Cubism

The name “Cubism” is thought to trace back to the critic Louis Vauxcelles. Seeing Braque's paintings on show in Paris in 1908, he remarked that they boiled everything down to “geometric outlines, to cubes.” The late work of Paul Cézanne, who painted objects from slightly shifting positions, was one influence. Cubism broke sharply with a European habit, dominant since the Renaissance, of using devices like linear perspective to conjure the illusion of real space from one fixed viewpoint; it stressed instead that the canvas is flat. Two phases are usually distinguished. Analytical Cubism, the earlier, lasted until about 1912, and its pictures look austere, with interlocking planes and lines in muted black, grey, and ochre. Synthetic Cubism, from about 1912 to 1914, uses simpler shapes and brighter colours and often pastes real material such as newspaper into the picture. Cubism launched many later abstract styles, and its geometry carried over into design, as in Art Deco.

Pick one face or object and follow its edges: where does one view end and the next begin, and does the picture feel deep or flat?

• Art Deco アール・デコ→Art Deco took a more geometric character from Cubism.