Synthetic Cubism

The latest inventions of analytical cubism project the movement into its most playful era. If the analytic period had sacrificed the unity of the object by housing it in a space revealing its essence, the phase of synthetic cubism finds a way to restore it without giving up spatial innovations.

The main compositional characteristics of synthetic cubism reside in the choice of juxtaposing or overlapping distinct parts of a representation, often using significant techniques such as collage and papier collé, thus favoring the compositions of objects with polyocular visions of the same object. In the 1912 work, for example, Picasso painted the woven texture of the seat separately on wax and then glued it to the canvas. The same technique was used by Braque, who perfected it in his fruit plate and glass. Among the techniques preferred by synthetic cubists there is also lettering, and the use of printed paper is of great importance. It is not uncommon for the works of this period to be monochromatic and make use of experimental techniques. Among the most important followers of this current, in addition to Picasso and Braque who laid the foundations, there is the Spaniard Juan Gris.

The birth of synthetic cubism, a term with which the third part of the pictorial movement is usually identified, is commonly traced back to 1912, the year in which Picasso painted Still life with chair. Following the spatial invasion of signs (Journal, matchstick holder, pipe and glass, 1911, Picasso), painters then had the idea of representing objects through their essential features, or in a synthetic way.

This new figuration, which authorizes a figurative freedom never reached, is also enlivened by the return of bright colors. The space of perspective has now disappeared in favor of a conceptual space. Braque and Picasso, however, will do it differently.

Braque, having made the forms and the color autonomous in the glued papers, translates these spatial upheavals, while preserving a flat space until 1913. From now on, the object is no longer presented in order, it addresses in mind to be replenished. The papers are replaced by vertical and horizontal planes, the faux wood technique, practiced in 1912, is refined so as to create a space without relief where the synthesized object seems to advance towards the viewer (Le Violon (Valse), 1913).

After having experienced in assemblies and constructions the capacity of cubist objects to evolve in the real space of his workshop, Picasso translates this experience at the pictorial level by housing cubist synthetic figures in a classic space (Woman in shirt in an armchair, 1913 ). This practice gives rise to new generations of glued papers, where he confronts perspective and cubist space with various objects (newspapers, packets of cigarettes…) and constructions where real and cubist objects rub shoulders (Le Verre Absinthe, 1914 ). Coming to the conclusion that cubist space contains perspective space, Picasso imposes cubismlike the logical evolution of painting. He thus gives painting a proper function, undermined since the appearance of photography: formerly a mirror of reality, it is now a space conducive to reflection.