Looking at the history of art, one name stands out. This is Pablo Picasso. He was born on 25th of the month of October 1881 in Malaga Spain. Jose’ Ruiz Blasco, his father who was also a painter, trained him at an early age; hence he was able to start his career at a tender age. Though he attended several art schools while growing, Picasso never completed any college level course; instead he left the Academic Academy of arts within one year. One of the reasons why he dropped out of school was due to the teachers’ inability to assist him in solving technical problems. He had two sisters, Delores and Conchita and his marriage life was a bit complicated; he got married to Olga Khoklova in 1918 but still got involved with mistresses. He got married twice and fathered four children with three different women.
Career wise, Picasso rose fast due to his father’s influence in the art industry. His father had lots of connections that in some way benefited him in getting the audience. Among Picasso’s works, “The Picador” was his first painting which he did at a tender age of eight. By 1900, he had started gaining national recognition and had his first exhibition. His “Blue period” began around 1901 when he used blue colors to paint after losing a close friend through suicide. Picasso continued rising in the art industry and moved to Paris in 1904 where he bought a studio and marked the start of his “Rose Period” where he used cheerful colors such as orange and red. The style of art in France was different. His interaction with Fernande Oliver brought some happiness which led to a change in his art work. His first major sale around 1906 was to an art merchant Ambroise Vollard for 2000 francs. His style changed drastically from the usual dry style to a more romantic one .
Between 1900 and 1901 Picasso started painting circus artists. He started experimenting on cubism which made him famous. Picasso and another artist called Braque are viewed as the founders of cubism, with their works being vital to the movement. The paintings were more sculptural as they presented simultaneous view of the subject. Picasso renounced the traditional chia-roscuro in which three-dimensional forms were evoked by reproducing how incident light plays across it; thus a sequence of shadows and highlights were produced. Picasso’s first cubist painting ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ which was done at around 1907, brought about a huge following by other young artists such as Georges Braque who had previously followed his rival Matisse .
Picasso’s interest was in plastic creation, mid way between painting and sculpture. His interest in Cubist collages somehow affected his painting. The famous guitar (the construction of a cardboard, wire and string, 65.1 x 33 x 19 cm by the museum of modern art, New York) is one of his key works. Together with the constructions and collages which followed, they introduced a different way of sculpture making. Picasso could present the surfaces, spaces, contours by playing with the parts and the relationships of an object rather than sculpting the solid mass. Picasso played a major role in developing Analytic cubism that involved analysis of individual things according to their shapes and use of brown colors, and Synthetic Cubism that involved collage making .
Cubists tend to think that the essence of something can be truly captured if it’s viewed from all the angles at the same time. Les d’Avignon was one such painting which captured all the angles. It was so contentious and described as unconventional work because of the quintet of bold nude whore. Cubists would break down the objects in the painting before reassembling them in a dissimilar order creating a few insights of the object. The movement is among the most powerful in arts history due to the completely different technique of viewing things. Artists were likened to writers; instead of painting the regular form of the object, they would analyze the subjects in a different way thus allowing them to view different aspects of the object in a single view .
Analytic cubism was one of the styles used in the cubism movement. It was an uncompromising and intellectual style in the cubism movement. The objects were fragmented to form several intricately hinged transparent and opaque planes that were set at a slight angle to the plane’s picture at lower relief. The contents of the plane’s edges were allowed to dissolve and leak into one another. Picasso’s “girl with mandolin” is a typical example in which the forms are dense and compact in the centre of the painting and more diffuse near the edges. This approach can be likened to taking several photographs of an object from different angles at different times, then cutting the photographs and rearranging randomly on a level surface to let them overlap .
The workings were mostly made of muted tones. Some traces of the visual practicality were maintained while breaking down and analyzing the image. The paintings were detailed, with images gathered firmly towards the centre, and grew sparser towards the edges. Muted colors would draw attention to the shifting perspective which embodied the artist’s perspective .
Analytic cubism later gave rise to synthetic cubism. This movement removed the three dimensional sense. Entirely new and expansive structures were synthesized in place of the then breaking down and reassembly of the original image. Picasso realized that in repeating the “analytic” signs, the paintings were more geometrically simplified, flatter and more generalized. Overlapping planes would at times share a single color. The painted flat depictions of paper were replaced by real papers. Drawn musical notations replaced by real music. Playing cards, fragments of news papers, advertisements and cigarette packs which were either painted or real interacted on the level plane as the artists were trying to get the real interpretation of art and life .
Collage that interpreted fragments and signs of real things was invented. “Still life with chair caning” was Picasso’s first collage, created in 1912. Synthetic Cubism was able to last way past the World War I, with the 20th century artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Hans Hoffman and several others being influenced by it. The integration of “low” and “high” art of the Synthetic Cubism is viewed as the first pop Art. The collage methods included graphics, patterns, words and several overlapping media to attain a desired result. Much brighter colors were used; different textures emerged such as sand, paper or gesso and more distinct geometric forms. The “Bowl of Fruit” and “The Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and Glass” by Picasso are some of the synthetic styles .
Around 1912, simultaneity which revolutionized cubism was introduced. Jean Metzinger’s Tea Time also known as the “Mona Lisa with a Teaspoon” were broken into several planes. These planes grow transparent revealing the planes behind them which then cross and combine with other planes. On the left, a saucer and teacup are divided in the centre, one side seen from above and the other side head on. Metzinger’s teacup is a demonstration of the simultaneity. The real image is expressed through the simultaneous revelation of more than one aspect of the object .
Cubism in general is an art that revolutionized the industry in different ways. It is however hard to view Picasso and Braque as the creators of the new visual language in visual arts. At its time, Analytic Cubism was definitely viewed as revolutionary by the critics, dealers and other artists but not the public. This was mainly, except for the 1913 Armory, to show that it took place in New York. Neither Braque nor Picasso was able to exhibit analytic Cubist workings in public. Various painters in Paris adopted and developed the idiom and promoted it and by 1911 a cubist school came about. Picasso persisted in employing multiple-viewpoint of the cubist style and some of his works are the Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), Musee Picasso, Female Nude and smoker (1968), Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne among others. On his part Braque devoted much of his time to “still life painting” in different styles. Though cubism was a revolutionary style, it mostly motivated painters to adjust the traditional art .
Works Cited
Ehrlich, Erika González. "Analytical and Synthetic Cubism: Picasso and Braque." (2012): 163-171.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART. 28 April 2012. Analytical Cubism. 24 June 2013 <http://visual-arts-cork.com>.
Gersh-Nesic, Beth. 3 august 2009. Art History Definition: Synthetic Cubism. 20 april 2013 <http://www.sntheticcubinsm.htm>.
Jansen, Marten. 24 January 2013. Pablo Picasso cubism. 28 June 2013 <http://www.pablopicasso.htm>.
