ANALYTIC CUBISM One could ask the question, when did “Cubism” begin? Some art historians consider a single painting of 1907, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, as the beginning. But that would be assuming that Picasso was the most important Cubist artist. The problem...
THE CUBISTS AND THEIR CIRCLE Today Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) are considered to be the “True Cubists,” to borrow a phrase from art historian, Edward Fry. But at the time Cubism was famous or infamous with the Parisian public,...
CUBISM AND ITS CONTEXT Perhaps more than any other major art movement of the first half of the Twentieth Century, Cubism is both transitional and Janus-faced in its response to the decades of changes of the Nineteenth Century. On one hand, the Cubist artists shared...
Modernism in New York City Why and How did the impetus for Modernist painting move from Paris to New York? This podcast traces the historical and artistic reasons that resulted in New York becoming the center of avant-garde painting the Fifties. The presence of the...
The Question of “Primitivism” and the Fauves Today, “primitivism” is considered a derogatory term, connoting the Twentieth Century Western attitude towards the presumed “inferiority” of non-Western art. “Primitivism” refers to the abiding belief that non-Western...
Art Between the Wars Although art history usually passes over this inter-war period quickly, pausing only for Dada and Surrealism, these decades were significant for the continued development of painting. After decades of avant-garde art, Europeans began to...