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1912 Nude Descending A Staircase By Georges Braque

Decent Essays

In the early twentieth century Post-Impressionism was the avant-garde art movement in the world, with its central city Paris, France. Artists from different religious backgrounds, cultures, and societal hierarchies migrated to Paris to take their art in new directions. France was a city of tolerance during both Pre and Post WWI; therefore, it was a beacon for those who wanted to convey their emotions and ideas visually. Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Robert Delaunay came to Paris and sought to create art with a personal aesthetic and to capture the essence of the modern era. As with Cezanne and Picasso, Georges Braque (1881-1963) used the cubism …show more content…

2). This is the second version of the same painting and it has the similar palette seen in the analytic phase of cubism in both Picasso and Braque’s works (Soltes, L38, 14:55). Again in this painting is the stylistic reduction of natural and geometric forms. He illustrates the same figure at different moments going down the stairs. There is a sense of fluidity and motion in the figure as it blends into each other at the different moments on the stairs that is reminiscent of Picasso’s Portrait of Art Dealer Ambroise Vollard blending into the background. According to Professor Soltes, this is also Duchamp’s attempt at futurists that is to depict movement in a static medium (L38, …show more content…

Cubism ignited a new way to think and look at art. In Picasso’s 1910 Portrait of Art Dealer Ambroise Vollard, he really pushed the boundaries of abstract painting in this analytic cubist composition. Analytic cubism is in which the object is broken down and dissolves into underlying geometric figures. Therefore, to examine the Portrait of Art Dealer Ambroise Vollard, the viewer cannot stand too close because all of what will be seen is geometric facets. However, if the viewer steps backwards, then they will see that Ambroise Vollard is in the center of the composition. He has dissolved into the background, yet the details of his face are evident with his balding head, closed eyes, beard, and mustache. Picasso used monochrome colors of browns and gray tones throughout this painting, which was indispensable to the underlying geometric elements of the Ambroise Vollard’s form and the background merged into each other (Soltes, L38,

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