The Cubist Epoch

Cooper, Douglas (1971)

This title is out of print.

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Between 1425 and 1450 artists throughout Europe—Masaccio, Filippo Lippi and Donatello in Italy, Fouquet and the Aix Master in France, the van Eycks in Flanders, Konrad Witz in Switzerland, and Stefan Lochner in Germany—abandoned the medieval way of representing reality, by means of experiential conceptions, and began to rely instead on visual perception, one-point perspective and natural light. In other words, these Renaissance artists opted out of recording that fuller truth about reality which is known to the human mind in favor of recording only what the eye sees of things, incomplete and deceptive though this may often be. And for some four hundred and fifty years European artists followed this same principle until, coming to the end of its pictorial possibilities, Cubism was invented to replace it. Now Cubism involved a return to the earlier conceptual principle, insofar as the artist assumed the right to fill gaps in our seeing, and to make pictures whose reality would be independent of, but no less valid than, our visual impressions of reality, and was thus stylistically the antithesis of Renaissance art. Yet there is a parallel between them, for both styles were initiated by a few artists, spread quickly throughout the western world and became the starting-point of a new and more modern art.

Cubism originated in Paris between 1906 and 1908 and was the creation of Picasso and Braque, a Spaniard and a Frenchman. Within four years, however, the pictorial methods and technical innovations of these two young painters had been seized on by other artists—in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Russia, American and, to a much lesser degree, in England—who either imitated them or tried to transform them by imaginative efforts into new types of artistic expression. A knowledge of Cubist methods and possibilities spread rapidly, and by this means Cubism played some part in the technical experiments and stylistic adventures which constitute virtually all the avant-garde developments in western art between 1909 and 1914. But there is more to it than that. For the influence of Cubism, though greatly diminished after 1925, certainly continued to affect the pictorial methods of most major artists until about 1940, when in turn it was supplanted by artistic conceptions of a wholly opposite order. As a result, Cubism has proved to be probably the most potent generative force in twentieth-century art and has transformed our western ideas concerning the purpose and possibilities of pictorial representation.

Table of contents

Foreword

Introduction

1. True Cubism: 1906–1912

Early Cubism: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1906–7
Early Cubism in relation to Fauvism
Braque's Nude, 1907–8
Developments in Picasso's Painting, 1907–9
Developments in Braque's Painting, 1908–9
From Early to High Cubism: The Painting of Braque and Picasso, 1909–12
Summary

2. The Cubist Movement in Paris: 1906–1914

Derain, 1906–10
Le Fauconnier, Gleizes and Metzinger, 1910–14
Delaunay, 1910–14
Léger, 1909–14
The Movement Gathers Momentum, 1911–14
Types of Cubism
The Puteaux Group and the Section d'Or, 1911–13
Villon, Duchamp and Picabia, 1911–13
Lesser Painters of the Cubist Movement, 1911–13: de Segonzac, Moreau, Marchand, Lhote, Herbin, Rivera, Férat, Chagall, Marcoussis and de La Fresnaye

3. The Influence of Cubism Outside France

In Holland: Mondrian
In Germany: Marc, Macke, Campendonk, Klee and Feininger
In Czechoslovakia: Filla, Kubišta, Procházka, Beneš, Gutfreund and Čapek
In Russia: Gontcharova, Larionov, Malevich, Tatlin, Popova and Udaltsova
In Italy: The Futurists
American Artists in New York and Paris: Weber, Marin, Stella, MacDonald-Wright, Russell and Bruce
In England: The Vorticists

4. Late Cubism: 1914–1921

Braque and Picasso: Pasted Papers and Paintings, Summer 1912 to Summer 1914
Juan Gris: Paintings and Pasted Papers, 1912–14
Cubism in Paris during the War Years
Picasso: Painting 1914–21
Braque: Painting 1917–21
Juan Gris: Painting 1915–21

5. Cubist Sculpture

Picasso, de La Fresnaye, Czaky and Filla
Duchamp-Villon and Archipenko
Boccioni and Weber
Gutfreund
Lipchitz, Gris, Laurens and Braque

6. Conclusion

Bibliography
Artists and Their Dates
Check List
Index
Photo Credits

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Authors: Douglas Cooper

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