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BTEC 1st Unit 2 Contextual Art & Design – Tutor: Paul CuretonCubismWeek 11 – 10th NovemberArt historians are interested in three basic related questions, questions which we will ask throughout the year:–How a work was produced?–What it is saying?–Why it was produced?Cubism is basically an artistic response by artists to an immense technological andindustrial change happening around them.Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London in1851.The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was organized by PrinceAlbert, Henry Cole, Francis Henry, Charles Dilke and other members of the Royal Societyfor the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce as a celebration of modern industrial technology and design. Products were being designed and produced on a mass scale and nations competed in World Exhibitions to show which was the most technologically advanced. There have been forty world exhibitions and the last one tookplace this year (2008).The Eiffel Tower was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from May 6, to October 31, 1889.Cubism as an art movement wanted to find new ways of making artwork and a group of artists started to reflect on their surroundings and try to find a new way of making pictures. This movement took place predominately around Paris as this was a major centre of art at the time. Artists would flock to Paris to find fame. The Eiffel Tower was a symbol of the magnificence and embracement of new technology in Paris as the city manufactured goods and developed new buildings on a massive scale.If you look at every cubist picture, it places man made objects before any natural ones. Cubism makes use of manufactured goods and makes art from these, as a subject and as a material.Example: look at the difference between Cezanne and Picasso –A. B.A. Paul, Cezanne, Le Mont Sainte-Victoire 1897.B. Pablo, Picasso, The factory horta de ebro, 1909.Question: Can you see Picasso’s preference for the man made?Pablo Picasso and George Braque wanted to represent the fact that our knowledge of an object is made up of lots of different views of it e.g. the sides, front, back top, and so they would paint their pictures in this way. Previous approaches to painting would show the picture from one particular point. E.g. John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott,1888.Summary:So cubist style is a reaction against perspective and to the fast pace of social change.Example: look at George Braque, Houses at L’Estique, 1908.Braque paints this image with simple child’s block shapes of houses, which take away connections with the real world. This early work by Braque is further developed later into full blown cubism.The best way of understanding this way of painting is to look at a quote from Picasso:“I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them.”Discussion: do you understand this idea of making art?Example: Juan Gris, Fantomas, 1915.The cubists developed a new technique called collage from the French Coller ‘to gum’.As the French origins of the term imply, a collage is a surface to which paper, cloth or other material has been attached. The process came to prominence with theCubists when Picasso and Braque began incorporating newspaper clippings andother non-art materials into their paintings with the intention of questioning only the limits of fine art but also the nature of representation.1notPicasso and Braque started to collage with items that were mass produced, in Juan Gris’sFantomas, you have wood grain, wallpaper, tile, newspaper, pipe and a paperback thriller(books were being cheaply and mass produced at this time).1 Duro, Paul., Greenhalgh, Michael, Essential Art History, (London; Bloomsbury, 1992) p84.Example: Robert, Delaunny, The Red Tower, 1911-12.For Delaunny he wanted to find a new way of painting and found that the Eiffel Tower was the key. He wanted to show the beauty of the new mechanical age so he painted the tower thirty times, where he tries to show the vertigo and light bouncing of the tower and how light bounces off the lead roofs’ of the surrounding buildings.Example: Robert, Delaunay, Homage to Bleriot, 1914.In this picture the Aviator Bleriot is seen in the top right, also you can see telegraph poles, radio, and the Eiffel tower. Again Delaunny wants to show the newness of all the new technology he is interested in. The first planes flying above Paris must have been a magnificent sight.Example: Fernand Leger, The Cardplayers, 1917 & The Builders, 1950It was with the onset of war that the way artists viewed the new mechanical, mass manufacture age not with optimism but realised its destructive power from 1914 – 1918. Leger painted from experiences in WW1 when he was in the trenches manning the machine gun. Leger shows all the machinery that he experienced. He was interested in symmetryand thus all is forms and paintings were meant to show this.22 Hughes, Robert, The Shock of The New, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991).Pablo, Picasso, Guitar, pasted paper, charcoal, ink and chalk on blue paper, mountedon rag board, 1913, 66*50cm.TASK 1: Case StudyLook at Picasso’s Guitar from 1913 and think how the representation of the musical instrument is constructed.Question: If Guitar represents a guitar, which way up is it?Hint: Start by focusing on the flat white form which suggests a profile of a guitar’s body. Why does the shape suggest that it is an actual guitar? If the shape was on its own do you think it would still give the impression of a guitar?Answer:Picasso suggests objects by placing elements together. They are placed without any obvious joins. To see a guitar in Guitar the viewer (you) have to select the different elements and make connections between them and only by relating these elements together can the representation of a guitar be seen. No one form occupies the correct position for the guitar’s neck. The blue form with the frets could be one possibility, or the white rectangle below placed between the newspaper or even the large white rectangle at the top could be taken as the neck. Picasso basically provides clues for seeing the guitar, but he stops as seeing it as a straight representation of a guitar, as we do not know which way up the guitar is.Picasso is playing with us. We could even see the sections of the guitar’s body as a woman’s waist and hips. The pattern could even be the woman’s dress. In Guitar Picasso continues his play as the newsprint is an advertisement for an optician!This is a strange way of making art, but by using forms, curves, shapes, Picasso shows that you can make a leap and imagine a guitar.Picasso, Pablo, Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass,pasted, gouache and charcoal on paper, 1912, 48 x 36.5 cm.Task 2: Practical Task‘Seeing as’Picasso as we have seen depicts one thing, but we look at it in another way. For example the newspaper and card in Guitar make up a Guitar body, but they are unrelated objects.Using this idea, make up your own collage ‘Seeing as’ collect some materials and make your own collage which shows a picture unrelated to the object which, will suggest another type of form e.g. newspaper and card which suggests a guitar. 3Hint: For example get a coca-cola bottle label. We know what it is, but cut it out and combine it with another material say some newspaper to make a car. This is ‘seeing as’ they are unrelated materials but we see it as something else.By doing these tasks we can understand the fundamentals of Cubism: theory through doing. But now you understand one of the most innovative moments in the history of art!Task 3: Independent StudyGather the following images of cubist’s artists: Albert GleizesJean MetzingerHenri Le Fauconnier.3 Edwards, Steve, ed, Art of The Avant-Gardes, (London: Yale University Press, 2004). ................
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