When did cubist painting rise? Which country? What was the first painting that was considered cubist?

Cubism (Cubism) is a movement and school in the history of modern western art, also translated as Cubism. 1908 began in France. Cubist artists pursue the form of fragmentation, analysis and reorganization, forming a separate picture-taking many combined fragments as the artist's display goal. Artists describe objects from multiple angles and put them in the same picture to express the most complete image of objects. The overlapping of various angles of objects creates many vertical and parallel line angles, and the scattered shadows make the cubist picture have no illusion of three-dimensional space caused by the traditional perspective of western painting. The background and the theme of the picture are alternately interspersed, which makes the cubist picture create two-dimensional painting characteristics.

Historical origin

build

Cubism began in 1906, when people lived in.

Estaque Residence 1908 georges braque

Founded by georges braque georges braque and Picasso in Montmartre.

They met in 1907 and cooperated very closely until 19 14 when the first world war broke out.

The emergence of the name cubism is accidental.

1908, Braque exhibited the work "Estaque House" in Caniweiler Gallery. Commentator L. Piston Reiss commented in Jill Brass magazine: "Mr. Braque restored everything ... into a cube." This style of painting is hence named.

The masters of cubism are Picasso and Braque. Among them, Picasso's oil painting "The Maiden of avignon" (1907) is considered to be the first work containing cubism.

Genre background

Western modernist art is the general name of some schools of modern art developed by western countries from the beginning of the 20th century-Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstraction and Pop Art. The word "modernism" is associated with some new, unconventional and different artistic concepts. Modernist art is not only different from traditional art in the past, but also does not include various schools of modern realism. It is not a concept with western modern art, it only occupies a place in it. The emergence of western modernist art has its political, economic, cultural and philosophical historical origins, and it is closely linked with the process of western modern society. New technological revolution, changes in social structure, people's thoughts, values, relationships between people, etc. The increasingly mature photography technology, the introduction of oriental art and African art represented by Japanese printmaking, the philosophical thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the influence of Freudian psychology, as well as various contradictions and drawbacks in the western real society, have all promoted the formation of modernist art.

Modern industry and science and technology have played an important role in the development of modernist art, and modernist artists' psychology and attitude towards modern science and mechanical civilization are complicated. In the practice of some artists (such as cubism, futurism and constructivism), they try to reflect this profound change in society, while in most artists' works, they take an evasive and detached attitude towards industrial civilization. They are dissatisfied with the depreciation of human nature and the appreciation of machinery in industrial society. But this does not mean that the mainstream of modernist art is contrary to the process of industrial society. In fact, industry and scientific and technological civilization have greatly changed the face of modern society and effectively promoted the rapid spiritual changes of modern art.

Modernist art first draws nutrition from Kant's arsenal of transcendental idealism, and at the same time is strongly influenced by modern philosophical thoughts, especially the philosophy and psychology of Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson, Jung and Sartre. Nietzsche's theory not only promoted the German expressionism movement, but also had a great influence on the whole modernist literature movement. In particular, he denies authority, advocates creativity based on human will and instinct, despises middle-class civilization and hypocritical morality, respects unconsciousness and instinct, and is pessimistic about the future of the world, which is reflected in the theory and practice of various schools of modernism. Freud's subconscious theory is the theoretical pillar of surrealism movement, which holds that "unconsciousness is the real existence of spirit". It is under the guidance of Freud's theory that artists of surrealism and other schools use various methods to explore the depths of people's spiritual world, which on the one hand opens up new areas of artistic expression, and on the other hand makes artistic language absurd and weird. Many works of nature have created a new realm of absurdity and strangeness.

From the perspective of the whole European art history, the trend of modernist art thought began from the period before and after Impressionism. To be exact, it originated from French post-impressionist painters Cezanne, Gauguin and Dutch painter Van Gogh. 1905, Fauvism was born in Paris, with Matisse as the head and Flamenco and others as the backbone. Inspired by Cezanne's works and deeply influenced by Gauguin and Van Gogh in artistic form, Cezanne expresses his subjective feelings about the objective world with strong colors, bold lines and distorted and exaggerated shapes. At the same time, German expressionism came into being. They deny the objectivity of the real world and blindly pursue the artist's own subjective feelings, but they do not pay attention to pure form exploration, but regard painting language as a way to resist society and vent their dissatisfaction.

Two years later, cubism led by Picasso and Braque appeared in Paris. It first destroys and dismembers all objects, decomposes natural shapes into various geometric sections, and then subjectively combines them, and even develops to combine several different aspects of the same object on the same picture to express four-dimensional space. Since cubism, various new theories and concepts have flooded into Europe, so futurism appeared in Italy in an avant-garde manner in 1909. They reject the emotional appeal and expectation of the past as a means of painting, admire the original form, deny the old things in the theme, and think it is very important to describe modern urban life, such as steel, speed, strenuous exercise and so on. Since then, modernist painting has become the mainstream trend of painting, as well as Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstraction, Action Painting, Pop Art and so on. They have all competed on the stage, leading for decades.

Compared with the traditional art based on realism and imitation, modernist art has the characteristics of symbolism, expressiveness and abstraction. Many schools of modernism flaunt themselves as anti-tradition, but in fact they may completely abandon tradition. What it tries to deny and reject is the realistic tradition with academic characteristics since the middle of19th century. In dealing with historical heritage, they paid more attention to the study of primitive social art, Egyptian and Mesopotamian art, Greek antique art and European medieval art. After Impressionism, western artists began to turn their attention to the expression language of paintings and handicrafts in China, Japan and India and explore freehand brushwork. Fauvism and cubist artists directly benefited from African sculpture. At the same time, Islamic art in the Middle East and the artistic heritage of Oceania are also the research objects of modernist artists. The above-mentioned artistic heritage in human history has provided beneficial nourishment for modernist artists.

Generally speaking, since the 20th century, western modernist art has adapted to the needs of people in modern society and created a number of works that can be incorporated into the classic culture of mankind. However, the theories of all schools and ideological trends are beyond reproach, not to mention the ideological tendencies of some of them are worth studying. Some schools of modernist art show idealistic artistic interest and decadent ideas; However, more modernist artists show rebellious character, emphasize their own value, express the artist's subjective intention, and also create many artistic expression methods and new materials.

Cubism has two schools in the twentieth century.

One is the laundry boat school, which is the orthodox school. The representatives of this school are Picasso and Braque.

The other school is the Hive School, represented by a group of up-and-coming cubist painters. The popularity of cubism is also catalyzed by these honeycomb painters.

stage of development

Cubism has experienced three development periods.

The Cezanne period of (1)1907-1909, that is, the early development stage, is the gestation and initial stage of cubism. Painters in this period mainly seek simple geometric forms, give up light and color analysis and pursue object-image forms;

(2) The period of analytical cubism of1909-1912. But they still only pay attention to the decomposition of form, but not to the overall reorganization, and the color is relatively single.

(3) The comprehensive cubism period of1912-1914. From 19 12 to 19 14, it entered the period of "comprehensive cubism". During this period, painters began to pay attention to the overall effect of the picture, rather than just emphasizing the partial decomposition. The color is gradually enriched, and the form of things is re-valued.

The exploration of cubist painters originated from Cezanne's theory and creative practice. They regard Cezanne's sentence "cylinders, spheres and cones should be used to express nature" as their artistic pursuit. In essence, this is the reflection of the social reality of industrial civilization and machine age in the early 20th century on the painter's spirit.

Picasso once said, "When we engage in cubism, we don't intend to engage in cubism, but we want to express what we have." Braque admitted: "Cubism, or rather my cubism, is a means I created and used to make painting conform to my talent." The combination of their two temperaments, and through the efforts of Grice and Legge, enabled them to reunite, which formed a dynamic cubism.

The emergence of cubism painting method has gone through a brewing process. After post-impressionism and symbolism, young artists are generally concerned about how to innovate forms to express people's inner feelings and psychology in the rapidly changing industrial society. New schools have appeared in France, Germany, Italy and Russia. In France, with the rise of animism, another group of writers and artists gathered in Montmartre's "mobile laundry room". Picasso, Braque, Laurent Sen, Apollinaire, Salmon, renard, Grice, Legg, etc. They got the support of an art dealer, D.-H. Carnweiler, who opened a gallery in Paris on 1907, known as Cubist Society. Other cubists were R. Delane and A. Glades. 19 10, a new cubist society was established with J. peron as the center. Because of its frequent activities in Pito, France, it is called Pito Group. Dutch painter P mondriaan and Mexican painter J de Rivera are also connected with Pito Group. They endowed analytical cubism with order and rules, thus promoting cubism to develop in a more abstract and subjective direction. From 19 12, Picasso and others conducted a comprehensive cubist experiment. There is still a strong sense of light and space in the broken and transparent structure of analytic cubism. The painter concentrates the objects observed in different states and different viewpoints on one plane, resulting in the overall experience effect. Comprehensive cubism no longer starts from dissecting and analyzing an object, but creates a new motif by combining a variety of different materials, and tries to make artists close to the ordinary truth in life through physical collage.

Although the Golden Section Society, as a branch of cubism, continued to hold exhibitions in 1920 and 1925, cubism, as an art movement, lost its vitality as early as 19 14.

Cubism is an artistic school full of ideas. It mainly pursues the beauty of a geometric form and the aesthetic feeling produced by the arrangement and combination of forms. It denies the traditional method of observing and expressing things from one viewpoint, and simplifies the three-dimensional picture into a plane and a two-dimensional picture. The interest of light and shade, light, air and atmosphere gives way to the interest and artistic conception of outlines and blocks piled up with straight lines and curves. We don't look at things from one viewpoint, but shape things we observe and understand from different viewpoints in the picture, thus showing the continuity of time. In doing so, obviously, we don't mainly rely on visual experience and perceptual knowledge, but mainly rely on rationality, ideas and thinking.

Cubism has a strong formalism tendency under the slogan of anti-tradition. However, its exploration in artistic form has greatly promoted the practical art fields such as modern arts and crafts, decorative arts and architectural arts, which pay attention to formal beauty.

The emergence of cubism is also the inevitable development of art itself. In traditional painting, painting only according to the objective nature shows only a part and side of nature. With the changes of modern life of modern people: objectivity and microcosmic, speed and variability, and the limitation of machines on people, painting is required to show such diversity and complexity; Plato's view of geometric beauty in ancient Greece and Cezanne's view of deliberately describing the structure and eternity of things, together with the enlightenment of African black sculpture, led to the emergence of cubism art.

main feature

Artists who are constantly seeking new ideas, Braque and Picasso, are all looking for new themes and spatial expressions in their paintings. They were influenced by Paul Cézanne, Georges Pierre Seurat, Iberian sculpture, African tribal art (although Braque refuted this statement) and Fauvism. Cubist painters accepted P Cezanne's idea of creating visual stereoscopic images, and then turned to the pursuit of psychological stereoscopic images. Cubist artists pursue the form of fragmentation, analysis and reorganization, forming a separate picture-taking many combined fragments as the artist's display goal. Artists describe objects from multiple angles and put them in the same picture to express the most complete image of objects. The overlapping of various angles of objects creates many vertical and parallel line angles, and the scattered shadows make the cubist picture have no three-dimensional sense caused by the traditional perspective of western painting. The background and the theme of the picture are alternately interspersed, which makes the cubist picture create two-dimensional painting characteristics.

Cubism is different from other artistic movements such as futurism. It has no "manifesto" to express its creative program, leaving only a few scattered remarks. Cubist painters have no systematic theoretical guidance, and everyone explores according to their own ideas. Picasso said, "I want to paint according to my imagination, not according to what I see." Braque also said: "The painter does not want to constitute an anecdote, but creates a painting fact." In the early works of cubism, only gray tones were used. Due to the use of neutral colors, the whole space doesn't look particularly forward or backward. The concept of cubism has also gone through a process of development and change. Its development has experienced three periods: Cezanne period of 1907- 1909; The analytical cubism period of 1909- 19 12. First of all, they broke the traditional painting method that can only be expressed according to a fixed viewpoint, and then arranged on the same painting plane. With the deepening of exploration, they found that such "analysis" often makes the picture lose its original shape more and more and fall into an abstract shape. Therefore, from 19 12 to 19 14, they entered the period of "comprehensive cubism". Their point of view is that instead of depicting the external form of objective objects, it is better to introduce objective objects into painting, so that the figurative objects themselves can be integrated with abstract structural forms.

Although cubist paintings are not "three-dimensional" and it is difficult to understand the relationship between objects and images, they believe that the "realism" of three-dimensional space drawn by traditional realistic techniques is false. Howgate, a theorist who defended them, said: "It is a scam to draw an ellipse if the cup is round, and it is also a scam if it is near." This specious "theory" is actually "arguing irrationally". Because the perspective change in vision is determined by the special structure of the eyeball, it is according to this specific organ that human beings correctly understand the world. Although it seems that the far building is smaller than the book in your hand, everyone knows that it is much bigger, and it can even be estimated how many times bigger it is. However, cubism recreates a way to understand objects. Generally speaking, it combines the impressions of objects from top, bottom, left, right, front and back on a plane. The early works of "analytical cubism" are like pasted paper-cuts, and the later works of "comprehensive cubism" are like stacked broken glass. Grice, an early cubist theorist, said: "As much as the eyes can see, there are many phenomena in the object, and as much as the brain understands, there is much substance in the matter." This is completely centered on the painter's personal subjectivity, and replaces the laws of the objective world itself with personal "understanding in the brain". He added: "Painting should use its own language to control and guide the audience, not to make them understand." So is there any clear principle of cubism in artistic expression? What grammar do they use to "control" and "guide" the audience? People ask the French painter Braque, the founder of this school of painting. The cubist painter replied, "I'd rather make it vague than clear." "This is far from making people happy, but it is to confuse them." 19 1 1 When cubism prevailed, a group of young artists who worshipped new tricks visited Picasso. A young man carefully asked the cubist whether to draw people's feet into circles or squares according to cubist principles. Picasso replied in an authoritative tone: "Nature has no feet!" "So fashionable young people woke up from a big dream and flew away happily with this famous saying. [ 1]

Main influence

The main feature of cubism creation is to destroy and dismember all the object images on the screen, and then subjectively piece together and combine them to express different sides of the object in a so-called three-dimensional way. It is to show two-dimensional and three-dimensional space on the plane, and even show the structure and time (four-dimensional space) invisible to the naked eye. Contrary to the wild fauvism, it represents a rational tendency. People think that both Impressionist and Fauvism paintings are imitations of nature, which are basically expressive works of art, and their significance lies in the new concept of space processing, which is actually the direct source of abstract and non-figurative painting schools that dominated art in the 20th century. Compared with the romanticism of expressionism, cubism is classicism and formalism.

Cubism is a movement and painting school with great influence in modern western art, and his artistic pursuit is directly related to Cezanne's artistic view. Cubist painters themselves claimed that "whoever understands Cezanne will understand cubism". They try to reduce the descriptive and expressive elements of their works and try to organize a geometric structure. Although their works still maintain a certain degree of concreteness, fundamentally speaking, their goals are quite different from objective reproduction. They developed a painting language called "simultaneous vision" from Cezanne, which combined different visions of objects from multiple angles on the same image in painting. The painter created a new artistic technique and language, collaged the picture with objects, further strengthened the texture change of the picture, and put forward the question of what is real and what is unreal between nature and painting. Cubism is a painting style, but it also has a far-reaching impact on sculpture and architecture in the 20th century.

Although cubism is extremely hated by the world, it is of epoch-making significance after all. It has become the source of inspiration for many painters in the coming decades, and it is also a sign of breaking with tradition. This vigorous and fruitful movement is inseparable from the close cooperation between Picasso and Braque. Cubism has a strong formalism tendency under the slogan of anti-tradition. Although the cubist art movement reached its peak only seven years ago, it had a very wide influence. Cubism's exploration in artistic form influenced artists all over Europe in the first decade of the 20th century, and inspired a series of artistic reform movements such as futurism, structuralism and expressionism, especially in the promotion of modern arts and crafts, decorative arts, architectural arts and other practical artistic fields that pay attention to formal beauty.

Representative figure

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, 188 1- 1973, Spanish girl from avignon; Guernica;

Picasso

Picasso was born in Malaga, a port city in southern Spain. His father is an art teacher and used to be an art curator. Picasso, 14 years old, was admitted to the advanced class of Barcelona Art School where his father taught. /kloc-When he graduated at the age of 0/6, his painting "Visiting the Patient" participated in the national art exhibition, with a fairly realistic modeling level. Later, he was admitted to the Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. But he prefers to freely absorb artistic nutrition in art galleries and streets.

Picasso, 19 years old, came to Paris. Because of poverty, he has been living at the bottom of society. At this time, he painted some oil paintings with the theme of poor friends, and the pictures were full of cold blue tones. This is his "melancholy period". 1April, 904, settled in the slums of Paris and lived a free and romantic life. At this time, he painted many paintings with the theme of wandering artists' life, and the color appeared warm pink, which was his "pink period". Later, influenced by Cezanne's art, he studied the painting structure on the basis of Cezanne. His works showed the tendency of geometrization, and began to decompose images into various planes and then reassemble them. 1907 created the epoch-making work "avignon Girl", and then entered the period of analytical cubism research and creation. Soon he used collage to create, which marked the end of his analytical cubism and gradually moved towards "comprehensive cubism". The main trend of Picasso's painting after the age of 32 is rich modeling means, that is, the use of space, color and lines, which reminds people of Cezanne.

Since then, Picasso has entered one restless exploration period after another, and his works, like his life, have no unity, continuity and stability. He has no fixed ideas, is changeable, enthusiastic or manic, amiable and hateful, sincere and pretentious, likable and annoying, unpredictable and unpredictable, but he is always loyal to freedom. There has never been a painter in the world who recreated the world at will with amazing frankness and naive creativity, and exercised his power at will completely freely. He wants to create everything without rules and prejudices, and he has no rules to follow in his artistic path. He went from naturalism to expressionism, from classicism to romanticism, and then back to realism. From concrete to abstract, coming and going, he opposes all the constraints and sacred views in the universe, and only absolute freedom suits him.

Fernand Leger

Fernand Leger, France, 188 1- 1955.

Born in Argonne, France. /kloc-came to the palace of Versailles in Paris for military service at the age of 0/9, and settled in the hive five years later, and began to be influenced by Cezanne's art. 1910 met Picasso and Braque. 19 14 When World War I broke out, he was enlisted again. He painted some pictures showing soldiers and war machines on the front line, and the mechanical aspects of war machines particularly strongly influenced his feelings. He retired because he was poisoned in the Battle of Verdun.

Legge's strong sense of machines is transformed into drawing objects into vertebral bodies, cylinders and polyhedrons. In contact with the external reality, he innovated his own inspiration and expression method. Most of Legge's creative themes come from objects made by industrial civilization. He also introduced the human image into the mechanical world, and the picture has a mechanical and inhuman feeling. Some people call his cubism "mechanical cubism".

There is no trace of archaization in Legge's works, no reference to history and literature, no myth, lyricism and romance, only strength and will, order and generosity, honesty and health. Critics call him "modern primitive man" or "modern classical man" In painting, Legge is always thinking about noisy, fast and tense life, big buildings, environment and the new space where we are forced to move. He not only used color, but also hinted at this new space with the shape he grasped in strong contrast.

Georges Braque

Georges braque, 1882- 1963, Estaque's house;

Among cubist painters, georges braque (1882- 1963) has no less influence than Picasso. He and Picasso are both founders of cubism, and the name cubism comes from his works. In addition, he also made many innovations in the cubist movement, such as introducing letters and numbers into painting, using collage, and so on. Braque's works are mostly still life paintings and landscape paintings, with simple, rigorous and unified style. Compared with all other cubist painters, he brought irreducible concrete and incisive analysis, rare harmonious colors and elegant and smooth lines, which his companions could not do.

Braque was born in a painter's family in Ajantai-sur-Seine. His father and grandfather were amateur painters, which made him interested in painting since he was a child. From 65438 to 0893, the Brakes moved to le havre, and soon he studied in a local art school. From 65438 to 0902, he entered the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, was instructed by Bona, and then transferred to Ambel College. He set up his own studio in 1904. After visiting the autumn salon on 1905, he became interested in fauvism painting and took part in the fauvism painting movement in the next two years. However, the tone of his works is "quiet as a song", which is quite different from those authentic fauvism works with strong colors and bold and exciting brushstrokes. "His temperament is extremely stable, so he does not abuse the freedom of the fauvism painter to indulge in it." 1907, he met Picasso and was deeply attracted by his work "The Girl of avignon". They became close friends and planned the cubist movement together.

1908, Braque came to Estaque. That's where Cezanne painted many landscapes in his later years. There, Braque began to explore the geometric form behind the natural representation through landscape painting. His house in Estaque was a typical work at that time. In this painting, houses and trees are simplified into geometric shapes. This expression obviously comes from Cezanne. Cezanne summarized the various forms of nature as cylinders, cones and spheres, while Braque went one step further and pursued this geometric representation of natural objects. He compressed the spatial depth of the picture in a unique way, making the house in the picture look like a deviated carton, which is between the plane and the three-dimensional effect. The arrangement of the scenes in the painting is not superimposed before and after, but advances from top to bottom, so that some objects reach the top of the picture. All the scenes in the painting, whether the most far-reaching or the most foreground, are displayed in the picture with the same clarity. Because Braque's painting style obviously showed Cezanne's influence at that stage, this stage is also called "Cezanne Cubism Period".