Cubism and ways of perception

The movement was at first given its name in derision. Like Impressionism, Cubism encountered general hostility and incomprehension. It was after all as nothing that had been perceived and expressed previously.

Its creators, Picasso, Braque, Gris and Leger, had always denied being theorists and accepted the term ‘cubist’ with initial reserve. The history of Cubism falls into three phases: Cezanne, analytical and synthetic. The period of which spanned seven years from 1907. It was in the spring of that year Picasso that had completed Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and with it a kind of violent simplification was born. Completely without the use of chiaroscuro, we are presented with the action of carving rather than only the completed figures.

The new aesthetic movement could be more distinctly seen in Picasso’s landscapes of 1908, intuitive with him and deductive with Braque. They worked as part of a larger collective, Bateau-Lavoir, and each other’s ideas made for rich dialogue. Braque fresh from Impressionism and fauvism controlled by austere sense of form. Picasso the instinctive draughtsman, tried to introduce colour into his work. Each on his own was striving to find the same solutions by developing whatever quality he lacked.

They made a study of the fundamental problem of painting: the representation of coloured volume on a flat surface. The history of cubism is that of successive solutions discovered to resolve this difficulty. The result was a new language, lyrical and conceptual at the same time. The new representations put an end to appearances observed since the Renaissance.

Braque and Picasso tried to define permanent properties of objects and their stability in a closed space. That, without the use of light or perspective and through a geometrical crystallization inspired by Cezanne. For this reason they were restrained in choice of theme to trees, houses, fruit-bowls, bottles and later musical instruments. These could all be reduced to geometric shapes and easily distinguished by the observer.

They were therefore less interested in making an inventory of the world as they were in creating a language which would renew its significance.

The 1914 war dispersed the creators of Cubism, each to follow the course of his own artistic destiny. The collective exaltation of those seven heroic years to 1914, will never be lost however.