BTEC 1st Unit 2 Contextual Art & Design

Tutor: Paul Cureton

Cubism
Week 11 10th November
Art historians are interested in three basic related questions, questions which we will ask
throughout the year:

How a work was produced?

What it is saying?

Why it was produced?

Cubism is basically an artistic response by artists to an immense technological and

industrial change happening around them.

Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London in
1851.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was organized by Prince
Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Henry, Charles Dilke and other members of the Royal Society

for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce as a celebration of modern

industrial technology and design. Products were being designed and produced on a mass
scale and nations competed in World Exhibitions to show which was the most
technologically advanced. There have been forty world exhibitions and the last one took
place this year (2008).

The Eiffel Tower was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition
Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution.
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from May 6,
to October 31, 1889.

Cubism as an art movement wanted to find new ways of making artwork and a group of
artists started to reflect on their surroundings and try to find a new way of making pictures.
This movement took place predominately around Paris as this was a major centre of art at
the time. Artists would flock to Paris to find fame. The Eiffel Tower was a symbol of the
magnificence and embracement of new technology in Paris as the city manufactured goods
and developed new buildings on a massive scale.

If you look at every cubist picture, it places man made objects before any natural ones.
Cubism makes use of manufactured goods and makes art from these, as a subject and as a
material.

Example: look at the difference between Cezanne and Picasso

A.

B.

A. Paul, Cezanne, Le Mont Sainte-Victoire 1897.

B. Pablo, Picasso, The factory horta de ebro, 1909.

Question: Can you see Picassos preference for the man made?

Pablo Picasso and George Braque wanted to represent the fact that our knowledge of an
object is made up of lots of different views of it e.g. the sides, front, back top, and so they
would paint their pictures in this way. Previous approaches to painting would show the
picture from one particular point. E.g. John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott,
1888.

Summary:

So cubist style is a reaction against perspective and to the fast pace of social change.

Example: look at George Braque, Houses at LEstique, 1908.

Braque paints this image with simple childs block shapes of houses, which take away
connections with the real world. This early work by Braque is further developed later into
full blown cubism.

The best way of understanding this way of painting is to look at a quote from Picasso:

I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them.

Discussion: do you understand this idea of making art?

Example: Juan Gris, Fantomas, 1915.

The cubists developed a new technique called collage from the French Coller to gum.

As the French origins of the term imply, a collage is a surface to which paper, cloth
or other material has been attached. The process came to prominence with the
Cubists when Picasso and Braque began incorporating newspaper clippings and
other non-art materials into their paintings with the intention of questioning not
only the limits of fine art but also the nature of representation. 1

Picasso and Braque started to collage with items that were mass produced, in Juan Griss
Fantomas, you have wood grain, wallpaper, tile, newspaper, pipe and a paperback thriller
(books were being cheaply and mass produced at this time).

Duro, Paul., Greenhalgh, Michael, Essential Art History, (London; Bloomsbury, 1992) p84.

Example: Robert, Delaunny, The Red Tower, 1911-12.

For Delaunny he wanted to find a new way of painting and found that the Eiffel Tower was
the key. He wanted to show the beauty of the new mechanical age so he painted the tower
thirty times, where he tries to show the vertigo and light bouncing of the tower and how
light bounces off the lead roofs of the surrounding buildings.

Example: Robert, Delaunay, Homage to Bleriot, 1914.

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In this picture the Aviator Bleriot is seen in the top right, also you can see telegraph poles,
radio, and the Eiffel tower. Again Delaunny wants to show the newness of all the new
technology he is interested in. The first planes flying above Paris must have been a
magnificent sight.

Example: Fernand Leger, The Cardplayers, 1917 & The Builders, 1950

It was with the onset of war that the way artists viewed the new mechanical, mass
manufacture age not with optimism but realised its destructive power from 1914 1918.
Leger painted from experiences in WW1 when he was in the trenches manning the machine
gun. Leger shows all the machinery that he experienced. He was interested in symmetry
and thus all is forms and paintings were meant to show this. 2

Hughes, Robert, The Shock of The New, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991).

Pablo, Picasso, Guitar, pasted paper, charcoal, ink and chalk on blue paper, mounted
on rag board, 1913, 66*50cm.

TASK 1: Case Study

Look at Picassos Guitar from 1913 and think how the representation of the musical
instrument is constructed.

Question: If Guitar represents a guitar, which way up is it?

Hint: Start by focusing on the flat white form which suggests a profile of a guitars body.
Why does the shape suggest that it is an actual guitar? If the shape was on its own do you
think it would still give the impression of a guitar?

Answer:
Picasso suggests objects by placing elements together.

They are placed without any

obvious joins. To see a guitar in Guitar the viewer (you) have to select the different
elements and make connections between them and only by relating these elements together
can the representation of a guitar be seen. No one form occupies the correct position for the
guitars neck. The blue form with the frets could be one possibility, or the white rectangle
below placed between the newspaper or even the large white rectangle at the top could be
taken as the neck. Picasso basically provides clues for seeing the guitar, but he stops as
seeing it as a straight representation of a guitar, as we do not know which way up the guitar
is.

Picasso is playing with us. We could even see the sections of the guitars body as a
womans waist and hips. The pattern could even be the womans dress. In Guitar Picasso
continues his play as the newsprint is an advertisement for an optician!
This is a strange way of making art, but by using forms, curves, shapes, Picasso shows that
you can make a leap and imagine a guitar.

Picasso, Pablo, Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass,

pasted, gouache and charcoal on paper, 1912, 48 x 36.5 cm.
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Task 2: Practical Task

Seeing as

Picasso as we have seen depicts one thing, but we look at it in another way. For example
the newspaper and card in Guitar make up a Guitar body, but they are unrelated objects.

Using this idea, make up your own collage Seeing as collect some materials and make
your own collage which shows a picture unrelated to the object which, will suggest another
type of form e.g. newspaper and card which suggests a guitar. 3

Hint: For example get a coca-cola bottle label. We know what it is, but cut it out and
combine it with another material say some newspaper to make a car. This is seeing as
they are unrelated materials but we see it as something else.

By doing these tasks we can understand the fundamentals of Cubism: theory through doing.
But now you understand one of the most innovative moments in the history of art!

Task 3: Independent Study

Gather the following images of cubists artists:
Albert Gleizes
Jean Metzinger
Henri Le Fauconnier.

Edwards, Steve, ed, Art of The Avant-Gardes, (London: Yale University Press, 2004).

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