Cubism

Cubism describes a revolutionary style of visual art invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the early 20th century. Drawing on a diversity of influences, from African tribal masks to the late works of Paul Cézanne, the two painters pioneered a radical departure from European conventions of spatial and figural representation. Linear perspective, dominant in Western art from the Renaissance onwards, was dispensed with; instead, arrangements of volumes and planes were used to highlight the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Rather than presenting realistic renderings of objects and figures, Cubist paintings use simplified forms and contrasting vantage points to create fragmented and abstracted compositions. The innovations of Picasso and Braque were adopted and further developed by a host of other artists, the so-called Salon Cubists, whose public exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendents and Salon d’Automne in Paris were largely responsible for introducing the Cubist vernacular to the general public.

In Cubist painting, objects and figures are broken down into distinct planes and reassembled into abstracted forms. Rather than creating the illusion of depth, these dynamic arrangements merge foreground and background to emphasise the flatness of the artist’s canvas. In general, Cubism can be understood as developing in two distinct phases: Analytical and Synthetic. In Analytical Cubism, objects are systematically dissected, with multiple viewpoints presented in interweaving planes. Confined to a muted palette of blacks, grey and ochres, these paintings represent the austere, cerebral starting point of Cubist experimentation. Synthetic Cubism, by contrast, features simpler shapes, brighter colours, and a variety of textures and patterns, including collages that incorporate non-art materials such as newspaper. These later works dispense altogether with allusions to three-dimensional space.

Perhaps the most influential artistic movement of the 20th century, Cubism represented a fundamental reimagining of Western artistic conventions. The canvas, no longer a window onto a faithfully reflected world, became the picture plane, freed from external constraints. The innovations of Picasso, Braque and others paved the way for numerous later styles including Constructivism, Futurism, Suprematism and De Stijl. Cubism’s formal concepts were also foundational to Dada and Surrealism; in particular, Synthetic Cubism’s inclusion of real and found objects became one of the most important and far-reaching ideas in Modern art.

Beyond the realm of the visual arts, the Cubist influence can be seen in the architecture of Le Corbusier, the literary works of Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner, and the poetry of Pierre Reverdy.