JTA 2012 Challenge - Cubism

Well, when you leave something until the last minute it usually bites you in the ass.  And, it did!  I did not start working on my cubism block until a few days before it was due.  Not smart, not smart at all!  I rushed it, skipped some things that I probably shouldn't have, but in the end I think it turned out okay.


Let's start with some research of CUBISM...


According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cubism was on the the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century.  It was creative by Pable Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) in Patris between 1907 and 1914.  The French art critic Lous Vauxcelles coined the term Cusbism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cezanne.  Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes".  Other influcense on early Cubism have been linked to Primitivism and non-Western sources.  The stylications and distortion of Picasso's ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), painted in 1907, came from African art.  Picasso had first seen African art when, in May or June 1907, he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadero in Paris.  The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.  They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas.  So they reduced and fractured objects into geomtric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief-like space.  They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.


And the official definition from Dictionary.com

cub·ism

 

[kyoo-biz-uhm]
noun ( sometimes initial capital letter ) Fine Arts .

a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20thcentury, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure,the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents,and the organization of the planes of a represented object  independently of representational requirements.

And then, my favorite, artyfactory.com, which explains the two different styles of cubism, Analytical and Synthetic.

Cubism had two distinct phases.  The early phase which lasted until about 1912 was called Analytical Cubism.  Here the artist analysed the subject from many different viewpoints and reconstructed it within a geometric framework, the overall effect of which was to create an image that evoked a sense of the subject.  These fragmented images were unified by the use of a subdued and limited palette of colours.  

Influences by the introduction of bold and simple collage shapes, Synthetic Cubism moved away from the unified monochrome surfaces of Analytic Cubism to a more direct, colourful and decorative style.  Although synthetic cubist images appear more abstract in their use of simplified forms, the other elements of their composition are applied quiet traditionally.  Interchanging lines, colours, patterns and textures, that switch from geometric to freehand, dark to light, positive to negative and plain to patterned, advance and recede in rhythms across the picture plain.

Needless to say, I marched to the beat of my own drummer and did my own thing.  I probably came close to the synthetic cubism style, but I don't think I nailed cubism quite as closely as I wanted to.  Although, I came pretty close in my rushed time... at least I think so!

Here is my mini-quilt for cubism, it still needs to be tweaked and quilted, which will definitely add more interest:

And here are the others in the group, well except for Pam's as she was away on reveal day.

Kathy's

Pat's

Natalie's

Judie's

Eyvonne's

I can't wait to see what Pam created.  I think they all turned out fabulous!  Our next block/mini-quilt is "Expressionism" -- can't wait for that one either.  It's not due until July but hopefully we'll all get ahead of schedule with the challenges and possibly have them done for the Mancuso Show in West Palm in November... hopefully!

Check out the previous JTA challenge block "Fauvism".