Cubism

Cubism, one of the most widely influential art movements, is based off the simplistic principles of converting represented forms into geometric shapes. Its unique beauty is in its rejection of the traditional techniques of foreshadowing, perspective and modeling as it instead transposes the familiar three dimensional subjects into flat images on a two dimensional surface. The founders of this revolutionary movement are still some of its greatest contributors, like Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braques, who were inspired by African art and other non-western sources.

Below, Picasso’s Woman in a Blue Hat demonstrates this altered reality through radically fragmented objects that is so characteristic of the style. Robert D. Harris’ Colliding Lines, above, is extremely representative of the cubist movement and its core principles as well. Instead of painting from just one angle, Harris has painted the faces in this piece from multiple angles at the same time in order to represent an object in the most complete way possible and still on a two dimensional canvas surface. It is evident, looking at these pieces, the mystique that this unconventional style possesses and the unique hold it has on its viewers as reality is bent and twisted before their eyes.