19th Century Art First Question

19th Century Art

FIRST QUESTION - THREE PHASES OF CUBISM

Considered one of the most influential art movements of the twentieth century, Cubism defined not only a transformative period of art but influenced the careers of the individual artists who directed the movement as well.

Cubism is traditionally divided into three phases: The proto-cubist, or Cezanne Phase, when Picasso and Braque, both considered the innovators and initiators of the Cubist movement, first followed the guidance and advice of Paul Cezanne and began treating nature in their art as consisting of the "cone the sphere and the cylinder" (ArtLex, ¶2); the Hermetic or Analytic Cubism period when cubism had been defined as an art form, and the Synthetic Cubism or Collage period of 1912-1919 when later cubism moved into collage.

Early Proto-Cubist Period:

In 1905, when Braque was still fascinated with Fauvist influences of Matisse and others, Picasso had left his native Barcelona for Paris. His work, at the time, was far removed from the sensuality and intellectual aspects of the art that he witnessed in the salons of Paris. Still concerned with morality and compassion, he depicted lonely figures in a world of beggars and circus performers. Still, even in these early works, such as "Girl on a Ball" (fig 1), one can see the foreshadowing of Picasso's cubist style with the flattened space and the use of the geometric forms of sphere and ball. In this painting, one can see dialectic between the depiction of objects in space, and the affirmation of the flat picture surfaces (Rosenblum, 10).

While Picasso was still painting human figures of despair in allegorical scenes, Braque was working within the confines of Impressionism with his landscapes and still life. Still loyal to Fauvist principles of "exuberant color," Braque nevertheless became greatly affected by a Cezanne exhibit at the Salon d'Automne in 1907, the same year he first met Picasso. That year, Picasso had spent much of it working on "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Figure 2) in which its angular forms owned much to his obsession, at the time, with African masks. These two influences, Cezanne and primitive African art, were to have a considerable influence on the Cubist movement in general. In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso gives the women faces that resemble African masks, and twists their positions to create multi-viewpoints. Braque was excited when he saw this painting of Picasso's and realized that here too, was someone breaking with traditional Western single viewpoint perspective" (Chilvers, Cubism, ¶ 2).

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

The two artists were very unlike each other in temperament, but they forged a friendship and artistic relationship that was to have a profound influence on art, together creating the movement known as Cubism.

Braque had already been moving closer to Cezanne with his insistence on analyzing the solid forms in his work. (Rosenblum, 32). Cezanne had earlier begun painting landscapes in terms of volume and we can see that influence in Braque's landscapes painted in L'Estaque. Braque traveled with Raol Dufy in 1908 to L'Estaque in Province, a site of many of Cezanne's landscape works and it was here that Braque produced a series of landscapes of his own clearly demonstrated the new influences being exerted upon him. His "Houses at l'Estaque" (Fig 3), demonstrated his new use of simplified form and more muted color usage. When these new type of paintings were exhibited at the Daniel Henry Kahnweiler Gallery, the critic Louis Vauxcelles gave Cubism it's name when he declared "M Braque scorns form and reduces everything, sites, figures and houses, to geometric schemes, to cubes" (Danto, 1998,¶3). This criticism, according to Arthur Danto completely failed to "capture the openness, the tentativeness, the nuance of Braque's efforts as an artist" and was, according to Danto a terrible simplification, but the term stuck. Danto argues that Cubism was just a concept others found to describe what Picasso and Braque had invented but had little relationship to what the artists actually believed they were doing. According to Danto, Picasso had said, "We simply wanted to express what was in us" (¶ 2).

Figure 4: Picasso, Landscape

Figure 3:Georges Braque, Viaduct at L'estaque (1908)

1908)

What Picasso and Braque created together, nevertheless was revolutionary, influencing a major transformation in Western art. Their discoveries in Cubism altered centuries of prevailing traditions since the Renaissance. Cubism replaced perspective systems that had precisely placed discrete objects in their surrounding space with a radically new fusion of mass and void, an unstable structure of fragmented planes and angles in uncertain spatial positions. No longer could the assumption hold true, that art was an illusory representation of an objective reality, but rather, art was now to be a reality in itself. Cubism changed dense objects into weightless transparencies, where sharp lines dissolved into the space around it; eventually, in the later periods of Synthetic Cubism, even the objects themselves could be metamorphosed into other objects. No longer could perception and its artistic representations be linearly tied to absolute objects existing outside of us. Perceptual reality, through these artistic images, was seen as ephemeral, shifting, and impermanent.

This new perception of reality, represented in the Cubist paintings of Braque and Picasso, was paralleling major transformations of how humans were experiencing changes in their world in general. With new communications and transportation abilities, such as the telephone, telegram, airplane and cinema, as well as the scientific discoveries of Einstein's relativity theory and its concept of a space-time continuum where time and space were no longer different dimensions, these inventions and new paradigms were breaking down the so-called objective world as it had been known to previous generations. Stephen Kern looks at the period between 1880 and 1918 as reality-shattering, in his classic book "The Culture of Time and Space," where he posits that these sweeping changes created a whole new way people began to experience space and time, which in turn changed their conscious perception of the world (Kern, 1983).

Cubism became the artistic language to express these changes in perception; even the spectator, seeing Cubist art, could have the realization that no single interpretation of the shifting shapes, spaces and textures would ever be completely resolved (Rosenblum, 9), it's ambiguity being the one certainty.

When we look particularly at the multi-viewpoint paintings of this period, (Fig 4a) it is as though we were taking in the whole object simultaneously, i.e. walking "around the painting like a sculpture. There is a presence of a space-time simultaneity sparing us of a linear time event, i.e. taking in each perspective in separate moments; instead we see the whole object in one moment through our conceptualization.

Space-time has now been incorporated into the perceived object itself. This art was as radical as the fundamental changes taking place in the world at the time. Figure 4a:Picasso: "Head of Medical Student": Study for Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

Hermetic or Analytic Cubism 1909-1911:

Joseph Golding called the years between the autumn of 1910 and the autumn of 1912 the "look alike years"(1990, ¶16). Yet, according to Golding, it was Braque that took the lead during this period, reaching toward a greater abstraction in his vision, although Golding feels that Picasso was more daring in his use of the multi-viewpoint perspective (¶11).

This was the time period in which Braque and Picasso's working relationship was at its closest and when the likenesses between their works was so great that it was sometimes hard for even the experts to tell them apart. Nevertheless, it is Braque, according to Golding, who showed the way and worked out many of the technical challenges that create a new "vocabulary of painting (¶11).. During this period, Braque and Picasso worked in nearby studios at Montmartre. This period of their Analytic Cubist work is sometimes characterized as "High Cubism" as it was a period that reached an certain stability. Another term used is "Hermetic Cubism" to convey the idea that Cubism during this period reached its most cryptic and "near-abstract" state. (Chilvers, Cubism ¶ 5). The Analytic Phase was called such because in this period one the artists are taking objects apart, analyzing them into their compound elements and then reorganizing them into a new order on the canvas.

The earlier Cubist paintings of Braque and Picasso had been relatively solid in mass, and the pictoral representations of trees and houses and human figures were easily recognized and discernable (Figures 3 and 4). Now their works become more fragmented into a large number of small, complex planes, intersecting and fusing with each other and the surrounding space. Color became even more de-emphasized and the paintings of this period are almost monochromatic in their muted browns and grays. Examples such as Braque's "The Portuguese" (Fig 5) and Picasso's "The Accordionist" (Figure 6) demonstrate the Analytic Cubist period as well as how close the two artists styles were during 1911.

Fig 6: Picasso, The Accordionist (1911) Fig 5: Braque, The Portuguese, (1911)

Other examples of their close collaboration and similar development during this period, what Golding described as similarities "so great that even the trained and experienced eye has occasionally to pause and blink" (Golding, 1990,¶ 16) are Picasso's "La Guitariste" (Fig 7) and Braque's

Woman with a Guitar" (Fig 8).

In Braque's "Woman with a Guitar we can see the foreshadowing of the Synthetic Cubism period, when he introduces stenciling and lettering, a practice that Picasso was soon to imitate.

Figure 7: Picasso, Le Guitariste"(1910

Figure 8: Braque "Woman with a Guitar" (1913

Synthetic Cubism/Collage 1912-1914:

Braque was beginning to experiment further now by mixing materials such as sand and sawdust into his paint to create a more textured, built- up look and what Chilvers (Cubism ¶ 7) describes as further emphasizing that the pictures were objects in and of themselves and had their own integrity rather than representing something. Picasso took this a step further when he began to create "collages." This was a major turning point in the evolution of Cubism, according to Greenberg, in his classic essay on "Collage" in "Art and Culture." Many art critics, according to Greenberg say that Picasso and Braque used collage as a way of returning to a "renewed contact" with reality in the face of increasing abstraction in their paintings but Greenberg insists that using the term "reality" in art is highly suspect (Greenberg, 1958).

Nevertheless, in their mutual influence on each other, Braque took this to another level when he created his "papier colle', consisting of works made of pieces of decorative paper. This period did bring back more color to their works and revolved to a more "decorative, relaxed " art, much less abstract and cerebral, incorporating everyday, familiar objects (Chilvers, Cubism ¶ 7). Figures 9 and 10 are examples of the reversal of the Analytic Cubist phase, where Picasso and Braque's works now demonstrate a richer texture of images that are now "built up" from preexisting elements, rather than being created from breaking up the components into fragments.

Figure 10: Braque, Still Life with Glass and Letters (1914)

Figure 9: Picasso, Pipe, Glass and Bottle of Rum (1914)

In the Synthetic Phase of Cubism, Juan Gris starts to play as significant a role as Braque and Picasso, and many artists were now won over to the Cubist movement including Fernard Leger. Gris and Leger are often considered the third and fourth major Cubist, respectively (¶ 8).

Figure 12: Leger, Exit the Ballets Russe (1914)

Figure 11: Juan Gris, Breakfast (1914)

Cubism, by 1914, became the dominant, avant-garde movement influencing artists throughout the world. World War I interrupted cubism's trajectory, but it again re-emerged at the end of the war. Cubism proved very adaptable and was the starting point for such other movements as, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism, as well as being a stimulant for leading artists of the time,(not only painters, but sculptors too), to adapt Cubist ideas to other mediums such as sculpture and architecture, by opening up forms to include a fusion of space. Picasso also experimented in Cubist sculpture.

Several Czech architects, members of the "Group of Plastic Artists" such as Josef Gocar, (Fig 13), incorporated Cubist ideas and "broke up" the facades of their buildings with abstract forms that were reminiscent of the Analytic Phase of Cubism (¶ 10). Cubism also exerted its influence on the applied arts. Gocar designed Cubist furniture and Art Deco was highly influenced by the Cubist movement.

Figure 13: Josef Gocar," Die Betonung von Gesimsen,"

QUESTION #2: RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM:

The avant-garde of Russian art between 1910 and 1930 was composed of a group of artists seeking to define themselves in the midst of great social and political turbulence wrought by the overthrowing of the old order in Europe and Russia, the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Chaos can bring great change, and these tumultuous times opened up a time for vast artistic experimentation influenced by utopian ideals and the possibilities of new relationships between art and society. These artists were fueled by a desire to contribute to a new social order that would bring harmony and unity (Marquardt & Roman, 1).

In Russia, a tension had existed since the mid- 19th century between native sources and Western influence. By 1908, a revival of Russian folk art was influencing artists who began painting with primitive, bold colors and simplified, childlike designs (3). This return to a more primitive, indigenous material was counteracted by another group of artists who were influenced by Western, modern art developments, especially Cubism, and in 1910, a group calling themselves the "Knave of Diamonds" was formed. A subgroup broke off from this movement, called the "Donkey's Tail," who favored the more traditional approach to art (3).

Kazimir Malevich, a Russian painter, writer and designer of the time, and considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, was a synthesizer of both Western, abstract influence and native art forms. Malevich was heavily influenced by Cubism and his primitive themes were rendered in an architectural and cylindrical style (3). Malevich was famous for his geometric style stage set for the "Victory Over the Sun" (Fig. 14), performed in Moscow in the winter of 1913.

Figure 14: KazimirMalevich, "Stage set and Costumes for Victory over the Sun" (1913)

It was here that the movement called "Suprematism" was born. Suprematism, for Malevich, was a synthesis of geometric abstract forms with a native Russian mystical tradition. Malevich, with his mystical leanings, hoped that he could break free from "the burden of the object, and swim free in the white abyss " and his work became increasingly abstract.

Except for a brief interlude of adding colors and a more painterly approach, by 1918, Malevich had returned to more austere, pure ideals with his "Suprematist Composition: White on White" (Fig 15). Seeming to be able to go no further along this road, Malevich turned to teaching and writing. He did make a trip to Bauhaus in 1927 and in the late 20's returned to his more figurative paintings but by this time he was out of favor with Stalin's reactionary "Social Realism." He died in poverty, after being by the Stalinist regime but he remained revered by the artistic community (Golding, 1991, ¶ 1).

Figure 15: Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition:White on White (1918)

Constructivism originated in Russia in 1914, becoming central until a few years after the Revolution of 1917, having been prefigured by the Suprematist movement with its geometric forms and use of industrial materials and abstract shapes. By the early 1920's, Constructivism had spread to the West and had considerable influence on a variety of artists in the fields of painting, sculpture and photography. Constructivism is distinguished by its use of manufacturing materials, like glass, plastic, metal, all arranged in formal relationships. Vladimir Tatlin, considered the father of Russian Constructivism, had visited Paris in 1914 and the sculptures of Picasso greatly influenced his work.

After the revolution, with its enthusiastic, utopian ideals of building a better society, machinery was seen as having a liberating force upon the working class and in this climate, Tatlin's investigations of industrial materials really took off (Chilvers, Constructivism ¶ 2).

After his return from Paris, Tatlin began making Relief Constructions using sheet metal, wood and wire. He achieved his greatest fame however, as the architect who designed the huge Monument to the Third International, also known as "Tatlin's Tower." Planned by Tatlin in 1920, the tower was to be made of iron, glass and steel and to dwarf the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The design included building blocks with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds, once an hour, a day and a year, and serve different accommodation functions. Prohibitive costs prevented Tatlin from executing the plan so it became part of the archives of visionary architecture (Fig. 16). Constructivism was hard to separate from the politics of the time. With revolutionary zeal, many artists proclaimed that "fine art was dead" and soon many applied artists embraced "Constructivism" which became the artistic model for angular designs being used for furniture, fabric, ceramics, as well as painting and sculpture (¶ 2).

Figure 16: Vladimir Tatlin, Model of the Project for the Monument to the Third International, 1920.

Artists, who did not wish to abandon fine art, immigrated to Europe and there developed a European or International Constructivism that was not concerned with art with a social purpose. They conceived of a purely abstract type of sculpture that nevertheless made use of industrial materials (¶ 3).