At the beginning of the last century, revolutions in art were made regularly after 2-3 years, and each of them turned over things no less than the universe as a whole. After the masters of Fauvism dealt with color, recognizing it as conditional and dependent not on reality, but on the tasks that the artist solves on his canvas, it was time to do something about the object and space. In the end, the world has already begun to get used to the fact that any woman, including naked, can be blue. It's time to give mankind on the other side of the head.
Experienced intransigents and former Fauvists Georges Braque, Maurice Vlaminck, and André Derain did it. Unexpected reinforcement they received from the adjoining Spanish guest workers Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. And, the first of them became the first and in a new direction.
It all began with the fact that Picasso painted the picture "Avignon Girls" - a fundamental work for early avant-garde. Now it looks quite traditional, and then, in 1907, so shocked even the closest friends of the author that they suspected him of madness. "Someday we will find Pablo hanging behind the screen," - a gloomy response to the painting Vlaminck. And even intransigent Marriage said Picasso: "You paint as if you want to make us eat a tow or drink kerosene. So they have at least once been in the skin of people who are watching their paintings.
P. Picasso. "Avignon Girls"
This job has raised a lot of questions that will then be dealt with by cubism. There is no perspective and light and shade in it, massive and weighty figures of girls are deformed and coarse, their proportions are broken, one of them - the one that sits - is shown from two angles, the head - from the front, and the body - from behind. The plane of the picture is divided into rigid segments, and the faces of some of the characters are Negro masks. It is clear why the painting caused shock. It was from him that the first cubist period began - the Cezanne period.
In general, Cezanne is a paradoxical figure in the history of art of the 20th century. On the one hand, it is one of the last representatives of a powerful classical tradition, coming from Poussin - despite the external differences to him. On the other hand, Cézanne was not just a forerunner, but a creator of early avant-gardism. He was referred to by the Fauvists, the Expressionists, the Cubists, and not even by nightfall, the abstractionists.
P. Cezanne. "Peaches and pears"
Cubists have taken a lot from Cezanne - a violation of perspective, showing objects simultaneously from several angles; color restraint, which has moved to the three-color ochre-black-green; thoroughness, weight and stability of the volume, as well as the covenant "treat nature through a cylinder, ball and cone", which means reducing any objects to these forms. Although the drawing of a cylinder, ball, and cone was the beginning of any traditional artistic education, cubists found in this principle the highest justification for their experiments.
The term "cubism" was coined by the same journalist who had already given the name to Fauvism - Louis Voxel. In his review of the Braque exhibition, he called the new direction a game of cubes.
G. Braque. "Estac"
In response to the quiet, peaceful and creative search of innovators, the cries of death of art were once again heard. And this is even though the cubists first returned the volume of painting, taken away from her by previous revolutions. But then they reasoned logically that we should do something about the volume. And they began to crush the depicted objects on small edges, turn them on a plane, turn them inside out. And so they did it, and it was impossible to know the objects already. The result was what Nikolai Berdyaev kindly called "folding monsters".
J. Gris: "The book, glasses and a tube"
And the purpose of all these cruel manipulations was quite noble - to allow the viewer to see what the volume consists of, to show it from all points of view, including from within. Thus, the notion of time was introduced into painting as if a person was looking at the picture as if for a long time spinning the object depicted on it in his hands, bypassing it around, looking inside. That's why, by the way, Cubists liked to depict violins and guitars so much - great opportunities opened up.
Here you will find Part 2.