Lastly, Cubism accepted and celebrated the static nature of the surface, its limits and its inability to be anything other than its own two-dimensionality. Through embracing the flatness of painting, another form of movement was created - the movement of the eye established by what was available to the painter, the interaction of plane surfaces, line and colour. Secondly, Cubism began to imitate the mobility of the camera by articulating multiple angles. In his teaching and writing, Gleizes outlined three stages in Cubism. Firstly he defined Cubism as an assertion to volume, perspective unity and three dimensions in an immobile object for an immobile spectator. Gleizes did not fetishise abstraction: for him it was a means to an end. In Cubism, there was an effort to make solid forms on the picture plane, a response to the formlessness of Impressionism. As Gleizes and Metzinger put it in this text, “It does not harmonise with this or that ensemble, it harmonises with the totality of things, with the universe it is an organism.”. This gives us a sense of the richness and possibility of painting, especially in tandem with the newness of modernism. They align the properties of decorative art with that of an organ, and align the properties of painting with that of an organism. In this text, Gleizes and Metzinger establish their view on the differences between what they call ‘decorative’ art and painting. They root their discussion in the work of Gustave Courbet and Edward Manet, and they pay homage to Paul Cézanne, who, they say, primed the style and thinking of Cubist artists: “…he plumbed reality with a stubborn eye…”. Written by French artists and theorists Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, the text provides an appropriately multi-faceted take on the movement as it was evolving in 1912. Gleizes himself claimed to be the founder of Cubism, and in this text, his and Metzinger’s kinship with artists is palpable. This text offers insights and explanations on aspects and properties of the art movement Cubism. This text will provide insights and ways of looking at Mainie Jellett’s Decoration and, as a contextual work, Juan Gris’ Pierrot. In this post, we consider the art movement Cubism through excerpts from Cubism, by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. In our ongoing adult learning series, In Focus, we link works from our collection with key art historical, theoretical or philosophical texts. Aimed especially at third-level students, but accessible to all, this series aims to support in-depth engagement with our collection and the selected texts.
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