/ˈkjuː.bɪz.əm/
Cubism
noun · art movement
Origin and method
Picasso and Braque read Cézanne intensely after the 1907 Cézanne memorial retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. Their analytic Cubist work of 1909–1912 takes Cézanne's primitive analysis — the cylinder, sphere, cone, "all placed in perspective" — and removes the spatial-coherence clause. The volumes remain identifiable as primitive solids, but they no longer cohere into a single perspectival space; multiple simultaneous viewpoints onto the same primitive flatten the picture plane.
Phases
Analytic Cubism (1909–1912): monochromatic palette, fragmented multi-viewpoint geometry, recognisable subject matter under heavy abstraction. Synthetic Cubism (1912–1914): reintroduction of colour and collage; the deconstructed primitives recombine into simplified flat shapes.
Legacy
Cubism's influence extends through Léger's mechanical figures, the Russian Constructivists via Malevich, the Bauhaus foundation curriculum, and most subsequent twentieth-century painting that engages with primitive geometric structure. The Bauhaus drew on Cubist primitive analysis at least as much as on Cézanne directly when Itten built his Vorkurs in 1919.
References
- Cooper, Douglas. The Cubist Epoch. Phaidon (1971). ISBN 0-7148-1456-3.
- Karmel, Pepe. Picasso and the Invention of Cubism. Yale (2003). ISBN 0-300-09435-6.
- Rubin, William. Cézanne: The Late Work. MoMA (1977). ISBN 0-87070-225-8.