Cubist sculpture

Cubist sculpture essentially is the dynamic rendering of three-dimensional objects in the language of non-Euclidean geometry by shifting viewpoints of volume or mass in terms of spherical, flat and hyperbolic surfaces.

In the longer term we could read such developments as the beginning of a process in which sculpture expands, poaching painting's territory and then others, to become steadily more prominent in this century".

[5] Now liberated from the one-to-one relationship between a fixed coordinate in space captured at a single moment in time assumed by classical vanishing-point perspective, the Cubist sculptor, just as the painter, became free to explore notions of simultaneity, whereby several positions in space captured at successive time intervals could be depicted within the bounds of a single three-dimensional work of art.

With its roots stemming as far back as ancient Egypt, Greece and Africa, the proto-Cubist period (englobing both painting and sculpture) is characterized by the geometrization of form.

Take, for instance, the strongest things by Winslow Homer; the strength lies in the big, elemental manner in which the artist rendered his impressions in lines and masses which departed widely from photographic reproductions of scenes and people.

Cézanne's departure from classicism, however, would be best summarized in the complex treatment of surface variations (or modulations) with overlapped shifting planes, seemingly arbitrary contours, contrasts and values combined to produce a planar faceting effect.

The influence generated by the work of Cézanne, in combination with the impact of diverse cultures, suggests a means by which artists (including Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brâncuși, Georges Braque, Joseph Csaky, Robert Delaunay, Henri le Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso) made the transition to diverse forms of Cubism.

[7] The African influence, which introduced anatomical simplifications, along with expressive features reminiscent of El Greco, are the generally assumed starting point for the Proto-Cubism of Picasso.

Aside from further influences of the Symbolists, Pierre Daix explored Picasso's Cubism from a formal position in relation to the ideas and works of Claude Lévi-Strauss on the subject of myth.

And too, without doubt, writes Podoksik, Picasso's proto-Cubism came not from the external appearance of events and things, but from great emotional and instinctive feelings, from the most profound layers of the psyche.

[19][20] European artists (and art collectors) prized objects from different cultures for their stylistic traits defined as attributes of primitive expression: absence of classical perspective, simple outlines and shapes, presence of symbolic signs including the hieroglyph, emotive figural distortions, and the dynamic rhythms generated by repetitive ornamental patterns.

[21] These were the profound energizing stylistic attributes, present in the visual arts of Africa, Oceana, the Americas, that attracted not just Picasso, but many of the Parisian avant-garde that transited through a proto-Cubist phase.

However, alternative contemporary views on Cubism have formed to some degree in response to the more publicized Salon Cubists (Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko and Joseph Csaky), whose methods and ideas were too distinct from those of Braque and Picasso to be considered merely secondary to them.

(Christopher Green)[2] Artist sculptors working in Montparnasse were quick to adopt the language of non-Euclidean geometry, rendering three-dimensional objects by shifting viewpoints and of volume or mass in terms of successive curved or flat planes and surfaces.

They were joined by Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), whose career was cut short by his death in military service, and then in 1914 by Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens and later Ossip Zadkine.

His torso entitled "Hero" (1910) appears related stylistically to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, "but in its energetic three-dimensional torsion it is entirely independent of Cubist painting."

(Barr)[26] Archipenko evolved in close contact with the Salon Cubists (Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Joseph Csaky and others).

At the same time, his affinities with Futurism were documented by the British magazine The Sketch in October 1913, where Archipenko's Dancers (Dance), reproduced on its front cover, was described as a 'Futurist sculpture'.

His use of sculptural voids was inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (1907) on the distortions of our understanding of reality, and how our intellect tends to define unanticipated circumstances positively or negatively.

Four months later Csaky exhibited at the Salon d'Automne (1 October - 8 November) in room XI together with the same artists, in addition to Modigliani and František Kupka, his Groupe de femmes (1911–1912), a massive, highly stylized block-like sculpture representing three women.

Les Joueurs de football (Football Players) 1912-13, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C — Robert Delaunay The Cardiff Team (L'équipe de Cardiff ) 1913, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven — Fernand Léger, Le modèle nu dans l'atelier (Nude Model In The Studio) 1912-13, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York — Juan Gris, L'Homme dans le Café (Man in Café) 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Now at 9 rue Blainville in the fifth arrondissement in Paris Csaky—along with the Cubist sculptors who would follow—stimulated by the profound cultural changes and his own experiences, contributed his own personal artistic language to the movement.

[24] Although some comparison can be drawn between the mask-like totemic characteristics of various Gabon sculptures, primitive art was well beyond the conservative French sensibilities visible in the work of Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

In Les Peintres Cubistes (1913) Guillaume Apollinaire writes of Duchamp-Villon: The early sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz, 1911-1912, were conventional portraits and figure studies executed in the tradition of Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau.

Lipchitz and Laurens were concerned with giving tangible substance to idea first pronounced by Jean Metzinger in his 1910 Note sur la peinture[35] of simultaneous multiple views.

[36] The African sculptor, writes Goldwater, "whether his forms were rectangular, elliptical, or round in outline, and whether he cut back little or much into the cylinder of fresh wood with which he began, was content to show one aspect of his figure at a time".

Goldwater continues: :"He achieved his "instinctive" three-dimensional effect by calculated simplification and separation of parts that allowed the eye to grasp each one as a unified, coherent mass.

The cubist sculptor, on the other hand, wished to "make his figure turn" by simultaneously showing or suggesting frontal and orthogonal planes, by flattening diagonals, and by swinging other hidden surfaces into view.

He had met Braque in 1911 and exhibited at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912, but his mature activity as a sculptor began in 1915 after experimenting with different materials.

But it seemed to me there was evidence of passionate conviction; that the simplification of forms was no mere exercise in plastic design, but a real interpretation of the rhythm of life.