What is Cubist Art?

Mike G. on 11 19, 2009

“The art of painting original arrangements composed of elements taken from conceived rather than perceived reality.”-Guillame Apollinaire, 1912
The art movement known as Cubism was founded in 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque . As an aesthetic and philosophical innovation, this type of painting and sculpture revolutionized modern abstract art for the rest of the 20th century. Paintings in this style are easily recognized by their faceted nudes and still lifes in muted colors.
Cubism has roots in Pointillism, Fauvism, and traditional folk sculpture from Africa. Cubists created an abstract, non-representational method of painting to depict three dimensional objects on a two dimensional plane while preserving multiple perspectives. Europeans were importing African figures to study ethnology, but Picasso and Braque valued the nude figurines and masks from an artistic view. They were drawn to the way masks were abstracted and dramatized faces. Also, Africans used natural materials such as wood that inspired cubists to utilize earth tone colors of browns and greens.
Their paintings are characterized by unspecified edges,fractured geometric forms, and  muted, depthless colors. This method produced forms with a reclassified point of view not reliant on classical theories of perspective, the disappearing horizon, or precise angles of illumination. They sought to incorporate simultaneous angles of a view on the same canvas, and highlight objects as merely their geometric constituents. They made free use of the basic Euclidean geometric solids: pyramid, cube, sphere, cylinder, and cone. The name “cubism” was originally intended as an insult to their “simplistic” depictions.

picasso“The art of painting original arrangements composed of elements taken from conceived rather than perceived reality.”-Guillame Apollinaire, 1912

The art movement known as Cubism was founded in 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque . As an aesthetic and philosophical innovation, this type of painting and sculpture revolutionized modern abstract art for the rest of the 20th century. Paintings in this style are easily recognized by their faceted nudes and still lifes in muted colors.

Cubism has roots in Pointillism, Fauvism, and traditional folk sculpture from Africa. Cubists created an abstract, non-representational method of painting to depict three dimensional objects on a two dimensional plane while preserving multiple perspectives. Europeans were importing African figures to study ethnology, but Picasso and Braque valued the nude figurines and masks from an artistic view. They were drawn to the way masks were abstracted and dramatized faces. Also, Africans used natural materials such as wood that inspired cubists to utilize earth tone colors of browns and greens.

Their paintings are characterized by unspecified edges,fractured geometric forms, and  muted, depthless colors. This method produced forms with a reclassified point of view not reliant on classical theories of perspective, the disappearing horizon, or precise angles of illumination. They sought to incorporate simultaneous angles of a view on the same canvas, and highlight objects as merely their geometric constituents. They made free use of the basic Euclidean geometric solids: pyramid, cube, sphere, cylinder, and cone. The name “cubism” was originally intended as an insult to their “simplistic” depictions.cubism 1

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