Cubism

Cubism has been defined in different ways by artists, critics and historians. Some have written about cubism as a form of plastic geometry.

Appolonaire's definitions

At Section d'Or in 1912, Guillame Apolonaire gave a lecture outlining 4 types of Cubism :

Scientific Cubism

Including Picasso and Braques

Physical Cubism

Le Fouconnier - who didn;t break fully with traditional perspective

Orphic

Duchamp, Picabia, Delauney

Instinctive

those jumping on the bandwagon!

Historification

Analytic v Synthetic

Analytic Cubism

Coined by Juan Gris a posteriori . Goes from 1910 to 1912 in France. Main practiced by Braque

• Use of Trompe-l'œil
• Refusal of perspective
• Multi-angled (dimension of time)
• Use of collage
• monochromatic colours.

Synthetic Cubism

• fewer and simpler forms based to a lesser extent on natural objects.
• Brighter colors
• more decorative effect,
• more use of collage and other two-dimensional materials.

until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity.

Early/ High/Late

English art historian Douglas Cooper describes three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch.

Early Cubism

1906 to 1908 - developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque;

High Cubism

1909 to 1914 during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent (after 1911)

Late Cubism

from 1914 to 1921) as the last phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement. Douglas Cooper's restrictive use of these terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris (from 1911) and Léger (to a lesser extent).

The assertion that the Cubist depiction of space, mass, time, and volume supports (rather than contradicts) the flatness of the canvas was made by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler as early as 1920,[15] but it was subject to criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Clement Greenberg.[16] <wikipedia>

see w:Cubism