Art of Cubism

Influenced by the works of Paul Cezanne and Jean Dominque Ingres, Picasso became intrigued with ambiguous silhouettes. Picasso also began to include elements of primitive and African art. It is believed that after Braque saw Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Braque set out to deliberately change his style in a friendly rivalry with his friend, Pablo Picasso. Heeding Cezanne's advice that artists should treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, ad the cone, Picasso and Braque considered their subject and then fragmented it, analyzed it, and reassembled it in abstract form. Proportions, organic integrity and continuity of life samples and material objects were abandoned. One vicious critic said the works resembled a field of broken glass. Cubism was the most radical and influential movement in twentieth-century art. The movement began a revolution in the visual arts that all subsequent painters dealt with in some way. French art critic Louis Vauxcelles, upon seeing Braque's highly abstracted 1908 landscapes, coined the word Cubism to describe the new style that seemed to be composed of geometric cubes.