Cubism : World is made of shapes.

Abstract

With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, modern art styles started to appear.

Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Art Nouveau Movement, Art Deco Movement, Cubism, Abstract Art, Pop Art Movement and Op Art Movement are major art styles appeared in modern art age.

Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. - Pablo Picasso

In 19th Century, artist believed in painting feelings and expression, which was not possible through photography.

Introduction

'Painting stands for no other end than itself. The artist paints an apple or a head: it is simply a pretext for line and color, nothing more' said Paul Cézanne.

The cubists were influenced most by the art of the Post Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. Picasso described Cézanne as 'the father of us all'. It was Cézanne who began the move to look at the basic shapes in nature.

The art historian Lawrence Gowing remarked that Cezanne was 'reaching out for a kind of modernity which does not exist, and still does not'.

Cubism was a term coined in 1908 by Louis Vauxcelles to describe the modern art of Picasso and Braque. The most influential style of the twentieth century, beginning in 1907 and ending around 1914, cubism is based on the simultaneous presentation of multiple views, disintegration, and the geometric reconstruction of objects in flattened, ambiguous pictorial so space; figure and ground merge into one interwoven surface of shifting planes. Color scheme was simple.

Features

1. It is not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space.
2. It presents a new reality in paintings that portrayed fundamentally fragmented objects, whose several sides are seen simultaneously.
3. Color scheme is simplified.
4. Color like brown, gray, cream, green, or blue are preferred
5. Shapes & curves are used in more decorative meaning.
6. Smooth and rough surfaces may be contrasted with one another
7. Materials like newspapers or tobacco wrappers are pasted on the canvas in combination with painted areas.

Cubist Artists

"When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us," said Picasso.

In 1907 Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City), a radical departure from the artistic ideas of the preceding ages and now considered the most significant work in the development toward cubism and modern abstraction.

Lyonel Feininger , Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Kasimir Malevich, Maria Blanchard, Patrick Henry Bruce, Albert Gleizes, Natalia Goncharova ,Fernand Leger,Mikhail Larionov, Henri Le Fauconnier , Louis Marcoussis, Jean Metzinger, Gino Severini,Robert Delaunay, Roger de la Fresnaye, Henri Laurens ,Andre Lhote, Alexander Archipenko, Juan Gris, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacques Lipchitz were renowned Cubist Artists other than Picasso and Braque.

Phases of Cubism

Analytical Cubism (1909 and 1911)

Analytical Cubism is the first developmental phase of Cubism.
1. The work is difficult to read (interpret) and is willfully ambiguous.
2. It was analysis of human forms and still life.
3. It led to the creation of new stylistic system to transpose the three-dimensional subjects into the flat images on the surface of the canvas.

Synthetic Cubism (1912)

A new phase in the development of the style, called Synthetic Cubism, began around 1912.

1. It was more of construction of an object rather analysis.
2. It was creation rather recreation.
3. Colors were used to add decorative look rather naturalistic description. Compositions were still static and centered, but they lost their depth and became almost abstract, although the subject was still visible in synthetic, simplified forms

End of Cubism Movement

Cubism consisted of a desire to deny the work of their art predecessors in a way that would dis-value their meanings and intentions.

The movement lasted approximately eighteen years, and existed around the time of Fauvism and Expressionism.

Conclusion

Every movement ends somewhere. But art never ends. Even today also cubism is alive.

If you are an artist, browse the art encyclopedia and try to learn cubism. It is really attractive and never dying modern art. Go through the biographies of Pablo Picasso, Cézanne and other cubist artists.

"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun" - Picasso