Cubism

Cubism was an avant-garde art movement that emerged in early-20th-century Paris, transforming painting and visual arts while also inspiring innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. The movement analyzed subjects, breaking them apart and reassembling them into abstract forms. Rather than showing objects from a single angle, artists depicted them from multiple viewpoints to place the subject in a broader context. Often called the most influential art movement of the 1900s, the term "Cubism" broadly refers to works created in Paris neighborhoods like Montmartre and Montparnasse, or near Paris in Puteaux, during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque pioneered Cubism together, later joined by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger. A key influence was the way Paul Cézanne represented three-dimensional form in his late works. A retrospective of Cézanne’s paintings appeared at the 1904 Salon d’Automne, with his current works shown at the 1905 and 1906 Salons, followed by two memorial retrospectives after his death in 1907.

In France, Cubism spawned offshoots like Orphism, abstract art, and later Purism. Its impact spread widely across the arts and popular culture. Cubism introduced collage as a modern art form. In France and elsewhere, movements such as Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl, and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Early Futurist paintings shared Cubism’s fusion of past and present, and its depiction of a subject from different views at once or in sequence—known as multiple perspective, simultaneity, or multiplicity. Constructivism was influenced by Picasso’s method of building sculpture from separate pieces. Common threads among these movements included the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and a connection to mechanization and modern life.

Scholars have divided Cubism’s history into phases. In one scheme, the first phase, called Analytic Cubism—a term coined later by Juan Gris—was a short but highly influential radical movement in France between 1910 and 1912. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, generally ran from about 1912 to 1914, marked by simpler shapes, brighter colors, and experiments with texture and pattern, such as using newspaper print and patterned paper. Synthetic Cubism remained vital until around 1919, when Surrealism gained popularity. English art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme with three phases: “Early Cubism” (1906–1908), when the movement was first developed in Picasso and Braque’s studios; “High Cubism” (1909–1914), when Juan Gris became an important figure after 1911; and “Late Cubism” (1914–1921), the final phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement. Cooper’s restrictive use of these terms to focus on Braque, Picasso, Gris (from 1911), and Léger (to a lesser extent) implied a deliberate value judgment.

Cubism flourished between 1907 and 1911. Picasso’s 1907 painting *Les Demoiselles d’Avignon* is often seen as a proto-Cubist work. In 1908, critic Louis Vauxcelles reviewed Braque’s exhibition at Kahnweiler’s gallery, calling him a daring man who despises form, “reducing everything, places and figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes.” Vauxcelles also noted that Matisse had said Braque submitted a painting “made of little cubes” to the 1908 Salon d’Automne. Critic Charles Morice repeated Matisse’s words, referring to Braque’s little cubes. The viaduct at l’Estaque inspired Braque to create three paintings marked by simplified form and deconstructed perspective. Braque’s 1908 *Houses at l’Estaque* (and related works) led Vauxcelles, in *Gil Blas* on 25 March 1909, to call them “bizarreries cubiques” (cubic oddities). Gertrude Stein described landscapes Picasso made in 1909, such as *Reservoir at Horta de Ebro*, as the first Cubist paintings. The first organized group exhibition by Cubists took place at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in spring 1911, in a room called “Salle 41,” featuring works by Metzinger, Gleizes, Léger, Delaunay, and Le Fauconnier—but none by Picasso or Braque. By 1911, Picasso was recognized as Cubism’s inventor, though Braque’s importance and precedence were argued later regarding his treatment of space, volume, and mass in the L’Estaque landscapes. However, art historian Christopher Green noted that “this view of Cubism is associated with a distinctly restrictive definition of which artists are properly to be called Cubists,” marginalizing those who exhibited at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants. As early as 1920, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler claimed that Cubist depictions of space, mass, time, and volume support the flatness of the canvas, though this was criticized in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Clement Greenberg. Contemporary views of Cubism are complex, shaped partly in response to the “Salle 41” Cubists, whose methods were too distinct from those of Picasso and Braque to be seen as merely secondary. Alternative interpretations have thus developed, including wider views that encompass artists later associated with the “Salle 41” group.