Cubism and Other Styles In 1970, Douglas Cooper published an important book on cubism called The Cubist Epoch. Although some of his ideas have been challenged more recently, he provides a good place to start.1 Apollinaire, one of the writers on cubism in the early 1900s, tried to establish a connection between cubism and the realism of Courbet. Courbet’s innovation was the refusal of abstract ideals of beauty in favor of a more sordid realism. The impressionists, although their art is rooted in the real world, were not concerned with this sordid reality since their focus was light and color. The neo- and other post-impressionists did not completely abandon reality but their interest was the idea, a transcendence of reality to reach a deeper plane. Cezanne, to a degree, bridges these directions. He wanted to represent permanence and transience, volume and flatness, the effects of light and structure. It is in this respect, of seeking both sides of the dualities raised by realism and the impressionist response, that Picasso is most related to Cezanne. We see these dichotomies most clearly in the pre-cubist painting of Demoiselles d’Avignon, a painting which is not flat but does not create the true illusion of depth, a painting which uses the female nude (an eternal icon of beauty) to communicate the antithesis of beauty. As both Picasso and Braque begin to more toward a more geometric, angled and seemingly multifaceted rendering of the figure, the primitivizing influence does not immediately leave their work although it is relocated in the hatchmarks and in a tendency to make the figures look as though they have been carved of wood. [See Figure 1: Picasso, Woman in Yellow, 1907.] By 1911, this effect has been eclipsed by their interest in opening up forms and planes and in uniting the figure and ground through the planar structure of space [see Figure 2: Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910]. This is the point at which their work becomes hermetic, or difficult to decipher, as the artists appear to be more concerned with the structure of lines and planes than they are with the “objective” content of the picture. This does create a conflict since the artists never give up that content, even as their paintings become more abstract, but eventually they resolve it in the direction of reality, in large part by inserting elements from reality into the art work. These “alien” materials do two things for the paintings: they reinforce the flatness of the surface, and in many cases, they offer ironic commentaries on the real world. Actually, they do a third thing as well: they emphasize the fact that a work of art is constructed out of materials. [See Figure 3: Braque, Still Life with Glass, Dice and Playing Card, 1913, and 4: Picasso, Guitar (El Diluvio), 1913.] For Cooper, this development leads to the end of what he calls “high” cubism, as the artists begin to imitate textural patterns, to introduce materials which have their materiality, and essentially create works of art which contain different levels of reality. For other writers, while not specifically calling this the end, it is the moment when Picasso, at least, recognizes that painting is an “impoverished” activity because it will always be removed from the world. But if this is the case, then the artist must find some way to put even greater distance between the art work and the world.2 We note that around 1912, Picasso began to make three-dimensional constructions. [See figure 5: Picasso, Still Life, 1914.] We might also note that he never gives up painting but his paintings do not continue to look like analytic cubist paintings after around 1913. After 1914, Picasso begins to return naturalistic techniques to his paintings without abandoning cubist techniques [Figure 6: Picasso, The Card Player, 1913-14]. In Cooper’s discussion, the followers of Picasso and Braque did not really understand cubism and used it in a decorative manner, compressing space so as to bring more of the object into the picture. Not everyone agrees with this interpretation although just about everyone does agree that the cubism of artists like Gleizes and Metzinger does not have the radical or innovative qualities that Picasso and Braque brought to their work. [Figure 7: Metzinger, Fruit and Jug on a Table, 1916] Cooper identifies four categories of cubism: True or Instinctive Cubism: which consists of Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger (most people now divide this into two groups: the first or “analytic” period and the second or “synthetic” period, and they place Gris and Leger in the second period) Systematic Cubism: artists who flirted with the ideas of cubism or used it as a stylistic formula (Gleizes, Metzinger, Le Fauconnier) (writers now refer to these artists as the “salon” cubists) Orphic cubism: a cubism which is more interested in color than in form (Delaunay, Morgan Russell, Stanton MacDonald-Wright) (this is still pretty much the definition although recent writing on Delaunay offers some arguments that his interest in color is an interest in the process of seeing) Kinetic cubism: used some of the vocabulary of cubism but concerned with the expression of movement (Duchamp, Villon, Joseph Stella, Futurists) (this is the most questionable category) [Figure 8: Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912] By 1914, cubism had changed so substantially that most writers invented a new word for it. By the 1920s, not even the cubists themselves talk about cubism and even they might be accused of using it as one of many styles. Below I’ve appended a summary of styles I once prepared for a class in early 20th century art. It seemed useful to have a list of definitions and examples. I probably don’t agree with all of it anymore but my goal at the time was more “dictionary” than theory. A Summary of Modern Styles, early 20th century Fauvism: relates to synthetism in intensity of colors, planarity of forms, emphasis on linearity-- especially curvilinearity. It is unlike synthetism in that there still is three-dimensional space, and the subject matter is closer to the subject matter of impressionism--nature through the "temperament" of the artist. Color harmonies express the relationship of the artist to the world, and color is used to create space. Another way of saying all this: the fauves simplify technique and the use of symbols--line is emphasized, colors are unmodulated (pure), an academic finish is neglected--the goal is to communicate the direct experience of a single emotional state. [Note that this definition leaves out all discussion of subject matter and ideology, which was actually the way the movement was discussed until the 1990s.] Artists: Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, 1904-07. expressionism: this style is most difficult to define, because all artists "express" themselves, and difficult to describe, since it appears to look different in all the artists called “expressionist.” But this latter fact simply confirms the notion that the meaning of style has less to do with how something looks than it has to do with what problem the artist is trying to solve. The term was first used to describe the expression of strong emotions in art; then it was used to designate a particular German form of art, which was a rejection of impressionism by changing the focus from capturing the effects of light to one of depicting a personal, interior response to the world. This subjective response leads to paintings which seem to place distortion above an objective depiction of the world. In particular, it seems to be an emotional response to urbanism and a world which is believed to be in a state of decadence and decline. Stylistically, the sources are diverse: a combination of influences from post-impressionist painters, fauvism, cubism and futurism, gothic art, northern renaissance art. Cubism, however, is probably the least significant of these influences – the characteristic angularity of a painter such as Kirchner could just as easily be attributed to the gothic influence. Artists: Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Marc, Macke, Meidner, Kandinsky, Nolde, Modersohn-Becker, Kollwitz. cubism: if expressionism is an emotional response to the world, cubism is an intellectual/conceptual response. It is about perception, but perception as a process which includes memory of what is seen and the experience of seeing something over time (which leads to the focus on including multiple angles or viewpoints of a single object). Up to here, this is an old definition, based largely on the writing of Gleizes and Metzinger. Cubism rejects renaissance perspective, and it rejects the idea of the art work as a representation of some reality that exists outside of the art work. In this respect, the cubist work of art is its own reality; it represents itself (as one writer says, the essence of cubism was to "make of each picture a new tangible reality rather than an illusion of some imaginary reality or an image of a purely visual sensation of reality"). The focus on the work of art as reality leads to an interest in depicting the process of making art. For example, aspects of painting which previously had been signs of the presence or absence of light now become signs of the process of painting, or components of a language. Words and letters are used in cubist paintings to reinforce this idea of art as a language. The interest in representing process is also true of the Russian constructivists although it takes a different visual form in their work. analytic or "true" cubism: a record or analysis of the perceptual experience of an object over time; characterized by faceting of objects, multiple points of view, architectonic composition, grid-like structure uniting object with background (Picasso and Braque).