Cubism

Cubism research papers discuss the art movement that was one of the major art movements of the 20th Century. The art and art history writers at Paper Masters can custom write your research paper on Cubism or any painter or artist of the Cubism era.

Cubism was a major artistic movement of the early 20th century, revolutionizing painting and sculpture in Europe and giving birth to the avant-garde. Pablo Picasso remains the most well-known and influential Cubist painter, a style that dominated his work and other from the 1910s through 1920. Many art historians contend that Cubism was the most influential art movement of the entire 20th century.

In Cubism, objects are deconstructed and reassembled in abstract form, presenting multiple points of view from a single perspective. Picasso's 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is widely considered to be the first proto-Cubist work. By 1909, the style was dominating his work. The first exhibition of Cubists took place in Paris in 1911.

Cubism is often divided into sub-phases.

1. Analytic Cubism dominated from 1910 to 1912
2. Synthetic Cubism persisted until 1919
3. Surrealism became dominant
4. High Cubism lasted from 1909 to 1914, with the work of Picasso and Juan Gris representing this stage.

The Section d'Or, also known as the Groupe de Puteux, was a collection of Cubist painters, sculptors and art critics that formed in 1911, and was active until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. This group was instrumental in exposing Cubism to the wider world. Cubism waned after World War I. Although Cubism persisted until the 1920s, most of its artists, including Picasso, had moved on to new styles.

The Cubists developed paintings that had multiple points of view. In many a canvas of Picasso there is to be seen a jumbled mixture of conflicting planes so that we see the same object from different points of view; many of the noses that Picasso paints are seen frontally and in profile at the same time. The orderly pictorial space that had been in vogue for five hundred years is now broken up and we have a type of painting in which the artist is free to represent things exactly as he pleases.

Cubism, much influenced by Cezanne, was a system of abstraction. That is, it broke up objects into their constituent geometric forms.This captured not the actual appearance of these objects, but their structural essence.But once you begin to abstract things-such as shapes-you can abstract other things as well and much of the subsequent history of twentieth century art was to be a continuation of this process.

The influence of cubism can be seen in art works a part of the movement of Futurism. Although Futurist painting was influenced by cubism, Futurism was fundamentally different from cubism. It was because of this difference that they treated urban life differently. As basically an art style, cubism had no specific political or social aims or ambitions. As basically a style, cubism was confined to the sphere of aesthetics. Any effects it had on individuals were ones relating to looking at a painting contemplatively, or almost meditatively. Futurism, by contrast, deliberately aimed at stimulating, and even provoking, individuals to embrace its perspective and living life as it urged. Unlike cubism which was a style and had no ambitions outside the realm of aesthetics, Futurism meant to use its style to move persons and society. The different treatments of urban life in cubism and futurism are accounted for to a considerable degree by the different approaches, temperaments, and intentions of their founders. Picasso and Braque, the originators of cubism, were artists. The founders of futurism were artists as well. F. T. Marinetti was a poet; and Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, among others, were painters. However, the founders of Futurism were political activists as well. They used their art to portray and pursue their political aims. Marinetti was the author of "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism," which is considered the foundation of Futurism. Boccioni, Carra, and Russolo, along with two other Italian artists, were the authors of the "Manifesto of the Futurist Painters," a writing which lays out the perspective and principles of Futurist painting. As these manifestos indicate, Marinetti and Boccioni and the others self-consciously founded Futurism and held themselves out as its leaders. Picasso and Braque, by contrast, did not try to "found" cubism. They did not try to start an artistic movement, much less a political or cultural movement. They did not see themselves as activists, but only as artists trying to develop and explore a new artistic style. The term "cubism" was not even applied by Picasso and Braque to the new style the were developing. The term "cubism" came from a phrase used by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles in describing paintings exhibited by Braque in Paris in November 1908. Vauxcelles described Braque's works as "geometric schemes and cubes."