The Development of Modernist Art
    
       
  Revolution and World War :: Expressionism in Early 20th-Century Europe :: Embracing Abstraction :: Challenging Artistic Conventions :: Transatlantic Artistic Dialogues :: European Art in the Wake of World War I :: New Art for A New Society-Utopian Ideals :: Emphasizing the Organic :: Art As Political Statement in the 1930s :: Émigrés and Exiles: Energizing American Art at Midcentury   Images courtesy of
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  EMBRACING ABSTRACTION

Pablo Picasso's extensive artistic production during his long career covered a wide range of media (painting, sculpture, ceramics, prints, and drawings) and styles.

The Fragmentation of Forms in Space

A planar portrait of a writer:

In his portrait of Gertrude Stein, Picasso painted Stein's head as a simplified planar form, incorporating aspects derived from African sculpture, ancient Iberian sculpture, and the late paintings of Cézanne.

33-8: PABLO PICASSO, Gertrude Stein, 1906-1607. Oil on canvas, 3' 3 3/8" x 2' 8". Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1947).
  1. Portrait of Gertrude Stein
  2. Portrait of Gertrude Stein
  3. Portrait of Gertrude Stein
  4. Portrait of Gertrude Stein
  5. Portrait of Gertrude Stein
"I Paint Forms as I Think Them":

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon shows the influence of African, Iberian, and European art. The painting points the way to a radically new method of representing form in space. Shapes are fractured and interwoven with the equally jagged planes that represent drapery and empty space. The heads of three of the figures were derived from ancient Iberian sculptures, while the two other heads were derived from African sculpture. The painting's revolutionary ideas provided the point of departure for the formulation of Cubism by Braque and Picasso around 1908.

33-9: PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, June-July 1907. Oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8". Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest).
  1. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
  2. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
  3. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
  4. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
  5. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Cubism

Outside the world of observation:

Cubism rejected naturalistic depictions and conventional pictorial illusionism. The Cubists dissected visual reality into its constituent optical features, which they then recomposed into a coherent aesthetic object. Analytic Cubism

Analytic cubism:

The first phase of Cubism is referred to as Analytic Cubism, which involved analyzing form and investigating the pictorial elements for conveying meaning.

Analyzing a musician's form:

In The Portuguese, an example of Analytic Cubism, Georges Braque dissected the form of the image and placed it in dynamic interaction with the space around it.		    
       
  33-10: GEORGES BRAQUE, The Portuguese, 1911. Oil on canvas, 3' 10 1/8" x 2' 8". Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum, Basel (gift of Raoul La Roche, 1952).
  1. The Portuguese
  2. The Portuguese
  3. The Portuguese
  4. The Portuguese
Kaleidoscopic colored shards:

In his cubist depiction of the Eiffel Tower, Champs de Mars, or The Red Tower, Robert Delaunay employs color.		  
       
  33-11: ROBERT DELAUNAY, Champs de Mars or The Red Tower, 1911. Oil on canvas, 5' 3" x 4' 3". Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
  1. The Red Tower
  2. The Red Tower
  3. The Red Tower
  4. The Red Tower
  5. The Red Tower
Synthetic Cubism

Illusion or reality?:

The second phase of Cubism is called Synthetic Cubism, in which artists constructed paintings and drawings from objects and shapes cut from paper or other materials to represent parts of a subject. Picasso's Still Life with Chair-Caning includes a piece of oilcloth pasted on the canvas after it was imprinted with the photolithographed pattern of a cane chair seat. The picture is framed with a piece of rope.

33-12: PABLO PICASSO, Still Life with Chair-Caning, 1912. Oil and oilcloth on canvas, 10 5/8" x 1' 1 3/4". Musée Picasso, Paris.
  1. Still Life with Chair-Caning
  2. Still Life with Chair-Caning
  3. Still Life with Chair-Caning
  4. Still Life with Chair-Caning
  5. Still Life with Chair-Caning
Glued and stuck paper:

Georges Braque's Fruit Dish and Cards is a variant of collage called papier collé (stuck paper) that involved gluing assorted paper shapes to a drawing or painting.

33-13: GEORGES BRAQUE, Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and Glass, 1913. Charcoal and various papers pasted on paper, 1' 6 7/8" x 2' 1 1/4". Private collection, New York.
  1. Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and Glass
  2. Similar Braque Painting
  3. Similar Paintings
Cubist Sculpture

The dissolution of form:

In Jacques Lipchitz's Cubist sculpture Bather, form is broken into cubic volumes and planes and made to interlock and intersect to produce irregular and spatially ambiguous facets and curves.		  
       
 
 
       
       
  33-14: PABLO PICASSO, Maquette for Guitar, 1912. Cardboard, string, and wire (restored), 25 1/4" x 13" x 7 1/2". Museum of Modern Art, New York.
  1. Marquette for Guitar
  2. Marquette for Guitar
Dynamic form in space:

One of the most successful sculptors t adapt into three dimensions the planar, fragmented dissolution of form central to Analytic Cubist painting was JAQUES LIPCHITZ.

33-15: JACQUES LIPCHITZ, Bather, 1917. Bronze, 2' 10 3/4" x 1' 1 1/4" x 1' 1". Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (gift of the Friends of Art). Copyright © Estate of Jacques Lipchitz/Licensed by VAGA, New York/Marlborough Gallery, NY.
  1. Bather
  2. Bather
  3. Bather
  4. Bather
The interplay of space and mass:

In his quasi-representational statuette Woman Combing Her Hair, Aleksandr Archipenko shows a complex interpenetration of space and mass.		    
       
  33-16: ALEKSANDR ARCHIPENKO, Woman Combing Her Hair, 1915. Bronze, approx. 1' 1 3/4" high. Museum of Modern Art, New York (bequest of Lillie P. Bliss).
  1. Woman
  2. Woman
  3. Woman
  4. Woman
  5. Woman
Welded metal sculptures:

In his almost completely abstract welded iron sculpture Woman Combing Her Hair, Julio González reduced form to an dynamic interplay of curves, lines, and planes.

33-17: JULIO GONZÁLEZ, Woman Combing Her Hair, ca. 1930-1933. Iron, 4' 9" high. Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
  1. Woman
  2. Similar Sculpture
  3. Similar Sculpture
  4. SImilar Sculpture
Purism

The machine aesthetic:

Fernand Léger was inspired by the "machine esthetic" and devised a style that combined the Cubist analysis of form with the Purist's broad simplification and machine-like finish of the design components. In Léger's The City, forms have the sharp precision of the machine.

33-18: FERNAND LÉGER, The City, 1919. Oil on canvas, approx. 7' 7" x 9' 9 1/2". Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (A. E. Gallatin Collection).
  1. The City
  2. The City
  3. The City
  4. The City
  5. The City
Futurism

Combining art and politics:

Futurism had both an artistic and a sociopolitical agenda. The Futurists championed war as a cleansing agent and called for the destruction of museums, libraries, and similar institutions. They also called for radical innovation in the arts and were particularly interested in the speed and dynamism of modern technology.

Simultaneity of Views:

Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash attempts to create the effect of motion by repeating shapes and producing a simultaneity of views.

33-19: GIACOMO BALLA, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912. Oil on canvas, 2' 11 3/8" x 3' 7 1/4". Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, gift of George F. Goodyear, 1964).
  1. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
  2. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
  3. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
  4. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
  5. Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
The sensation of motion:

Umberto Boccioni's Futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space attempts to show the formal and spatial effects of motion in a striding human figure.

33-20: UMBERTO BOCCIONI, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 (cast 1931). Bronze, 3' 7 7/8" high x 2' 10 7/8" x 1' 3 3/4". Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest).
  1. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
  2. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
  3. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
  4. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
  5. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
A sanitized depiction of war:

"War-Sole Hygiene to the World": Gino Severini's Armored Train reflects the Futurist belief in the cleansing action of war while capturing the dynamism and motion central to Futurism. By breaking all the objects in the painting into facets and planes, Severini suggests action and movement.

33-21: GINO SEVERINI, Armored Train, 1915. Oil on canvas, 3' 10" x 2' 10 1/8". Collection of Richard S. Zeisler, New York.
  1. Armored Train
  2. Armored Train
  3. Armored Train
  4. Armored Train
  5. Armored Train
  
       
 
 
       
       
  Revolution and World War :: Expressionism in Early 20th-Century Europe :: Embracing Abstraction :: Challenging Artistic Conventions :: Transatlantic Artistic Dialogues :: European Art in the Wake of World War I :: New Art for A New Society-Utopian Ideals :: Emphasizing the Organic :: Art As Political Statement in the 1930s :: Émigrés and Exiles: Energizing American Art at Midcentury