Cubism

Hello my dear neighbors, since I thought you enjoy the last talk about history I decided to continue with this new activity in BlogLand. Welcome on board everyone, we are about to start.

Cubism is the grandfather of modern painting. It's the art movement that changed the way we observe nature and totally revolutionized 20th century art. It was prominent in Europe between 1908 and 1919.

Cezanne was indeed the father of modern art and the bridge that he built between Impressionism and Cubism does much to link the 19th with the 20th century. If paintings prior to1850 were tight and smoothly painted, Cezanne taught us to break away from technique and concentrate more on color and the power of a single brush stroke.

Picasso and Braque noticed how Cezanne attempted to disengage with detail and simplify a painting. The Cubists thought that this breakaway from tradition was honest and had to be capitalized on in order for painting to further it's self. The revolutionary breakthrough began when Picasso and Braque began to see Cezanne´s simple brush strokes as component parts to an image. It's as if Cezanne turned his paintings into machines, with parts and accessories. The parts being the brush strokes the accessory being color. Picasso saw how the painting was no longer "just a picture" but rather a series of emergent properties that could be festooned and altered in any conceivable way. Cezanne cracked the glass, Picasso shattered the glass and put the pieces together in what we now know as Cubism.

The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening. They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief like space. They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.

In Cubist work up to 1910, the subject of a picture was usually discernible. Although figures and objects were dissected or "analyzed" into a multitude of small facets, these were then reassembled, after a fashion, to evoke those same figures or objects. Picasso and Braque so abstracted their works that they were reduced to just a series of overlapping planes and facets mostly in near-monochromatic browns, grays, or blacks. In their work from this period, Picasso and Braque frequently combined representational motifs with letters . Their favorite motifs were still lives with musical instruments, bottles, pitchers, glasses, newspapers, playing cards, and the human face and figure. Landscapes were rare.

Analytical Cubism is one of the two branches of Cubism. It was developed between 1908 and 1912. With a muted usage of color such as grey, blue and yellow ochre the Analysts concentrated on reducing subject matter into the simple forms of cylinder, sphere and cone.

The second branch of Cubism created between 1912 and 1919 by Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris was called Syntetic Cybism. This style includes the usage of oil cloth, newspaper and sheet music which were pasted on to canvass along with the first inclusion of "collage" in painting.

Nowadays, Cubism seems like just another facet of abstract art, but in reality, it came first—and it directly influenced most of the abstract art of the 20th century.

That's it for today my friends, hope you enjoyed the chat, you are welcome to comment about it or ask questions if you want to know more about the subject we talked about.

History of art: Impressionism

Hellow my dear neighbours, since I do not know how to cook, neither how to do any kind of manual activity, I decided to invite you to my place to listen to a talk about the art history. Welcome on board everyone, we are about to start.

The term 'Impressionist' was first used as an insult in response to an exhibition of new paintings in Paris in 1874. A diverse group of painters, rejected by the art establishment, defiantly set up their own exhibition. They included Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas.

What characterises Impressionism for most people nowadays, is both the subject matter and the technique. Landscapes, and scenes from modern urban and suburban life painted in bright, pure colours are typical. Impressionists often began (and sometimes completed) their paintings outdoors rather in a studio. Their rapidly applied brushstrokes are often visible.

The scientific discoveries and inventions of the 19th century had an important influence on the way painters worked. New research encouraged artists to experiment with complementary colours. For instance, in Renoir's The Skiff (La Yole), he places an orange boat against cobalt blue water. Orange and blue were understood to be opposite one another in the color spectrum, and by placing them next to each other, each looked deeper and brighter. Even more significant to the Impressionists was an interest in the way in which the human mind processes what it sees. When we look at a landscape, or a crowd of people, we do not instantly see every face, or leaf in detailed focus, but as a mass of colour and light. Impressionist painters tried to express this experience. According to Gombrich, "They discovered that if we look at nature in the open, we do not see individual objects each with its own colour but rather a bright medley of cones which blend in our eye or really in our mind."

Another factor which changed how artists painted was the innovation of ready-made paint in tubes. Grinding pigments in order to make up oil paint had been a laborious and untidy process. The availability of a wide range of ready-made colors meant that artists could work outdoors, rather than in a studio. They could also work at much greater speed, at moments applying the paint straight from the tube without even using a brush.

Absorbing japonism techniques from the Japanese allowed the Impressionists to expand and divert away from the classical painters. Japanese wood block prints were imitated and the stringent French art scene was able to enjoy its first taste of globalization via the magnificent works some of the world's most renowned artists were able to produce thanks to the inspiration of the Japanese culture.

Their main aim was substituting the dominant idea of "Beauty" for the new one of "Freedom". To understand this concept is important to pay attention to the historic and social frame of the time which included the apparition of the brain, the solo photograph and individual clocks.

That's all folks, hope you enjoyed the chat, you are welcome to comment about it or ask questions if you have doubts.