George Braque - North Stratfield School PTA

Georges Braque
1882-1963
Cubism
For this presentation you will need:
(Available reproductions and supplemental boards in the vertical art storage rack to the right of the
cabinet.)
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Still Life: Le Jour (1929) (large mounted reproduction)
Elements of Art Board
Other printed materials for reference that are in the white binder: Road Near L’Estaque
(1908), Violin and Palette (1909), Piano and Mandolin (1909-1910), Man With Guitar (1911),
Fruit Dish and Glass (1912).
Supplemental prints in the white binder to refer to his brief period of Fauvism: Landscape at
L’Estaque (1906); A comparison to Cezanne: L’Estaque (1883-1885); a comparison to
Matisse: Woman With A Hat (1905); and his later work in the Ateliers series: Ateliers VIII
(1954)
In the black cabinet you will find a white binder with a copy of the current presentation and the
additional materials listed above for reference.
Updated December 10, 2014
2 Georges Braque
Personal Information Name:
Nationality:
Born:
Died:
Lived:
Georges Braque
French
May 13, 1882, Angenteuil (near Paris, France)
August 31, 1963 in Paris, France
Braque was born into a family of painters. Both his father and grandfather owned
a prosperous house-painting business and young Braque would travel on
assignments to learn. By 1902 he moved to Paris to study fine art. While in Paris,
Braque studied for two years and frequently visited the Louvre. He became
interested in architecture, and Egyptian and Greek works.
Braque was the first living artist to exhibit at the Louvre.
Professional Information
Type of artist:
Cubist (with Picasso, Braque is considered a founding father of Cubism).
Style/Technique:
Cubism is a style of art in which natural forms are broken into geometric shapes
such as squares, triangles, or circles. The paintings are executed in muted colors.
The objects are fragmented or cubed geometrical patterns and are organized on a
grid. The early stage of Cubism rejected the normal conventions of linear
perspective and instead it was shown by a means of color, reddish browns for
foreground and warm blues for background. Also, in Cubist canvases, there are
multiple light sources, Cubist canvases light appears to enter the composition
from numerous different angles thus confusing the viewer as to whether shapes
are convex or concave. Braque described "objects shattered into fragments… [as]
a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish
space and movement in space”. He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color
palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.
His paintings consist primarily of still lifes. A still life is a picture of an
arrangement of objects. They are known for their robust construction, low-keyed
color harmonies, and serene, meditative quality.
Braque began his career as a Fauvist. Fauvism is another style of art that
originated in the early twentieth-century. It consisted of Modern artists whose
works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational
or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Fauvism as a style began around
1900 and continued beyond 1910, this artistic style only lasted a few years,
1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. One of the leaders of the movement was
Henri Matisse. (You can show the Matisse sample of Fauvism to compare
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3 Georges Braque
with Braque’s early works). Already, however, his art was displaying a
growing fascination with geometric patterns and solid, defined forms that was
out of step with the canon preached by Matisse. As the Fauvism movement was coming to an end, Braque was greatly influenced
by the work of Paul Cezanne, and his ideas of multiple perspectives which led
Braque to initiate a type of prototype Cubist painting (the first set of cubist
paintings) in landscapes he completed at L'Estaque. You can see this in the
painting Road Near L’Estaque in the white binder. The town of L’Estaque had
been a favorite subject for Paul Cézanne, whose 1907 memorial exhibition in
Paris had a great impact on Braque. After this he worked closely with Picasso
with whom he formulated Analytical Cubism and later, Synthetic Cubism.
Analytical Cubism focused on breaking down one image and showing it in
many different perspectives, Synthetic Cubism focused more on a collage,
utilizing different surfaces, textures and subject matters. (see characteristics and
definitions in the white binder).
Artist Biography
Georges Braque, the most representatively French of this century’s painters, was born in Argenteuil,
France, one of the centers of the Impressionist movement in the later half of the nineteenth century. He
was the son of a painting contractor who was also a Sunday painter. He had his first art lessons from his
father, from who he learned to imitate marble, wood and gilt surfaces in paint (this would come in
handy in his later years as he incorporated this decorative style into his paintings). At 15, Braque then
studied at the School of Fine Arts at Le Havre before going to Paris to begin a lifelong exploration of
color and space, searching for the most beautiful combination of the two.
In, 1902, after a year of military service and with the financial support of his family, Braque made the
decision to become an “artist”. This meant enrolling first in a private art academy in Paris, and then
attending the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He spent two more years as an official student of art,
regularly attending the Louvre for inspiration and exploring the different approaches to color and form
used by the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He did not copy the work he saw in the art schools
and in the museums. Braque searched for a new way to paint and one said “I am far more concerned
about being in tune with nature than copying it.”
Early in his work Braque was influenced by the Impressionists and by his contemporaries,
Matisse and Derain, and joined the Fauvre movement in about 1905. Even in this period, his work
showed characteristics of his later style, for he painted some works in monochrome using angles as
well as curves with a flatter, more transparent pigment, than that of his colleagues. By 1907 the
architectural influence of Cezanne had asserted itself and Braque, with Picasso, founded the Cubist
movement. Braque began to paint in muted colors and in geometrical patterns. He and Picasso worked
closely together until the outbreak of World War I, sometimes producing works so similar that the two
artists themselves could not tell which one had painted a given picture if had not been immediately
signed.
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Georges Braque
4 In 1912, after courting is wife-to–be, Marcelle, Braque began a lengthy experiment with collage and
overlay. Although Cubism was created jointly by Braque and Picasso, it was Braque who was first to
introduce lettering, to make use of a paint comb, to introduce imitation wood graining and marbling, to
vary the texture of his paint by mixing it with sand and other ingredients and finally to discover the
technique of “papier colle” (paper collage). Alongside Cubist paintings by Picasso, Braque’s appear
more painterly, and serene.
In 1914, Braque was mobilized in the French Army, and a head wound he received in 1915 made him
temporarily blind so he could not paint again until 1917. At this time he began to develop a new and
more personal style, using a brighter palette and freer manner that was less angular and more luminous.
During the decade 1918-28 (after his head injury in 1915) Braque maintained his mastery of Cubism by
constantly varying the size and shape of his canvases: horizontal alternate with verticals, large with
small, square with elongated. His paint is sometimes luscious, sometimes dry. Braque’s color
harmonies and his handling of form also varied constantly, even with groups of works of the same date:
somber changes to light, compressed to flabby and extended, angular to rounded and free flowing.
During the wartime period, the work he put together would change in order to represent the somber,
dark period the world was going through. In between wartime, he would also change the style and
themes, to represent lighter times, and happier things, which were taking place around him.
By 1931, he had found a marvelous balance between intelligence and sensitivity, technique and
inspiration.
Between 1930 and 1936, Braque’s basic concern was with the decorative aspects of painting. His
repertoire of still life objects remained the same, but temporarily Braque relinquished his interest in
space, volume and tactile values in favor of seductive surface play of meandering lines. Natural objects
virtually lost not only their value for Braque, but also even their right to material existence. The colors
he used alternated between a heavy range of black, dark brown, blue and yellow, white, orange and
purple. This was an easygoing interval of Braque’s career.
Between 1941 and 1944, when he was able to return home to France in Normandy after more than four
years of absence due to World War II, Braque’s subject matter was related almost exclusively to food
and the daily routine of housekeeping. One after another, Braque’s still lifes are of kitchen tables with
a sparse arrangement of objects.
From 1956 on, Braque’s health and strength were constantly on the decline. He made no paintings of
importance after this date, although he labored away and brought to completion a few beautiful works
which he had begun in the early 1950s. He worked primarily during his declining years in the graphic
media, illustrating books for friends or making lithographs in color as well as black and white. He
became interested in stained glass and also accepted a commission for the ceiling of the Etruscan Room
at the Louvre. He also worked on a series of paintings called Ateliers in which he carries a bird motif
throughout and this theme reappears as the decoration for the Etruscan Hall in the Louvre. There are
several theories about why he included birds in these paintings. Two years before his death he became,
in the whole history of France, the first artist to be consecrated during his lifetime by an exhibition
organized at the Louvre. He continued to paint until the time of his death on August 31, 1963. He was
81 years old.
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5 Georges Braque
Featured Artwork
Still Life: Le Jour (1929)
(Still life, oil on canvas)
Style: Synthetic Cubism
Braque’s favorite genre, remained still life (nature
morte), as exemplified by his numerous Cubist
works. The subject matter of his still life paintings
were things that he saw every day. In this case, his
kitchen and items he may have found there. He
also included an instrument as well as he is also
known for painting instruments in his cubist
paintings and still lifes. He is showing more color
here like he does in his earlier pieces and
incorporated the texture of the wood and wallpaper
as characterized by the definition of Synthetic
Cubism. He also includes letter type to add to the decorative nature as well. Although Braque began his
career painting landscapes, during 1908 he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting
still lifes instead. Braque explained that he “… began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the stilllife you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have
always had to touch things and not merely see them… In tactile space you measure the distance
separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things
from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life” A still life was also more
accessible, in relation to perspective, than landscape, and permitted the artist to see the multiple
perspectives of the object. Braque's early interest in still lifes revived during the 1930s.
Show: Large mounted reproduction
Ask:
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What do you think Still Life means? (a picture of an inanimate object, such as fruit or flowers)
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What are the objects in the painting? (table, newspaper, guitar, knife etc.)
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Which objects are pictured as though they were broken and then put back together in an unusual
way? ( newspaper)
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How does the painting make you feel?
Discussing the Art
Show the Elements of Art board.
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6 Georges Braque
Color
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What kinds of colors did Braque use? (Cool colors, black, brown, purple, green, gray)Can you
see the stokes he used in these painting to create the lines?
Which colors go well together?
Shape
A shape is a line that encloses itself. Use a pipe cleaner or draw the shapes in a piece of paper to
demonstrate what happens when two ends of a line meet. A shape is created. Name some shapes
(square, circle, ova cube, rectangle, cylinder, semicircle, etc) that are in the paintings.
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Texture
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Do you see more geometric or free-form shapes? (Geometric)
What shapes do you see? (rectangles, squares, diamonds)
What objects do you see? (Guitar, knife, fruit, newspaper, table, pitcher
What kinds of textures are depicted in the painting? (Wood , marble, stone)
Line
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Where do you see straight lines? (table, knife, newspaper, guitar)
Are the lines clean and hard or soft? (clean and crisp)
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What kind of light is depicted? (natural)
Do you see any shadows? (yes, the table, guitar)
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Which objects seem most important?
Identify objects in the foreground, middle ground, and background.
Light
Space
Foreground: The objects and land that are “before” or in front of everything else
in the picture.
Middle ground: The objects and land in a picture that are mid-distant, in front of
the background.
Background: The farthest away objects in a picture, usually near the top of the
picture plane. In a landscape it is the sky and the farthest land.
Activities
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Have the children use geometric shapes (circles, squares, triangles, etc) cut from different
colored paper(or magazine) to suggest objects in still life. They can arrange the shapes on their
desks or tabletops. Encourage the children to use their imagination to create a still life that is all
their own. Time permitting, you can also have the children use the shapes to suggest human
and animal figures the way the Cubists pictured them.
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7 Georges Braque
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Have the children look at the reproduction provided and play the “eye spy” game to describe the
objects in the painting.
Other Noteworthy Paintings
Road Near L’Estaque (1908)
Style: Prototype Cubism
Road near L'Estaque, 1908 makes visible Cézanne's influence on
Braque's developing later Cubist style. Braque employs Cézanne's
progressive gradations of color and flattened, inaccessible spaces. As
Cézanne often did, Braque left an area of canvas unpainted, in the limb
of a tree. Road near L'Estaque looks forward to Cubism in its
significantly restricted palette of colors, crowded space, and sharp
geometric forms.
Violin and Palette (1909)
Style: Analytic Cubism
In Violin and Palette, 1909 Georges Braque fragmentalized the objects in
the painting into pieces, which are then meshed into the background.
Viewers thus see fragments of the objects in the picture that seem broken
amidst other pieces of the painting, as if hidden in a jigsaw puzzle. Stare at the various shades of color and we will find fragments of the violin
at the bottom left side of the painting against the backdrop of what appears
to be music scores, all aligned vertically along the length of the painting.
Stare hard at the violin and we will see the fragmented strings and the
carved S and inverted S shapes that are typical of violins. Stare harder and
the pieces seem to float before our eyes.
The muted colors allow the play of light and shadows so that as we move
from side to side or stare hard at the painting, the various pieces seem to
move or merge with other pieces. Examine each piece, and we will be
amazed at how detailed Braque had been in examining a violin, so that we
are able, as a violin maker would, to identify the pieces that go into making a violin.
North Stratfield School
Art in the Classroom
Georges Braque
8 Piano and Mandola (1909-1910)
Style: Analytic Cubism
Analytic Cubism is also seen in Piano and Mandola. Similar to Violin and
Palette, objects are still recognizable in the paintings, but are fractured into
multiple facets, as is the surrounding space with which they merge. The
compositions are set into motion as the eye moves from one faceted plane
to the next, seeking to differentiate forms and to accommodate shifting
sources of light and orientation. In Violin and Palette, the segmented parts
of the violin, the sheets of music, and the artist's palette are vertically
arranged, heightening their correspondence to the two-dimensional surface.
Ironically, Braque depicted the nail at the top of the canvas in an
illusionistic manner, down to the very shadow it cast, thus emphasizing the
contrast between traditional and Cubist modes of representation. The same
applies to the naturalistic candle in Piano and Mandola, which serves as a
beacon of stability in an otherwise energized composition of exploding
crystalline forms: the black-and-white piano keys all but disembodied; the
sheets of music virtually disintegrated; the mandola essentially
decomposed.
Man With Guitar (1911)
Style: Analytic Cubism
Braque painted Man with a Guitar in a mode that came to be called
Analytic Cubism. In works created in this style, he and Pablo Picasso
experimented with different types of representation to challenge the
orthodoxy of illusionistic space in painting. Here Braque paired an
accessible, lifelike rendering of a nail and rope, at left, with a nearly
indecipherable rendering of a human figure playing a guitar. Braque
and Picasso's collaboration was so close when they developed Analytic
Cubism that Braque later compared them to two mountaineers, bound
together. In order to remove the mystique of the maker from their
paintings, they both habitually signed the back of their works instead of
the front.
Fruit Dish and Glass (1912)
Style: Synthetic Cubism
This painting is most notable for being the first papier collé, or collage, a
technique which Braque invented. He simulated oak paneling and two kinds
of printed motifs on a dark beige background. Braque may have been drawn
to this paper because he was trained in a technique called trompe-l'oeil;
which allowed him to create pictorial effects that resemble woodgrain and
marble finishes, but are made with paint and a special wide comb. Braque
then may have found it amusing to incorporate the woodgrain paper in his
piece. He may also have wished to use the paper to create a visual pun about
North Stratfield School
Art in the Classroom
9 Georges Braque
the nature of representation. He noticed that because the paper looks realistic and yet it is flat, and
pasted on, it undermines spatial relationships. It can act as the foreground, the background, or both.
When first observing Fruit Dish and Glass, one might recognize a glass filled with grapes and pears,
but these elements are flattened and distorted versions of actual objects.
Rather than trying to accurately represent reality, Braque is playing with textures, shapes, and
composition to construct a painting that is half recognizable and half symbolic.
Resources
http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/georges-braque-man-with-a-guitar-ceret-summer-1911early-1912
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?oid=490612
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51188.html?mulR=1274174306|8
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-braque-georges.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72MCQWzyD4E&noredirect=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/arts/design/georges-braque-pioneer-of-modernismreview.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
http://www.biography.com/people/georges-braque-92246
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/851
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/georges-braque-atelier-i-5790358-details.aspx
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/10328295/Georges-Braque-He-changed-Westernpainting-for-ever.html
http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/01/magic-studio-george-braques-atelier.html
http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/cezanne-and-his-influence-on-the-cubist-movement-in-art-5782/
http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/analysis-of-georges-braque-man-with-a-guitar-3826/
http://www.finearts360.com/index.php/georges-braque-biography-3602/
http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/Braque/Braque.shtml
http://www.georgesbraque.org/piano-and-mandola.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_Dish_and_Glass
Bibliography
Douglas Cooper: Braque: The Great Years. The Art Institute of Chicago,1972.
Edition Beyeler Berel. G Braque. Werner and Bischoff AG. Basel, 1968.
Mersini, Lara Vinea: Braque. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1971.
Teacher’s Guide to My Weekly Reader Art Gallery 1966-67.
Shorewood Fine Art Reproductions, Inc. The Art Reference Guide and Artists Biographies
Encyclopedia Britannica, Braque, Georges
http://www.mod/picasso/braque/braque.html
Georges Braque, Discover France
http://www.discover france.net/France/ART/Braque/Braque.shtml.
Biography of Georges Braque
http://www.brainjuice.com
Richardson, John: G. Braque Silvana Editoriale D’Arte, 1961
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Art in the Classroom