Cubism

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It has been suggested that Analytic cubism, Synthetic cubism be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Woman with a guitar by Georges Braque, 1913

Cubism was an early 20th century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form — instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to present the piece in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles presenting no coherent sense of depth. The background and object (or figure) planes interpenetrate one another to create the ambiguous shallow space characteristic of cubism.

Leading artists of the movement include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris.

1 History
2 Cubism and its ideologies
3 Cubism in Literature
4 Cubism in other fields
5 Further reading
6 External links and references:

[edit] History

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, then residents of the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France were the movement's main innovators. After meeting in 1907 they began working on the development of Cubism in 1908, and worked closely together until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It is believed by many that the work of Cézanne may have sparked the movement. French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term "cubism", or "bizarre cubiques", in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators did not initially adopt it.

Cubism was taken up by many artists in Montparnasse and promoted by art dealer Henry Kahnweiler, becoming popular so quickly that by 1910 critics were referring to a "cubist school" of artists. However, many of the artists who thought of themselves as cubists went in directions quite different from Braque and Picasso. The Puteaux Group was a significant offshoot of the Cubist movement, and included artists like Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, his brother Jacques Villon, and Fernand Léger.

In 1913 the United States was exposed to Cubism and modern European art when Jacques Villon exhibited seven important and large drypoints at the famous Armory Show in New York City. Braque and Picasso themselves went through several distinct phases before 1920, and some of these works had been seen in New York prior to the Armory Show, at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery.

The leading artists were Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Paul Cézanne, and George Orwell.

[edit] Cubism and its ideologies

Paris before World War II was a ferment of politics and movements. New anarcho-syndicalist trade unions and women's rights movements were especially new and vigorous. There were strong movements around patriotic nationalism. Cubism was a particularly varied art movement in its political affiliations, with some sections being broadly anarchist or leftist, while others were strongly aligned with nationalist sentiment. There was also an ideological influence on cubism from the artists of Italian Futurism.

[edit] Cubism in Literature

Cubism also was adapted into literature, especially poetry, by the likes of Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude Stein and Pierre Reverdy. Such poets adopted a number of techniques which could be classed as close to Analytic Cubism (destruction of grammar, strange or absent punctuation, free verse, etc.) and also some others close to Synthetic Cubism, especially in the case of Guillaume Apollinaire (fusion of poetry and drawing in caligrammes; collages involving postcards, letters and the like; use of musical notation, etc.) It should be noted that Cubist poetry frequenty overlaps with Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism or even more diverse movements such as Vicente Huidobro's Creationism.

[edit] Cubism in other fields

Image:Bugattiengine.JPG While mostly associated with art and literature, cubism is also found its way into the automobile industry, reflected in the engine designs of at least one famous automaker. Ettore Bugatti, founder of the Bugatti marque of automobiles was regarded as a cubist, having himself attended cubist gatherings. Cubism can clearly be seen in the form Bugatti engines. The American architect Paul Rudolph gained widespread notoriety for his three-dimensional cubist building designs with highly fractured floor plans.