Early Cubist Painting
Proto-type Cubism, History, Styles, Paintings,
Picasso and Braque.
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Early Cubist Painting |
 Houses at L'Estaque (1908) by Georges Braque. |
Early Cubist Painting (c.1907-9)Contents • When did Cubism
begin? |
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If pushed, most art historians would say that the movement known as Cubism began in 1907 with Picasso's picture Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. This work signalled the start of an exploratory phase, during which Picasso and Georges Braque came together to establish several new and important principles of modern art. This collaboration did not happen overnight: it wasn't until 1908 that both artists formed the intimate working relationship ("two mountaineers roped together"), based on the ideas of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), which led to the invention of first analytical Cubism (c.1909-1912) and then synthetic Cubism (1912-14). |
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The year 1907 must have been exceptionally stimulating for the Spanish master. He was in the middle of his African or Negro period (1906-7), during which he was absorbing the primitivism and aesthetics of African tribal art - a process which culminated in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, MoMA, New York), as well as oils like Head (1907, Barnes Foundation), Bust of a Woman (1907, MoMA, NY) and Nude (Bust) (1907, Hermitage, St Petersburg). Other vivid examples of his 'African' paintings of the time include: Woman with a Fan (1907, Hermitage, St Petersburg) and Dance of the Veils (Nude with Drapery) (1907, Hermitage, St Petersburg). In 1908, he continued with the primitivist style of Les Demoiselles, executing a number of ethnic-style works with well-modelled, angular bodies. They include: Seated Woman (1908, Hermitage, St Petersburg), Dryad (1908, Hermitage, St Petersburg), and Farm Woman (Full-Length) (1908, Hermitage, St Petersburg). Only in his mid/late-1908 works such as Friendship (1908, Pushkin Museum, Moscow) and Three Women (1908, Pushkin Museum), does the influence of Cezanne begin to emerge. |
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At the start of 1907, Braque was known as a member of Fauvism, the high-fashion style of colourism which had burst onto the Parisian art world in 1905. However two events in 1907 would rapidly change his life. First, he was bowled over by the major Cezanne retrospective, at the Salon d'Automne. Second, his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler introduced him to Apollinaire and Picasso. Braque visited the latter at his studio in the tumbledown Bateau Lavoir complex in the Rue Ravignan, Montmartre, where he was profoundly impressed by Les Demoiselles. Indeed, he was so taken with it, that he abandoned Fauvism and spent the next six months working on a new picture - Large Nude (1908, Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou) - which required him to transform his whole method of painting. Unlike Picasso, however, Braque moved directly directly from his Large Nude to more overt Cubist imagery (in the manner of Cezanne), namely his landscapes at L'Estaque. So by late 1908, stylistically he was fractionally ahead of his Spanish partner. |
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Picasso and Braque: Collaboration (1908-9) In 1908, by now both deeply intrigued by Paul Cezanne's geometric-style landscapes, Picasso and Braque set about extending their mentor's ideas. First, they completed a series of landscape paintings that were very similar to those by Paul Cezanne. Thus all natural forms were reduced to basic geometric shapes and the colour palette was predominantly subdued blues and greens. (Picasso still maintained his keenness for his warmer ochres and siennas). They painted houses in the form of 3-D cubes: Braque at L'Estaque; Picasso at Horta del Ebro in Spain. It was these paintings that the French art critic Louis Vauxelles was describing in 1909, when he used the expression 'bizarreries cubiques' - which led to the adoption of the word Cubism. Conventions of Perspective Rejected In this early phase of prototype-Cubism, Picasso and Braque utilized several technical devices to undermine the illusion of space. To begin with, they rejected all the normal conventions of linear perspective. Instead of diminishing size signifying background, perspective was rendered by means of colour: warm reddish browns were used for foreground, cool blues for background. Buildings appear one on top of the other instead of standing one behind the other. In Houses on the Hill (1909, MoMA), Picaso used similar cubic-shaped imagery for his background and foreground (houses). By rendering earth and sky in the same way, he introduced greater unity to the picture but also introduced ambiguity: after all, there was now less difference between ground and air. Another technique used by both Braque and Picasso in their early Cubist art, involved the use of different light sources. Whereas traditional pictures employ a consistent light source (to create the illusion of three-dimensional space), in Cubist canvases light appears to enter the composition from numerous different angles thus confusing the viewer as to whether shapes are convex or concave. Greatest Early Cubist Paintings In addition to works already cited, here is a short list of some of the best early Cubist pictures, executed in the manner of Cezanne. Georges Braque Pablo Picasso For works by other Cubists, see Cubist Painters. |
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