Cubism was the new age and beginning of Modernism. It was a new regime and cycle of artists expressing themselves with new materials (photography in particular). It surrounded the subject matter of contemporary life, that aside with not anything religious and historic. Traditional aspects and regimes have been tested and the normal perspectives where therefore abandoned.
Cubism holds many multiple viewpoints and is not based on naturalistic observation but on mental conception. It was then situated that there was a sort of freedom to manipulate a subject-matter to create new and variable compositions. Elements in a picture would then be chosen and placed purely according to aesthetic consideration rather than being based in reality. This thought by the normality of society , it allowed people to suppress the norms and expectations through art and various multimedia.
Cubism relates to chance, challenge and change because it expresses the movement of people going beyond the public domain and expectations.
“Nature should be treated as cylinders, spheres and cones” – Paul Cezanne
Some of the more early works of Cubism.
Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-06, oil on canvasPablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas
Cubism nowadays has been modernized by various technologies and techniques. With new and developed processes, Cubism has been turned into a more eye-catching and popular approach to everyday life.
Elvis PresleyMicheal Jackson
Some of the more modernized interpretations of cubism is example of Philippines-based designer Dre Ilutsre. He is just one of the many artists that has created a collection of pop-culture character illustrations in his own distinct style.
The eye-catching illustrations are cubism-inspired digital art where the characters are portrayed in an abstract form, made up by different shapes. Ilustre uses mostly red, blue and yellow in his works.
In his collection, famous figures such as pop-icons Michael Jackson, Bob Marley and martial artist Bruce Lee have been featured.
Born in Bristol, UK in 1986 Tom Pope’s artistic practice is primarily based within performed photography. Pope’s playful and whimsical approach orchestrates situations and performed gestures of social interaction. Within these settings the public become willing participators and collaborators where the act of taking photographs is a social event. Spontaneity is embraced and chance encouraged.
HERE IS SOME OF TOMS WORK –
Over The Edge-Tom Pope
Tom Pope studied Photography in the Arts at Swansea Metropolitan University and received his Masters in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2011 where he was also the recipient of a Deutsche Bank Award. His works are in the National Museum of Wales and National Portrait Gallery. Pope won the Night Contact/Photoworks commission 2014. The resulting filmSilent Fore to Aft made in collaboration with Terry Smith premiered at Brighton Photo Biennial 2014.
Tom Pope is a performance photographer that lives and works in London and he produces guess work as he never know what hes taking as he uses old fashioned cameras and or uses tripods with a trigger release cable which he won’t know the outcome until after he performs. What I like about Tom pope is that his work is very spontaneous and even though his pictures aren’t perfect, they still tell a story. I do find some of his work a bit bland, as in some of his videos don’t interest me but then again some of his videos are very clever and creative and I like how he thinks outside the box and is more unique compared to other photographers. The reason Tom produces more videos rather than photographs is because he feels like you can’t capture a whole performance in one photograph.
On our French Trip in June, he was very helpful in developing our ideas and helping us try something new, he isn’t scared to try something different and get negative reactions from it, he seems to enjoy bouncing off the negatives and make them into positives in his films and photographs. I was defiantly inspired by his work and was happy to have him help me in my development as a photographer. His work reflects his personality which is quite difficult to portray, but that is my new aim, to make my work unique and I want my work to reflect my personality and aspirations. I want my photographs to have public in them because usually I would just do one or two people and i would direct them a lot more, but for my videos I want them to be more spontaneous.
The actual word ‘dadaism’ is a nonsense word which was made up with no real meaning. The creators wanted to use a word that meant nothing as a sign of protest against the First World War. This new idea was adapted in 1916. This movement can be seen as shocking, surprising and scandalous to most people, although it isn’t as crazy as people make it out to be. Dadaism was created by Hugo Ball in Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. This is the total rejection of rules and came from utter disgust after the brutality of WWI. Here Ball wanted an audience reaction to try and test their tolerance and to test them and their take on this new art form.
This can be associated with photo montage, this is the layering of different types of images cutting them out and putting them back together in a different way to create an entirely new image. Here many propaganda posters were created as a new movement and to influence citizens. This really interests me as I am able to explore how different countries and different leaders perceived themselves and what message they wanted to bring across to the world.
I like the idea of dadaism and photo montage. I think I am going to experiment with copies of old family photographs and create my own photo montage as well as maybe creating a few more realistic propaganda posters for past and present leaders. This will be interesting for me and I think that I will be able to explore a load of different aspects of this movement. For me I will be taking a chance to see how controversial a lot of what I am going to create will be, as well as it changing and challenging the way society thinks and perceives a certain influential person or period in time.
There weren’t many women involved with the dadaism movement but there was one popular woman called Hannah Hoch. Hoch was a German Dada artist, born in 1889. The reason not many women were a part of this movement because around the time this came about women were seen as secondary to men, that they should stay at home and nurture the children and were unworthy of work. Hoch was actually one of the originators of photomontage. She was the loan woman amount the Dada group as women were seen as lesser than men back then.
Cubism became one of the most influential visual art styles of the early Twentieth Century. This starts in 1907 when Pablo Picasso painted a portrait of five prostitutes. However it wasn’t who he had painted as this was common for artists to hire prostitutes to paint as it was seen as disrespectful to paint a nude image of your wife or of someone else’s wife. It was the way in which he had painted them which really got people talking, starting the era of cubism and the gateway to modern art.
I fiind this painting very interesting because the way it has been done is as if these women aren’t human but also in a way to protect their identity so that no one can see who these women actually are. I do think Picasso did this just as an experiment, to test the way the spectator thinks, which came to be very successful as now any one of his paintings will be sold for millions of dollars as each is unique and there is only one copy of it. I find this painting visually interesting because it doesn’t show too much attention to detail. It gives the basic shape and outline of each woman’s figure unlike biblical painting that people are used to seeing on top of church ceilings [from 1500s]. I like that this painting doesn’t objective these women as many other painters have done so many times in the past. To me this painting is embracing the human form and physique yet somehow it managed to deface the women in the painting too. I’m unsure whether or not distorting these women’s faces was an experimentation of different shapes or rather a means to say that these women’s faces don’t matter and only their bodies do. I have mixed feelings about this painting as you can see it from many different perspectives and can take from it both positively and negatively.
Pablo Picasso was inspired by Etienne-Jules Marey [1830 – 1904] and Eadweard May Bridge. These two also created a new style of art called montage. This came from Russia as well as the theory of an active audience when watching films. Here the Russians believed that an audience watching a film want to get involved and think actively and take from a film what they want whereas the old American belief was that all audiences’ were passive and were just fed something and they took it all in and did what the advertisement or film told them to do.
Situationism is the theory that behavior is mainly a response to immediate situations.
The situationist international was a group of social revolutionaries, which was made up of artists, political theorists and intellectuals which started in 1957 and ended in 1972. Guy Debord was one of the members who stuck out the most. At first the situationists were concerned about how art had been held back and wanted to make art and culture one in everyday life. Then they became concerned about the capitalist society. They believed that capitalism gave humans dissatisfaction so human desire needed to be fulfilled by finding an alternative to a capitalist society. They are well known for their wildcat strikes and riots in Paris 1957 where there were general strikes all across France which almost put Frances capitalist economy on a stop although the strike did turn violent it was mostly artistic it included things such as songs, graffiti’s and posters.
Tom Pope was inspired by the situationists, I think there is a link between the work he does and the situationists because Tom Pope looks for a reaction and he challenges the norms by pushing boundaries.
The Space Hijackers is a group originating in the United Kingdom that defines itself as “an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planners, architects, multinationals and other hoodlums”. Time Out magazine has described the group as “an inventive and subversive group of London ‘Anarchitects’ who specialise in reclaiming public spaces – usually without permission.
The group’s activities have included “guerrilla benching” restoring benches that had been recently removed and bolting them to the ground — organising a midnight game of cricket in the centre of the City of London financial district, and satirising the glossy architects’ drawings that are displayed on the perimeter of luxury apartments by depicting children’s playgrounds and other projects they believe to be actually desirable. Many of these activities aim to bring to people’s attention the role which corporations play in society in a different light.
I fiind this painting very interesting because the way it has been done is as if these women aren’t human but also in a way to protect their identity so that no one can see who these women actually are. I do think Picasso did this just as an experiment, to test the way the spectator thinks, which came to be very successful as now any one of his paintings will be sold for millions of dollars as each is unique and there is only one copy of it. I find this painting visually interesting because it doesn’t show too much attention to detail. It gives the basic shape and outline of each woman’s figure unlike biblical painting that people are used to seeing on top of church ceilings [from 1500s]. I like that this painting doesn’t objective these women as many other painters have done so many times in the past. To me this painting is embracing the human form and physique yet somehow it managed to deface the women in the painting too. I’m unsure whether or not distorting these women’s faces was an experimentation of different shapes or rather a means to say that these women’s faces don’t matter and only their bodies do. I have mixed feelings about this painting as you can see it from many different perspectives and can take from it both positively and negatively.
