Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement begun in Paris that revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and influenced artistic innovations in music , ballet , literature , and architecture . Cubist subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris ( Montmartre and Montparnasse ) or near Paris ( Puteaux ) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
90-757: Paul Neagu (1938–2004) was a British artist, born in Romania and living in England from 1970 onwards, who worked in diverse media such as drawing, sculpture, performance art and watercolor. He died on 16 June 2004 in London. His influences included Cubism , Marcel Duchamp , Constantin Brâncuși and Joseph Beuys . His works can be found in public collections including, among others, the British Museum , London, le Fond départemental d'art contemporain, Seine Saint-Denis, Bobigny, France,
180-469: A Romanian artist is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cubism The movement was pioneered in partnership by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque , and joined by Jean Metzinger , Albert Gleizes , Robert Delaunay , Henri Le Fauconnier , Juan Gris , and Fernand Léger . One primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne . A retrospective of Cézanne's paintings
270-779: A figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes". Vauxcelles recounted how Matisse told him at the time, "Braque has just sent in [to the 1908 Salon d'Automne ] a painting made of little cubes". The critic Charles Morice relayed Matisse's words and spoke of Braque's little cubes. The motif of the viaduct at l'Estaque had inspired Braque to produce three paintings marked by the simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective. Georges Braque's 1908 Houses at L’Estaque (and related works) prompted Vauxcelles, in Gil Blas , 25 March 1909, to refer to bizarreries cubiques (cubic oddities). Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro , as
360-568: A gauge against which such diverse tendencies as Realism or Naturalism , Dada , Surrealism and abstraction could be compared. Japan and China were among the first countries in Asia to be influenced by Cubism. Contact first occurred via European texts translated and published in Japanese art journals in the 1910s. In the 1920s, Japanese and Chinese artists who studied in Paris, for example those enrolled at
450-413: A genre or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal. A significant modification of Cubism between 1914 and 1916 was signaled by a shift towards a strong emphasis on large overlapping geometric planes and flat surface activity. This grouping of styles of painting and sculpture, especially significant between 1917 and 1920, was practiced by several artists; particularly those under contract with
540-435: A modern art form. In France and other countries Futurism , Suprematism , Dada , Constructivism , De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Early Futurist paintings hold in common with Cubism the fusing of the past and the present, the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same time or successively, also called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity, while Constructivism
630-715: A much broader ideological transformation towards conservatism in both French society and French culture . The most innovative period of Cubism was before 1914. After World War I, with the support given by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg , Cubism returned as a central issue for artists, and continued as such until the mid-1920s when its avant-garde status was rendered questionable by the emergence of geometric abstraction and Surrealism in Paris . Many Cubists, including Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger and Emilio Pettoruti while developing other styles, returned periodically to Cubism, even well after 1925. Cubism reemerged during
720-419: A new "pure" painting in which the subject was vacated. But in spite of his use of the term Orphism these works were so different that they defy attempts to place them in a single category. Also labeled an Orphist by Apollinaire, Marcel Duchamp was responsible for another extreme development inspired by Cubism. The ready-made arose from a joint consideration that the work itself is considered an object (just as
810-497: A new addition to the Salon scene, exhibited his Portrait of Picasso (Art Institute of Chicago), while Metzinger's two showings included La Femme au Cheval ( Woman with a horse , 1911–1912, National Gallery of Denmark ). Delaunay's monumental La Ville de Paris (Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris) and Léger's La Noce ( The Wedding , Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), were also exhibited. In 1912, Galeries Dalmau presented
900-520: A new style caused rapid changes in art across France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, and Russia. The Impressionists had used a double point of view, and both Les Nabis and the Symbolists (who also admired Cézanne) flattened the picture plane, reducing their subjects to simple geometric forms. Neo-Impressionist structure and subject matter, most notably to be seen in the works of Georges Seurat (e.g., Parade de Cirque , Le Chahut and Le Cirque ),
990-522: A painting), and that it uses the material detritus of the world (as collage and papier collé in the Cubist construction and Assemblage). The next logical step, for Duchamp, was to present an ordinary object as a self-sufficient work of art representing only itself. In 1913 he attached a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and in 1914 selected a bottle-drying rack as a sculpture in its own right. The Section d'Or , also known as Groupe de Puteaux , founded by some of
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#17329700757441080-486: A purely formal frame of reference. Crystal Cubism, and its associative rappel à l'ordre , has been linked with an inclination—by those who served the armed forces and by those who remained in the civilian sector—to escape the realities of the Great War, both during and directly following the conflict. The purifying of Cubism from 1914 through the mid-1920s, with its cohesive unity and voluntary constraints, has been linked to
1170-528: A secondary or satellite role in Cubism is a profound mistake." The history of the term "Cubism" usually stresses the fact that Matisse referred to "cubes" in connection with a painting by Braque in 1908, and that the term was published twice by the critic Louis Vauxcelles in a similar context. However, the word "cube" was used in 1906 by another critic, Louis Chassevent, with reference not to Picasso or Braque but rather to Metzinger and Delaunay: The critical use of
1260-626: A series entitled Formes Circulaires , in which he combined planar structures with bright prismatic hues; based on the optical characteristics of juxtaposed colors his departure from reality in the depiction of imagery was quasi-complete. In 1913–14 Léger produced a series entitled Contrasts of Forms , giving a similar stress to color, line and form. His Cubism, despite its abstract qualities, was associated with themes of mechanization and modern life. Apollinaire supported these early developments of abstract Cubism in Les Peintres cubistes (1913), writing of
1350-527: A time when both artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism , Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks . They became friendly rivals and competed with each other throughout their careers, perhaps leading to Picasso entering a new period in his work by 1907, marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian and African art. Picasso's paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism , as notably seen in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon ,
1440-400: A wide audience. Over 200 works were displayed, and the fact that many of the artists showed artworks representative of their development from 1909 to 1912 gave the exhibition the allure of a Cubist retrospective. The group seems to have adopted the name Section d'Or to distinguish themselves from the narrower definition of Cubism developed in parallel by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in
1530-409: A wide ideological shift towards conservatism in both French society and culture. Yet, Cubism itself remained evolutionary both within the oeuvre of individual artists, such as Gris and Metzinger, and across the work of artists as different from each other as Braque, Léger and Gleizes. Cubism as a publicly debated movement became relatively unified and open to definition. Its theoretical purity made it
1620-488: Is broken. Their presence is suggested by the heavy, often triangular, shading of the angles between them... Both styles are distinguished from the work of Picasso and Braque by their clear, rational and measurable quality." Although Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that "Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away". In 1912, Gris exhibited at
1710-415: Is difficult to apply to painters such as Jean Metzinger , Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay and Henri Le Fauconnier , whose fundamental differences from traditional Cubism compelled Kahnweiler to question whether to call them Cubists at all. According to Daniel Robbins , "To suggest that merely because these artists developed differently or varied from the traditional pattern they deserved to be relegated to
1800-525: Is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it." The most serious objection to regarding
1890-510: Is pushed to a high degree of complexity in Metzinger's Nu à la cheminée , exhibited at the 1910 Salon d'Automne; Gleizes' monumental Le Dépiquage des Moissons (Harvest Threshing) , exhibited at the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or; Le Fauconnier's Abundance shown at the Indépendants of 1911; and Delaunay's City of Paris , exhibited at the Indépendants in 1912. These ambitious works are some of
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#17329700757441980-412: The Demoiselles as the origin of Cubism, with its evident influence of primitive art, is that "such deductions are unhistorical", wrote the art historian Daniel Robbins . This familiar explanation "fails to give adequate consideration to the complexities of a flourishing art that existed just before and during the period when Picasso's new painting developed." Between 1905 and 1908, a conscious search for
2070-652: The Exposició d'art cubista , Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide; the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin; the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen ; and the Salon de la Section d'Or in Paris. Gris, in that same year, signed a contract that gave Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler exclusive rights to his work. At first Gris painted in
2160-823: The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art , Dublin, the Musee Cantonal de Beaux Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, the National Museum of Art of Romania , Bucharest, the Philadelphia Museum of Art , Philadelphia, USA, and the Tate Gallery , London. One of the works in Tate's collection, 36 Possibilities Realised Simultaneously , dating 1973–74, reflects a variety of styles, from oil paint, pencil, ink and gesso. This work captures an early phase of Neagu's first years in
2250-503: The Montmartre quarter of Paris, and to show that Cubism, rather than being an isolated art-form, represented the continuation of a grand tradition (indeed, the golden ratio had fascinated Western intellectuals of diverse interests for at least 2,400 years). The idea of the Section d'Or originated in the course of conversations between Metzinger, Gleizes and Jacques Villon. The group's title
2340-411: The antecedent of Cubism. Art historian Douglas Cooper says Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne "were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907". Cooper goes on to say: "The Demoiselles is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it
2430-531: The boulevard du Montparnasse . These soirées often included writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon . Together with other young artists, the group wanted to emphasise a research into form, in opposition to the Neo-Impressionist emphasis on color. Louis Vauxcelles, in his review of the 26th Salon des Indépendants (1910), made a passing and imprecise reference to Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Léger and Le Fauconnier as "ignorant geometers, reducing
2520-469: The École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts , brought back with them both an understanding of modern art movements, including Cubism. Notable works exhibiting Cubist qualities were Tetsugorō Yorozu 's Self Portrait with Red Eyes (1912) and Fang Ganmin 's Melody in Autumn (1934). The Cubism of Picasso and Braque had more than a technical or formal significance, and the distinct attitudes and intentions of
2610-812: The "Salle 41" artists, e.g., Francis Picabia ; the brothers Jacques Villon , Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp , who beginning in late 1911 formed the core of the Section d'Or (or the Puteaux Group ); the sculptors Alexander Archipenko , Joseph Csaky and Ossip Zadkine as well as Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens ; and painters such as Louis Marcoussis , Roger de La Fresnaye , František Kupka , Diego Rivera , Léopold Survage , Auguste Herbin , André Lhote , Gino Severini (after 1916), María Blanchard (after 1916) and Georges Valmier (after 1918). More fundamentally, Christopher Green argues that Douglas Cooper's terms were "later undermined by interpretations of
2700-545: The 1911 Salon des Indépendants and the 1912 Salon d'Automne in Paris). Clarifying their aims as artists, this work was the first theoretical treatise on Cubism and it still remains the clearest and most intelligible. The result, not solely a collaboration between its two authors, reflected discussions by the circle of artists who met in Puteaux and Courbevoie . It mirrored the attitudes of the "artists of Passy", which included Picabia and
2790-568: The 1911 Salon. The article was titled The "Cubists" Dominate Paris' Fall Salon and subtitled Eccentric School of Painting Increases Its Vogue in the Current Art Exhibition – What Its Followers Attempt to Do. Among all the paintings on exhibition at the Paris Fall Salon none is attracting so much attention as the extraordinary productions of the so-called "Cubist" school. In fact, dispatches from Paris suggest these works are easily
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2880-483: The 1911 and 1912 Salons extended beyond the conventional Cézanne-like subjects—the posed model, still-life and landscape—favored by Picasso and Braque to include large-scale modern-life subjects. Aimed at a large public, these works stressed the use of multiple perspective and complex planar faceting for expressive effect while preserving the eloquence of subjects endowed with literary and philosophical connotations. In Du "Cubisme" Metzinger and Gleizes explicitly related
2970-422: The 1912 Salon d'Automne, Amorpha-Fugue à deux couleurs and Amorpha chromatique chaude , were highly abstract (or nonrepresentational) and metaphysical in orientation. Both Duchamp in 1912 and Picabia from 1912 to 1914 developed an expressive and allusive abstraction dedicated to complex emotional and sexual themes. Beginning in 1912 Delaunay painted a series of paintings entitled Simultaneous Windows , followed by
3060-426: The 1912 exhibition had been curated to show the successive stages through which Cubism had transited, and that Du "Cubisme" had been published for the occasion, indicates the artists' intention of making their work comprehensible to a wide audience (art critics, art collectors, art dealers and the general public). Undoubtedly, due to the great success of the exhibition, Cubism became avant-garde movement recognized as
3150-638: The 1920s and the 1930s in the work of the American Stuart Davis and the Englishman Ben Nicholson . In France, however, Cubism experienced a decline beginning in about 1925. Léonce Rosenberg exhibited not only the artists stranded by Kahnweiler's exile but others including Laurens, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Gleizes, Csaky, Herbin and Severini. In 1918 Rosenberg presented a series of Cubist exhibitions at his Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris. Attempts were made by Louis Vauxcelles to argue that Cubism
3240-589: The Bateau-Lavoir until 1922. Josette Gris was Juan Gris' second companion and unofficial wife. In 1906, after he sold all his possessions, he moved to Paris and became friends with the poets Guillaume Apollinaire , Max Jacob , and artists Henri Matisse , Georges Braque , Fernand Léger and Jean Metzinger . He submitted darkly humorous illustrations to journals such as the anarchist satirical magazine L'Assiette au Beurre , and also Le Rire , Le Charivari , and Le Cri de Paris . In Paris, Gris followed
3330-610: The Cubist depiction of space, mass, time, and volume supports (rather than contradicts) the flatness of the canvas was made by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler as early as 1920, but it was subject to criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Clement Greenberg . Contemporary views of Cubism are complex, formed to some extent in response to the "Salle 41" Cubists, whose methods were too distinct from those of Picasso and Braque to be considered merely secondary to them. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed. Wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with
3420-464: The Cubists. The 1912 manifesto Du "Cubisme" by Metzinger and Gleizes was followed in 1913 by Les Peintres Cubistes , a collection of reflections and commentaries by Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire had been closely involved with Picasso beginning in 1905, and Braque beginning in 1907, but gave as much attention to artists such as Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Picabia, and Duchamp. The fact that
3510-515: The Duchamp brothers, to whom sections of it were read prior to publication. The concept developed in Du "Cubisme" of observing a subject from different points in space and time simultaneously, i.e., the act of moving around an object to seize it from several successive angles fused into a single image (multiple viewpoints, mobile perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity), is a generally recognized device used by
3600-642: The First World War. Léger was based in Montparnasse. In contrast, the Salon Cubists built their reputation primarily by exhibiting regularly at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, both major non-academic Salons in Paris. They were inevitably more aware of public response and the need to communicate. Already in 1910 a group began to form which included Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay and Léger. They met regularly at Henri le Fauconnier's studio near
3690-578: The Municipal Council of Paris, leading to a debate in the Chambre des Députés about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such art. The Cubists were defended by the Socialist deputy, Marcel Sembat . It was against this background of public anger that Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes wrote Du "Cubisme" (published by Eugène Figuière in 1912, translated to English and Russian in 1913). Among
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3780-519: The Salon Cubists produced different kinds of Cubism, rather than a derivative of their work. "It is by no means clear, in any case," wrote Christopher Green, "to what extent these other Cubists depended on Picasso and Braque for their development of such techniques as faceting, 'passage' and multiple perspective; they could well have arrived at such practices with little knowledge of 'true' Cubism in its early stages, guided above all by their own understanding of Cézanne." The works exhibited by these Cubists at
3870-503: The UK, when, in order to experiment as much as possible outside what was expected of him in the new art context, he created a fictitious art group, Generative Art Group, composed of other four artists invented by Neagu. One of his works, Going Tornado (1974), was used as an album cover for the Bruford album Gradually Going Tornado from 1980. "For Paul Neagu, art is an expression of 'desire in
3960-527: The academic artist José Moreno Carbonero . It was in 1905 that José Victoriano González adopted the more distinctive name Juan Gris. In 1909, Lucie Belin (1891–1942)—Gris' wife—gave birth to Georges Gonzalez-Gris (1909–2003), the artist's only child. The three lived at the Bateau-Lavoir , 13 Rue Ravignan, Paris, from 1909 to 1911. In 1912 Gris met Charlotte Augusta Fernande Herpin (1894–1983), also known as Josette. Late 1913 or early 1914 they lived together at
4050-471: The age of 40, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges. The top auction price for a Gris work is $ 57.1 million (£34.8 million), achieved for his 1915 painting Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux (Still Life with Checked Tablecloth) . This surpassed previous records of $ 20.8 million for his 1915 still life Livre, pipe et verres , $ 28.6 million for the 1913 artwork Violon et guitare and $ 31.8 million for The musician's table , now in
4140-443: The art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg . The tightening of the compositions, the clarity and sense of order reflected in these works, led to its being referred to by the critic Maurice Raynal as 'crystal' Cubism. Considerations manifested by Cubists prior to the outset of World War I —such as the fourth dimension , dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson 's concept of duration —had now been vacated, replaced by
4230-432: The artists, by Gris, Léger and Gleizes. The occasional return to classicism—figurative work either exclusively or alongside Cubist work—experienced by many artists during this period (called Neoclassicism ) has been linked to the tendency to evade the realities of the war and also to the cultural dominance of a classical or Latin image of France during and immediately following the war. Cubism after 1918 can be seen as part of
4320-454: The attention of the general public for the first time. Amongst the Cubist works presented, Robert Delaunay exhibited his Eiffel Tower, Tour Eiffel (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). At the Salon d'Automne of the same year, in addition to the Indépendants group of Salle 41 , were exhibited works by André Lhote , Marcel Duchamp , Jacques Villon, Roger de La Fresnaye , André Dunoyer de Segonzac and František Kupka . The exhibition
4410-497: The case of Still-life With Chair Caning , freely brushed oil paint and commercially printed oilcloth together on a canvas. The Cubist contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne created scandal regarding the use of government owned buildings, such as the Grand Palais , to exhibit such artwork. The indignation of the politician Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué made the front page of Le Journal , 5 October 1912. The controversy spread to
4500-403: The composition serves as a foundation to flatten the individual elements onto a unifying surface, foretelling the shape of things to come. In 1919 and particularly 1920, artists and critics began to write conspicuously about this 'synthetic' approach, and to assert its importance in the overall scheme of advanced Cubism. In 1924, he designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and
4590-443: The face of the systems that attempt to inhibit it', as he writes, and desire involves 'the recovery' of what he calls, variously, the 'hyphen,' the 'abstract', the 'gamma', all of which involve the 'bodily', conveyed particularly through the 'figural essence of sculpting, paintings, drawings'. Neagu's works, whatever their medium, are certainly full of desire, as their visceral energy suggests." Donald Kuspit This article about
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#17329700757444680-483: The facts they identify. Neither phase was designated as such at the time corresponding works were created. "If Kahnweiler considers Cubism as Picasso and Braque," wrote Daniel Robbins, "our only fault is in subjecting other Cubists' works to the rigors of that limited definition." The traditional interpretation of "Cubism", formulated post facto as a means of understanding the works of Braque and Picasso, has affected our appreciation of other twentieth-century artists. It
4770-866: The famous Ballets Russes . Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilités de la peinture , at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923 and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925. After October 1925, Gris was frequently ill with bouts of uremia and cardiac problems. He died of kidney failure in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) on 11 May 1927, at
4860-549: The finer elements of the compositions; the constituent components, including the small planes of the faces, become part of the unified whole. Though Gris certainly had planned the representation of his chosen subject matter, the abstract armature serves as the starting point. The geometric structure of Juan Gris's Crystal period is already palpable in Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan (June 1915; Philadelphia Museum of Art ). The overlapping elemental planar structure of
4950-455: The first Cubist paintings. The first organized group exhibition by Cubists took place at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris during the spring of 1911 in a room called 'Salle 41'; it included works by Jean Metzinger , Albert Gleizes , Fernand Léger , Robert Delaunay and Henri Le Fauconnier , yet no works by Picasso or Braque were exhibited. By 1911 Picasso was recognized as the inventor of Cubism, while Braque's importance and precedence
5040-449: The first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide ( Exposició d'Art Cubista ), with a controversial showing by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin and Marcel Duchamp (Barcelona, 20 April to 10 May 1912). The Dalmau exhibition comprised 83 works by 26 artists. Jacques Nayral's association with Gleizes led him to write the Preface for the Cubist exhibition, which
5130-451: The first time at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants (a painting entitled Hommage à Pablo Picasso ). "He appears with two styles", writes art historian Peter Brooke, "In one of them a grid structure appears that is clearly reminiscent of the Goûter and of Metzinger's later work in 1912." In the other, Brooke continues, "the grid is still present but the lines are not stated and their continuity
5220-437: The fluidity of consciousness, blurring the distinctions between past, present and future. One of the major theoretical innovations made by the Salon Cubists, independently of Picasso and Braque, was that of simultaneity , drawing to greater or lesser extent on theories of Henri Poincaré , Ernst Mach , Charles Henry , Maurice Princet , and Henri Bergson. With simultaneity, the concept of separate spatial and temporal dimensions
5310-483: The human body, the site, to pallid cubes." At the 1910 Salon d'Automne , a few months later, Metzinger exhibited his highly fractured Nu à la cheminée (Nude) , which was subsequently reproduced in both Du "Cubisme" (1912) and Les Peintres Cubistes (1913). The first public controversy generated by Cubism resulted from Salon showings at the Indépendants during the spring of 1911. This showing by Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, le Fauconnier and Léger brought Cubism to
5400-713: The largest paintings in the history of Cubism. Léger's The Wedding , also shown at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912, gave form to the notion of simultaneity by presenting different motifs as occurring within a single temporal frame, where responses to the past and present interpenetrate with collective force. The conjunction of such subject matter with simultaneity aligns Salon Cubism with early Futurist paintings by Umberto Boccioni , Gino Severini and Carlo Carrà ; themselves made in response to early Cubism. Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris ( Spanish: [ˈxwaŋ ˈɡɾis] ; French: [gʀi] ),
5490-457: The late 1920s, drawing at first from sources of limited data, namely the opinions of Guillaume Apollinaire . It came to rely heavily on Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler 's book Der Weg zum Kubismus (published in 1920), which centered on the developments of Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris. The terms "analytical" and "synthetic" which subsequently emerged have been widely accepted since the mid-1930s. Both terms are historical impositions that occurred after
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#17329700757445580-417: The lead of Metzinger and another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso . Gris began to paint seriously in 1911 (when he gave up working as a satirical cartoonist), developing at this time a personal Cubist style. In A Life of Picasso , John Richardson writes that Jean Metzinger's 1911 work, Le goûter (Tea Time) , persuaded Juan Gris of the importance of mathematics in painting. Gris exhibited for
5670-558: The main feature of the exhibition. [...] In spite of the crazy nature of the "Cubist" theories the number of those professing them is fairly respectable. Georges Braque, André Derain, Picasso, Czobel, Othon Friesz, Herbin, Metzinger—these are a few of the names signed to canvases before which Paris has stood and now again stands in blank amazement. What do they mean? Have those responsible for them taken leave of their senses? Is it art or madness? Who knows? The subsequent 1912 Salon des Indépendants located in Paris (20 March to 16 May 1912)
5760-460: The modernist sense. Picasso is credited with creating the first Cubist collage, Still-life With Chair Caning , in May 1912, while Braque preceded Picasso in the creation of Cubist cardboard sculptures and papiers collés . Papiers collés were often composed of pieces of everyday paper artifacts such as newspaper, table cloth, wallpaper and sheet music, whereas Cubist collages combined disparate materials—in
5850-483: The most conspicuous Cubists, was a collective of painters, sculptors and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism, active from 1911 through about 1914, coming to prominence in the wake of their controversial showing at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants . The Salon de la Section d'Or at the Galerie La Boétie in Paris, October 1912, was arguably the most important pre-World War I Cubist exhibition; exposing Cubism to
5940-408: The movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque; the second phase being called "High Cubism", (from 1909 to 1914) during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent (after 1911); and finally Cooper referred to "Late Cubism" (from 1914 to 1921) as the last phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement. Douglas Cooper's restrictive use of these terms to distinguish
6030-475: The newspapers Esquella de La Torratxa and El Noticiero Universal attacking the Cubists with a series of caricatures laced with derogatory text. Art historian Jaime Brihuega writes of the Dalmau show: "No doubt that the exhibition produced a strong commotion in the public, who welcomed it with a lot of suspicion. A major development in Cubism occurred in 1912 with Braque's and Picasso's introduction of collage in
6120-459: The painters of the Puteaux Group in the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. His preference for clarity and order influenced the Purist style of Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret ( Le Corbusier ), and made Gris an important exemplar of the post-war " return to order " movement. In 1915 he was painted by his friend, Amedeo Modigliani . In November 1917 he made one of his few sculptures,
6210-476: The poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire accepted the term on behalf of a group of artists invited to exhibit at the Brussels Indépendants. The following year, in preparation for the Salon de la Section d'Or , Metzinger and Gleizes wrote and published Du "Cubisme" in an effort to dispel the confusion raging around the word, and as a major defence of Cubism (which had caused a public scandal following
6300-598: The polychrome plaster Harlequin . Gris's works from late 1916 through 1917 exhibit a greater simplification of geometric structure, a blurring of the distinction between objects and setting, between subject matter and background. The oblique overlapping planar constructions, tending away from equilibrium, can best be seen in Woman with Mandolin, after Corot (September 1916) and in its epilogue, Portrait of Josette Gris (October 1916; Museo Reina Sofia ). The clear-cut underlying geometric framework of these works seemingly controls
6390-436: The sense of time to multiple perspective, giving symbolic expression to the notion of ‘duration’ proposed by the philosopher Henri Bergson according to which life is subjectively experienced as a continuum, with the past flowing into the present and the present merging into the future. The Salon Cubists used the faceted treatment of solid and space and effects of multiple viewpoints to convey a physical and psychological sense of
6480-422: The simplification of natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones. However, the cubists explored this concept further than Cézanne. They represented all the surfaces of depicted objects in a single picture plane, as if the objects had all their faces visible at the same time. This new kind of depiction revolutionized the way objects could be visualized in painting and art. The historical study of Cubism began in
6570-436: The style of Analytical Cubism , a term he himself later coined, but after 1913 he began his conversion to Synthetic Cubism , of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier collé or, collage . Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were practically monochromatic , Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse. Gris exhibited with
6660-582: The word "cube" goes back at least to May 1901 when Jean Béral, reviewing the work of Henri-Edmond Cross at the Indépendants in Art et Littérature , commented that he "uses a large and square pointillism, giving the impression of mosaic. One even wonders why the artist has not used cubes of solid matter diversely colored: they would make pretty revetments." (Robert Herbert, 1968, p. 221) The term Cubism did not come into general usage until 1911, mainly with reference to Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, and Léger. In 1911,
6750-462: The work of Braque, Picasso, Gris (from 1911) and Léger (to a lesser extent) implied an intentional value judgement. Cubism burgeoned between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. In 1908, in his review of Georges Braque 's exhibition at Kahnweiler 's gallery, the critic Louis Vauxcelles called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and
6840-498: The work of Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger that stress iconographic and ideological questions rather than methods of representation." John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. "The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram: The diagram being a visible symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as signs not as imitations or recreations." There
6930-766: The works exhibited were Le Fauconnier 's vast composition Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) now at Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Joseph Csaky 's Deux Femme, Two Women (a sculpture now lost), in addition to the highly abstract paintings by Kupka, Amorpha (The National Gallery, Prague), and Picabia , La Source (The Spring) (Museum of Modern Art, New York). The most extreme forms of Cubism were not those practiced by Picasso and Braque, who resisted total abstraction. Other Cubists, by contrast, especially František Kupka , and those considered Orphists by Apollinaire (Delaunay, Léger, Picabia and Duchamp), accepted abstraction by removing visible subject matter entirely. Kupka's two entries at
7020-584: Was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism , his works are among the movement's most distinctive. Gris was born in Madrid and later studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Sciences. There, from 1902 to 1904, he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905, he studied painting with
7110-588: Was a distinct difference between Kahnweiler's Cubists and the Salon Cubists. Prior to 1914, Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger (to a lesser extent) gained the support of a single committed art dealer in Paris, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who guaranteed them an annual income for the exclusive right to buy their works. Kahnweiler sold only to a small circle of connoisseurs. His support gave his artists the freedom to experiment in relative privacy. Picasso worked in Montmartre until 1912, while Braque and Gris remained there until after
7200-408: Was another important influence. There were also parallels in the development of literature and social thought. In addition to Seurat, the roots of cubism are to be found in the two distinct tendencies of Cézanne's later work: first his breaking of the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, thereby emphasizing the plural viewpoint given by binocular vision , and second his interest in
7290-458: Was argued later, with respect to his treatment of space, volume and mass in the L’Estaque landscapes. But "this view of Cubism is associated with a distinctly restrictive definition of which artists are properly to be called Cubists," wrote the art historian Christopher Green: "Marginalizing the contribution of the artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 [...]" The assertion that
7380-488: Was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1910 and 1912 in France. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism , remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity. English art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch . According to Cooper there was "Early Cubism", (from 1906 to 1908) when
7470-531: Was comprehensively challenged. Linear perspective developed during the Renaissance was vacated. The subject matter was no longer considered from a specific point of view at a moment in time, but built following a selection of successive viewpoints, i.e., as if viewed simultaneously from numerous angles (and in multiple dimensions) with the eye free to roam from one to the other. This technique of representing simultaneity, multiple viewpoints (or relative motion )
7560-402: Was dead, but these exhibitions, along with a well-organized Cubist show at the 1920 Salon des Indépendants and a revival of the Salon de la Section d’Or in the same year, demonstrated it was still alive. The reemergence of Cubism coincided with the appearance from about 1917 to 1924 of a coherent body of theoretical writing by Pierre Reverdy, Maurice Raynal and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and, among
7650-554: Was fully translated and reproduced in the newspaper La Veu de Catalunya . Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was exhibited for the first time. Extensive media coverage (in newspapers and magazines) before, during and after the exhibition launched the Galeries Dalmau as a force in the development and propagation of modernism in Europe. While press coverage was extensive, it was not always positive. Articles were published in
7740-456: Was held at the Salon d'Automne of 1904, current works were displayed at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne , followed by two commemorative retrospectives after his death in 1907. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism , abstract art and later Purism . The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging in the arts and in popular culture. Cubism introduced collage as
7830-433: Was influenced by Picasso's technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements. Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization and modern life. Scholars have divided the history of Cubism into phases. In one scheme, the first phase of Cubism, known as Analytic Cubism , a phrase coined by Juan Gris retrospectively,
7920-553: Was marked by the presentation of Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 , which itself caused a scandal, even amongst the Cubists. It was in fact rejected by the hanging committee, which included his brothers and other Cubists. Although the work was shown in the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912 and the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Duchamp never forgave his brothers and former colleagues for censoring his work. Juan Gris,
8010-597: Was reviewed in the October 8, 1911 issue of The New York Times . This article was published a year after Gelett Burgess ' The Wild Men of Paris , and two years prior to the Armory Show , which introduced astonished Americans, accustomed to realistic art, to the experimental styles of the European avant garde, including Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. The 1911 New York Times article portrayed works by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Metzinger and others dated before 1909; not exhibited at
8100-550: Was suggested by Villon, after reading a 1910 translation of Leonardo da Vinci 's Trattato della Pittura by Joséphin Péladan . During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African , Polynesian, Micronesian and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin , Henri Matisse , and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein , at
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