Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement begun in Paris that revolutionized painting and sculpture, and inspired artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture. In Cubist works of art, the subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
Pablo Picasso, 1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, considered to be a major step towards the founding of the Cubist movement
Albert Gleizes, L'Homme au Balcon, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud), 1912, oil on canvas, 195.6 × 114.9 cm (77 × 45 1/4 in.), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Completed the same year that Albert Gleizes co-authored the book Du "Cubisme" with Jean Metzinger. Exhibited at Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1912, Armory show, New York, Chicago, Boston, 1913.
The "Cubists" Dominate Paris' Fall Salon, The New York Times, October 8, 1911. Picasso's 1908 Seated Woman (Meditation) is reproduced along with a photograph of the artist in his studio (upper left). Metzinger's Baigneuses (1908–09) is reproduced top right. Also reproduced are works by Derain, Matisse, Friesz, Herbin, and a photo of Braque.
In the arts and in literature, the term avant-garde identifies an experimental genre, or work of art, and the artist who created it; which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.
Avant-garde cinema: The Love of Zero (1928), a short film directed by the artist Robert Florey.
Political revolution has influenced both the topic and form in The Overthrow of the Autocracy, a Soviet avant-garde painting.
The cultural provocation of avant-garde art: Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. (Alfred Stieglitz)
In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), Walter Benjamin addresses the artistic and cultural, social, economic, and political functions of art in a capitalist society.
