Cubism’s Abstraction Influence Through Architecture And Painting

There are many types arts that influences many different types of people. It was a way to express a thought or to just showcase the light through thought. Cubism was something that paved the way for artists in the 20th century to finally be free to draw and paint on how they would like with people finally appreciating their work. While in the 15th century artists would have wanted to get that feel of classical art from taken ideas from the ancient Greek and Roman world; they would have wanted to show a beautiful and real sense of being while the artist in 20th century would have wanted the complete opposite of that idea. These types of works just not being seen on paintings and sculptures but as well in every day use objects like chairs and tables. It showed new meanings of representation and the aim was to physically show a 3D world in a 2D space making it very illusionistic! Cubism made it’s way to the connection to the abstract forms and showcasing in modern architecture.

Cubism is an art that was first influenced by the avant-garde artist, Paul Cezanne and through out the years influenced other prominent artist. Cubism was an way of painting something that was not idealized and was a revolutionary style of modern art which was started by Georges Braques and Pablo Picasso. This all started in the start of the 20th century by which Cezanne; he was the father of Cubism, first at the time to react against the impressionism and modern painting of the time. This is what cubism was about to reject the idea of the idealized and to add tons of angles and different types of views onto the painting- making the picture somewhat unrecognizable. We learn that Cezanne showed us forms living in the reality of light while the other iconic artist for cubism; Picasso brings his idea of real life from his mind and lays it out in a very different type of perspective adding a math idea of geometry. For example, if we look at the painting by Pablo Picasso called Ma Jolie(with guitar)(fig 2) it shows what we think is a woman and a guitar but we don’t see either the woman or the guitar. We do see some characteristics of the guitar like the tremble but since the angles distorts the figure, we have no idea what is actually going on in the piece. It is made to question of the title of the painting and try to puzzle the woman and guitar back into piece. Cubism was made to be systematic doctrine and the artist who wanted to transform their art would bring themselves to the first principles of line including inspiration; returning to the idea of Fauvism- many of the cubist were fauves as well making them return to that style of colour and composition in their work. Cubist had to go from somewhere, so they used some of their other influences of genres like fauvism to influence the cubist era. A very important man who helped Picasso and Braque was Daniel- Henry Kahnweiler, one of something he says which really outlines the idea of this principle was that this was a new nature of painting which characterized a representation of it being structural as well reproduce the formal beauty of things and was an attempt to get this formal beauty in the painting. What he was trying to say was that as well of painting some sort of representation it was as well something structural to it. These representations turns to an angular form without that whole sets of colour we see that it just stayed with white, grey and black. This broke the tradition for first the notions of perception and colour.

When we think of abstract forms, we think of ideas that are very broad because it is a very broad word that can work with many terms of art. It is something to show the extreme sense of nature; making it non-figurative and each type of abstract art has something that is so big to understand. It’s a very confusing term to understand because it is not ‘set in stone’ theres not just one art that can represent this. We can say a lot of art as abstract but what can be pure abstraction? It is what makes a painting have no dependence on natural forms and is all abstract in its ideal form, like if we look at Piet Mondrian’s Composition(fig 1) we see the difference in character but very abstract making letting it’s intention known showing the non geometrical forms as well as geometric forms. They are forms that use elements that are abstract from shapes and geometrical ideas when we look at Mondrian’s but when we look at Picasso’s Ma Jolie( with Guitar) (fig 2) we see that it is an “near- abstraction”, meaning that he would look at natural forms, adding a name that relates to the painting and transforms it into a form that we would consider abstract. Today when we look at abstraction, there is no need for defence because it is widely accepted. When we look at cubist art we under stand that they didn’t care about the subject matter or how they looked mainly focused on the point of view. From reading from Robert Delaunay, we learn of a man who was virtually abstract and got his ideas from cubism, saying he is trying to abstain a way to expressive art that excludes all of the styles of the past, completely removed from their vocabulary, not using light as a method but trying to make it communicate with them and if they don’t include light that means that there is no movement to the eye, in a way trying to just connect to the nature of their souls. Each soul ‘sees’ something different so how they would create pure abstraction would be different from person to person but each would have some sort of harmony. So, this way of painting to to reject the whole idea of how people have been painting for centuries and to throw the book out. They wanted the whole subject to completely disappear and create a subject that is not even clear and doesn’t have any type of meaning to a person who might look at it but each person might interpret it differently.

When we think of how the influence of how architecture was ruling the world at the time we can see that now as it went on architecture was made to be aesthetically beautiful as well as have a purpose from the start of the 20th century with the renewal of ‘art nouveau’ if we look at the respect of Hector Guimard in his invention of the side chair- it was meant to be a sitting devise as well as a beautiful art piece. It has to correspond between design and their idea of modernity at the time because times do change as they progress. Cubism came to play when looking to model for architecture it is something that played with their heads on how they would model their houses or objects which would sit in them. If we look for example, Vladimir Tatlin for his piece, Corner Counter Relief( fig 3), it was a way for him to play with form and space- distance himself from painting and sculpting- which these artist wanted to do. It was meant to be shown in a Russian household- bringing modernity into the everyday setting. Where did he get the idea from? Cubism! From Picasso, he went to Paris and he saw in Picasso’s studio one of his sculptures- the guitar it was really attracted to it but thought that there was too much representation in this type of art and thinking their was so objective to it what he thought of it. He thought to make this sculpture turn into an interior space paving it;s way for abstract art into architecture. As Harrison says, Sculpture and architecture, until the present, destroy space as space by dividing it. The new sculpture and architecture must destroy the work of art as an object or thing. They all their own narrative when you look at different types of arts- different expressions and different means that it comes about. If we look at Proun space ( Fig 4) we see the idea of this, consisting of 3 sides of the space making us allow us to take the ‘space’ into account for architectural thinking.These correlates with each other, both wanting some sort of purpose in a space in a room- maybe not the same purpose but the same idea to what they ideally would want would be that the object in question would be the main focus which brings our eyes right there. These movements paves the way for the final stage of how architecture was influenced. When we reject ornamental design and embrace the minimalism of it. Using the analytical idea to their buildings and incorporating different materials and new structures. We see this when we look at El Lissitzky’s Proun space(fig 4), it shows us an abstract space beginning to incorporate a three-dimensional architecture space. These works were prototypes for visionary inhabitable abstractions in which the visitor could experience geometric shapes and linear vectors wrapping around corners and launching toward the ceiling. Paving it’s way to put two- dimensional forms into rooms and transforming them. It’s really a place where one goes from painting to architecture. The space becomes part of the artwork. He made sure to add these works from 2D forms into 3D. It was a play with perspective and shifts that are included in his prints. This shows how architecture can still find its way in the art world.

We take this idea of space and put it into account to the new idea of thinking of the De Stijl; This was an emphasis as well to pure abstraction which we learn from Mondrian if we look at figure 1; its a composition of rectangular planes but with a grid view look. When we look at Schroder house(figure 5) we see the same emphasis with the grid idea of building now into houses. All of the angles in that house is 90 degree angles so that aesthetically and purposely it is made for it to look nice and that you can shift the walls on how you would like.

In conclusion, all of these areas of art has some type of relation to each other— cubism to abstraction, abstraction to architecture. These types of art all influenced each other but mainly cubism is what made people start to change their ideas on how to create their own works of art.