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“Cubism is the main pivot in 20th century art, the culmination of the process begun with Impressionism, but also the route to abstraction.” (Peter Watson, The Modern Mind p. 63)
Cubism expressed a worldview of radical subjectivity and individual relativism; the only thing real to the Cubists was their own mind. “A cubist will fashion the real in the image of his mind, for there is only one truth, ours, which we impose on everyone.” (Jean Metzinger, Cubism, quoted in Introducing Picasso, p. 82)
The Cubists abandoned conventional perspective and fragmented the world into intersecting geometric planes, representing the world simultaneously from different viewpoints. They violated the physical laws of nature and discarded a consistent light source. This produced an ambiguous sense of space with no differentiation of solid and void.
“For a century that questioned the very concept of absolute truth, Cubism created an artistic language of intentional ambiguity.” (Robert Rosenbloom, Cubism and Twentieth Century Art, p. 9)
They also introduced new techniques (collage) and new textures (adding sand, printed material, and other objects in their paintings).
Cubism was the most influential art movement of the 20th century. It influenced Russian Constructivism, Dutch De Stijl, German Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and nearly every art movement of the 20th century.
“All forms of painting in the last fifty years have been affected by the invention of Cubism.” (Anthony Blunt, Picasso’s Guernica, p. 1)
The founder and quintessential representative of Cubism was Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973).
Picasso was recognized to be an art prodigy and trained first by his father and then at the Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts. Barcelona was the nexus of the Spanish anarchism and libertarian movement, and Picasso was its rising star.
In 1904 he moved to Paris where he experimented with opium, Nietzschean thought, and the bohemian lifestyle of the cafes. Three years later he painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, considered by historians to be the birth of modern art.
“Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was an attack on all previous ideas of art; it was intended to be as destructive as it was creative, shocking, deliberately ugly, and undeniably crude.” (Peter Watson, The Modern Mind p. 63)
Picasso was hugely prolific, creating over 20,000 works in nearly every medium, achieving an international status greater than any artist in history. He saw himself at war with traditional values and sought to destroy them with his art.
“A painter is always at war with the world. Either he wants to conquer it or crush it, change it or celebrate it.” (Pablo Picasso, Quoted in, Introducing Picasso, p. 18)
“Picasso’s war on representation was a war on the tradition that begot it, the tradition that saw human beings as possessing infinite value.” (E. Michael Jones, Degenerate Moderns, p. 143)
“Picasso viewed his works not as art but rather as weapons, weapons against every emotion of belonging in creation, against nature, human nature and the God who created it all.” (Arinanna Huffington, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer)
Picasso’s art reflected and informed a century of insanity and despair. “In Picasso as in the century he mirrored, there arose a Dionysian compound of unbound eroticism, aggression, dismemberment, death, and birth. (Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 391)
“The artist must have some faith in his fellow men and some confidence in the civilization to which he belongs. Such an attitude is not possible in the modern world. The only logical monument would be to disillusion, to despair, to destruction. It was inevitable that the great artist of our time should be driven to this conclusion. Picasso’s great fresco (Guernica) is a monument to destruction, a cry of outrage and horror.” (Sir Herbert Read, Picasso’s Guernica, p. 6)
“He produced some of the scariest distortions of the human body and the most violently irrational, erotic images of Eros and Thanatos ever committed to canvas.” (Robert Hughes, People of the Century, p. 82)
“Not one of these pictures was actually a portrait, but his prophesy of a ruined world.” (David Duncan, Picasso’s Picassos, Quoted in, Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live, p. 198)
Guernica
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Self-Portrait
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