Cubism is highly influential visual art style of the 20th century. It was created mainly by the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1914. It emphasized flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, this rejected the traditionl techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro. It refuted theories that art should imitate nature. Cubist painters presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects.
Cubism got its name from remarks that the critic Louis Vauxcelles about Braque´s 1908 painting "Houses T L'Estaque" that it was composed of cubes. Nevertheless, it was "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by Picasso in 1907 that led to the new style.
The development of this movement, which was from 1910 to 1912, is often referred to as Analyticxal Cubism. The works created by Picasso and Braque during this time are almost indistinguishable from one another because they are so similar. They both favored right-angle and straight-line costruction. Their color schemes were almost a monochromatic scale so the viewer would not get distracted from the primary interest of the artist: the structure of form.
After 1912, a new phase called Synthetic Cubism appeared. This focuses on emphasizing the combination, or synthesis, of forms in the picture. Color has a strong role in this works, shapes are larger and more decorative, smooth and rough surfaces are contrasted, and foreign materials might be pasted to the canvas in combination with paint. This technique is called collage and further emphasizes the differences in texture and aasks what is reality and what is illusion.
Some other painters that adopted and developed this art style are Fernand Leger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Juan Gris, Roger de la Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger. This movement, although mainly linked to painting, also influenced sculpture and architechture in the 20th century. The major cubist sculptors were Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Lipchitz. It can be seen in the shapes of the houses Le Corbusier, a Swiss arquitect, designed as well.
This movement was a revolutionry approach of representing reality, they had different views of subjects in the same picture, whih resulted in it looking fragmented and abstracted.
According to artstory.org, post-impressionism encompasses a wide range of distinct artistic styles that all share the common motivation of responding to the opticality of the Impressionist movement. The stylistic variationns range from scientifically oriented Neo-Impressionism to lush Symbolism, but they are all concentrated on the subjective vision of the artist. Painting became a window to the soul and mind instead of a window onto the world.
Post-Impressionist era became an influence to some groups in the 20th century, like the Expressionists, and some contemporary movements like the identity-related Feminist Art.
Key Ideas:
Artists looked to connect with the viewers of their art on a deeper, more personal level. They looked into their memories and emotions to do so and symbolic and personal meanings were important to them as well.
The aesthetic vision of the post-impressionist artists was dominated by structure, order, and the optical effects of color. They used color and shape to describe their surroundings instead of just representing them.
Most post-impressionist artists focused on abstract from and pattern when applying the paint onto the canvas. This paved way for the radical modernist exploration of abstraction int eh 20th century.
Post-Impressionism has been grouped into two general stylistic trends:
- The structured or geometric style
This was the precursor to Cubism.
- The expressive or non-geometric side
This led to Abstract Expressionism
Claude Monet, the famous French painter who gave name to Impressionism, altered the path of painting in 1872. He achieved this through Impression, Sunrise in which he used each visible stroke to record exactly how the light fell upon the steamships and the water.
The core membership of Post-Impressionism was conformed by Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas.
The Impressionist artists eventually became known as Post-Impressionist artists, this term grouped together varying individual artistic styles from the artists themselves.
Paris was the fount of Post-Impressionism. The life of the city was no longer the dominant subject for artists because of the emphasis on symbolic and expressive content.
Georges Seurat was the one that broke with Impressionism by developing a style of painting known as Pointillism. The largest stylistic movement of Seurat is known as Neo-Impressionism, chromo-luminarism or divisionism. He explored a new scientific point of view for color and extended the interest in optics for Impressionist artists.
Pablo Picasso was born in Spain, 1881. He was raised in Spain before he moved to France and spent most of his adult life working there as an artist. He created more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and other items, among those were costumes and theater sets.
His full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picass ws born on October 25, 1881 in Málaga Spain. He died on April 8, 1973. He was a spanish expatriate painter sculptor, printmaker, ceraicist, stage designer and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He was, along with Georges Braque, the creator of Cubism.
Picasso's work is considered radical. He had profound empathy, visionary creativity and reverence for is technical mastery. These qualities distinguished him as a revolutionary artist. Picasso devoted most of his life to an artistic production that he believed would keep him alive and through this he contributed to modern art of the 20th century.
Pablo Picasso's artistic style changed so much throughout his life that it doesn´t look like only one artist did it. He insisted that his work was not indicative of radical shifts, but rather of his dedication to objectively evaluating for each piece the for and techniques best suited to achieve his desired effect.
Art critics and historians break up Picasso´s life into periods:
The Blue Period:
The Blue Period lasted from 1901 to 1904. This period was called that way because most of his paintings were dominated by the color blue during this years. Picasso moved to Paris to open his own studio, but he was depressed and lonely because of the death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas. During this period he depicted scenes of poverty, anguish, sadness, isolation and mostly in shades of blue and green. His most famous paintings from this period are "Blue Nude", "La Vie", and "The Old Guitarist", all from 1903.
The Rose Period:
In 1905, Picasso had mostly overcome the depression he was in during the previous years of his life and he fell in love. His artistic styles and paintings gravitated more towards warmer colors, such as beiges, pinks and reds. This period lasted from 1904 to 1906. He fell in love with the model Fernande Olivier and was prosperos thanks to the patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. His most famous paintings from this year were "Family at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06), and "Two Nudes"(1906).
Picasso pioneered Cubism next to Georges Braques. In 1907, he produced a painting tt is said to have been the precursor and inspiration of Cubism. This painting is called "Les Demoiselles dAvignon". It depicts five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with geometic figures, with splotches of blue, green, and gray. His early Cubist paintings include "Three Women" (1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909), and "Girl with Mandolin" (1910). These first works are known as his Analytic Cubist. His later Cubist works are knon as his Synthetic Cubism and these paintings include "Still Life with Chair Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14), and "Three Musicians" (1921).
His works from 1918 to 1927 are knon as his Classical Period, a return to Realism. During the outbreak of WWI, he becae more somber and worried by the depiction of reality. His works from this period are "Three Women at the Spring" (1921), "Two Women Runnning on the Beach/The Race" (1922), and "The Pipes of Pan" (1923).
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die havingleft undone.
One of the most famous painters of our world is Vincent Willem van Gogh, a post-impressionist painter. He was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands. van Gogh died in France on July 29, 1890, when he was 37 due to a gunshot wound. He always struggled with mental illnesses and was poor throughout his life. His works were not recognized during his lifetime, so he died believing he would never get any recognition in this world.
Since he started painting he completed over 2,100 art pieces. He had 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolor paintings, drawings, and sketches.
Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
Some of van Gogh's most recognized art pieces are:
Starry Night
Sunflowers
Wheatfield with Crows
Self-portraits
When van Gogh was 15, his family was struggling with money issues and he was forced to leave school to start working and helping his family with the income. He was an educated man, fluent in French, German, and English. He managed to get a job at an art dealership that belonged to his uncle. By 1873, he was transferred to London. While in London he started to get to know better the English culture and was infatuated with it. He became a fan of the well-known authors Charles Dickens and George Eliot.
van Gogh fell in love with Eugenie Loyer, who was the daughter of his landlady. She rejected his marriage proposal and he had a breakdown. He threw away all his books except for the Bible and dedicated his life to God. He was fired from his job because he started telling people they shouldn't buy the "worthless art".
He continued to then teach a Methodist boys' school and preached to a congregation. He was raised in a religious family, it wasn't until that moment in his life when he started taking religion seriously. He hoped to become a minister and prepared to take the admissions exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. He studied for a whole year but then refused to take the Latin exam because he said it was a dead language of poor people, therefore he was denied entrance to the school.
This same situation was repeated in the Church of Belgium in 1878. He volunteered to move to a poor coal mine in southern Belgium. Preachers used to be sent there as punishment. He drew pictures of miners and their families, preached and ministered the sick. He was called "Christ of the Coal Mines". The evangelical committees were not pleased with van Gogh's lifestyle. Because of this, they refused to renew his contract and he had to find something else to do.
"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."
In December 1888, van Gogh was just living on coffee, bread, and absinthe in France. He was feeling sick. After this, everyone could tell he wasn't just feeling physically bad but his mental health wasn't the best either. During this time it is suspected that he ate paint and sipped on turpentine.
Since his brother, Theo, was worried about him, he offered Paul Gauguin money so he would take care of van Gogh in Arles, France. After a month they spent all most of their time arguing and one night, Gauguin got tired of it and walked out. When Gauguin turned around, he saw a van Gogh holding a razor in his hand. Later, van Gogh ended up in a brothel and paid for a prostitute, he had blood pouring from his hand and he offered her his ear. He asked the prostitute to keep it carefully.
One day, July 27, 1890, he went out to paint with a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest. He was later found in his room bleeding because the bullet did not kill him. His brother, Theo, had helped him sell his art and in May that year gave Vincent a stern talk about his financial state. Vincent had interpreted this talk as Theo not wanting to sell his art anymore which would mean that Vincent would not be getting that income. He was really worried about his future and what was going to happen with his life after that.
After being found, Vincent van Gogh was taken to the hospital and his brother was called. When Theo arrived, Vincent was sitting up and smoking a pipe. After a few days, van Gogh asked his brother to take him home. Two days later, on July 29, 1890, he died at age 37 in the arms of his brother.
"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
The development of this movement, which was from 1910 to 1912, is often referred to as Analyticxal Cubism. The works created by Picasso and Braque during this time are almost indistinguishable from one another because they are so similar. They both favored right-angle and straight-line costruction. Their color schemes were almost a monochromatic scale so the viewer would not get distracted from the primary interest of the artist: the structure of form.
Some other painters that adopted and developed this art style are Fernand Leger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Juan Gris, Roger de la Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger. This movement, although mainly linked to painting, also influenced sculpture and architechture in the 20th century. The major cubist sculptors were Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Lipchitz. It can be seen in the shapes of the houses Le Corbusier, a Swiss arquitect, designed as well.
