Cubism

Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (now Musée de l’Homme)

Primitive, primitivism

Analytic Cubism

trompe l’oeil = fool the eye

Synthetic cubism

Collage (coller = to paste)

papier collé = pasted paper

jouer = to play

Picasso

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-06

• Stein: Ex-Patriot. Born in America, living + working in Paris during the WWs
• Female art patron. Innovative writer. Extremely experimental artist. Hyperaware of construction of painting.
• Private salon. Left bank of Paris. Collecting European art.
• Face rendered almost sculptural. Mask. Iberian sculpture from the Louvre. Ovular eyes. Monumental form fills canvas. Hands are not precise.

Les Demoiselle d’Avignon, 1907

• About halfway through visits Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro
• Faces on the right appear like masks.
• 5 prostitues in a brothel in Barcelona. Confrontational. 5 instead of 1 looking at he viewer. Aggressive stances.
• Sex and commerce. Earlier sketches contain male figures. Female figures are more curvilinear than angular. Break down of form. Considered unfinished.
• Draped curtains are broken up in the background through exploration of space. Shards.
• Deliberately disorienting.
• Objects shown from multiple perspectives but flattened.
• Colonial perspectives on these cultures.
• Larger than life size.

Anne Chave’s “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism: 

Thesis:

• Different perspective of scholars. Historiography.
• A lot of art historians and critics were white males they had bias opinion on intention of artist
• Insertion of new view from Chave.

Significance of role as “a heterosexual, feminist, female viewer”?

• Overlapping of types of women.
• Proof of different opinion through experiences
• Helps the reader understand perspective and background knowledge
• Specificity of critical opinion
• Grounding opinion in her voice

Roles of gender, race, and class

• Gender: Women – Aggressive, not passive.
• Links between Olympia.
• Aggressiveness, ugliness of pose. Opinion of Africans.

Other points

• Piece wasn’t specifically made for her to see. Private life made public.
• Legal but not on view – Courbet. Irked people.

Picasso

Three Women, 1908

• Use of cubes and triangles as basis for forms.
• Cannot necessarily tell which parts belong to which figures.
• Lower right hand corner: passage
• Attention to rules of representation. Formally trained but rejected it consciously. Tenants of representation.
• Echoing of Les Demoiselles. Accumulation of geometric shapes.

Analytic Cubism

• Analysis of form: basic geometric parts.
• Monochromatic
• Appearance of shattering

George Braque

• Called into service for WWI

Houses at L’Estaque, 1908

• Muted green, brown, greyish colours
• Subject matter: landscape, house, trees.
• Use of line and tone to create forms. Basic shading.
• Not interested in creating illusionistic space.
• Trees cut off dramatically

Violin and Palette, 1909

• Nail: Illusionistic poke out into space
• Violin, sheet music (roof), curtain
• Purposefully tricking the eye but giving a lot of information
• Many different perspectives.
• Right hand side: Most fragmented. Shards of colour.
• Long narrow vertical painting, Radical.

The Portuguese, 1911

• French cafe, vague male figure and acoustic
• Smokiness of the cafe.
• Dissecting form.
• Not meant to be exact illusionistic representation of real world.
• Blended forms.
• Inclusion of text and numbers: Poster of musician. Layering.

Picasso

Ma Jolie, 1911 – 12

• Shapes float over monochromatic background.
• Use of black line and shading from dark to light.
• Appearance of feet or hand. Spotting the figure as the background is more impasto than geometric.