Marcus Chen
Cubism is an early-20th-century art movement that is credited to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who developed it in Paris between 1907 and 1914. The movement challenged Renaissance depictions of space and perspective, and instead presented fragmented objects and subjects depicted from multiple perspectives. While Picasso and Braque are often credited with creating Cubism, some art historians consider Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, painted by Picasso in 1907, to be the first Cubist painting.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Artist | Pablo Picasso |
| Year | 1907 |
| Name of Painting | Les Demoiselles d'Avignon |
| Subject | Five female nudes |
| Style | Proto-Cubist |
| Elements | Cubist style, fractured angular shapes, multiple perspectives |
| Colour Scheme | Reddish-browns, blues |
| Influenced by | African art, Paul Cézanne |
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What You'll Learn
The painting: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, painted by Pablo Picasso in 1907, is often considered a proto-Cubist work. It is a large oil painting that portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona, Spain. The figures are rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes, challenging the expectation that paintings will offer idealized representations of female beauty.
The painting was created during a period of competition between Picasso and Henri Matisse to be perceived as the leader of modern painting. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was a response to Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre (1905-1906) and an assault upon the traditional European painting style from which it derived. Instead, Picasso turned to primitive art traditions, including African tribal masks and Iberian sculpture, to create a netherworld of strange gods and violent emotions.
The painting's style reflects Picasso's obsession with primitive art, not only of African origin but also the art of ancient Iberia, or modern-day Spain and Portugal. The simple forms, angular planes, and bold shapes of primitive art influenced Picasso's restructuring of artistic conventions. The figures in the painting exhibit a range of ethnic influences, including Egyptian or South Asian, Iberian, and African styles.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was first exhibited in 1916 at the Salon d'Antin, nine years after its completion. The public reaction to the painting was largely negative, and it was considered immoral and outrageous. However, the work's impact propelled Picasso into the centre of controversy and established him as an important leader of modern art.
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Artist: Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and his contributions to the Cubist movement are significant. While there may be differing opinions on which work can be definitively credited as the first Cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, created by Picasso in 1907, is often cited as a
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Date: 1907
In 1907, Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which is often considered a proto-Cubist work. The painting is also regarded as presaging a new style, as it depicted fractured, angular shapes of five female nudes. It is known for its use of warm reddish-browns advancing and cool blues receding, rendering perspective through colour. This work is considered to have set the groundwork for the Cubist movement, which is generally agreed to have begun around 1907.
In the same year, Picasso and Georges Braque developed a new style of painting that transformed everyday objects, landscapes, and people into geometric shapes. This marked the beginning of one of the most important friendships in art history, as the two artists shared ideas, scrutinised each other's work, and challenged and encouraged one another.
During this early phase of Cubism, Braque experimented with shallow spacing by reducing the colour palette to neutral browns and greys, further flattening out the space. This period, known as Analytical Cubism, ran from 1908 to 1912 and was characterised by an interweaving of planes and lines in muted tones.
By 1909, Picasso and Braque were collaborating, painting largely interior scenes that included references to music, such as musical instruments or sheet music. Their works during this time encouraged viewers to focus on the stylistic innovations of Cubism rather than the specificity of the subject matter.
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Proto-Cubist work: angular, fractured forms
Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is often considered a proto-Cubist work. It is also credited with being the first Cubist painting. The forms of the five female nudes in the painting become fractured, angular shapes. The painting is characterised by a radical flattening of the picture plane, breaking it up into geometric shards. The body of the standing woman in the centre is composed of angles and sharp edges. The cloth wrapped around her lower body and her body itself are given the same amount of attention as the negative space around them, as if all are in the foreground and equally important.
The term proto-Cubism (or Early Cubism) refers to an intermediary transition phase in the history of art from 1906 to 1910. It is considered the first experimental phase of an art movement that would become more extreme, known from 1911 as Cubism. Proto-Cubist works are characterised by a radical geometrization of form and a limited colour palette. They typically depict objects in geometric schemas of cubic or conic shapes.
The proto-Cubist phase was followed by the development of Analytical Cubism from 1910 to 1912. During this period, Picasso and Georges Braque's works became so similar that their paintings were almost indistinguishable. They favoured right-angle and straight-line construction, with simplified colour schemes of muted tones and monochromatic hues. Their paintings depicted complex, multiple views of objects, which were reduced to overlapping opaque and transparent planes.
The Cubist style emphasised the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting traditional techniques of perspective, modelling, and chiaroscuro. Cubist painters presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects.
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Influences: African art, Paul Cézanne
The early-20th-century avant-garde art movement of Cubism is often credited as beginning with Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon', which included elements of Cubist style. However, the movement was also pioneered by Georges Braque, with his 1908 painting 'Houses at L'Estaque' being described by a critic as "bizarreries cubiques" ("cubic oddities").
The development of Cubism was influenced by African art, particularly the highly stylised, non-naturalistic tribal masks of the Makonde people of north Tanzania, which present a vivid human image. The masks' geometric shapes and angles inspired Picasso, who said:
> "A head is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth, which can be distributed in any way you like."
Other artists influenced by African art include Amedeo Modigliani, whose work features elongated shapes and almond eyes, and Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, whose work features bold angular brushstrokes.
Paul Cézanne is also considered a key precursor to the development of Cubism, particularly through his revolutionary approach to form and perspective. Although he was never a Cubist himself, his exploration of how to depict three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane laid the groundwork for artists like Picasso and Braque. Cézanne often depicted objects from slightly different perspectives in the same painting, foreshadowing the Cubist practice of showing multiple viewpoints at once. His focus on the underlying structure of objects, rather than their exact outward appearance, also became fundamental to Cubism, as artists shifted their emphasis from realistic representation to an exploration of form and spatial relationships.
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Frequently asked questions
Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' is often considered the first proto-Cubist work.
The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles is credited with coining the term "Cubism" after seeing the landscapes painted by Georges Braque in 1908 at L'Estaque.
Cubist paintings are characterised by the use of geometric shapes, the rejection of traditional techniques of perspective, modelling, and foreshortening, and the exploration of multiple perspectives.
