Cubism and Picasso's Key Works

Synthetic Cubism and Collage

Brett Wightley, an Australian artist, creates collage art influenced by Braque and Picasso.
Synthetic cubism introduced visual tricks using:
- Mirror pieces
- Painted wood grain
- Bits of corners
This approach led to the birth of collage.
Dataism also embraced the idea of collage.

Originally trained as a house decorator before moving to Paris in 1900.
Involved in fauvism.
Influenced by Cezanne.
Met Picasso and saw Les Demoiselles in Picasso's studio.
Incorporated lettering, collage, visual tricks, and thick paint due to his decorator training.
Portrait of the guitar is seated in the window of the cafe.

Coined by critic Louis Vossens after Henri Matisse described a painting by George Braque as "nothing but little cubes."
Cubist works were first exhibited in 1910.
The audience and critics were shocked and made fun of the style.

Painter, sculptor, printmaker, pioneer, master, monster, public figure, genius.
Born in Spain, moved to Paris and established his career.
Shocked art critics with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
Focused on everyday, unsuspecting objects, people, events, and things.
Aimed to make art accessible to everyone, not just the elite.
Avignon is a street in the red light district of Barcelona (Picasso's hometown).
Similarities between Braque's and Picasso's works are evident; Picasso was influenced by Braque.

Depicts prostitutes in a brothel in Picasso's hometown.
Tells the story of a sailor selecting a woman from prostitutes in a brothel.
Shocked the Parisian bourgeois due to its portrayal of such manners.
Not intended as a decorative element but rather to shock people.
Aims to highlight relevant issues of Paris at the time, such as lust, sexuality, death, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Large and partly abstract with African influences, making the faces look like African masks. The size is 243 cm x 233 cm.
Faces resemble African masks, linking to stereotypes of African people as primitive, wild, and sexual beings.
There is no beautification whatsoever; it is brutal and disturbing.
Shallow space and breaking up of forms with unusual abstract contortions of the figure. The poses of women are seductive and erotic, but their faces are heavily stylized.
Angular human forms are surrounded by curtains, and even the melon piece of fruit is highly angular like shards of glass.
This was a transitional work that sparked a whole new way of depicting forms. The faces of the women on the right are often seen as representations of African masks that we know Picasso was then looking at. The figure on the left is an archaic figure going back to ancient time. Have the And then back Picasso is allowing his laboratory to be exposed to us.

Radical break with five hundred years of European painting since the Renaissance, laying the foundation for Cubism.
Upends conventions of representation, such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro, shattering the illusion of depth.
Picasso found the formal means to convey ideas about sexuality, the female nude, and sexually transmitted diseases.
The painting is confrontational; the women turn their gaze outward to engage the viewer directly.
The original sketches included a sailor (customer) and a medical student.
The medical student carries a skull, a memento mori, representing the tension between sensuality and the reminder of death.
African masks represent danger and otherness, reflecting France's colonialism.
Expresses the flatness of the picture plane, rejecting the false illusion of depth.
Speaks to the oppressiveness of post-Renaissance culture on contemporary artists seeking a new visual language.
The fractured planes create a palpable three-dimensional space.
There is still some sense of illusion. There's still some shadow. There's still some highlighting. But Picasso is only creating an illusion that goes back into space a few inches.
The artist had been exploring these ideas, and before him, Cezanne had done this. You can see why artists who saw this painting in Picasso's studio soon after it was painted were horrified even to God when he represented unidealized women in a brothel.

Picasso's political affiliation (Spanish Civil War, communist) greatly impacted his work.
A huge painting meant to be read from left to right, highlighting the horror of the event.
Depicts crying women, wailing women, and fragmented animals.
Based on the events of April 27, 1937, when Hitler's German air forces bombed the village of Guernica in Northern Spain.
Guernica was a city of no strategic military value.
The bombing was history's first aerial saturation bombing of a civil population civilian population.
A cold-blooded training mission to test new bombing tactics and terrorize the resistance.
Over three hours, 25 bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of explosive and incidentry bombs.
Fires burned for three days, destroying 70\% of the city.
Approximately a third of the population, 1600 civilians, were wounded or killed.
In 1937, Picasso expressed his outrage against war with Guernica.
Displayed to millions of visitors of Paris World's Fair and is now the twentieth century's most powerful indictment against war.
Size is 3.5 meters by just over just under a meter.
Symbolism is key.

Picasso said it was simply an appeal to people about massacred people and animals.
The horse and bull are images Picasso used his entire career, part of life and death ritual of the Spanish bullfights and first saw as a child.
Some scholars interpret the horse and bull as representing the deadly battle between the Republican fighters' horse and Franco's fascist army, the bull.
Picasso said only the bull represented brutality and darkness, adding, it is up to the painter to define the symbols.
Harsh light of bulb contrast to soft light of candle could reflect the harsh reality of technology, political war, hope, and humanity.
Mother and dead baby represent innocent lives lost.
Mother's head facing the sky in an anguished cry, her eyes in the shape of tears.
This image is meant to resemble the classic Catholic images of the virgin and child, aviated by war.
Pigeon in flight, broken pieces, and the imploring man are present.

With Three Musicians: Recognizable figures and compositionally strong.
Weeping Woman represents the pain of Guernica.
Portraits of women he knew and loved are cubist in style.
Use of appropriation, influenced by Manet's Luncheon on the Grass, a postmodern concept.