Cubism: Innovation and Re-evaluation of Art and Its Meaning

The development of art of the 20^th century was marked by the emergence of a number of new trends which aimed at the destruction of traditional stereotypes that existed before and establishment of new styles. Artistic experiments led to the development of new movements, among which it is possible to single out Cubism as one of the mainstream movements of the 20^th century, which mirrored the major trends in the art and socio-cultural life of the epoch.

Cubism had started in the early 20^th century and was marked by works of great artists of that epoch such as P. Picasso and G. Barque. They were the most prominent representatives of this trend. As for their art it produced a great impact on abstract art of the 20^th century and the distinctive feature of Cubists was the resemblance of their work to geometric figures. Probably, due to it was called Cubism. Among the best samples of this art I would name the work of G. Barque ”˜Violin and Palette’ that was cubic, flat and abstract. Another great representative of Cubism was P. Picasso who, to certain extent, followed the example of G. Barque, but, at the same time, it was quite different because it is possible to find African motives in Picasso’s works such as “Les Demouiselles D’Avignon”, which were inspired by African Artifacts. Also, Picasso tended to paint portraits in a Cubist style, such as “Portrait of Suzanne Bloch”, which were consistently different from classical portraits because of their flatness and dominance of geometric forms. His works, like all Cubists’ works, marked the shift of emphasis from the classical art to the modern one. Thus, G Barque and P. Picasso, being probably the most outstanding representative of Cubism, gave life to a new, different style.

The specific traits of works of cubists were the attention to geometric forms and their dominance of the realism of the depiction of the reality. In fact, Cubism became a response of artists to the significant scientific progress of the early 20^th century. The dominance of science stimulated cubists’ interest to correct geometric forms, though they are re-assembled in abstract forms and as a rule cubist works do not have depth, which was typical for realistic or other traditional movements. At the same time, the use of geometric forms allowed artist depict the subject of their paintings from multitude points of view. In such a way, artists could present their work at a different angle which contributed to multiple possibilities of the interpretation of their paintings. Another remarkable feature of cubists paintings was the interpenetration of the background and object planes which contributed to the creation of the shallow ambiguous space, where it was difficult to distinguish the background from the object, which the artist really wanted to lay emphasis on. Moreover, Cubism contributed to the emergence of other modernist movements which were based on experiments of cubists with the form and perspective. In this respect, it is possible to trace the trend to abstraction in works of various artists, which influenced by Cubists. For instance, it is possible to mention W. Kadinsky’s “Blue Mountain”, where the color is presented independently from the form.

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is possible to conclude that Cubism was one of the major artistic movements, especially in the early 20^th century. In fact, Cubism had challenged traditional and conservative art movements and, instead, offered a new approach to the art. The innovative nature of Cubism inspired the emergence of other modernist movements. As a result, Cubism became one of the leading art movements of the 20^th century which influenced the development of art and, to a significant extent, changed the attitude of the public as well as artist to art and the role of artist in the contemporary world.