Scholars have divided the history of Cubism into phases. In one scheme, the first phase of Cubism, known as
Analytic Cubism, a phrase coined by
Juan Gris a posteriori, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1910 and 1912 in France. A second phase,
Synthetic Cubism, is generally considered to run from about 1912 to 1914, characterised by simpler shapes and brighter colours, and experiments in texture and pattern, for example, using newspaper print and patterned paper.
Synthetic Cubism remained vital until around 1919, when the
Surrealist movement gained popularity. English
art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book,
The Cubist Epoch. According to Cooper there was "Early Cubism", (from 1906 to 1908) when the movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque; the second phase being called "High Cubism", (from 1909 to 1914) during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent (after 1911); and finally Cooper referred to "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) implied an intentional value judgement.
Proto-Cubism: 1907–1908 , ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'', 1907, considered to be a major step towards the founding of the Cubist movement , 1909–10,
Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise), oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73 cm,
Tate Modern, London Cubism burgeoned between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' has often been considered a
proto-Cubist work. In 1908, in his review of
Georges Braque's exhibition at
Kahnweiler's gallery, the critic
Louis Vauxcelles called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes". Vauxcelles recounted how Matisse told him at the time, "Braque has just sent in to the 1908
Salon d'Automne a painting made of little cubes". Georges Braque's 1908 ''
Houses at l'Estaque (and related works) prompted Vauxcelles, in Gil Blas
, 25 March 1909, to refer to bizarreries cubiques
(cubic oddities). Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro'', as the first Cubist paintings. The first organized group exhibition by Cubists took place at the
Salon des Indépendants in
Paris during the spring of 1911 in a room called 'Salle 41'; it included works by
Jean Metzinger,
Albert Gleizes,
Fernand Léger,
Robert Delaunay and
Henri Le Fauconnier, yet no works by Picasso or Braque were exhibited. but it was subject to criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by
Clement Greenberg. ,
Portrait de Messieurs Kawashima et Foujita, 1914 Contemporary views of Cubism are complex, formed to some extent in response to the "Salle 41" Cubists, whose methods were too distinct from those of Picasso and Braque to be considered merely secondary to them. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed. Wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the "Salle 41" artists, e.g.,
Francis Picabia; the brothers
Jacques Villon,
Raymond Duchamp-Villon and
Marcel Duchamp, who beginning in late 1911 formed the core of the
Section d'Or (or the
Puteaux Group); the sculptors
Alexander Archipenko,
Joseph Csaky and
Ossip Zadkine as well as
Jacques Lipchitz and
Henri Laurens; and painters such as
Louis Marcoussis,
Roger de La Fresnaye,
František Kupka,
Diego Rivera,
Léopold Survage,
Auguste Herbin,
André Lhote,
Gino Severini (after 1916),
María Blanchard (after 1916), and
Georges Valmier (after 1918). More fundamentally, Christopher Green argues that Douglas Cooper's terms were "later undermined by interpretations of the work of Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger that stress iconographic and ideological questions rather than methods of representation."
Early Cubism: 1909–1914 , ''
L'Homme au Balcon, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud), 1912, oil on canvas, 195.6 × 114.9 cm (77 × 45 1/4 in.), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Completed the same year that Albert Gleizes co-authored the book Du "Cubisme"'' with Jean Metzinger. Exhibited at , Paris, 1912,
Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston, 1913. There was a distinct difference between Kahnweiler's Cubists and the Salon Cubists. Prior to 1914, Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger (to a lesser extent) gained the support of a single committed art dealer in Paris, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who guaranteed them an annual income for the exclusive right to buy their works. Kahnweiler sold only to a small circle of connoisseurs. His support gave his artists the freedom to experiment in relative privacy. Picasso worked in Montmartre until 1912, while Braque and Gris remained there until after the First World War. Léger was based in Montparnasse. Louis Vauxcelles, in his review of the 26th Salon des Indépendants (1910), made a passing and imprecise reference to Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Léger and Le Fauconnier as "ignorant geometers, reducing the human body, the site, to pallid cubes." At the 1910 , a few months later, Metzinger exhibited his highly fractured
Nu à la cheminée (Nude), which was subsequently reproduced in both
Du "Cubisme" (1912) and
Les Peintres Cubistes (1913). '' (1908–09) is reproduced top right. Also reproduced are works by Derain, Matisse, Friesz, Herbin, and a photo of Braque. At the of the same year, in addition to the Indépendants group of
Salle 41, were exhibited works by
André Lhote,
Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon,
Roger de La Fresnaye,
André Dunoyer de Segonzac and
František Kupka. The exhibition was reviewed in the October 8, 1911 issue of
The New York Times. This article was published a year after
Gelett Burgess'
The Wild Men of Paris, and two years prior to the
Armory Show, which introduced astonished Americans, accustomed to realistic art, to the experimental styles of the European avant garde, including Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. The 1911
New York Times article portrayed works by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Metzinger and others dated before 1909; not exhibited at the 1911 Salon. The article was titled ''The "Cubists" Dominate Paris' Fall Salon
and subtitled Eccentric School of Painting Increases Its Vogue in the Current Art Exhibition – What Its Followers Attempt to Do.''
Salon des Indépendants The subsequent 1912 Salon des Indépendants located in Paris (20 March to 16 May 1912) was marked by the presentation of Marcel Duchamp's
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, which itself caused a scandal, even amongst the Cubists. It was in fact rejected by the hanging committee, which included his brothers and other Cubists. Although the work was shown in the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912 and the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Duchamp never forgave his brothers and former colleagues for censoring his work. Juan Gris, a new addition to the Salon scene, exhibited his
Portrait of Picasso (Art Institute of Chicago), while Metzinger's two showings included
La Femme au Cheval (
Woman with a horse, 1911–1912,
National Gallery of Denmark). Delaunay's monumental
La Ville de Paris (Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris) and Léger's
La Noce (
The Wedding, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), were also exhibited.
Galeries Dalmau In 1912,
Galeries Dalmau presented the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide (''Exposició d'Art Cubista''), with a controversial showing by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin and Marcel Duchamp (Barcelona, 20 April to 10 May 1912). The Dalmau exhibition comprised 83 works by 26 artists. Jacques Nayral's association with Gleizes led him to write the Preface for the Cubist exhibition, Duchamp's
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was exhibited for the first time. Extensive media coverage (in newspapers and magazines) before, during and after the exhibition launched the Galeries Dalmau as a force in the development and propagation of modernism in Europe. and
El Noticiero Universal attacking the Cubists with a series of caricatures laced with derogatory text. A major development in Cubism occurred in 1912 with Braque's and Picasso's introduction of collage in the modernist sense. Picasso is credited with creating the first Cubist collage,
Still life With Chair Caning, in May 1912, while Braque preceded Picasso in the creation of Cubist cardboard sculptures and
papiers collés. Papiers collés were often composed of pieces of everyday paper artifacts such as newspaper, table cloth, wallpaper and sheet music, whereas Cubist collages combined disparate materials—in the case of
Still-life With Chair Caning, freely brushed oil paint and commercially printed oilcloth together on a canvas. The controversy spread to the Municipal Council of Paris, leading to a debate in the Chambre des Députés about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such art. The Cubists were defended by the Socialist deputy,
Marcel Sembat. It was against this background of public anger that Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes wrote
Du "Cubisme" (published by Eugène Figuière in 1912, translated to English and Russian in 1913). Among the works exhibited were
Le Fauconnier's vast composition
Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) now at Rhode Island School of Design Museum,
Joseph Csaky's
Deux Femme, Two Women (a sculpture now lost), in addition to the highly abstract paintings by Kupka,
Amorpha (The National Gallery, Prague), and
Picabia,
La Source (The Spring) (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Abstraction and the ready-made ,
Simultaneous Windows on the City, 1912, 46 x 40 cm,
Hamburger Kunsthalle, an example of
Abstract Cubism The most extreme forms of Cubism were not those practiced by Picasso and Braque, who resisted total abstraction. Other Cubists, by contrast, especially
František Kupka, and those considered
Orphists by
Apollinaire (Delaunay, Léger, Picabia and Duchamp), accepted abstraction by removing visible subject matter entirely. Kupka's two entries at the 1912 Salon d'Automne,
Amorpha-Fugue à deux couleurs and
Amorpha chromatique chaude, were highly abstract (or nonrepresentational) and metaphysical in orientation. Both Duchamp in 1912 and Picabia from 1912 to 1914 developed an expressive and allusive abstraction dedicated to complex emotional and sexual themes. Beginning in 1912 Delaunay painted a series of paintings entitled
Simultaneous Windows, followed by a series entitled
Formes Circulaires, in which he combined planar structures with bright prismatic hues; based on the optical characteristics of juxtaposed colors his departure from reality in the depiction of imagery was quasi-complete. In 1913–14 Léger produced a series entitled
Contrasts of Forms, giving a similar stress to color, line and form. His Cubism, despite its abstract qualities, was associated with themes of mechanization and modern life. Apollinaire supported these early developments of abstract Cubism in
Les Peintres cubistes (1913), The group seems to have adopted the name Section d'Or to distinguish themselves from the narrower definition of Cubism developed in parallel by
Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque in the
Montmartre quarter of Paris, and to show that Cubism, rather than being an isolated art-form, represented the continuation of a grand tradition (indeed, the
golden ratio had fascinated Western intellectuals of diverse interests for at least 2,400 years). The idea of the Section d'Or originated in the course of conversations between Metzinger, Gleizes and Jacques Villon. The group's title was suggested by Villon, after reading a 1910 translation of
Leonardo da Vinci's
Trattato della Pittura by
Joséphin Péladan. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering
African, Polynesian,
Micronesian and
Native American art. Artists such as
Paul Gauguin,
Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through
Gertrude Stein, at a time when both artists had recently acquired an interest in
primitivism,
Iberian sculpture,
African art and
African tribal masks. They became friendly rivals and competed with each other throughout their careers, perhaps leading to Picasso entering a new period in his work by 1907, marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian and African art. Picasso's paintings of 1907 have been characterized as
Protocubism, as notably seen in ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the antecedent of Cubism. Cooper goes on to say: "The Demoiselles
is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the Demoiselles
is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it." Between 1905 and 1908, a conscious search for a new style caused rapid changes in art across France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, and Russia. The Impressionists had used a double point of view, and both Les Nabis and the Symbolists (who also admired Cézanne) flattened the picture plane, reducing their subjects to simple geometric forms. Neo-Impressionist structure and subject matter, most notably to be seen in the works of Georges Seurat (e.g., Parade de Cirque
, Le Chahut and Le Cirque''), was another important influence. There were also parallels in the development of literature and social thought. The critical use of the word "cube" goes back at least to May 1901 when Jean Béral, reviewing the work of
Henri-Edmond Cross at the Indépendants in
Art et Littérature, commented that he "uses a large and square pointillism, giving the impression of mosaic. One even wonders why the artist has not used cubes of solid matter diversely colored: they would make pretty revetments." (Robert Herbert, 1968, p. 221) in an effort to dispel the confusion raging around the word, and as a major defence of Cubism (which had caused a public scandal following the 1911 Salon des Indépendants and the 1912 Salon d'Automne in Paris). Clarifying their aims as artists, this work was the first theoretical treatise on Cubism and it still remains the clearest and most intelligible. The result, not solely a collaboration between its two authors, reflected discussions by the circle of artists who met in
Puteaux and
Courbevoie. It mirrored the attitudes of the "artists of Passy", which included Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, to whom sections of it were read prior to publication. The 1912 manifesto
Du "Cubisme" by Metzinger and Gleizes was followed in 1913 by
Les Peintres Cubistes, a collection of reflections and commentaries by Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire had been closely involved with Picasso beginning in 1905, and Braque beginning in 1907, but gave as much attention to artists such as Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Picabia, and Duchamp. Crystal Cubism, and its associative ''rappel à l'ordre'', has been linked with an inclination—by those who served the armed forces and by those who remained in the civilian sector—to escape the realities of the Great War, both during and directly following the conflict. The purifying of Cubism from 1914 through the mid-1920s, with its cohesive unity and voluntary constraints, has been linked to a much broader
ideological transformation towards
conservatism in both French society and
French culture. The most innovative period of Cubism was before 1914. After World War I, with the support given by the dealer
Léonce Rosenberg, Cubism returned as a central issue for artists, and continued as such until the mid-1920s when its avant-garde status was rendered questionable by the emergence of
geometric abstraction and
Surrealism in
Paris. Many Cubists, including Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger and
Emilio Pettoruti while developing other styles, returned periodically to Cubism, even well after 1925. Cubism reemerged during the 1920s and the 1930s in the work of the American
Stuart Davis and the Englishman
Ben Nicholson. In France, however, Cubism experienced a decline beginning in about 1925. Léonce Rosenberg exhibited not only the artists stranded by Kahnweiler's exile but others including Laurens, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Gleizes, Csaky, Herbin and Severini. In 1918 Rosenberg presented a series of Cubist exhibitions at his Galerie de l'Effort Moderne in Paris. Attempts were made by Louis Vauxcelles to argue that Cubism was dead, but these exhibitions, along with a well-organized Cubist show at the 1920 Salon des Indépendants and a revival of the Salon de la Section d'Or in the same year, demonstrated it was still alive. ==Interpretation==