Cubism

( Beginning in 1908 )

   Cubism is the most radical, innovative, and influential ism of twentieth-century art. It is complete denial of Classical conception of beauty.

   Cubism was the joint invention of two men, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their achievement was built the foundation of Picasso's early work then developed to a Synthetic Cubism. As the various phases of Cubism emerged from their studios, it became clear to the art world that something of great significance was happening. The radical innovations of the new style confused the public, but the avant-garde saw in them the future of art and new challenge.

   Proportions, organic integrity and continuity of life samples and material objects are abandoned. Canvas resembles "a field of broken glass" as one vicious critic noted. This geometrically analytical approach to form and color, and shattering of object in focus into geometrical sharp-edged angular pieces baptized the movement into 'Cubism'. A close look reveals very methodical destruction or rather deconstruction into angular 3-dymensional shaded facets, some of which are caving others convex. Cubism distrusts "whole" images perceived by the retina, considers them artificial and conventional, based on the influence of past art. It rejects these images and recognizes that perspective space is an illusory, rational invention, or a sign system inherited from works of art since the Renaissance.

   Instead of an image of external world we are given a world of its own, analogous to nature but built along different principles. Cubism seeks to reproduce different perspectives or forms simultaneously, as they might be seen by the mind's eye. It attempts to mimic the mind's power to abstract and synthesize its different impressions of the world into new 'wholes'.

   Among numerous responses on these Cubistic challenges some artists put these innovations into the service of a less radical art, or at the other end of the spectrum was the radical painting of Robert Delaunay who attempted to take an antisocial Analytic Cubism into a wholly different direction. Among other twentieth century's isms emerged as responses on challenge of Cubism were Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Rayonism, Abstraction, and Precisionism.