Was Cubism influential?

Cubism

by Sabine Rewald

October 2004

Notes:

The style of Cubism, created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque described on The Met website as "cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century." was a style of art created by geometric forms. 

From this article I have discovered that early cubism, have been connected to Primitivism and non-Western sources. 

The origin term Cubism was coined by a French Art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, after seeing the landscapes of Braque in 1908.

The cubist artists chose to reject the concept of art having to copy nature or that all artists should use the same techniques but instead emphasis two-dimensionality of a canvas, they did this by reducing and fracturing objects into geometrical forms realigning them "within a shallow, relieflike space."

Analytic Cubism (1910-12) in Picasso and Braque's work mainly was reduced to overlapping planes and facets using browns, greys or blacks giving it a near-monochromatic look.

They tended to combine representational motifs with letters, their favourite motifs focusing on still life involving musical instruments , bottles, newspapers, glassware, playing cards, the human face and figure, however it was very rare to find a landscape in this style.

Cubism was also developed further by a number of artists including Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger and many other painters. 

The article also talks about the influence the art movement has had not just on painting but also on twentieth-century sculpture and architecture. The movement also supposedly had far-reaching concequences for Dada and Surrealism.

How reliable is this source?

This source is written by a member of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art which is a world known art institution, therefore I personally believe that the source is reliable.

Source:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm