My Science School

Understanding Cubism

Breaking away from centuries of tradition, Cubism was the first movement to preset art as an expression of multiple viewpoints rather than a single viewpoint. The artists showed the object take on reality. As a result, in the final image, it became quite difficult to recognize the original subject anymore.

How it got its name?

It is called Cubism because the items represented in the artworks look like they are made out of cubes and other geometrical shapes.

The movement was conceived as ‘a new way of representing the world’, and assimilated outside influences, such as African art, as well as new theories on the nature of reality, such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

How it began?

Artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Barque were pioneers of this style.

Cubism is often divided into two phases – the Analytic phase (1907-12), and the Synthetic phase (1913 through the 1920s). The initial phase attempted to show objects as the mind, not the eye, perceives them. Most of the paintings were in monochrome, putting the focus only on the shapes and forms.

Picasso started adding colours to the Cubism style, giving birth to Synthetic Cubism. The Synthetic phase featured works that were composed of fewer and simpler form, in brighter colours.

Other major exponents of Cubism included Robert Delaunay, Francis Picabia, Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Leger.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution began to change the way people had lived their lives for centuries in Europe, it created an intense longing for the past among some. This gave birth to Romanticism, which brought to the fore the feelings of artists and how they expressed it, as opposed to creating within a definite set of rules. It was used mostly in art, literature and music.

It began to take shape in many countries in Europe, and emotions, nature and the past were gloried in paintings through bold brushstrokes. It used an intense emotion to create something authentic and new. Terror, awe, grief and horror were other strong emotions artists played with at this time.

Artists aimed to evoke the sublimity and raw beauty of nature and things gone by. And unlike the Rationalist movement, which aimed to stay close to the present, Romantic artists always looked back, elevating folk and myths to antiquity, in the hope that they could escape the early urbanism of the industrial Revolution. This, indirectly, also stoked nationalistic ideals among the people.

The movement was named Romantic during the 18th century in England and France –‘Romantique’(French), meant beautiful scenery or in general, the praise of a natural phenomenon such as sunsets. And since the art movement placed a lot of emphasis on nature and its beauty, the name stuck on.

But if one were to define what the movement really was, poet and critic Charles Baudelaire put it rather succinctly in 1846-“Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling”.

Examples of Romantic art:

Wanderer above the sea of fog: Painted in 1818 by Caspar David Friedrich, considered the most important German romantic artist, the painting shows a man is formal clothing standing on top of a mountain of rocks with his back to the viewer. The viewer can see a thick blanket of fog and his contemplative body language. The artist aims to show how small humans are in comparison to the grandness of nature.

The Raft of the Medusa: Medusa was a ship that fought in the Napoleonic wars. It survived them all but crashed in 1816 in a sandbank while transporting people to Senegal. The 400 people in it were forced to evacuate and over 150 of them set said on a small raft. They went through many ordeals and 13 days later, when the raft was found, only 15 men were alive. The artist Theodore Gericault studied the scandal and created this masterpiece. This painting is considered one of the most iconic in French Romantic art.

Liberty Leading the People: Liberty is a folk goddess in French culture – not only is she goddess but also women of the people. And so, during the French revolution, she was personified in many works of art. This painting by EUGENE Delacroix commemorates the July revolution of 1830 in which king Charles X was overthrown. Here, Liberty is leading the people of France to victory. The goddess also inspired the Statue of Liberty in New York.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In the late 1800s, there was a change of thought among some artists. This was around the time that scientific thinking was beginning to spread, and so the idea that what the eye saw and the brain transmitted were two different things was something that artists pounced upon. This new group, with its bright unblended colours and short brushstrokes wanted to create art out of an impression, a fleeting second in time. These paintings were part of Impressionism.

In 1870, the Anonymous Society of Painters organized an exhibition in Paris where they displayed art that went against what was taught at major institutions and what artists in the era strived to be. The sketch-like paintings that many critics called ‘unfinished’, was the birth of Impressionism and focused on light and its effect on the surroundings. The founding members of this movement were Claude Monet, Edger Degas and Camille Pissarro. In fact, it was Monet’s painting “Impression, Sunrise” that gave the movement its name, since a critic called it an ‘impression’ of a painting.

As more painters got drawn to this style, they began to leave their studios and step outside to catch moments to paint. Everyday suburban and rural leisure became popular muses for these painters. Hence, boating and bathing establishments that flourished in that time became popular haunts for impressionists. They used brighter and innovative colours, coloured shadows and even featured industrialisation encroaching on the serenity of the landscape. This would have been allowed in the traditional painting style.

The moment was fleeting and powerful, and eventually, the collective of painters that began and nurtured it developed their own distinct styles, causing raptures in the organisation. Many began to focus on the purity of colour, thereby creating Neo-Impressionism.

Examples

Impression Sunrise:

Painted by Claude Monet in 1872, the painting became a symbol of Impressionism after it gave the movement its name. The subject is the Le Havre harbour in France or so it is suggested, since the brushstrokes are very loose and not defined. Monet captures the scene through light and colour rather than definition.

Le Boulevard Montmartre, effet de nuit:

This painting by Camille Pissarro depicts a scene of Paris in the 19th Century. Pissarro took a room on the Montmartre Boulevard and painted it at different times of the day. This one, painted at night, plays exclusively on light to capture the dramatic effect of the movement.

Paris Street; Rainy Day:

Considered one of the most ambitious paintings of urban lifestyle in the 19th Century, this painting by Gustave Caillebotte depicts de Dublin, an interesting near Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. The painting was appreciated for its precision and photograph-like quality. Caillebotte creates the idea of overcast, rainy day just through the light and the reflection on water on the street.

Wow facts

• Impressionists were more concerned with the light and colour of the moment than its vivid details. They mostly painted outdoors and worked quickly to capture the moment before the light changed. For this, they used brush strokes and unmixed colour to save time. Often they had very unusual visual angles too.


• Impressionists were often accused of having unfinished paintings and dealing with social or banal subjects. Most of them could not sell their paintings and lived in poverty for years. In fact, Van Gogh – a post-Impressionist artist – sold only one painting in his lifetime and his buyer was his brother!

 

Picture Credit : Google