Talk:Cubism

Category

Add "Category:Visual art movements" to article when unprotected. Hyacinth 05:29, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

move it back, i think

Modernism template

I've added a template feel free to add new articles to it. Stirling Newberry 00:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This article needs a lot of help. I put a stub tag on it. Also, the movements of modern art are not linear, so I don't see the benefit in having "preceded by" and "followed by" in the template. [[User:Dystopos|05:10, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is a movement? And what is an edit war?

An IP is edit warring apparently because they do not believe there is any such thing as Cubist literature, music, or architecture. Also, they've done some damage needs to be fixed, and I trust somebody will take care of it: they insist on placing the stray word "collage" at the top of the article, and they've disguised a block quote from the October 11, 1918 New York Times so it will not be recognized as quoted material. (This looks to me like inadvertant copyright violation and an exception to the 3-revert rule per WP:3RRNO, but I'lll let someone else revert it for the third time.)

The question of whether various Cubist-related developments in the arts can be called "movements" is settled or not settled by checking reliable sources. One such source is LeRoy Breunig, The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology (1995), which makes a good case that there is such a thing as Cubist poetry and that it has the characteristics of a movement ([https://www.amazon.com/Cubist-Poets-Paris-Anthology-Modernist/dp/0803212240 blurb here). Richard L. Admussen, in "Nord-Sud and Cubist Poetry" (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Autumn, 1968), writes: "the expression literary Cubism may be said to be an inadvisedly chosen term which, nevertheless, in its way, characterizes better than any other term the works found in Nord-Sud." Ozenfant, in Foundations of Modern Art (1952, p.18), writes of Apollinaire that "he was generally styled Cubist". Also see Wylie Sypher, "Gide's Cubist Novel" (The Kenyon Review, Spring 1949); Marilyn Gaddis Rose, "Gertrude Stein and Cubist Narrative" (Modern Fiction Studies, Winter, 1976-77); Marianne DeKoven, "Gertrude Stein and Modern Painting: Beyond Literary Cubism" (Contemporary Literature, Winter, 1981); etc. The term "literary Cubism" is certainly in use.

Christopher Green and John Musgrove write in "Cubism" at Grove Art Online that "the term is not specifically applied to a style of architecture except in former Czechoslovakia", where it is. (Radomíra Sedláková, in "Czech Cubism" -- also at Grove Art Online -- defines the title subject as "Term used to describe a style in architecture and the applied arts" developed in Prague before the first World War.) All of the above rather contradicts the IP's edit summary that "there is no cubist music, architecture, or literature", at least with regard to literature and architecture.

The Grove "Cubism" article goes on to say: "Cubism cannot definitively be called either a style, the art of a specific group or even a movement. It embraces widely disparate work; it applies to artists in different milieux; and it produced no agreed manifesto. Yet, despite the difficulties of definition, it has been called the first and the most influential of all movements in 20th-century art." In short, although it is not definitively a movement, it has been called the most important movement in 20th-century art. Wikipedia follows sources; if something is routinely described by historians as a movement, we are free to call it a movement.

The changes the IP has made in the first two sentences of the article are defensible and I may even agree with some of them, but is poor form to introduce important changes by edit warring, and the unrelated format damage mentioned above still needs to be reverted. Ewulp (talk) 02:41, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

agree! Music may be a stretch though. Johnbod (talk) 02:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Good points are made and deserving of regard. I still maintain that attaching cubist to art movements is a stretch, but given that others think differently, I have made an edit to account for cubist art movements and cubist related movements without one canceling out the other. There was no insistence (an unfortunate characterization) to have a stray word be left, and this typo has been fixed. Appreciation for the error being pointed out. 5ive9teen (talk) 03:23, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the dialogue, but the new edit ("Outside of the visual arts, cubism resulted in art movements classified as cubist, as well as other cubist related developments, in music, ballet, literature, and architecture") is needlessly prolix & awkward. The previous edit was better all around. Ewulp (talk)

I've made an edit for simplicity. Also moved the mention of collage from the first sentence where it seemed premature – a reader unfamiliar with the subject could get the impression that the invention of collage is the primary reason Cubism is notable. For what it's worth, the Cubism article in Encyclopedia Britannica first mentions the word "collage" near the end of the fourth paragraph; the Heilbronn Timeline of Art History doesn't mention collage (papiers collés) until the fourth paragraph. We don't have to copy everything they do, but they are useful as a model of what experts in the subject consider to be a proper inverted pyramid. Ewulp (talk) 06:48, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

The lead

Recent edit is not good. There is no mention whatsoever of prints in the body of the article, and the lead should summarize the article. And there's no need to bloat the lead sentence by mentioning every individual art medium influenced by Cubism. An examination of reliable sources on the broad subject of Cubism will show that the emphasis is overwhelmingly on painting; some entire books on Cubism do not mention prints even once. In a general survey Cubist sculpture, collage, prints, drawing, ceramics, fiber art, industrial design, mosaic, and much else may or may not be given a mention in their proper place but the lead sentence should emphasize the important points and not run on and on. Ewulp (talk) 03:57, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

(New section started and liberty taken to move a reply to it) The editor, perhaps unwittingly, has made an argument to remove sculpture from the lead. The EB says cubism was also a reduction to flatness and 2d. This Greenberg fetish has been long debunked by Steinberg. I suggest we look instead to scholars and art historians, such as Richardson (egregiously unrelied upon so far), Rubin and Steinberg. Since I do not have access to the EB entry on cubism, regardless of its dubious value, I will hazard to guess the 1st 4 paragraphs also do not mention the tangential and secondary effects of cubism on other art forms. I also will suggest for the sake of comity for no one to shout edit war off of one revert and to do so when making a 2nd revert begs hurling accusation in return, but I won’t. Naturally a discussion is warranted and I’m happy to join. I suggest we start with whether collage is lead worthy. Of course I will gather citations to make the case here on the talk page. Gotta wonder tho, how did this article never include cubist prints? This is an oversight I will attempt to amend. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5ive9teen (talk • contribs) 23:24, May 23, 2024(UTC)

• • The lede should be simple and direct regarding painting. In my experience referencing Cubism refers to the innovations regarding the paintings by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, joined by the work of Metzinger, Gleizes, Juan Gris and others and the innovations made by the paintings of Paul Cezanne. Initially an enormous step forward in the world of painting. Other forms (sculpture, etc.) eventually are introduced later...Modernist (talk) 11:45, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes to that. For the record, I did not "shout edit war off of one revert"; a look at the article's edit history will reveal that 5ive9teen (although not signed in, hmmm) had reverted my edits twice on May 17, before I posted here on the 18th. Eliminating the word "sculpture" from the first sentence was not unwitting. Of course collage is lead-worthy, and it is in the lead section as it should be, just not in the very first sentence of the article where this editor demands it be included, along with printmaking, sculpture, and by next week who knows what else. Let's talk about Rubin. A search of Rubin's Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism shows that the word "print" appears only five times in the entire book, the first being on page 71, and three of those instances are irrelevant (as in, "Permission to print excerpts has been granted by..."). The terms "printmaking", printmaker" and "printmakers" are not in the book at all. "Etching" and "drypoint" appear only after page 80 and page 176 respectively, and mainly in picture captions, not in the body text. So perhaps the first sentence of our article need not mention printmaking. EB does not claim "a reduction to flatness", it says Cubism "emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane" and describes "planes [that] appear to move beyond the surface of the canvas rather than to recede in depth". I don't think this has been debunked; also see Berger, The Moment of Cubism, p. 24, where a Cubist painting is described as "two-dimensional insofar as one's eye comes back again and again to the surface of the picture." This is how Cubism is usually described, and we follow sources. EB of course does mention the effects of Cubism in other media, in paragraph five: "Though primarily associated with painting, Cubism also exerted a profound influence on 20th-century sculpture and architecture..." We have influence in other arts covered in our first sentence; it can't get any more advanced placement than that. Ewulp (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect characterization of similar modernist art movements and styles

In the article it is claimed "In France and other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism", this characterization is extremely generalizing and incorrect. The cited article by the Museum of Modern art (link) has quite literally zero mentions of the other modernist movements/styles/etc. and nowhere does it say that Cubism, of all things, was the reason for their development. For example: F.T. Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto before Cubism was wholly even defined, as the article is about the discussion of the blurry line when Cubism started. Later in the article another article is cited (link), but it only claims in passing that some paintings of early Futurist type were "made in response to" Picasso. This article by Jean Wilette on arthistoryunstuffed states: "Futurists were still considered to be “derivative” of Cubism, but this judgment was based upon a morphological similarity and such a formalist comparison can be very misleading." and "First, the word 'Cubism' was not a specific term at that time and, second, in the pre-war period, there were many manifestations of 'Cubism' in Paris".

I believe to say that these movements developed in response to Cubism is very incorrect and generalized. Please, somebody, give me a better source or help me understand the reasoning for such claims. I suggest this part to be edited and unless in some time a better source is given, I will be adding a clarification tag. Finlojo (talk) 08:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)