At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Western societies saw accelerated industrial advancement coupled with marked intellectual and social change. How was this revolution embodied in art? Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the ‘reverberators,’ so to speak -- sent to explore what the upheaval meant through their paintings and collages.

Both artists, influenced by Cézanne, can be said to have invented a new movement. Picasso and Braque defied the laws of traditional painting with its apparent timelessness, stability, and classical perspective. They began painting abstract art – the non-figurative representation of an observed world in flux. The Cubism movement was their response to a world changed by shifting philosophical and scientific realities.

Cubists translated the ideas of philosophers like Henri Bergson on memory, perception, duration of time, and space and altered their canvases to reflect this new platform or aesthetic. Perception and knowledge were believed to be ever-changing, altered by experience and accumulated memories. It was the artist’s task to capture this fluidity and this new way of looking at information. While Picasso and Braque were credited with inventing this unique visual language, such artists as Juan Gris, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger, and Marcel Duchamp stretched it. They were major examples of the Cubist movement in its Analytic and Synthetic varieties.

Analytical Cubism’s imperatives were defined as: a diversity of perspectives, deconstruction of forms and fragmentation, the emphasis on two-dimensional construction, the blurring of lines between the object and the environment, and subdued coloration. Synthetic Cubism was a synthesis of invented forms using paper collages (papier collé) with bold coloration, patterns, and textures.

Two lights of the Analytical Cubism movement were Robert Delaunay and one of Cubism’s founders, Georges Braque. Their proficiency in the fundamental aspects of this offshoot of Cubism was on display in their respective pieces, Red Eiffel Tower (1910-1911) and The Castle of La Roche-Guyon (1909).

Delaunay and Braque attempted to glean the ethereal and changeable quality of human perspective and knowledge. They rejected the copying of nature by conventional methods, and sought to express diversity and complexity through fragmentation of objects and blurring boundaries between an object and the environment. Shapes were perceived as being in transition. Pictorial configuration was advanced, and a shallow, relief-like space was created to provide limited distance between objects and what appeared in the foreground and background. The gaze of the viewer was directed, but there was no imaginary distance to lead the eye toward an interior object. The whole canvas demanded study.

In Castle of La Roche-Guyon, Braque began to experiment in earnest with Analytical Cubism. He deconstructed a known piece of architecture, reconfiguring the castle into something entirely distinctive. He did not copy it as a static object, but gave it a fragmented appearance. Braque vertically arranged the space with geometric forms and faceted planes that appeared to sit precariously on the surface of a high elevation. The lines between the fractured vision of the castle and the surrounding foliage and trees were blurred, almost unrecognizable, as broad strokes of greens, browns, and grays. Two- and three-dimensional perspectives were made interchangeable, and the colors were hushed and hazy – gray, white, brown, and green. The green was iridescent.

In Red Eiffel Tower by Delaunay, one can see that he embraced most of the rubrics of Analytical Cubism through his study of the iconic symbol of the Paris cityscape, the Eiffel Tower. In this painting, he captured the zip, mobility, and vibrancy of the new industrial age, the new century. The picture was far from static or homogeneous; it churned with fragmented shapes, planes, and facets of the tower and the surrounding buildings and sky. Two- and three-dimensional perspectives were made interchangeable. The space around the tower was shaded in blues, whites, and grays. The vertical tower was red, with its brilliant latticework ready to twist and soar. The picture was energetic and off-kilter, embracing modernity. Unlike those in the Braque work and other Analytical Cubist renderings, the colors were not understated; whites and blues infused the canvas with light, and red was a bold counterpoint.

Political, social, technological, and intellectual shifts in the modern age laid the groundwork for Cubism’s seismic shift in the art world. The experimentation created a new movement with talented adherents. Cubism as a general movement both introduced and influenced Analytical Cubism. Braque created the prototype and Delaunay adopted these guiding principles. The fragmentation, interchangeable dimensions, blurring of perspective, and coloration reflected their grasp of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. Both artists produced models of this movement in their paintings, The Castle of La Roche-Guyon and Red Eiffel Tower.

Cubist artists such as Braque and Delaunay opened the doors for future abstract artists, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, to explore new methods, new forms, and new ideas. Analytical Cubism showed artists a groundbreaking way forward.

This essay is based on a paper written for an Art History class on Modernism here in 2017. Claire Kitz (Hamilton ‘19) was Editor-in-Chief for Enquiry in her senior year. She currently works at a consulting firm in Chicago.