shows the road to Cubism, the dissecting and reshaping of objects with the
artist’s scalpel, which is his brush.
Looking at our next example, Factory at Horta de Ebro (1909), it seems as if
Picasso began from Cézanne but painted the subject with a more consistent
and geometricizing approach. Obviously, the buildings gave him the cue for
the strongly faceted structure, but he chose the motif, to use Cézanne’s word,
and knew what he was looking for. Note the buildings and the complex
courtyard in the background, with a smokestack beyond it. Even the trees
seem to spring from cylindrical bases. The limited palette—sandy browns
and tans, dark and light greens with white highlights—is typical of Picasso
when he is exploring a new idea. Once it
was unrelenting blue; now in the years
of Cubist exploration, it is increasingly
monochrome again, but toward browns
and greys with only occasional touches of
bright color.
Picasso and Georges Braque evolved the
new style of Cubism during the period
1907–1912, with their closest contact
occurring from 1909–1911. Perhaps no truly
revolutionary style has ever been developed in such a short period of time as
Cubism. Fauvism was also the work of a few men in a brief period, but it was
not as revolutionary because it was another in the periodic assertions of the
primacy of color in art. Fauvism used color more abstractly, a development
from Gauguin and Van Gogh. Cubism developed from Cézanne, but it is a
more focused, intensive effort, quasi-scienti¿ c in its analytical rigor.
We’ll look at a few important examples of full Cubism, starting with Picasso’s
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1910). This is a great and somber portrait, and
those who claim that they cannot recognize the subject in a Cubist painting
cannot say the same about this painting. The features are there; the intellect
is there; note the powerful forehead and the top of the head, above the eyes.
That his eyes are either closed or looking downward emphasizes both the
rational mind and the insight of Vollard. The essential logic of Cubism
seems to À ow from all of Picasso’s earlier works. They may seem initially
Picasso understood not
just the compositional
and structural ideas
of Cézanne’s pictures
but their emotional and
psychological core.