Louis Vauxcelles s The Exhibition Of Braque - 1594 Words

Louis Vauxcelles’s mocked the exhibition of Braque’s paintings calling them â€Å"little cube paintings† effectively naming the movement largely led by Picasso and Braque Cubism. This name does indeed describe a majority of Picasso and Braques’ paintings well, at least in the visual sense. However, it must be noticed that the pieces completed by Picasso and Braque were not simple or little in meaning. Cubism was an entirely new way of doing art. The method of realism that had largely dominated the art since the Renaissance was ignored by Cubist artists. This break from tradition was supposed to help the artists represent their feelings and ideas in a new way, which gave them a better understanding of the world around them. It is also argued†¦show more content†¦Braque provides an example of this technique in Bottle and Fishes completed between 1910-1912. In this piece, the image has been shattered and then pieced back together but in a way that w hich the objects represented are hardly recognizable. To add to the difficulty of recognizing objects, Braque made the piece largely monochromatic, with greys and blacks in a majority of the piece. It is important to note that although both Braque and Picasso experimented with the fragmentation of objects in their pieces, they cannot be considered abstract. For example, although difficult to first understand Bottle and Fishes can be interpreted. The shape of the bottleneck orients the viewer as to where the base of the bottle ends. After this is understood, the shapes of the fish become apparent. Therefore, it is through the juxtaposition of objects that are more clearly represented to those that are not that these pieces are understood through. In other terms the bottleneck can be known as the signifier as to what the piece is trying to signify. The next stage of Cubism is known Synthetic Cubism. It is in this stage of their work that Braque and Picasso more thoroughly explore the same ideas being discussed by Saussure. Glass and Bottle of Suze was made by Picasso in November of 1912 at the beginning of the synthetic stage of Cubism. The piece is a collage made from pasted paper, gouache,