Editing Cubism (section)

===Proto-Cubism: 1907–1908===
{{main|Proto-Cubism}}
Cubism burgeoned between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting ''[[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]]'' has often been considered a [[Proto-Cubism|proto-Cubist]] work.

In 1908, in his review of [[Georges Braque]]'s exhibition at [[Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler|Kahnweiler]]'s gallery, the critic [[Louis Vauxcelles]] called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes".<ref>[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7521008s/f2.item Louis Vauxcelles, ''Exposition Braques'', Gil Blas, 14 November 1908], Gallica (BnF)</ref><ref name="Danchev">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iTzniDD6EwAC&q=little+cubes&pg=PR123|title=Georges Braque: A Life|first=Alex|last=Danchev|date=March 29, 2007|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=9780141905006|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Vauxcelles recounted how Matisse told him at the time, "Braque has just sent in [to the 1908 {{lang|fr|Salon d'Automne|italic=no}}] a painting made of little cubes".<ref name="Danchev" /> The critic Charles Morice relayed Matisse's words and spoke of Braque's little cubes. The motif of the viaduct at l'Estaque had inspired Braque to produce three paintings marked by the simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective.<ref>''Futurism in Paris – The Avant-garde Explosion'', Centre Pompidou, Paris 2008</ref>

Georges Braque's 1908 ''[[Houses at L'Estaque]]'' (and related works) prompted Vauxcelles, in ''Gil Blas'', 25 March 1909, to refer to ''bizarreries cubiques'' (cubic oddities).<ref>[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7536065n Louis Vauxcelles, ''Le Salon des Indépendants'', Gil Blas, 25 March 1909], Gallica (BnF)</ref> [[Gertrude Stein]] referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as ''Reservoir at Horta de Ebro'', as the first Cubist paintings. The first organized group exhibition by Cubists took place at the [[Salon des Indépendants]] in [[Paris]] during the spring of 1911 in a room called 'Salle 41'; it included works by [[Jean Metzinger]], [[Albert Gleizes]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Robert Delaunay]] and [[Henri Le Fauconnier]], yet no works by Picasso or Braque were exhibited.<ref name="Christopher Green" />

By 1911 Picasso was recognized as the inventor of Cubism, while Braque's importance and precedence was argued later, with respect to his treatment of space, volume and mass in the L'Estaque landscapes. But "this view of Cubism is associated with a distinctly restrictive definition of which artists are properly to be called Cubists," wrote the art historian Christopher Green: "Marginalizing the contribution of the artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 [...]"<ref name="Christopher Green" />

The assertion that the Cubist depiction of space, mass, time, and volume supports (rather than contradicts) the flatness of the canvas was made by [[Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler]] as early as 1920,<ref>D.-H. Kahnweiler. Der Weg zum Kubismus (Munich, 1920; Eng. trans., New York, 1949)</ref> but it was subject to criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by [[Clement Greenberg]].<ref>C. Greenberg. ''The Pasted-paper Revolution'', ARTnews, 57 (1958), pp. 46–49, 60–61 ([https://archive.org/details/sim_artnews_1958-09_57_5/page/n45/mode/2up Internet Archive]); repr. as 'Collage' in Art and Culture (Boston, 1961), pp. 70–83</ref>

Contemporary views of Cubism are complex, formed to some extent in response to the "Salle 41" Cubists, whose methods were too distinct from those of Picasso and Braque to be considered merely secondary to them. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed. Wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the "Salle 41" artists, e.g., [[Francis Picabia]]; the brothers [[Jacques Villon]], [[Raymond Duchamp-Villon]] and [[Marcel Duchamp]], who beginning in late 1911 formed the core of the [[Section d'Or]] (or the [[Puteaux Group]]); the sculptors [[Alexander Archipenko]], [[Joseph Csaky]] and [[Ossip Zadkine]] as well as [[Jacques Lipchitz]] and [[Henri Laurens]]; and painters such as [[Louis Marcoussis]], [[Roger de La Fresnaye]], [[František Kupka]], [[Diego Rivera]], [[Léopold Survage]], [[Auguste Herbin]], [[André Lhote]], [[Gino Severini]] (after 1916), [[María Blanchard]] (after 1916), and [[Georges Valmier]] (after 1918). More fundamentally, Christopher Green argues that Douglas Cooper's terms were "later undermined by interpretations of the work of Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger that stress iconographic and ideological questions rather than methods of representation."<ref name="Christopher Green" />

[[John Berger]] identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. "The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram: The diagram being a visible symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as signs not as imitations or recreations."<ref>{{cite book|last=Berger|first=John|title=The Moment of Cubism|url=https://archive.org/details/momentofcubismot0000berg|url-access=registration|year=1969|publisher=Pantheon|location=New York, NY|isbn=9780297177098}}</ref>