The Significance of Cubism

At that around which this play is set, there were many developing revolutionary ideas about art, combining instinct and intellect with sensation.

The breaking away began quite noticeably in the mid to late 19th century with artists like Courbet, Manet, all the Impressionists, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. If these artist had not begun to question the traditional principles of painting, the Fauves (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/fauvism.html) and the Cubists could never have expressed themselves with so much liberty. The climate was right for new ideas, on a continuum to abstraction of all kinds.

Some significant factors leading up to new ways of looking at art and painting especially:
1. Photography – probably the most significant
1839 Daguerre’s invention
1888 Eastman began to mass market the Kodak camera
2. Impressionism (http://www.impressionism.org/)
3. Revolutions in Europe, significant ones in 1848, same year as the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels
4. Technological inventions (collapsible paint tube 1841)
5. General changes in modern life and scientific principles

In Cubism, there are said to be three stages of development (some variation in this)
1. Facet Cubism – artist began to separate objects of figures into definite geometrical elements while placing them in a composition
2. Analytical cubism – objects increasingly broken down, presentation of several aspects of the object at once
3. Synthetic cubism – further liberated from traditional reality and appearance
In first phase there was a strong influence from African sculpture, as well as painters Cezanne and Seurat.

The phenomenon eventually led to collage, for Braque and Picasso, by 1912. They began to glue paper and cloth on to the pictures – this mixture of material blurs the boundaries between the real and the painted.

Cubism was the point of departure for many artists for a long time, despite first negative reception and has been called the first and the most influential of all movements in 20th century art.

Cezanne and influence
Since 15th century, artists had begun using rules of perspective, with detail and accuracy, depicting everything as right size and shape in relation to other objects. Everything in the painting was seen from a single viewpoint. French artist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/) was beginning to change that approach, partly to construct a representation of how we really see the world and partly to create new ways of representing space. His works illustration a combination of simultaneous viewpoints and begin to show an abstract treatment of volume and space

A retrospective exhibition was held in 1907 after his death, which was attended by many artists, including Braque and Picasso. They were inspired to continue the experiment with perspective. They produced a kind of “anti-perspective,” by trying to give up the illusion of space all together. These combine pieces simultaneous seen from different angles and different times. The broken shapes and surfaces highlight the contradictions involved in trying to paint three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.

Georges Braque (1882-1962) (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/braque_georges.html)
There was an intense collaboration between Braque and Picasso for a number of years. Braque’s 1908 “Maisons á L’Estaque” (at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland) was the work to be described by an art critic as “nothing but a pile of little cubes.” As is often the case, that was the origin of the name of the movement.

Political aspect
By 1912, the French Chamber of Deputies had a heated debate about the inclusion of several cubist painting, including those by foreign artists, at their “Salon d’automne.” These works were being called “jokes in very bad taste,” “anti-artistic,” and “anti-national.” In spite of the Fine Arts Minister’s claim not to interfere in artistic matters, the debate continued, some pressure was applied, and some works were removed. After the newspapers took it up, it became a “cause,” and one result was that cubism is frequently associated with political subversion.

In discussing the development of Cubism, French artist Fernand Leger (1881-1955) said: “All that could be done with color had already been done – what remained for us was line”

Early cubists changed the technique of painting through the use of new materials and scientific principles, in particular the relativity of time-space, which introduced the idea of movement – in order to arrive at a more complete knowledge of an object.

It has been said that modern life demanded a change in pictorial expression. And this connection between art and science is key to Martin’s play.