Photography Schools

The birth of cubism took place in 1907-1908 when the world was on the brink of WWI. This new trend in modernist art naturally stirred up anger among philistines.

A circle of poets and critics, and followers of the philosopher Bergson, stood up for cubism in the visual arts. This group became known as the Cubists. The poet and publicist G. Apollinaire became the undisputed leader of this movement. If impressionist painting declared its use of colour conventional, then the Cubists gave voice to a new approach to reality via the conventional character of space. The American art historian J. Golding wrote that cubism "...is the fullest and most radical revolution in art since the time of the Renaissance". This movement was one of the first to embody the leading trends in the further development of XX century art. One of these trends became the dominance of the concept over the artistic value of the painting in itself. The philosopher Hegel noted that the art of the new age was increasingly filled with reflection and figurative thinking, excluding the abstract so the line between art criticism and practical creativity became to fine to draw. If, in cubism this trend existed in a rudimentary form then in postmodernist art it became a dominant force.

1907-1912 was the period of analytical cubism (also called stereometric or volumetric). At this time sensational reforms were taking place in the realm of art reality - there was an unprecedented decomposition of form, in this instance involving cubes.

The Cubist's artistic approach included a rejection of perspective, a reduction in the number of figures in view and a tendency to show them simultaneously and from several angles, and an inclination towards reverse perspective.

In 1908-1909 both Braque and Picasso sought approaches beyond the scope of cubism. After 1912 the period referred to as "synthetic" cubism began (also called "representational cubism"). The principle of creating an artistic space consisted of filling the canvas with parts of a dissected object which collided, lay side by side, covered or disappeared into each other. In this way a picture is created like a painted collage from separate parts of shapes, as if these shapes have been cut into small pieces. For Cubists form is represented by a flat imprint viewed simultaneously from a number of sides.