Who invented synthetic cubism

It is one of the greatest 20th century paintings of the Synthetic Cubist movement. From Analytical to Synthetic Cubism. This new synthetic form of Cubist art reversed the compositional principle of Analytical Cubism. Instead of breaking down an object into fragments and then re-assembling them Analytical Cubism , the image was being built up synthesized from new elements and shapes. The two main techniques they used were collage from the French "coller", meaning to stick and papier colles from the French, meaning pasted paper.

The new type of modern art emerged in two particular works. In The Portuguese , Kunstmuseum, Basel , Braque had introduced the use of stencilled lettering, and in the following year he began to experiment with mixing materials such as sand and sawdust with his paint, in order to create interesting textures. Picasso produced his first collage Still Life with Chair-Caning , , Musee Picasso, Paris , in which he incorporated a piece of oilcloth and a length of rope whereupon Braque responded by pasting pieces of printed or decorative colour paper onto his paintings in much in the same way as a collage, except the shape of the pasted papers were objects themselves.

He first used papier colles in Fruit Dish and Glass , private collection. Synthesis to Create Modern Art. This process of incorporating scraps of everyday materials newspaper cuttings, tickets, tobacco wrappers etc into their paintings, marked a move away from the austere intellectualism of Analytical Cubism, towards a more relaxed and whimsical set of aesthetics. The theory was that, by introducing physical elements of real life, paintings would become more 'real'.

In addition, the use of commonplace bits and pieces of daily rubbish was a deliberate attack on the superior image and high-mindedness of fine art. The inclusion of these items suggested that art could be made with scissors and glue as easily as with brushes and paint - a liberating and most unconventional approach for those days. The chosen genre was, for the most part, still life , and one overt consequence of their concern with greater surface richness, was that Braque and Picasso and especially Juan Gris reintroduced colour to their painting.

Both artists were delighted with their fake textures and surfaces. Picasso in particular used collage to amuse spectators with witty transformations of everyday objects, and took full advantage of the whimsicality of the medium. Although he had co-invented Cubism to make a serious point, one feels that his puckish sense of humour prevented him from taking the movement as seriously as say Apollinaire, or Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger , whose book Du Cubisme had helped to establish Cubism as an ultra-intellectual type of art.

After all, simply pasting bits of rubbish onto a painting did not inevitably make it more real. Indeed many materials were used to create an illusion of reality, the very thing that Picasso and Braque had criticized traditional fine art for, in its reliance on single point perspective.

In general, however, most art critics treat Synthetic Cubism very seriously and read enormous significance into its use of non-art materials. The African masks in the Trocadero, including a Grebo mask, which Picasso must have known, contain various fibers - straw and raffia [while a] similar use of natural fiber appears in a Fang mask owned by Braque".

Picasso in particular often explored the masks in his sketches and studies, not as an attempt at imitation, but rather to deconstruct their design in order to inform his own way of working. Braque and Picasso had already experimented with painting letters in their Analytic phase, adding sand to pigment to create texture to their works too. They had also including fragments of everyday items such as rope and fringe, but these later additions would become central to Synthetic Cubism's preference for incorporating the "variety" of everyday mixed media into their works.

Around , Picasso and Braque coined the term "collage" from the French meaning "to glue" to describe works of theirs that incorporated paper, newspaper clippings, fabric and other everyday objects. Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning , assimilating wallpaper with a chair caning pattern and framed by a piece of ordinary rope, introduced the collage technique to the art world. As Poggi wrote, Picasso's still lifes "acquired legendary status [ Collage artists often selected particular materials reflecting their own predilections: Picasso would often use cuts of rope or tassels, Braque favored elements of woodgrain, while Gris even brought broken pieces of mirrors to at least one of his works.

In his book, Kahnweiler noted that Braque and Picasso's Cubist evolution was driven by the aesthetic question of "representation and structure conflict"; or to put it more simply, the question of how the artist might separate out colors and objects within the same work. The two men had addressed this "conflict" in their monochromatic Analytic works. But having established the collage technique, the practice opened up new possibilities for separating color from content so that each could be applied independently within the same flat pictorial space.

As art historian Douglas Cooper put it, "If an object could be convincingly represented in a painting by some readymade equivalent of itself, Braque reasoned, it should be possible to treat color as a free element in the composition". The process involves combining fragments of oil-cloth, paper, wood, linoleum and newspaper with oil on canvas. Picasso and Gris quickly followed their friend's lead with the former stating that, "If a piece of newspaper can become a bottle, that gives us something to think about in connection with both newspapers and bottles [while adding that] This displaced object has entered a universe for which it was not made and where it retains, in a measure, its strangeness".

The technique also informed the artists' approach to painting, with all three producing works that included planes resembling readymade pieces of various types of papers and wood with the effect of creating striking spatial and surface contrasts. According to historian Francis Francina, art history has tended to treat "Picasso and Braque as a sort of 'avant-garde' within the broader grouping of modernists [ Indeed, as the most "poetic" of the three men his work was more open to the possibilities of color.

As the art critic John Russell observed, his work has "an imaginative energy, a multiplicity of lucid statement and an apparently limitless invention [that] stands for a depth and strength of color that on the whole were excluded from Cubism".

Synthetic Cubism's development in collage had a radical effect on modern sculpture following Picasso's Maquette for Guitar , a three-dimensional collage incorporating paper, cardboard, string, and wire. The process of incorporating scraps of everyday materials such as paper clippings, tickets and tobacco folders into their compositions marked a move away from the intellectualism of Analytical Cubism, directing the course towards a more relaxed and playful set of aesthetics.

After allowing themselves the creative freedom to depict the world around them however they saw fit, painters of Synthetic Cubism discovered an incredibly inventive approach to picture making. There were virtually no more restrictions of any kind as the only boundaries were set by the amount of creativity the artists possessed.

For example, they might collage a scrap of a real magazine in order to represent an actual newspaper within the compositions, but place it alongside a bottle completely sketched in charcoal. However, an artist could also shape such a bottle with clippings.

Interestingly, it was this mimicking of surfaces and textures that earned the last phase of Cubism its prefix - synthetic. It was supposed to be an indicator of how something artificial could be used to describe a material within an imitation of something else.

The initial assumption that helped shape Synthetic Cubism was the idea of introducing physical elements that were intended to make the images seem more real.

The use of mundane bits and pieces of daily rubbish was a purposeful assault on the high-mindedness of what was perceived as fine art at the time. By including such elements within respected artworks, Cubist artists suggested that art could be made with scissors and glue as effectively as with brushes and paint. This was an enormous innovation at the time, one that impacted the art scene for good. On the conceptual level, Synthetic Cubism turned each painter creatively loose so they could find their own process of using this new and inventive way of conceiving form.

Many of these artists opted to paint still life compositions, as this genre was the usual choice for many, but there were also compositions with musical instruments, Harlequins and other typical Cubist themes. The famed Spaniard produced his first Synthetic collage piece in the year of , [6] titling it as Still Life with Chair-Caning.

In it, the author incorporated a piece of oilcloth and a lengthy rope alongside traditional materials at the painter's disposal.

The oilcloth pattern was intended to simulate the bars of the chair and the rope served the role of a picture frame. Rather than depicting a chair, part of a chair was actually put onto the piece and this was the most revolutionary aspect of the compositions. Although Picasso had a playful and casual approach to making this piece, Chair-Caning became a prototype of all later ready-made experiments, having an extensive impact on Marcel Duchamp.

Despite this painting being the Picasso's most iconic Synthetic work, his series called Guitars is the most popular one. For these artworks, he used newspapers, music sheets, wallpapers, various fabrics, cardboard, etc. He also incorporated charcoal, pencil, oil, wax, wood and other ready-made objects such as teaspoons. Analytical cubism was about breaking down an object like a bottle viewpoint-by-viewpoint, into a fragmentary image; whereas synthetic cubism was about flattening out the image and sweeping away the last traces of allusion to three-dimensional space.

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change?