Cubism

Cubism, an avant-garde art movement originating in Paris during the early 20th century, profoundly transformed painting and the visual arts, while also stimulating significant artistic innovations across music, ballet, literature, and architecture.

In Cubism, subjects undergo analysis, deconstruction, and subsequent reassembly into abstract forms. Artists diverge from single-perspective depictions, instead presenting subjects from multiple viewpoints to convey a more comprehensive understanding. This movement is widely regarded as the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The designation cubism broadly encompasses diverse artworks created in Paris (specifically Montmartre and Montparnasse) or its vicinity (such as Puteaux) throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque collaboratively pioneered the Cubist movement, later joined by artists such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger. A significant precursor to Cubism was Paul Cézanne's late-period exploration of three-dimensional form. Cézanne's work was featured in a retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1904, with contemporary pieces exhibited at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne, and two posthumous commemorative retrospectives following his death in 1907.

Within France, Cubism spawned several derivative movements, including Orphism, various forms of abstract art, and subsequently Purism. The influence of Cubism extended broadly across both the fine arts and popular culture. Notably, Cubism pioneered collage as a modern artistic medium. In France and internationally, movements such as Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl, and Art Deco emerged as reactions to Cubist principles. Early Futurist paintings shared with Cubism the integration of past and present, alongside the depiction of a subject from multiple, simultaneous, or successive viewpoints—concepts also known as multiple perspective, simultaneity, or multiplicity. Constructivism, conversely, drew inspiration from Picasso's method of assembling sculptures from distinct components. Additional shared characteristics among these diverse movements encompass the faceting or geometric simplification of forms, and the thematic connection to mechanization and modern existence.

History

The historical trajectory of Cubism has been categorized into distinct phases by scholars. One classification identifies the initial phase as Analytic Cubism, a term retrospectively coined by Juan Gris. This period, spanning approximately 1910 to 1912 in France, constituted a radical and highly influential, albeit brief, art movement. The subsequent phase, Synthetic Cubism, is generally considered to have lasted from around 1912 to 1914, distinguished by simpler forms, more vibrant colors, and experimental use of texture and pattern, such as incorporating newspaper print or patterned paper. Synthetic Cubism maintained its prominence until approximately 1919, coinciding with the rise of the Surrealist movement. English art historian Douglas Cooper presented an alternative three-phase schema in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Cooper's framework includes "Early Cubism" (1906–1908), marking the movement's initial development in the studios of Picasso and Braque; "High Cubism" (1909–1914), during which Juan Gris became a significant figure (post-1911); and "Late Cubism" (1914–1921), which he defined as the final stage of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement. Cooper's selective application of these terms to differentiate the works of Braque, Picasso, Gris (from 1911), and to a lesser extent Léger, suggested an inherent value judgment.

Proto-Cubism: 1907–1908

Cubism experienced its formative development between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, is frequently identified as a proto-Cubist artwork.

In 1908, art critic Louis Vauxcelles, reviewing Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery, characterized Braque as an audacious artist who disregarded conventional form, stating he was "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes".

Vauxcelles further recalled Matisse's contemporaneous remark: "Braque has just sent in to the 1908 Salon d'Automne a painting made of little cubes." Critic Charles Morice subsequently echoed Matisse's observation, referring to Braque's "little cubes." The viaduct motif at l'Estaque served as an inspiration for Braque, leading him to create three paintings notable for their formal simplification and perspectival deconstruction.

In a 25 March 1909 article for Gil Blas, Vauxcelles coined the term bizarreries cubiques (cubic oddities) in response to Georges Braque's 1908 painting Houses at l'Estaque and associated artworks. Gertrude Stein identified Picasso's 1909 landscapes, including Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the inaugural Cubist paintings. The initial organized group exhibition of Cubist art occurred in the 'Salle 41' at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris during the spring of 1911. This display featured works by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, and Henri Le Fauconnier, notably excluding any contributions from Picasso or Braque.

By 1911, Picasso was widely acknowledged as the originator of Cubism; however, Braque's significant contributions and chronological precedence, particularly concerning his manipulation of space, volume, and mass in the L'Estaque landscapes, became subjects of later scholarly debate. Art historian Christopher Green observed that "this view of Cubism is associated with a distinctly restrictive definition of which artists are properly to be called Cubists," further stating that it involved "Marginalizing the contribution of the artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 [...]"

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler posited as early as 1920 that Cubist representations of space, mass, time, and volume reinforced, rather than undermined, the inherent flatness of the canvas. This assertion, however, faced considerable critique during the 1950s and 1960s, notably from Clement Greenberg.

Current perspectives on Cubism are multifaceted, partly shaped by the "Salle 41" Cubists, whose artistic approaches diverged significantly from those of Picasso and Braque, precluding their classification as merely derivative. Consequently, diverse interpretations of Cubism have emerged. Broader conceptualizations of Cubism encompass artists subsequently linked with the "Salle 41" group, such as Francis Picabia; the brothers Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Marcel Duchamp, who established the core of the Section d'Or (or the Puteaux Group) from late 1911; sculptors including Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Csaky, Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz, and Henri Laurens; and painters like Louis Marcoussis, Roger de La Fresnaye, František Kupka, Diego Rivera, Léopold Survage, Auguste Herbin, André Lhote, Gino Severini (post-1916), María Blanchard (post-1916), and Georges Valmier (post-1918). More fundamentally, Christopher Green contends that Douglas Cooper's terminology was "later undermined by interpretations of the work of Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger that stress iconographic and ideological questions rather than methods of representation."

John Berger articulated that "The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram: The diagram being a visible symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as signs not as imitations or recreations."

Early Cubism: 1909–1914

A notable distinction existed between the artists supported by Kahnweiler and those associated with the Salon Cubists. Before 1914, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a dedicated Parisian art dealer, provided financial backing to Picasso, Braque, Gris, and to a lesser degree, Léger, by securing exclusive purchasing rights to their creations in exchange for an annual income. Kahnweiler's clientele was restricted to a select group of connoisseurs. This patronage afforded the artists the autonomy to pursue their experimental endeavors in comparative seclusion. Picasso maintained his studio in Montmartre until 1912, whereas Braque and Gris continued to reside there until after the First World War. Léger, in contrast, was situated in Montparnasse.

Conversely, the Salon Cubists established their prominence primarily through consistent exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, both significant non-academic art exhibitions in Paris. Consequently, they were inherently more attuned to public reception and the imperative for broader communication. By 1910, a collective comprising Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, and Léger had begun to coalesce. Regular gatherings were held at Henri le Fauconnier's studio, situated near the boulevard du Montparnasse. These evening assemblies frequently featured literary figures like Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon. Alongside other emerging artists, this group sought to prioritize an exploration of form, contrasting with the Neo-Impressionist focus on color.

Louis Vauxcelles, in his 1910 review of the 26th Salon des Indépendants, briefly and vaguely characterized Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Léger, and Le Fauconnier as "ignorant geometers, reducing the human body, the site, to pallid cubes." A few months later, at the 1910 Salon d'Automne, Metzinger presented his highly fractured Nu à la cheminée (Nude), an artwork subsequently reproduced in both Du "Cubisme" (1912) and Les Peintres Cubistes (1913).

Cubism's initial public controversy arose from its exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants during the spring of 1911. This particular showing, featuring works by Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Le Fauconnier, and Léger, marked Cubism's first significant exposure to the general public. Among the Cubist pieces displayed, Robert Delaunay presented his Eiffel Tower, Tour Eiffel (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).

At the Salon d'Automne held in the same year, works by André Lhote, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Roger de La Fresnaye, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and František Kupka were exhibited alongside the Indépendants group from Salle 41. The exhibition received coverage in the October 8, 1911, issue of The New York Times. This publication followed Gelett Burgess's The Wild Men of Paris by one year and preceded the Armory Show by two years; the latter event introduced American audiences, accustomed to realistic art, to the experimental European avant-garde styles such as Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. Notably, the 1911 New York Times article featured works by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, and Metzinger, among others, that were dated prior to 1909 and had not been displayed at the 1911 Salon. The article bore the title The "Cubists" Dominate Paris' Fall Salon and the subtitle Eccentric School of Painting Increases Its Vogue in the Current Art Exhibition – What Its Followers Attempt to Do.

Among all the paintings on exhibition at the Paris Fall Salon none garnered as much attention as the extraordinary productions of the so-called "Cubist" school. In fact, dispatches from Paris suggest these works were undeniably the exhibition's primary highlight. [...]

Despite the perceived radicalism of "Cubist" theories, a considerable number of artists adhered to them. Georges Braque, André Derain, Picasso, Czobel, Othon Friesz, Herbin, and Metzinger were among those who signed canvases that captivated and astonished Parisian audiences.

What do they mean? Have those responsible for them taken leave of their senses? Is it art or madness? Who knows?

Salon des Indépendants

The 1912 Salon des Indépendants in Paris (20 March – 16 May 1912) featured the controversial presentation of Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, which provoked a scandal even among Cubist artists. The hanging committee, comprising his brothers and other Cubists, notably rejected the work. Despite its subsequent display at the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912 and the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Duchamp remained unforgiving towards his brothers and former colleagues for their censorship. Juan Gris, a newcomer to the Salon, exhibited his Portrait of Picasso (Art Institute of Chicago), while Metzinger presented two works, including La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse, 1911–1912, National Gallery of Denmark). Additionally, Delaunay's monumental La Ville de Paris (Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris) and Léger's La Noce (The Wedding, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris) were also on display.

Galeries Dalmau

In 1912, Galeries Dalmau hosted the world's inaugural declared group exhibition of Cubism (Exposició d'Art Cubista), featuring a controversial display by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, and Marcel Duchamp (Barcelona, 20 April – 10 May 1912). This Dalmau exhibition showcased 83 works by 26 artists. Jacques Nayral, due to his association with Gleizes, authored the Preface for the Cubist exhibition, which was subsequently fully translated and published in the newspaper La Veu de Catalunya. Notably, Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 made its debut exhibition here.

The Galeries Dalmau gained prominence as a significant contributor to the advancement and dissemination of modernism in Europe, largely due to extensive media attention in newspapers and magazines preceding, during, and following the exhibition. Although press coverage was widespread, it was not uniformly favorable. For instance, articles in the newspapers Esquella de La Torratxa and El Noticiero Universal featured caricatures accompanied by disparaging commentary, criticizing the Cubists. Art historian Jaime Brihuega observed that the Dalmau exhibition "undoubtedly generated considerable public stir, met with substantial skepticism."

A pivotal evolution in Cubism emerged in 1912 with the introduction of collage, in its modernist interpretation, by Braque and Picasso. Picasso is recognized for producing the inaugural Cubist collage, Still life With Chair Caning, in May 1912. However, Braque had previously created Cubist cardboard sculptures and papiers collés. Papiers collés typically incorporated fragments of quotidian paper items, such as newspaper, tablecloths, wallpaper, and sheet music. In contrast, Cubist collages integrated diverse materials; for example, Still-life With Chair Caning combined freely applied oil paint with commercially printed oilcloth on a single canvas.

Salon d'Automne

The Cubist exhibits at the 1912 Salon d'Automne provoked a scandal concerning the utilization of state-owned venues, including the Grand Palais, for displaying such art. The outrage expressed by politician Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué was prominently featured on the front page of Le Journal on October 5, 1912. This controversy escalated to the Municipal Council of Paris, culminating in a parliamentary debate within the Chambre des Députés regarding the allocation of public funds for hosting such artistic presentations. The Socialist deputy, Marcel Sembat, notably defended the Cubists.

Amidst this climate of public discontent, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes authored Du "Cubisme", which Eugène Figuière published in 1912 and subsequently translated into English and Russian in 1913. The exhibited works included Le Fauconnier's expansive piece Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears), currently housed at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and Joseph Csaky's sculpture Deux Femme, Two Women (now considered lost). Additionally, highly abstract paintings by Kupka, specifically Amorpha (located at The National Gallery, Prague), and Picabia's La Source (The Spring) (part of the Museum of Modern Art, New York collection), were also displayed.

Abstraction and the Ready-Made

The most radical manifestations of Cubism diverged from the practices of Picasso and Braque, who refrained from complete abstraction. Conversely, other Cubists, particularly František Kupka, and those designated as Orphists by Apollinaire (including Delaunay, Léger, Picabia, and Duchamp), embraced abstraction by entirely eliminating discernible subject matter. Kupka's two submissions to the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Amorpha-Fugue à deux couleurs and Amorpha chromatique chaude, were profoundly abstract (or nonrepresentational) and metaphysically inclined. Both Duchamp in 1912 and Picabia from 1912 to 1914 cultivated an expressive and evocative abstraction, exploring intricate emotional and sexual motifs. Commencing in 1912, Delaunay initiated a series of works titled Simultaneous Windows, succeeded by another series, Formes Circulaires, where he integrated planar compositions with vibrant prismatic colors. His departure from realistic imagery was nearly absolute, grounded in the optical properties of juxtaposed hues. Between 1913 and 1914, Léger created the series Contrasts of Forms, emphasizing color, line, and form similarly. Despite its abstract characteristics, Léger's Cubism was linked to themes of mechanization and contemporary existence. Apollinaire endorsed these nascent developments of abstract Cubism in Les Peintres cubistes (1913), advocating for a novel "pure" painting devoid of subject. Nevertheless, despite Apollinaire's application of the term Orphism, these diverse works resist classification under a singular artistic category.

Marcel Duchamp, whom Apollinaire also categorized as an Orphist, initiated another radical artistic evolution influenced by Cubism. The concept of the ready-made emerged from the dual premise that an artwork functions as an object (akin to a painting) and incorporates material detritus from the environment (similar to collage and papier collé in Cubist constructions and Assemblage). Duchamp's subsequent logical progression involved presenting mundane objects as autonomous artworks, solely representing their own existence. Illustratively, in 1913, he affixed a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool, and in 1914, he designated a bottle-drying rack as an independent sculptural piece.

The Section d'Or

The Section d'Or, alternatively referred to as the Groupe de Puteaux, comprised a collective of painters, sculptors, and critics affiliated with Cubism and Orphism. Established by several prominent Cubists, this group was active from approximately 1911 to 1914, gaining recognition following their contentious display at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants. The Salon de la Section d'Or, held at the Galerie La Boétie in Paris in October 1912, is widely considered the most significant Cubist exhibition prior to World War I, effectively introducing Cubism to a broad public. With over 200 works exhibited, the presentation of artworks spanning the artists' development from 1909 to 1912 imparted the exhibition with the character of a Cubist retrospective.

The group reportedly adopted the designation 'Section d'Or' to differentiate their approach from the more circumscribed interpretation of Cubism concurrently advanced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris's Montmartre district. This nomenclature also aimed to convey that Cubism constituted a continuation of a venerable tradition, rather than an isolated artistic phenomenon, given that the golden ratio had captivated Western intellectuals across various disciplines for over two millennia.

The conceptualization of the Section d'Or emerged from discussions among Metzinger, Gleizes, and Jacques Villon. Villon proposed the group's title subsequent to his reading of Joséphin Péladan's 1910 translation of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on Painting).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European artists began to engage with and appreciate art from African, Polynesian, Micronesian, and Native American cultures. Prominent figures like Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso found themselves captivated and influenced by the profound power and stylistic simplicity inherent in these non-Western artistic traditions. Approximately in 1906, Picasso was introduced to Matisse by Gertrude Stein, a period during which both artists had developed a nascent interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art, and African tribal masks. Their relationship evolved into a friendly rivalry, characterized by mutual competition throughout their careers, potentially catalyzing Picasso's entry into a new artistic phase by 1907, distinctly shaped by Greek, Iberian, and African artistic influences. Picasso's works from 1907 are often categorized as Protocubism, exemplified by Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which serves as a precursor to Cubism.

According to art historian Douglas Cooper, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne exerted significant influence on the genesis of Cubism, particularly impacting Picasso's paintings between 1906 and 1907. Cooper further asserts: "While the Demoiselles is commonly cited as the inaugural Cubist painting, this characterization is an overstatement. Although it represented a crucial initial stride toward Cubism, it does not fully embody the style. Its disruptive, expressionistic qualities even contradict the detached, realistic ethos of Cubism. Nonetheless, the Demoiselles logically serves as Cubism's foundational work, as it signifies the emergence of a novel pictorial language, wherein Picasso radically subverted established artistic norms, and from which all subsequent developments originated."

The assertion that Demoiselles represents the genesis of Cubism, particularly due to its apparent primitive art influences, faces a significant challenge, as art historian Daniel Robbins characterized such interpretations as "unhistorical." Robbins further contended that this common explanation "fails to give adequate consideration to the complexities of a flourishing art that existed just before and during the period when Picasso's new painting developed." From 1905 to 1908, a deliberate pursuit of novel artistic styles precipitated swift transformations in art throughout France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Russia. Impressionist artists had previously employed a dual perspective, while both Les Nabis and the Symbolists, who also held Cézanne in high esteem, flattened the pictorial plane, simplifying their subjects into fundamental geometric shapes. Neo-Impressionist compositional methods and thematic content, particularly evident in Georges Seurat's works such as Parade de Cirque, Le Chahut, and Le Cirque, constituted another crucial contributing factor. Furthermore, analogous developments were observed in literature and social philosophy.

Beyond Seurat, the foundational elements of Cubism are discernible in two distinct characteristics of Cézanne's later artistic output: firstly, his fragmentation of the painted surface into numerous multifaceted areas, which underscored the multiple perspectives inherent in binocular vision; and secondly, his inclination towards abstracting natural forms into basic geometric solids like cylinders, spheres, and cones. Nevertheless, Cubist artists extended this conceptual framework beyond Cézanne's initial explorations. They rendered all surfaces of depicted objects within a singular pictorial plane, creating the impression that every facet of an object was simultaneously visible. This innovative representational approach fundamentally transformed the visualization of objects in painting and art.

The scholarly examination of Cubism commenced in the late 1920s, initially drawing upon restricted data sources, primarily the perspectives of Guillaume Apollinaire. Subsequently, this research became heavily dependent on Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's 1920 publication, Der Weg zum Kubismus, which focused on the artistic trajectories of Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris. The classifications "analytical" and "synthetic," which arose later, have gained widespread acceptance since the mid-1930s. Both designations, however, represent retrospective historical impositions, formulated after the artistic developments they describe. Neither of these phases was identified by such terminology during the period when the associated artworks were produced. Daniel Robbins observed, "If Kahnweiler considers Cubism as Picasso and Braque, our only fault is in subjecting other Cubists' works to the rigors of that limited definition."

The conventional understanding of "Cubism," retrospectively constructed post facto to interpret the oeuvres of Braque and Picasso, has influenced the perception of other twentieth-century artists. This framework proves challenging to apply to painters like Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, and Henri Le Fauconnier, whose significant divergences from traditional Cubism prompted Kahnweiler to question their classification as Cubists. Daniel Robbins asserted, "To suggest that merely because these artists developed differently or varied from the traditional pattern they deserved to be relegated to a secondary or satellite role in Cubism is a profound mistake."

The etymology of the term "Cubism" frequently highlights Henri Matisse's 1908 reference to "cubes" in relation to a Braque painting, alongside its subsequent publication twice by critic Louis Vauxcelles in a comparable context. Nevertheless, the descriptor "cube" had been employed earlier, in 1906, by another critic, Louis Chassevent, who applied it not to Picasso or Braque, but specifically to Metzinger and Delaunay, stating:

"M. Metzinger functions as a mosaicist akin to M. Signac, yet he exhibits greater precision in the delineation of his color cubes, which convey the impression of mechanical fabrication [...]".

The critical application of the term "cube" extends as far back as May 1901, when Jean Béral, in his review of Henri-Edmond Cross's work at the Indépendants for Art et Littérature, remarked that Cross "employs a broad and square pointillism, creating a mosaic-like impression. One even wonders why the artist has not utilized cubes of solid, diversely colored material: they would form attractive facings." (Robert Herbert, 1968, p. 221)

The term "Cubism" gained widespread acceptance primarily in 1911, often associated with artists such as Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, and Léger. That same year, the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire formally endorsed the term for a collective of artists invited to exhibit at the Brussels Indépendants. Subsequently, in 1912, Metzinger and Gleizes authored and published Du "Cubisme" in anticipation of the Salon de la Section d'Or. This seminal work aimed to clarify the prevailing confusion surrounding the term and served as a significant defense of Cubism, which had previously generated public controversy following the 1911 Salon des Indépendants and the 1912 Salon d'Automne in Paris. As the inaugural theoretical treatise on Cubism, it articulated the artists' objectives and continues to be regarded as the most lucid and comprehensible exposition of the movement. The treatise emerged not merely from the collaboration of its two authors but also from discussions among the artistic circle that convened in Puteaux and Courbevoie. It further reflected the perspectives of the "artists of Passy," including Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, who reviewed portions of the text before its publication. A central concept elaborated in Du "Cubisme", widely recognized as a core Cubist technique, involves the simultaneous observation of a subject from multiple spatial and temporal vantage points, effectively fusing successive angles obtained by moving around an object into a singular composite image (encompassing multiple viewpoints, mobile perspective, simultaneity, or multiplicity).

The 1912 manifesto, Du "Cubisme", authored by Metzinger and Gleizes, was succeeded in 1913 by Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Peintres Cubistes, a compilation of his reflections and critical analyses. Apollinaire maintained close associations with Picasso from 1905 and Braque from 1907, yet he extended comparable critical attention to other prominent artists, including Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Picabia, and Duchamp.

The deliberate curation of the 1912 exhibition, designed to illustrate the evolutionary trajectory of Cubism, coupled with the timely publication of Du "Cubisme", underscores the artists' strategic intent to render their work accessible to a diverse public, encompassing art critics, collectors, dealers, and the general populace. The exhibition's considerable success undeniably propelled Cubism into recognition as a significant avant-garde movement, establishing it as a distinct artistic genre or style characterized by a shared philosophical foundation or objective.

Crystal Cubism: 1914–1918

Between 1914 and 1916, Cubism underwent a notable transformation, characterized by a pronounced emphasis on expansive, overlapping geometric planes and a flattened surface aesthetic. This stylistic cluster, encompassing both painting and sculpture, gained particular prominence from 1917 to 1920 and was adopted by numerous artists, notably those affiliated with the art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg. The heightened compositional rigor, clarity, and sense of order evident in these creations prompted the critic Maurice Raynal to coin the term "crystal" Cubism. Earlier Cubist preoccupations preceding World War I, such as the fourth dimension, the dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson's concept of duration, were subsequently abandoned, yielding to an exclusively formal artistic framework.

Crystal Cubism, alongside its associated concept of rappel à l'ordre (return to order), has been interpreted as an artistic response to the Great War, reflecting a desire among both military personnel and civilians to disengage from the conflict's harsh realities during and immediately after its conclusion. The stylistic purification of Cubism, evident from 1914 through the mid-1920s, characterized by its cohesive unity and deliberate formal constraints, is often correlated with a broader ideological shift towards conservatism within French society and culture.

Cubism After 1918

The period preceding 1914 marked Cubism's most innovative phase. Following World War I, Cubism regained prominence among artists, sustained by the patronage of dealer Léonce Rosenberg, and maintained this central position until the mid-1920s. At this juncture, its avant-garde standing was challenged by the rise of geometric abstraction and Surrealism in Paris. Despite developing alternative styles, numerous Cubist practitioners, including Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger, and Emilio Pettoruti, periodically revisited Cubist principles, even beyond 1925. The movement experienced a resurgence in the 1920s and 1930s through the works of American artist Stuart Davis and British artist Ben Nicholson. Conversely, in France, Cubism began to decline around 1925. Léonce Rosenberg played a crucial role, exhibiting not only artists affected by Kahnweiler's exile but also others such as Laurens, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Gleizes, Csaky, Herbin, and Severini. In 1918, Rosenberg organized a series of Cubist exhibitions at his Galerie de l'Effort Moderne in Paris. While Louis Vauxcelles attempted to declare Cubism defunct, these exhibitions, alongside a meticulously organized Cubist display at the 1920 Salon des Indépendants and a concurrent revival of the Salon de la Section d'Or, unequivocally demonstrated its continued vitality.

The resurgence of Cubism was contemporaneous with the development of a cohesive theoretical framework between approximately 1917 and 1924. This body of work was authored by critics such as Pierre Reverdy, Maurice Raynal, and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, as well as artists including Gris, Léger, and Gleizes. During this era, many artists intermittently adopted Neoclassicism, characterized by figurative art produced either exclusively or in conjunction with Cubist pieces. This stylistic shift has been attributed to a desire to circumvent the harsh realities of the war and to the prevailing classical or Latin cultural identity of France during and immediately after the conflict. Consequently, Cubism post-1918 can be contextualized within a broader ideological movement towards conservatism in French society and culture. Nevertheless, Cubism itself continued to evolve, both within the individual oeuvres of artists like Gris and Metzinger, and across the diverse practices of figures such as Braque, Léger, and Gleizes. As a publicly discussed movement, Cubism achieved a degree of unity and became more amenable to definition. Its inherent theoretical rigor established it as a critical standard for evaluating disparate artistic trends, including Realism, Naturalism, Dada, Surrealism, and various forms of abstraction.

Influence in Asia

Among the initial Asian nations to experience Cubist influence were Japan and China. This engagement began in the 1910s through the dissemination of translated European texts in Japanese art periodicals. By the 1920s, Japanese and Chinese artists who pursued studies in Paris, particularly those attending institutions like the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, returned to their home countries with a comprehensive understanding of contemporary art movements, including Cubism. Significant artworks demonstrating Cubist characteristics include Tetsugorō Yorozu's Self Portrait with Red Eyes (1912) and Fang Ganmin's Melody in Autumn (1934).

Interpretation

Intentions and Criticism

The Cubist movement, as pioneered by Picasso and Braque, transcended mere technical or formal innovation. Concurrently, the distinct perspectives and objectives of the Salon Cubists fostered diverse manifestations of Cubism, rather than simply derivative forms of the foundational work. As Christopher Green observed, "It is by no means clear, in any case, to what extent these other Cubists depended on Picasso and Braque for their development of such techniques as faceting, 'passage' and multiple perspective; they could well have arrived at such practices with little knowledge of 'true' Cubism in its early stages, guided above all by their own understanding of Cézanne." The artworks presented by these Cubists at the 1911 and 1912 Salons expanded beyond the traditional Cézanne-inspired themes—such as the posed model, still life, and landscape—preferred by Picasso and Braque. Instead, they incorporated large-scale subjects drawn from modern life. These publicly exhibited works underscored the application of multiple perspectives and intricate planar faceting to achieve expressive impact, while simultaneously maintaining the profound resonance of subjects imbued with literary and philosophical depth.

In their seminal work Du "Cubisme", Metzinger and Gleizes explicitly connected the perception of time with multiple perspectives, thereby symbolically representing Henri Bergson's philosophical concept of 'duration'. Bergson posited that life is subjectively experienced as a continuous flow, where the past transitions into the present, and the present merges into the future. The Salon Cubists employed faceted representations of solids and space, alongside multiple viewpoints, to articulate a physical and psychological sense of conscious fluidity, effectively dissolving the boundaries between past, present, and future. A significant theoretical advancement by the Salon Cubists, distinct from the contributions of Picasso and Braque, was the concept of simultaneity. This innovation drew, to varying degrees, upon the theories of Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach, Charles Henry, Maurice Princet, and Henri Bergson. The introduction of simultaneity fundamentally challenged the notion of distinct spatial and temporal dimensions, leading to the abandonment of linear perspective, which had been established during the Renaissance. Consequently, subjects were no longer depicted from a singular viewpoint at a specific moment; instead, they were constructed from a sequence of successive perspectives, as if observed concurrently from multiple angles and dimensions, allowing the viewer's gaze to traverse freely.

The technique of depicting simultaneity and multiple viewpoints, or relative motion, achieved significant complexity in several notable works. These include Metzinger's Nu à la cheminée, displayed at the 1910 Salon d'Automne; Gleizes' monumental Le Dépiquage des Moissons (Harvest Threshing), exhibited at the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or; Le Fauconnier's Abundance, presented at the Indépendants in 1911; and Delaunay's City of Paris, shown at the Indépendants in 1912. These ambitious creations represent some of the largest canvases within the Cubist movement. Furthermore, Léger's The Wedding, also exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912, embodied simultaneity by integrating diverse motifs within a unified temporal framework, where past and present responses coalesce with collective intensity. This thematic convergence of subject matter and simultaneity establishes a clear connection between Salon Cubism and the early Futurist paintings of Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, and Carlo Carrà, which themselves emerged as a response to nascent Cubism.

Cubism and other forms of modern European art were introduced to the United States through the seminal 1913 Armory Show, which premiered in New York City before touring Chicago and Boston. At this exhibition, Pablo Picasso presented several Cubist works, including La Femme au pot de moutarde (1910), the sculpture Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909–10), and Les Arbres (1907). Jacques Villon contributed seven significant and large drypoints, while his brother Marcel Duchamp provoked considerable public reaction with his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). Francis Picabia showcased his abstract pieces La Danse à la source and La Procession, Seville (both from 1912). Albert Gleizes exhibited two distinctively stylized and faceted Cubist works: La Femme aux phlox (1910) and L'Homme au balcon (1912). Additional Cubist contributions were made by Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Roger de La Fresnaye, and Alexander Archipenko.

Cubist Sculpture

Analogous to Cubist painting, Cubist sculpture finds its origins in Paul Cézanne's method of deconstructing painted subjects into constituent planes and fundamental geometric forms, such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. This sculptural approach similarly exerted a widespread influence, serving as a foundational precursor to both Constructivism and Futurism.

Cubist sculpture evolved concurrently with Cubist painting. In the autumn of 1909, Picasso created Head of a Woman (Fernande), employing a technique where positive features were rendered through negative space and vice versa. Douglas Cooper asserts that "The first true Cubist sculpture was Picasso's impressive Woman's Head, modeled in 1909–10, a counterpart in three dimensions to many similar analytical and faceted heads in his paintings at the time." Alexander Archipenko further developed these positive/negative spatial inversions with notable ambition between 1912 and 1913, exemplified by his work Woman Walking. Following Archipenko, Joseph Csaky became the inaugural sculptor in Paris to align with the Cubists, exhibiting with them from 1911. Raymond Duchamp-Villon subsequently joined their ranks, followed in 1914 by Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, and Ossip Zadkine.

Cubist construction proved as profoundly influential as any pictorial innovation within the movement, serving as the impetus for the proto-Constructivist works of Naum Gabo and Vladimir Tatlin, thereby initiating the entire constructive tendency in 20th-century modernist sculpture.

Architecture

Cubism established a crucial connection between early-20th-century art and architectural developments. The historical, theoretical, and socio-political interrelationships among avant-garde practices in painting, sculpture, and architecture manifested early ramifications across France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia. While numerous points of intersection exist between Cubism and architecture, direct linkages are relatively scarce. Connections are most frequently drawn through shared formal attributes such as the faceting of form, spatial ambiguity, transparency, and multiplicity.

Architectural engagement with Cubism primarily focused on the deconstruction and subsequent reassembly of three-dimensional forms, employing elementary geometric shapes juxtaposed without relying on classical perspective illusions. This approach allowed for diverse elements to be superimposed, rendered transparent, or interpenetrate while preserving their inherent spatial relationships. From 1912, exemplified by La Maison Cubiste by Raymond Duchamp-Villon and André Mare, Cubism became a significant catalyst in the evolution of modern architecture. It developed concurrently with the work of architects like Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius, influencing the simplification of building design, the adoption of industrially appropriate materials, and the expanded incorporation of glass.

Cubism held particular relevance for an architectural movement striving for a style independent of historical precedents. Consequently, the revolutionary principles established in painting and sculpture were integrated into "a profound reorientation towards a changed world." Cubo-Futurist concepts, articulated by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, also shaped perspectives within avant-garde architecture. The influential De Stijl movement adopted the aesthetic tenets of Neo-plasticism, which Piet Mondrian developed in Paris under Cubist influence. Gino Severini further connected De Stijl to Cubist theory through the writings of Albert Gleizes. Nevertheless, the synthesis of fundamental geometric forms with intrinsic beauty and industrial applicability—a concept foreshadowed by Marcel Duchamp from 1914—was ultimately advanced by the founders of Purism, Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier). They jointly exhibited paintings in Paris and co-authored Après le cubisme in 1918. Le Corbusier's primary objective was to transpose the characteristics of his distinctive Cubist style into architectural practice. From 1918 to 1922, Le Corbusier dedicated his efforts to Purist theory and painting. In 1922, Le Corbusier and his cousin Jeanneret established a studio in Paris at 35 rue de Sèvres, where his theoretical investigations rapidly evolved into numerous architectural projects.

La Maison Cubiste (The Cubist House)

During the 1912 Salon d'Automne, an architectural installation, swiftly dubbed Maison Cubiste (The Cubist House), was presented. Its architecture was conceived by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, with interior decoration by André Mare and a team of collaborators. In Du "Cubisme", composed concurrently with the assembly of the "Maison Cubiste," Metzinger and Gleizes articulated the autonomous character of art, emphasizing that decorative concerns ought not to dictate artistic essence. They considered decorative work to be the "antithesis of the picture." Metzinger and Gleizes asserted that "The true picture bears its raison d'être within itself. It can be relocated from a church to a drawing-room, from a museum to a study. Fundamentally independent and necessarily complete, it is not obligated to immediately satisfy the intellect; rather, it should progressively guide it towards the imagined depths where coordinative illumination resides. It does not merely harmonize with a specific ensemble; instead, it harmonizes with phenomena in general, with the universe: it constitutes an organism..."

La Maison Cubiste was a fully furnished model house, featuring a facade, a staircase, wrought iron banisters, and two distinct rooms: a living room, designated as the Salon Bourgeois, which displayed paintings by Marcel Duchamp, Metzinger (Woman with a Fan), Gleizes, Laurencin, and Léger, and a bedroom. This installation exemplified L'art décoratif, presenting a domestic environment where Cubist art could be integrated into the comfort and style of modern, bourgeois living. Visitors to the Salon d'Automne traversed the plaster facade, conceived by Duchamp-Villon, to access the two furnished interiors. This architectural exhibit subsequently traveled to the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and Boston, where it was cataloged in the New York exhibition as Raymond Duchamp-Villon, number 609, and titled "Facade architectural, plaster" (Façade architecturale).

André Mare designed the interior furnishings, wallpaper, upholstery, and carpets, which represented an early manifestation of Cubism's influence on the nascent Art Deco movement. These elements featured vibrant floral motifs, such as roses, rendered in stylized geometric configurations.

Mare named the living room, where Cubist paintings were exhibited, the Salon Bourgeois. Léger lauded this designation as 'perfect'. In a letter to Mare preceding the exhibition, Léger articulated his approval, stating: "Your idea is absolutely splendid for us, really splendid. People will see Cubism in its domestic setting, which is very important."

Christopher Green observed that "Mare's ensembles were accepted as frames for Cubist works because they allowed paintings and sculptures their independence," creating a dynamic interplay of contrasts. This approach necessitated the participation not only of Gleizes and Metzinger themselves, but also of Marie Laurencin, the Duchamp brothers (with Raymond Duchamp-Villon designing the facade), and Mare's long-standing collaborators Léger and Roger La Fresnaye.

In 1927, Cubists Joseph Csaky, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Henri Laurens, the sculptor Gustave Miklos, and other artists collaborated on the interior design of a Studio House located on rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine. This residence was designed by architect Paul Ruaud and owned by French fashion designer Jacques Doucet, who was also a notable collector of Post-Impressionist and Cubist art (including Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, acquired directly from Picasso's studio). Laurens contributed the fountain, Csaky conceived Doucet's staircase, Lipchitz crafted the fireplace mantel, and Marcoussis produced a Cubist rug.

Czech Cubist Architecture

Authentic Cubist architecture remains exceptionally scarce. Its architectural application was uniquely concentrated in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic), particularly within its capital, Prague. Czech architects were pioneering and singular in their creation of original Cubist structures. Cubist architecture primarily flourished between 1910 and 1914, though Cubist or Cubism-influenced edifices continued to be constructed post-World War I. Subsequent to the war, Prague saw the emergence of Rondo-Cubism, an architectural style that integrated Cubist principles with curvilinear forms.

In their theoretical rules, Cubist architects articulated a theoretical imperative for dynamism, aiming to transcend the inherent stillness of matter through innovative design, thereby eliciting sensations of vitality and expressive plasticity in observers. This aesthetic was to be realized through forms derived from pyramids, cubes, and prisms; through the arrangement of oblique, predominantly triangular surfaces; and by sculpting facades into protruding, crystal-like units, evocative of a diamond cut, or even cavernous forms reminiscent of late Gothic architecture. Consequently, the entirety of facade surfaces, encompassing gables and dormers, received sculptural treatment. Grilles and other architectural embellishments were rendered in three-dimensional forms. This approach also led to the creation of novel window and door designs, such as hexagonal windows. Furthermore, Czech Cubist architects extended their design principles to furniture.

Prominent Cubist architects included Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman, Emil Králíček, and Josef Chochol. Their architectural endeavors were primarily concentrated in Prague, though they also undertook projects in other Bohemian municipalities. Josef Gočár's House of the Black Madonna, erected in Prague's Old Town in 1912, stands as the most renowned Cubist structure, housing the unique Grand Café Orient, recognized as the world's sole Cubist café. Vlastislav Hofman contributed the entrance pavilions of Ďáblice Cemetery between 1912 and 1914, while Josef Chochol conceived several residential properties situated beneath Vyšehrad. Additionally, a Cubist streetlamp, designed by Emil Králíček in 1912, remains preserved near Wenceslas Square; Králíček also completed the Diamond House in Prague's New Town around 1913.

Cubism's Influence Across Other Disciplines

Beyond its origins in painting and sculpture, Cubism's influence permeated various other artistic domains. In literature, Gertrude Stein's prose frequently employs repetition and recurring phrases as foundational elements within both individual passages and entire chapters. This stylistic approach is evident in many of Stein's significant works, including her novel The Making of Americans (1906–08). Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were not only pivotal early patrons of Cubism but also exerted considerable influence on the movement itself. Conversely, Pablo Picasso significantly impacted Stein's literary style. Within American fiction, William Faulkner's 1930 novel As I Lay Dying is often interpreted as engaging with Cubist principles, presenting the diverse narratives of fifteen characters that collectively form a unified whole.

Poets commonly associated with Cubism include Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, André Salmon, and Pierre Reverdy. American poet Kenneth Rexroth characterized Cubism in poetry as "the conscious, deliberate dissociation and recombination of elements into a new artistic entity made self-sufficient by its rigorous architecture," distinguishing it from the Surrealists' free association and Dada's blend of unconscious expression and political nihilism. Despite this distinction, the Cubist poets significantly influenced both Cubism and subsequent movements like Dada and Surrealism. Louis Aragon, a co-founder of Surrealism, acknowledged Reverdy as "our immediate elder, the exemplary poet" for himself, Breton, Soupault, and Éluard. Although less widely recognized than their painter counterparts, these poets continue to inspire; American poets John Ashbery and Ron Padgett have recently published new translations of Reverdy's oeuvre. Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is also cited as an example of translating Cubism's multi-perspective approach into poetic form. In ballet, Pablo Picasso created the inaugural Cubist sets and costumes in 1917 for Sergei Diaghilev's production of Parade. This initial contribution was followed by six additional ballets, through which Picasso profoundly impacted the ballet world, influencing subsequent generations of designers and choreographers. Georges Braque similarly contributed to ballet, designing for four productions, beginning with Diaghilev's Les Fâcheux in 1924. Juan Gris also designed sets and costumes for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Furthermore, prominent poster designers such as A.M. Cassandre and Edward McKnight Kauffer were instrumental in popularizing Cubism within commercial graphic design and typography. In fashion, couturiers like Paul Poiret and Callot Soeurs integrated Cubist elements, such as overlapping layers and planar forms that de-emphasized bodily volumes, into their designs.

According to John Berger, "It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of Cubism. It was a revolution in the visual arts as great as that which took place in the early Renaissance. Its effects on later art, on film, and on architecture are already so numerous that we hardly notice them."

Gallery of Works

Press Articles and Reviews

Fourth dimension in art

• Fourth dimension in art
• Precisionism
• Proto-Cubism
• Rayonism
• Section d'Or
• Vorticism

References

Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914, The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

• Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader, Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914, The University of Chicago Press, 2008
• Alfred H. Barr Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936.
• Elizabeth Carlson, "Cubist Fashion: Mainstreaming Modernism after the Armory," Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 1–28. doi:10.1086/675687.
• Cauman, J. (2001). Inheriting Cubism: The Impact of Cubism on American Art, 1909–1936. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries. ISBN 0-9705723-4-4.
• Cooper, D. (1970). The Cubist Epoch. London: Phaidon in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art & the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87587-041-4.
• Debray, C., & Lucbert, F. (2000). La Section d'or, 1912-1920-1925. Paris: Éditions Cercle d'art. (Exhibition catalogue for Musées de Châteauroux, Musée Fabre).
• Genovese, P. V. (2010). Cubismo in architettura. Roma: Mancosu Editore. (In Italian).
• Golding, J. (1959). Cubism: A History and an Analysis, 1907-1914. New York: Wittenborn.
• Green, C. (1987). Cubism and its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–28. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Johnston, I. (2004). Preliminary Notes on Cubist Architecture in Prague.
• Lifshitz, M. (2018). The Crisis of Ugliness: From Cubism to Pop-Art (D. Riff, Trans.). Leiden: BRILL. (Original work published in Russian by Iskusstvo, 1968).
• Richardson, J. (1991). A Life Of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907–1916. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26665-1.
• Robbins, D. (1981). Sources of Cubism and Futurism. Art Journal, 41(4).

• Cubism, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Cubism, Agence Photographique de la Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées (RMN)
• Cubism, Guggenheim Collection Online
• Index of Historic Collectors and Dealers of Cubism, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art