What does Cubism look like? For the international network of artists who first engaged with this movement, it was a work in progress. Uniting these artists was their intent to forge a visual language that was, as poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote in The Cubist Painters (1913), “entirely new.” To do this they drew inspiration from disparate sources, including popular culture, African and Oceanic art, and new ideas of space and time.
Densely displayed around the gallery are works by artists traditionally associated with Cubism, such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, presented in dialogue with those by painters and sculptors aligned with other early avant-garde movements. Between 1908 and 1918 a number of these artists visited or lived in Paris, having set their eyes on the French metropolis as a place of inspiration, conversation, and exchange. This gallery’s crowded installation evokes the way many of these works would have been seen at that time—in artists’ studios, collectors’ homes, and the annual Parisian exhibitions known as salons.
Organized by Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Alexandra Morrison, Curatorial Assistant, and Rachel Remick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.