ARTH101: Art Appreciation

Georges Braque, Landscape of l'Estaque, 1907, oil on canvas, 37 x 46 cm. (Musée d'Art moderne, Troyes, France)

During the summer of 1908, Braque returned to Cézanne's old haunt for a second summer. Previously he had painted this small port just south of Aix-en-Provence with the brilliant irreverent colors of a Fauve (Braque, along with Matisse, Derain, and others, defined this style from about 1904 to 1907). But now, after Cézanne's death and having met Picasso, Braque set out on a very different tack, the invention of Cubism.

Cubism is a terrible name. Except for a brief moment, the style has nothing to do with cubes. Instead, it is an extension of the formal ideas developed by Cézanne and broader perceptual ideas that became increasingly important in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These ideas inspired Matisse as early as 1904 and Picasso perhaps a year or two later.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, 8 x 7 feet and 8 inches (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

We certainly saw such issues asserted in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. But Picasso's great 1907 canvas is not yet Cubism.  It is more accurate to say that it is the foundation upon which Cubism is constructed. If we want to really see the origin of the style, we need to look beyond Picasso to his new friend Georges Braque.

A New Perspective

The young French Fauvist Georges Braque had been struck by the posthumous Cézanne retrospective in Paris in 1907 and his first sight of Picasso's radical new canvas, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Like so many people that saw it, Braque is reported to have hated it - Matisse, for example, predicted that Picasso would be found hanged behind the work, so great was his mistake. Nevertheless, Braque stated that it haunted him through the winter of 1908.

Like every good Parisian, Braque fled Paris in the summer and decided to return to the part of Provence in which Cézanne had lived and worked. Braque spent the summer of 1908 shedding the colors of Fauvism and exploring the structural issues that had consumed Cézanne and now Picasso. He wrote:

Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-04, oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 36 3/16 inches (73 x 91.9 cm) (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Like Cézanne, Braque sought to undermine the illusion of depth by forcing the viewer to recognize the canvas, not as a window but as it truly is, a vertical curtain that hangs before us. In canvases such as Houses at L'Estaque( 1908), Braque simplifies the form of the houses (here are the so-called cubes). Still, he nullifies the obvious recessionary overlapping with the trees that force forward even the most distant building.

Georges Braque, Houses at l'Estaque, 1908, oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. (Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland)

Brothers of Invention

When Braque returned to Paris in late August, Picasso was an eager audience. Almost immediately, Picasso began to exploit Braque's investigations.  But far from the end of their working relationship, this exchange becomes the first in a series of collaborations that lasts six years. It creates an intimate creative bond between these two artists that is unique in art history.

Pablo Picasso, The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro, 1909, oil on canvas, 24-1/8 x 20-1/8 in. (Museum of Modern Art, New York, fractional and promised gift)

Between 1908 and the beginning of World War I in 1914, Braque and Picasso worked together so closely that it is difficult for experts to tell whether a work is by one or the other. For months, they would visit each other's studio almost daily to share ideas and challenge each other. Still, a pattern did emerge, and it tended to benefit Picasso. When a radical new idea was introduced, Braque more likely recognized its value. But Picasso usually realized its potential and was able to exploit it fully.

Tough Art

Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911, oil on canvas, 116.8 x 81 cm (Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland)

By 1910, Cubism had matured into a complex system that seems to have rejected all esthetic concerns. The average museum visitor often looks disappointed when they confront a canvas by Braque or Picasso from 1910–1911 (the period known as Analytic Cubism), even if they acknowledge the importance of the work. I suspect this lies in the difficulty of the work. Cubism is an analysis of vision and its representation. It is challenging. As a society, many believe that all art ought to be easily understandable or at least beautiful. That is the part I find confusing.

Source: Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, Smarthistory, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/cubism-early-abstraction/cubism/a/inventing-cubism
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