Proto-Cubism (also referred to as Protocubism, Early Cubism, and Pre-Cubism or Précubisme) is an intermediary transition phase in the history of art chronologically extending from 1906 to 1910. Evidence suggests that the production of proto-Cubist paintings resulted from a wide-ranging series of experiments, circumstances, influences and conditions, rather than from one isolated static event, trajectory, artist or discourse. With its roots stemming from at least the late 19th century, this period is characterized by a move towards the radical geometrization of form and a reduction or limitation of the color palette (in comparison with Fauvism). It is essentially the first experimental and exploratory phase of an art movement that would become altogether more extreme, known from the spring of 1911 as Cubism.
Proto-Cubist artworks typically depict objects in geometric schemas of cubic or conic shapes. The illusion of classical perspective is progressively stripped away from objective representation to reveal the constructive essence of the physical world (not just as seen). The term is applied not only to works of this period by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, but to a range of art produced in France during the early 1900s, by such artists as Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, and to variants developed elsewhere in Europe. Proto-Cubist works embrace many disparate styles, and would affect diverse individuals, groups and movements, ultimately forming a fundamental stage in the history of modern art of the 20th-century.Christopher Green, 2009, Cubism, MoMA, Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press
History and influences The building blocks that led to the construction of proto-Cubist works are diverse in nature. Neither homogeneous nor isotropic, the progression of each individual artist was unique. The influences that characterize this transition period range from Post-Impressionism, to Symbolism, Les Nabis and Neo-Impressionism, the works of Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin to African, Egyptian, Greek, Micronesian, Native American, Iberian sculpture, and Iberian schematic art.
In anticipation of Proto-Cubism the idea of form inherent in art since the Renaissance had been questioned. The romanticist Eugène Delacroix, the realist Gustave Courbet, and practically all the Impressionists had abandoned a significant portion of Classicism in favor of immediate sensation. The dynamic expression favored by these artists presented a challenge in contrast to the static means of expression promoted by the Academia. The representation of fixed objects occupying a space, was replaced by dynamic colors and form in constant evolution. Yet other means would be necessary to jettison completely the long-standing foundation that surrounded them. While the freedom of Impressionism had certainly jeopardized its integrity, it would take another generation of artists, not just to bring the edifice down piece by piece, but to rebuild an entirely new configuration, cube by cube.Alex Mittelmann, State of the Modern Art World, The Essence of Cubism and its Evolution in Time, 2011
Cézanne
Several predominant factors mobilized the shift from a more representational art form to one that would become increasingly abstract; one of the most important would be found directly within the works of Paul Cézanne and exemplified in a widely discussed letter addressed to Émile Bernard dated 15 April 1904. Cézanne ambiguously writes: "Interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone; put everything in perspective, so that each side of an object, of a plane, recedes toward a central point."Erle Loran, Cézannes Composition: Analysis of His Form with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs, Foreword by Richard Shiff, University of California Press, April 30, 2006
In addition to his preoccupation for the simplification of geometric structure, Cézanne was concerned with the means of rendering the effect of volume and space. His rather classical color-modulating system consisted of changing colors from warm to cool as the object turns away from the source of light. Cézanne's departure from classicism, however, would be best summarized in the treatment and of application of the paint itself; a process in which his brushstrokes played an important role. The complexity of surface variations (or modulations) with overlapped shifting planes, seemingly arbitrary contours, contrasts and values combined to produce a strong patchwork effect. Increasingly in his later works, as Cézanne achieves a greater freedom, the patchwork becomes larger, bolder, more arbitrary, more dynamic and increasingly abstract. As the color planes acquire greater formal independence, defined objects and structures begin to lose their identity.
The art critic Louis Vauxcelles acknowledged the importance of Cézanne to the Cubists in his article titled From Cézanne to Cubism (published in Eclair, 1920). For Vauxcelles the influence had a two-fold character, both 'architectural' and 'intellectual'. He stressed the statement made by Émile Bernard that Cézanne's optics were "not in the eye, but in his brain".Christopher Green, Cubism and its Enemies, Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-28, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, p. 192
With both his courage and experience to draw from, Cézanne created a hybrid art-form. He combined on the one hand the imitative and the immobile, a system left over from the Renaissance, and the mobile on the other; together to forming a hybrid. His own generation would see in his contradictory codes nothing more than impotence, unaware of his intentions. However, the next generation would see in Cézanne greatness, precisely because of this duality. Cézanne was seen simultaneously as a classicist by those who chose to see in his work the imitation of nature and perspective, and as a revolutionary by those who saw in him a revolt against imitation and classical perspective. Timid, yet clearly manifest, was the will to deconstruct. Artists at the forefront of the Parisian art scene at the outset of the 20th century would not fail to notice these tendencies inherent in the work of Cézanne, and decided to venture still further.Robert L. Herbert, 1968, Neo-Impressionism, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Avant-garde artists in Paris (including Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Othon Friesz, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Alexander Archipenko and Joseph Csaky) had begun reevaluating their own work in relation to that of Cézanne. A retrospective of Cézanne's paintings had been held at the Salon d'Automne of 1904. Current works were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1905 and 1906, followed by two commemorative retrospectives after his death in 1907. The influence generated by the work of Cézanne suggests a means by which some of these artist made the transition from Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Divisionism and Fauvism to Cubism.Joann Moser, 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, Pre-Cubist Works, 1904-1909, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press, pp. 34, 35
Cézanne syntax didn't just ripple outwards over the sphere, touching those that would become Cubists in France, Futurists in Italy and Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, Expressionists in Germany, it also created currents that flowed throughout Parisian art world threatening to destabilize (if not topple) at least three of the core foundations of the academia: the geometrical method of perspective used to create the illusion of form, space and depth since the Renaissance; Figuratism, derived from real object sources (and therefore representational), and aesthetics. At the time, it was assumed that all art aims at beauty, and anything that wasn't beautiful couldn't be counted as art. The proto-Cubists revolted against the concept that objective beauty was central to the definition of art.Arthur Coleman Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art, Open Court Publishing, 2003, , Brian Massumi, Deleuze, Guattari and the Philosophy of Expression, CRCL, 24:3, 1997.
Symbolism In his Sources of Cubism and Futurism, art historian Daniel Robbins reviews the Symbolist roots of modern art, exploring the literary source of both Cubist painting in France and Futurism in Italy.Daniel Robbins, Sources of Cubism and Futurism, Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 4, (Winter 1981): pp. 324-27, Published by College Art Association The revolution of free verse with which Gustave Kahn was associated, was a principle example of the correspondence between progress in art and politics; a growing conviction among young artists. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti acknowledged his indebtedness to it, as a source of modern artistic liberty. "Paul Fort's Parisian review Vers et Prose", writes Robbins, "as well as the Abbaye de Créteil, cradle of both Jules Romains's Unanimism and Henri-Martin Barzun's Dramatisme, had emphasized the importance of this new formal device". Kahn's free verse was revolutionary because, in his own words, "free verse is mobile, like mobile perspective". In classical French poetry, writes Robbins, "meaning and rhythm were united, and sense and rhythm stopped simultaneously. The unity consisted in the number and rhythm of vowels and consonants together forming an organic and independent cell". The system began to break down, according to Kahn, with the Romantic poets when they permitted a stop for the ear, with no stop in meaning. This is akin to Jacques Villon's drawings and prints of 1908 and 1909, notes Robbins, "where the hatching lines that create a shape do not stop at the contour, but continue beyond, taking on an independent life".
The next step, wrote Kahn, was to impart unity and cohesion by means of a union of related consonants, or the repetition of similar vowel sounds (assonance). Poets were thus free to create novel and complex rhythms, with, if so desired, inversions that destroyed the beat of the strophe. As Kahn noted, this was shocking because traditionally it was the regularity of the strophe that gave the reader meaning. Symbolist concepts vacated the metronome-like symmetry and introduced liberty, flexibility and elasticity. Each was to find her own rhythmic force. The classicists feared that the dismantling of meter by the decadent Symbolist 'barbarians' would undermine the French language, and thus attack the very foundations of social order.
Elasticity, one of Kahn's favorite words used to describe free verse, would become the title of well known Futurist works by Umberto Boccioni, as well as two paintings by Roger de La Fresnaye, a proto-Cubist work and later a cubist work entitled Marie Ressort (ressort meaning elasticity or spring). These paintings, writes Robbins, are an homage to the prose of Jules Laforgue, whose poems concerned the life of his sister Marie.
Pablo Picasso