Overview

Invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914, Cubism is the most influential art movement of the 20th century. It destroyed the Renaissance idea that a painting is a “window” into a realistic world. Instead, it treated the painting as a flat surface where 3D objects are analyzed and deconstructed.

Core Idea

The core idea is simultaneity. In real life, you don’t stare at a cup from one fixed point (like a camera). You move around it. You see the top, the side, and the handle. Cubism tries to put all those views onto the canvas at once. It is a way of painting “time” and “movement” as well as space.

Formal Definition

An early 20th-century style and movement in art, especially painting, in which perspective with a single viewpoint was abandoned and use was made of simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes, and, later, collage.

Intuition

Imagine you have a cardboard box.

  • Realism: You paint a picture of the box sitting on a table.
  • Cubism: You unfold the box so it lies flat. Now you can see all six sides at once. It looks like a geometric pattern, but it is actually a “truer” representation of the whole box than the realistic picture (which hides the back).

Examples

  • Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso, 1907): The painting that started it all. Five nude women with jagged, shard-like bodies and faces inspired by African masks. It shocked the world with its ugliness and aggression.
  • Violin and Candlestick (Braque, 1910): A “Analytic Cubist” work where the objects are shattered into a brown and gray crystal-like structure. You can barely recognize the violin.
  • Still Life with Chair Caning (Picasso, 1912): The first “Collage.” Picasso glued a piece of oilcloth printed with a chair pattern onto the canvas. It blurred the line between art and reality.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s just squares: It’s not just about cubes. It’s about planes and facets.
  • It’s abstract: It is actually highly representational. They were painting real things (guitars, bottles, people), just in a new way. They hated “Abstract Art” (like Kandinsky) which was about spiritual feelings. Cubism was about the physical world.
  • Analytic Cubism (1908-1912): The first phase. Dark colors, highly complex fragmentation. Breaking things down.
  • Synthetic Cubism (1912-1914): The second phase. Brighter colors, simpler shapes, use of collage. Building things up.
  • Primitivism: The influence of African and Oceanic art (masks, totems) was crucial. Picasso saw these not as “primitive” but as sophisticated conceptual art.

Applications

  • Architecture: Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus applied Cubist principles (geometric purity, transparency) to buildings.
  • Camouflage: In WWI, artists used Cubist patterns to paint tanks and ships (“Dazzle Camouflage”) to confuse the enemy’s eye.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Intellectualism: It can be very dry and hard to love. It appeals to the brain, not the heart.
  • Misogyny: Picasso’s treatment of women in his art (chopping them up, distorting them) often reflected his real-life aggression towards them.

Further Reading

  • Golding, John. Cubism: A History and an Analysis. 1959.
  • Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso. (The definitive biography).
  • Stein, Gertrude. Picasso. 1938.