Cubism and Georges Braque

Cubism and Georges Braque

Cubism was an artistic movement that emerged in the early 1900’s in France. Trying to create a new way to view art, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braque led this ground-breaking art style. Influenced by Post-Impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne, Fauves, George Seurat as well recently discovered African art and African ceremonial headdress and tribal masks. This art movement “shattered naturalistic forms and space as they attempted to portray on a flat surface all aspects of what existed in three dimension.” (National Gallery of Art, 2010). By overlapping picture planes and using multiple perspectives it produced a geometrical or rather multi dimensional feel to the images by showing all sides of the subject matter depicted. Their “approach was related more to the way we see images in our ‘minds-eye’ rather than in real life, that is if we were to close our eyes and try to see a particular image it is often hard to visualize the ‘whole’ image, we usually see bits and pieces or fragmented parts.” (The Worldwide Art Gallery, 2010).

There are two distinct styles of cubism, analytic and synthetic. The first wave of cubism, Analytic Cubism (although some say the first wave was Facet Cubism) looks at all views of the image at once, it was a way of pulling apart the subjects into different planes. Color was almost non-existent, using muted earth tones; the focus was on the structure of the form itself. Although Analytical Cubism was influential it was short lived, this phase of the art movement only lasted roughly four years giving way to the second style of cubism, Synthetic Cubism. This form of cubism portrayed the image in

CUBISM AND GEORGES BRAQUE 4

basically a two dimensional view by utilizing different textures, contrasting surfaces and merging several objects together. Color, now important (unlike Analytic Cubism) was...