Cubism was a revolution that changed how artists worked, and forever changed the way we see the world.

While it’s often said to have been “invented” by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1907, it had been gestating for at least a decade. The seeds of its later flowering can be seen in the paintings of Paul Cézanne. In his late period, from about 1890 to 1907, he worked through what would later become known as cubism.

Drawing inspiration from Japanese prints and the classical nudes of his colleague and rival Rodin, Cézanne tried to express what he called “solidity of volume,” sculpting the canvas with planes of color that didn’t attempt to simulate reality but instead created a kind of visual music with colors and forms that evoked emotion rather than trying to imitate appearances.

What he didn’t do was use perspective. In his still lifes, for instance, there was no attempt to represent objects at different distances from each other; instead, there were multiple viewpoints all on the same plane. By representing objects from multiple angles simultaneously, Cézanne discovered a new reality, one in which things have no permanent position but exist only in relation to their surroundings.*

Picasso and Braque took

Cubism, one of the major art movements in the 20th century, was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The word cubism comes from French word “cube,” which is a three-dimensional shape with six sides. Cubism can be considered as the extension of the Post-Impressionist painting style, since it has similar features such as abstraction and flat planes of color. This essay will give a brief history of cubism, discuss its development and evolution, and finally explain some of its characteristics.

This painting is one of the first cubist works created by Picasso in Paris in 1908. It shows a woman with an eye patch, whose face was remodeled through all kinds of geometric forms. This painting represents one of the first steps towards cubism, since it has many of the characteristics that would characterize this new approach to art. It was painted using small brushstrokes and colored squares (known as “cubes”). Cubism seeks to create a feeling of multiple simultaneous perspectives on a single object or scene. As you analyze this painting you will notice that there are more than one way to look at it. You can see that there are also other ways to paint this subject matter; for instance, in this next painting, Braque

The painting is usually thought of as a three-dimensional object. But in fact, it was painted on a flat canvas. The box structure is an illusion; it doesn’t actually exist.

Cubism is a device for depicting the visible world on a flat plane. In this sense it can be considered a kind of projection from 3D to 2D. However, instead of merely reducing the dimensions of objects, cubist artists also dislocate them and reassemble them, as though assembling a collage from parts of several different objects.

Taken together these two techniques can be seen as breaking down the objects depicted into their component pieces, reconstructing them in the image, and then reassembling those pieces into something that can still be recognized as the original but viewed in a new way.

This shift in perspective, from external to internal and back again, is at the heart of cubist art and its effects.

Cubism is a modern art movement, pioneered and developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized the way artists represent reality. The movement was founded on the notion that the world can be represented in a multitude of ways, and that objects do not have one definitive shape or appearance, but instead can be represented from multiple points of view.

The idea behind cubism itself was not entirely novel. It had been presented in a variety of ways prior to the development of cubism by Picasso and Braque. In order for us to understand exactly how cubism works, we must first understand its history, as well as the process by which it came into being.

History: Before the development of cubism by Picasso and Braque, many artists had developed methods similar to that which would later become known as cubism. A great deal of this work was done by Paul Cézanne, who is often referred to as “the father of modern art.” Cézanne believed that objects are made up of basic geometric shapes—squares, triangles, rectangles—and that these shapes could be used to represent everything in the world around us. He called these basic forms “cubes.” Thus, his paintings were often composed of numerous

Cubism is a style of art that was popular between 1907 and 1920. During this time, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque revolutionized painting by developing the use of multiple perspectives in their artwork. While the term “Cubism” has multiple meanings, it generally refers to a style of art known as analytical cubism.

Tone:  matter-of-fact

This is a very interesting work of art. It is worth studying in detail. A recent post by an artist, Maxfield Parrish, has some good ideas about the cubism movement.

The painting seems to have three distinct layers, and appears to be distorted at different angles with respect to the front plane. This suggests three different points of view. The bottom layer is large and yellow, with a complex texture. There are several vertical rectangles, possibly representing windows or doors in a building with red walls and blue trim. The middle layer is more complicated, with an abundance of smaller rectangles in many colors and patterns. There is also a large central rectangle with horizontal lines that might represent a street or other paved surface. It also looks like there are some flying objects in the background (two at the top and one at the bottom). The top layer is composed of small shapes of various colors, including some simple black outlines that resemble faces or body parts.

We can explore this further by looking at various areas and drawing conclusions from what we see:

1) In the lower left corner, it looks like there is a window or door open on the building; do we see any other openings? Is there any shading around them? We should be able to tell if

Ever since the Renaissance, art had been moving away from representational realism. Through the centuries, artists were trying out different ways to show depth and perspective in their paintings. In the early 1900s, a few artists began to experiment with abstracting those techniques.

The result was Cubism, a movement that used multiple perspectives and geometric forms to create an almost dizzying effect. Picasso and Braque created paintings one layer at a time- not like a collage, but by building on top of what they had already done. The results are hard to make sense of, but that’s part of the point. The artists wanted you to see it in your own way.*