This essay was written as a project
for an art history course in 2006. It was finished on July 28, 2006,
and is unchanged from that date except that I have taken out the
images for copyright reasons and replaced them with links. I chose the topic of Cubism
because it had baffled me for a long time and the explanations I was
seeing in the literature were unsatisfactory, to me. The conclusion
I came to differs from standard accounts, and I hope
readers will find it interesting. Comments are welcome, to
folio@wow.net.
CUBISM: THE BIG PICTURE
By Mary Adam
Background
Somewhere between 1900 and 1910 there is a gap in the history of
art that I have never seen properly explained. Art goes from
delightful Impressionist paintings from around 1850 onwards, such as
Dégas’s dancers and Renoir’s portraits of children, through Cézanne,
Van Gogh and Gauguin, all representational Post-Impressionist
painters, each with a distinctive style and logic of his own (Fig.
1). One thing follows another ever so naturally. And then suddenly
we are in the twentieth century, and representation drops out of the
spotlight. It doesn’t disappear altogether, it simply is no longer
the raison d’être of painting.
What happened? As we all know, Cubism happened (Fig. 2). All the
other main movements in the early 20th century – Fauvism, Die Brücke,
German Expressionism -- were clearly representational, however wild
and arbitrary their colour might have been.
Analytical Cubism on the other hand, was not obviously
representational. It is acknowledged to be an important turning
point in the history of art, and art students need to understand it.
“Knowing about Cubism is simply part of visual literacy” says Karen
Wilkin.1 However, the standard explanations are not
enlightening and sometimes are at odds with what the pictures show.
Speaking for myself, Cubism has long both fascinated and baffled me
despite previous attempts to understand it.
Fig. 1:
Cézanne, The Peppermint Bottle, 1893-95, oil on
canvas, 65.7 x 82 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
(Public domain image from
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_201.jpg)
Fig. 2 and 15:
Picasso, The Accordionist,
1911.
Oil on canvas, 51 ¼ x 35 ¼ inches. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Image from
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_126_1.html;
or from the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.11:001
The aim of this project, therefore, is to arrive at an
understanding of Cubism – how it came about, and its logic and
rationale. I decided to approach it through a study of Picasso’s
work in the years leading up to and during Analytical Cubism.
The standard explanations
Explanations of Cubism usually mention three things: Picasso’s
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Fig 3), as the picture that
started it all;2 Cézanne’s famous advice to Emile
Bernard about geometrical forms; and the theory of multiple
viewpoints, possibly derived from the first two.
Fig. 3:
Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Oil on canvas, 8' x
7' 8" (243.9 x 223.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image from
the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.07:001
Les Demoiselles
To take Les Demoiselles first: this picture of a brothel
is certainly a key one in the history of modern art.
Experts point to:
- the deformation of the figure at the lower right, in which
we are seeing the front and back of the figure at the same time
(multiple viewpoints);3
- the shallow space from front to back, and the faceting of
the women’s bodies;
- the faces of the two women on the right, thought to be
influenced by African masks and/or Iberian sculpture.
However, comparing Les Demoiselles with a painting from
the height of Analytical Cubism (Fig 4), the connection between the
two is far from clear.
For instance, in Picasso’s Cubist portrait:
- There is no obvious deformation;
- The portrait is faceted but it may or may not involve
multiple viewpoints.
- The space is to me quite deep and resonant.
- There are no African masks or mask-like elements.
Furthermore, Les Demoiselles is clearly representational,
while the portrait is abstract apart from the head.4
Fig. 4:
Picasso, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1910. Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Image from
http://arthistory.westvalley.edu/images/P/PICASSO/VOLLARD.JPG
(or from the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.10:012
)
Cézanne
Another common theory, and the main one offered by Gombrich,
5 is that Cézanne’s advice to the young painter Emile Bernard
to “treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere and the cone” (but
note, not the cube) was the rationale for Cubism. It has been
interpreted as an instruction to reduce the world to geometric
forms, which is what Cubist paintings often looked like at first.
Rubin however argues against the theory because Cézanne did not
paint that way himself. 6 In a footnote he cites a
suggestion that Cézanne was fed up with Bernard’s theorizing and was
advising him to stick to basics until he had more experience. Also,
Golding, a leading authority, says, “Any influence of Cézanne that
there may be in the Demoiselles […] is of the most general kind.”7
However, Golding does say that Braque was influenced by Cézanne to a
far greater extent than was Picasso.8
Multiple viewpoints
The notion of multiple viewpoints has been around since the early
days of Cubism, but it too is dubious. It is routinely mentioned,9
often in the form of assertions rather than presentation of facts.
The trouble is, it is easy to say but not so easy to prove. Looking
at the pictures, I have seen no convincing evidence so far that it
is the main rationale for Cubism, although instances of more than
one viewpoint do occur.
In short, none of the usual explanations actually explain Cubism
in a concrete way.
Picasso’s intentions
If Les Demoiselles and Cézanne do not shed light on Cubism, what
next? I decided to try to figure out Picasso’s intentions by
studying earlier works leading up to Cubism; and by reading a
sampling of the literature.
The Blue period, 1901—1904
I didn’t stay long on the Blue period because it is not directly
relevant. However, this was when Picasso showed his amazing artistic
gifts, exemplified in his drawing of hands and feet (Fig. 5). If
later he distorted and abstracted figures, it was not because of
lack of skill.
Fig. 5:
Picasso, Acrobat’s Family with a Monkey, early 1905. Gouache,
watercolour, pastel and ink on cardboard, 104 x 75 cm. Göteborgs
Konstmuseum. [Added later: an image is available
on the Online Picasso Project website,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.05:003 ]
The Rose period, 1904--1906
It was while studying this period that I began to recognize what
might be happening. In essence, the Rose period shows that Picasso
did not think in a linear way, one thing at a time, but often had
two or more separate themes going on together.10
During this time, instead of elongated skinny figures in
monochrome blue, he began to paint short heavy figures in monochrome
reddish-pink, as in Fig. 6, Two Nudes. In several areas of
the figures, most notably the breasts, the dark and light tones are
kept separate, showing his interest in the sculptural quality that
could be achieved on a flat surface through the separation of
planes.
Fig. 6:
Picasso, Two Nudes, 1906. Oil on canvas, 151.3 x 93 cm. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image from the Online Picasso
Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.06:024.
He may also have been investigating the differences between males
and females, or the possibility of turning a male into a female or
vice versa. And at this time he began to explore ways to deform the
figure for expressive purposes, a theme which continued to occupy
him to the end of his life.
For example, in the 1906 drawing in Fig. 7, called Woman with
Red Head, something very odd is happening. The collar bones
slant up towards the midline instead of down,11 and
there’s no hollow at the base of the shortened neck. The figure’s
head looks like a woman’s but it has a masculine-looking torso. And
the nose might have been carved out of wood. Picasso’s own
self-portrait of 1906 (Fig. 8) has some of these features.
Fig. 7:
Woman with Red Head, 1906. Gouache on paper, 63 x 47 cm,
Musée National d”Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Image from the Online Picasso
Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.06:083
Fig. 8:
Self Portrait with Palette, 1906. Oil on canvas, 91.9 x 73.3 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image from
the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.06:026
So, I believe, Picasso was following at least two lines of
inquiry at this time:
- deformation, and
- separation of planes.
I believe that these led to different strands in his art.
Separation of planes, later to become faceting, fed into Cubism;
whereas deformation, so important in Les Demoiselles, was not
a feature of Cubism at all, in my view, but became a core feature of
his later art, sometimes known as “the Picasso style”12 –
as in the Weeping Woman (1937) or Cat Eating a Bird
(1939).
The Pre-Cubist phase, 1907--1908
After painting Les Demoiselles in 1907, Picasso made a
number of drawings and paintings of figures which continued the
theme and style of the two women on the right of Les Demoiselles,
with strongly mask-like faces (Fig. 9), some of them heavily hatched
in paint. So many works exist in this style13 that it
could justify a category of its own. They are sometimes seen as
studies for Les Demoiselles.
He was also becoming deeply absorbed in his other strand, planes
and facets. Fig. 10 shows a drawing of a faceted torso from 1908,
and Fig 11 is a magnificent early Cubist landscape, also from 1908.
The forms are simplified and faceted, one could fairly say
abstracted. The exaggeration of the planes by faceting deepens the
sense of space, in my view, contrary to the idea that Cubism
involved flattening (Steinberg has called Picasso “the great
flattener of 20th century painting”14).
Fig. 9, Buste de femme, Paris, Spring
1907. Oil on canvas, 64 x 50 cm.Národni Galerie, Prague. Image from the Online Picasso
Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.07:134
Fig. 10,
Bateau, 1908, Pencil on paper, 64,5 x 49,5 cm. The Picasso
Estate. Image from the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.08:041
Fig. 11:
Landscape with Two Figures, 1908. Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm.
Musée Picasso, Paris. Image from
http://philo.ucdavis.edu/home/cmc/SPA141/PICASSO/landscap.html
or from the Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/WorksInfo?CatID=OPP.08:117
Cubism and abstraction
At this point I began to realize that the essence of Cubism is in
fact abstraction, and from there on everything fell into place.
Why did it take so long? Looking now at The Guitar Player
(Fig. 12, right), one wonders how it could ever have been seen as
anything other than abstract. And yet the notion that Cubism is
not abstraction is deeply rooted in the literature, though at
times the arguments are self-contradictory. For instance, Golding
says at page 84, “although Cubist paintings were becoming more
abstract in appearance …”, at page 86 he states, “Cubism ... was
never at any stage an abstract art”.15 Abstraction is
often mentioned, but in a secondary role or qualified in some way,
as in Wilkin’s “virtually abstract”,16 or Barr’s
“semi-abstract”17). Ironically though, Cubism is included
under abstract art in Honour and Fleming’s Glossary.18
Fig. 12 (info below)
I think the argument against abstraction in Cubism may be
invalid, or at least misleading, and it certainly has been a mental
block for me for a number of years. The block was finally blown away
by a quote from Picasso himself:
“There is no abstract art. You must always start with
something. Afterwards you can remove all trace of reality.
There’s no danger then . . . because the idea of the object will
have left an indelible mark.”19
The indelible mark
Seeing Cubism primarily as abstraction changes how one approaches
the pictures. It’s a question of knowing what to look for. Existing
theories tend to make one look at the pictures piecemeal, whereas
with Analytical Cubism the thing to look for, in my newly-acquired
view, is the indelible mark of the big picture. I immediately tried
this out on The Guitar Player (below left), a picture that
has puzzled me for years, with the result shown in Fig. 13 at right.
Above left: Fig. 12,
Picasso, The Guitar Player, 1910.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris. Image from
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso/cadaques.jpg.html
Above right: Fig. 13,
My scribbled analysis of The Guitar Player.
Testing, testing…
Steinberg has cautioned that no one explanation of anything
Picasso did has ever held up.20 Therefore, what is
presented here is merely a hypothesis. I tested it again, on The
Accordionist (Figs. 2 and 15), which the Guggenheim has called
baffling,21 using a photo of an accordion player as a
guide (Fig. 14); and was taken aback when the “big picture” method
appeared to fail. However, Richardson says that according to Picasso
himself it was not a musician at all, but a woman, and the title was
a sexual double entendre, the clue being “the genital positioning”
of the accordion keys (arrow in Fig. 15).22 Thus the
picture is one of Picasso’s little jokes. Fig. 16 shows a possible
interpretation.
Fig. 14:
An accordion player. Image from the Instrument Encyclopedia section
of the CHICO website --
http://www.si.umich.edu/chico/instrument/pages/accordion_gnrl.html
Fig. 2 and 15:
Picasso, The Accordionist,
1911.
Oil on canvas, 51 ¼ x 35 ¼ inches. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Image from
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_126_1.html
Fig. 16:
A possible interpretation of The Accordionist (my scribble
analysis)
Epilogue
Picasso and Braque arrived at fully-developed Analytical Cubism
in the summer of 1909, through extending the process of abstraction
while retaining the essence or idea of the subject, a tricky sort of
balancing act. The characteristics of the style include geometrical
overlapping facets, an underlying grid to organize the picture
plane,23 tonal gradations of great beauty, and fragments
of the subject identifiable in places.
By these means, Cubism shifted the emphasis of picture-making
away from representation and towards a totally new formal freedom,
explaining the gap mentioned in the opening paragraph. Richardson
says that Analytical and Synthetic Cubism between them engendered
every major modern movement – Abstraction (Fig. 17), de Stijl (Fig.
18), Constructivism, Minimalism (Fig. 19), Dada, Surrealism and Pop
Art.24
Abstraction
Fig. 17: Wassily
Kandinsky, Black Lines,
December 1913. Oil on canvas, 51 x
51 5/8 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_71_3.html
(click on "previous work").
De Stijl
Fig. 18:
Theo van Doesburg, Aritmetička
kompozicija (Arithmetic Composition), 1930. Image from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Theo_van_Doesburg_Arithmetic_Composition_%281930%29.jpg
Minimalism
Fig. 19:
Agnes Martin, Water Flower,
1964. Pen and white and red ink? with gray wash, 30.1 x 30.3 cm
(11 7/8 x 11 15/16 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Image from
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=55750+0+none
Following on from Cubism, abstraction in all its forms caught on
with critics, painters and public alike and before long a revolution
in art was underway that is still playing out.
References
1 Wilkin, Karen, 1989: O Pioneers! Picasso and Braque 1907-1914.
The New Criterion, Vol 8, No. 4, December 1989;
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/08/dec89/pioneers.htm
2 Art of the Western World video series, Episode 15, T.V.S.
Television Ltd., 1989. Produced and directed by Ian Potts.
3 Warncke, Carsten-Peter, ed. Ingo F. Walther, 1997, Pablo
Picasso 1881-1973, Taschen, Cologne, p.158
4 Wilkin 1989, op cit.
5 Gombrich E. H., 1989, The Story of Art, 15th edition,
Phaidon Press Ltd., Ann Arbor, Michigan, p.456-458.
6 Rubin, William, 1972. Picasso in the Collection of the
Museum of Modern Art. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York, p. 48.
7 Golding, John, 1988. Cubism: A History and an Analysis,
1907—1914, 3rd edition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, p. 39
8 Ibid, p. 58 and p. 63
9 Acton, Mary, 1997, Learning to Look at Paintings. Routledge,
London, p. 47
10 Warncke 1997, op cit, p.148
11 Richardson, John, 1991. A Life of Picasso: Volume 1, The
Early Years, 1881--1906. Random House, New York, p. 438.
12 Warncke 1997, op cit. p.403
13 The Online Picasso Project,
http://picasso.tamu.edu
14 Steinberg, Leo, 1972. Other Criteria: Confrontations with
Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press, New York, p 191.
15 Golding 1988, op cit, p. 86. See also p. 89.
16 Wilkin 1989, op. cit
17 Barr, Alfred, quoted in Rubin 1972, p. 42
18 Honour, Hugh and Fleming, John, 2002. A World History of
Art, 6th edition, Laurence King Publishing, London, p. 920.
19 Richardson, John, 1996. A Life of Picasso: Volume 2, The
Painter of Modern Life, 1907—1917. Random House, New York. p.
175.
20 Steinberg 1972, op cit, p. 190
21 The Guggenheim Museum website,
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_126_1.html
22 Richardson 1996, op. cit, p. 187
23 Ibid, p. 157
24 Ibid, p 106
____________________
Mary Adam
8 Braemar Road, Cascade, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
July 28, 2006
folio@wow.net
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Modified May 4, 2007 -- Text unchanged, images replaced with
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Modified July 14, 2007: Some
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