
the movement Simultanism.
• The name Simultanism comes
from the work of French
scientist Michel Eugène
Chevreul who discivered that
colours look different
depending on the colours
around them.
• In her work she explored how
the interaction between colors
has created a sense of depth
and movement.
Sonia Delaunay. Prismes electriques. Oil
on canvas. 1914. Centre Pompidou, Paris

38. Frantisheck Kupka
• studied at the Prague Art
Academy between 1889 and 1892.
In 1892, he enrolled at the
Akademie der Bildenden Künste,
Vienna,
• In the spring 1896 Kupka had
moved to Paris where he attended
the Académie Julian briefly,
before he studied at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts.
• did not want to be identified with
any art movements although he
exhibited at the Salon des
Indépendants in the Cubist room,
František Kupka. Disks of
Newton (Study for "Fugue in
Two Colors"). Oil on canvas.
1912. Philadelphia Museum of
Art.

39. Duchamp
Man Ray, was a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher,
and a leader of American modernism. He spent much of his time
fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts.
Man Ray and Duchamp brought the European interest in experimental
art movements to America. In 1910 Duchamp invented the concept of
the readymade – which involved choosing existing objects on the
grounds that they were aesthetically neutral – opened the door to the
most radically avant-garde movements.
After Duchamp, the constraints of traditional media vanished and art’s
possibilities stretched to absolutely any object.

40. Marcel Duchamp,
Nude Descending a Staircase,
NO 2, 1912. Oil on canvas.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
• In 1912, Duchamp painted his famous
Nude Descending A Staircase, which
caused a scandal at the 1913
ARMORY SHOW in New York City,
and made Duchamp famous in
America. One critic called it "an
explosion in a shingle factory.
• The painting was inspired by the
photographic motion studies of
Eadward Muybridge and Étienne-
Jules Marey.

41. Die
The
Eadward James Muybridge. High jump. High-speed
photographic sequence of an athlete doing the high jump. This
is an additional image.
• This sequence, by the British-American photographer
Eadweard James Muybridge (1830-1904), was published in
the book Animal Locomotion (1887).
• The jump runs from left to right and is seen both from the
side and the front. Muybridge pioneered the use of high-
speed photography and

42. In Paris in 1914, Duchamp bought and inscribed a bottle rack, thereby
producing his first ready-made, a new art form based on the principle
that art does not depend on established rules or on craftsmanship.
Duchamp's ready-mades are ordinary objects that are signed and titled,
becoming aesthetic, rather than functional, objects simply by this
change in context. Dada aimed at departure from the physical aspect of
painting and emphases in ideas as the chief means of artistic
expression.
In 1915, Duchamp began his major work, The Large Glass, or The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23).In 1918 he completed
his last major painting, Tu m', a huge oil and graphite on canvas. In 1923
Duchamp "stopped" painting and devoted himself largely to the game of
chess