Cubism, so far the main build up of my work by George Braque (still life with grapes)

Cubism

Cubism!!  Never heard of it!!

For our Assignment we were to be a curator of an exhibition.  My first search results were informing me that George Braque and Pablo Picasso created Cubism in 1908.

WHY?

Simply put, Cubism was invented so people could observe all views of a person or object at once, from any angle or all angles giving all the picture or object. 

UNDERSTANDING

Upon viewing Cubism I couldn't understand the images I was seeing. Because they were unclear my mind couldn't make much sense of it. In my head I thought ART should make a little sense or have a clear meaning. ( Just how naive was I)

To fully understand the idea I decided to take the work of George Braque's,  Still Life with Grapes and investigate it closer. By taking images in Black and White as well as colour  and cutting into some  photocopies of the Still Life I was  able try and reassemble them into some kind of order. (This proved difficult)  I cut out and stuck down the same shapes and depths of what I envisaged the work would of been like. I realised just how complex George Braque's work must of  been and the effort and planning he must of when through to achieve the finish piece. 

Building up the frame work

Next I painted and highlighted pieces. 

finished
For my first attempt, I wasn't very happy with the end result. I realised that I have missed some pieces out and the sizing wasn't as exact as it should of been.
MISSING THE POINT
I still felt I was missing the point that Pablo and George were wanting me to see. I researched more using books, internet, and drawing and sketching.
I learnt that they was two stages to Cubism. The first stage being Analytical. Analytical Cubism was taking an object and dissecting the viewpoint by viewpoint, braking it down and looking at it from different angles, overlapping, colouring, shading and painting. The colour were simple as to make sure the viewer wasnt distracted from the form of the image on display.
Synthetic Cubism was the second stage (1912 - 1914) Synthetic Cubism seemed to have simpler softer shapes. Brighter colours, textures and patterns. Collage was giving and making a new approach to the work.
INFLUENCES
Cubism extended to other artistic fields outside painting and sculpture. In literature, the written works of Gertrude Steir, employs repetition and repetitive phrases as building blocks in both passages and whole chapters of her work.
Fashion and fabrics were showing interest and big houses like Chanel and Paul Poiret included cubism onto the catwalks. Even today Cubism influences can be seen on the shop floors and catwalks. 
For me the biggest and most exciting influence Cubism had was on Architecture. Architectural Cubism centred on the reconstitution of the three-dimensional form, using simple geometric shapes, without the illusion of classic perspective. Some elements could even be superimposed or made transparent using glass. They could even penetrate one another.
PRAGUE

The city of Prague in the Czech Republic is one country that really applied Cubism into the Architecture. It flourish between 1910 -1914 and after World War 1 a new style of cubist architectural developed Rondo-cubism. Rondo-cubism fused cubism with round shapes. Led by artists like Janak, Rondo-cubism added circles and folklorist elements. They used this new way to increase their national pride and identity.
OVERVIEW
Architectural design makes more sense to me than the actually art. I feel this is because its pleasing visually and seems also to have more purpose. While it is still wacky in someways it was futuristic for its time and I'm left fascinated at the immense scale Cubism had influencing architecture. I do look forward to seeing what other movements like futurism. dada and realism had on architecture.