Modern Art - Cubism and Surrealism

Cubism is one of the principle innovation that happened in early 20^th century which has been considered to be among most influential art movement in modern art. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented the Cubist style combining their shared ideas and influences. Cubism derived its name from comment made by one critic; critic said that the paintings were made out of little cubes. The cubist style emphasizes the flat, two dimensional space, complex negative and positive space, and multiple perspective breaking the visual world down to basic geometric shapes. Cubist painters emphasize their pictorial composition over their personal expressions.

The cubist painting called “Women with Pear” by Pablo Picasso is one of the several portrait painting of Fernande Olivier done by the artist. It is a size of 36 1/4 x 27 7/8 inches oil painting on canvas. He painted this painting during the summer of 1909 in native Spain where he spent time with his companion, Fernande Olivier. This painting is a basically a women’s above the shoulder portrait in an indoor environment. Two out of three of the picture plane is covered by the female figure. There is a green color curtain in the right side of the background. There is a table and pears on top of the table in the left side of the background. Picasso broke down Fernande’s face into a collection of geometric shape and radically reassembled it to show sense of human characteristics. The whole painting is a collection of pointy sharp geometric shape except for the pears on the table. The pears painted as round shaped objects contrast to the rest of the painting. Picasso chooses less saturated color or muted colors to paint this painting. He used geometric shapes and darker shade of colors to create shadows in the background.  Use of relatively warm color (yellow/brown) with green and shades of grey balance and unify the whole composition.

Surrealism is cultural movement which began in the mid 1920’s by a group of artists who were opposed to the direction of European culture. They proclaim the importance of unconscious mind, dreams, fantasies and hallucinations. Surrealist paintings featured element of surprise, desire to pushing out of boundaries and strangeness. This style emphasize on the mysterious, marvelous, mythological and irrational in an effort to make art. Surrealist artist used this style to express their uncensored basic desires and feeling in a dream like setting.

Giorgio de Chirico is famous for his enigmatic paintings and his influences for the surrealism movement. His painting “The Anxious Journey” is an oil on canvas painting.  The dimension 29 1/4 x 42 inches of this painting was made in 1913. Chirico arranged series of architectural arches in the space according to linear perspective. The middle part of the architectural structure painted in a right angle. Even though these arches set up according to linear perspective, its pathways don’t make sense. No one can see where these leads to because almost every one of arches filled with shadows. However, the archway to the left and right side of the picture plane show what is happening beyond them. Very little part of the wall and looming sky shows through the right archway.  The train engine which is running toward the brick wall at the left side gave a physiological and emotional tension. Chirico’s choice of colors is really interesting; because he uses the same color pallet for all of his work. This painting is a beautifully exemplifies the key characteristics of a surrealist painting.