Pablo Picasso Research Paper

Cubism and Picasso Paris, the world center of art, is a thriving city full of artistic activities that provide unparalleled conditions for the exchange of creative ideas throughout history. Paris has been the avant-garde in art and culture. This inspiring city witnessed many artistic movements that had a huge impact on world culture. During the 1920s after WWI, a wave of artists of all nationalities gathered in French capital to investigate a way to make their art different. The desperation and danger that many felt after the war caused them to create revolutionary work with lasting value. Those talented artists, including Pablo Picasso, developed Cubism, which is the first abstract style of modern art in this respectfully creative city, revolutionizing
traditional artwork and setting the precedence for modern art. At the beginning of the twentieth century, western society experienced World War One, which changed everything in the world, including arts.
Before this war, western civilization had been enjoying a century of relative peace. Arts and literature followed the certain trusted tradition in the past. However, WWI broke the traditional but peaceful life of western people, as well as the style of arts and literature. Many greatest works of art were created during that period of time because of the desperation and anger that the artist felt following the war. In Gertrude Stein’s famous novel Paris France, she suggests the influence of WWI on art as:
It was a period when there really was a serious effort made by humanity to be civilized, the world was round and there really were not left any unknown on it and so everybody decided to be civilized. France could be civilized without having progress on her mind, she could believe in civilization in and for itself, and so she was the natural back ground for this period. (Stein 37)
Gertrude Stein introduces that people needed a civilization to recover from the culture lost during the war years. They seek for a new way to express their desperation, fears, and anger after WWI. For artists, they needed a more radical approach and a different way to see the world after this big change. That is the reason why so many revolutionary art movements were born during that period of
time.
Cubism, developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques, is the first truly revolutionary style of modern art that was created at the early age of the twentieth century. Unlike traditional paintings, Cubist paintings are not in a realistic form. Their subjects were represented as combinations of basic geometric shapes. With this unique form of paintings, the artist can give a fuller, more detailed explanation of the subject, showing multiple viewpoints of an image at the same time. Edward F. Fry describes the influence of Cubism in his article "Picasso, Cubism, And Reflexivity" as:
Cubism was the cornerstone of twentieth-century art because it broke with past tradition definitively; established “modernist” flatness, opticality, and involvement with the medium of art; and thus sanctioned a new tradition that would lead to nonobjective art as well as to assemblage and to other “modernist” principles and practices. (Fry)
Because this new painting style provided a new abstract way of seeing art, it had a great influence on the development of modern art. It was the first style of abstract art, which was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century in response to the world that was changing with rapid speed because of the war. The artists of cubism tried to revitalize the tired traditions of Western art. They challenged conventional forms of representations, such as viewpoints, which had been the traditional rule since the renaissance. Those talented artists wanted to develop a new art style which reflected the modern age. Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential cubist artist, started off cubism with a painting named “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,” which means the young ladies of Avignon in English. In Picasso’s famous work, the five women have very ugly faces, and look as if they are going to fall into pieces. These women appear as slightly threatening with disjointed and angular body shapes. When this work first came out, it caused a controversy in the society, because many people thought that it should have looked more professionally done and realistic. Picasso broke the traditional rules while creating this masterpiece by painting the women from more than one angle at a time. He wanted the viewer to appreciate this painting more than the elements meet their eye. Picasso broke the traditional rules for paintings, setting his own standard for what he believed was art. He inspired many other young artists in their own outstanding art movements as well due to his passion and persistence in setting his own standard for what he wanted to express. During the development of cubism, the writers of “Lost Generation” inspired many young talented cubist artists, leading to the success of this movement.
Pablo Picasso’s relationship with Gertrude Stein, an American writer of Modernist art, was vital to his later success. Gertrude Stein was a pioneer of the “Lost Generation,” a generation of writers that came of age at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was an important figure in the Parisian art world, who helped shape an artistic movement of writing. The salon at her home at 27 rue de Fleurus that she shared with Alice B. Toklas, her secretary and life companion, became a gathering place for the talented ambitious artists. Her support helped those artists, including Picasso, to achieve the revolutionary goal. When no one else wanted to buy Picasso’s paintings, Stein collected almost all of his early work. In the movie “Paris Was a Woman,” directed by Greta Schiller, it suggests that “ had Gertrude Stein not started collecting Picasso’s work in those early years, it is possible that Picasso would have remained a struggling artist, swallowed up in the artistic sea that was Pairs at the time and continuing to barter paintings.” In 1905, Picasso painted a portrait for Stein. However, instead of a traditional portrait with the physical likeness and expressive detail, he painted Gertrude Stein as a big hulking woman who stares blankly past the view, a foreshadowing of his adoption of cubism. Queen’s Quarterly
introduces Stein’s influence on Picasso in the article “The Stein’s Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde,” “Stein did more to support avant-garde painting than any other collectors or institutions in the first decade of the twentieth century.” Stein’s support allowed Picasso to keep up doing what he believed was right regardless of traditions. After WWI, when artists who wanted to be civilized from all over the world came to this city, they inspired and supported each other to form a new style of art responding to this changing world. Undoubtedly, in art, the development of cubism is one of the most influential events of the twentieth century. It helps artists to see beyond the traditional European art format and into more abstract forms. Many stories about cubist artists not only emphasize the importance of art revolution but also provide the readers today a view of the change of the culture after WWI. During that period of time, some young artists, including Pablo Picasso, and the writers of the “Lost Generation” started off the art revolution in order to express their postwar feelings reflecting the changing world in a new radical way. Without cubism, many modern art styles, such as Minimalism, would almost not exist. Nowadays, Cubism continues to inspire work of many contemporary artists with its long-lasting cultural value.