Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. The first branch of cubism, known as ''Analytic Cubism'', was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France. In its second phase, ''Synthetic Cubism,'' the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity.

English art historian Douglas Cooper describes three phases of Cubism in his seminal book, ''The Cubist Epoch''. According to Cooper there was "Early Cubism", (from 1906 to 1908) when the movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque; the second phase being called "High Cubism", (from 1909 to 1914) during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent; and finally Cooper referred to "Late Cubism" (from 1914 to 1921) as the last phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement.

In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.

History

Conception and origins

thumb|Pablo Picasso, ''Le guitariste'', 1910, oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. An example of ''Analytic Cubism''. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Micronesian and Native American art for the first time. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when both artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. They became friendly rivals and competed with each other throughout their careers, perhaps leading to Picasso entering a new period in his work by 1907, marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian and African art. Picasso's paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as notably seen in ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'', the antecedent of Cubism.

According to the English art historian, collector, and author of ''The Cubist Epoch'', Douglas Cooper, remarking on Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne "both of those artists were particularly influential to the formation of Cubism and especially important to the paintings of Picasso during 1906 and 1907". Cooper goes on to say however ''Les Demoiselles'' is often erroneously referred to as the first cubist painting. He explains, :The ''Demoiselles'' is generally referred to as the first Cubist picture. This is an exaggeration, for although it was a major first step towards Cubism it is not yet Cubist. The disruptive, expressionist element in it is even contrary to the spirit of Cubism, which looked at the world in a detached, realistic spirit. Nevertheless, the ''Demoiselles'' is the logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism, because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom, because in it Picasso violently overturned established conventions and because all that followed grew out of it.

Cubism was taken up by many artists in Montparnasse and promoted by art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, becoming popular so quickly that by 1911 critics were referring to a "cubist school" of artists. However, many of the artists who thought of themselves as cubists went in directions quite different from Braque and Picasso. The Puteaux Group or Section d'Or was a significant offshoot of the Cubist movement; it included Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, his brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, and Fernand Léger, and Francis Picabia. Other important artists associated with cubism include: Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Marie Laurencin, Max Weber, Diego Rivera, Marie Vorobieff, Louis Marcoussis, Jeanne Rij-Rousseau, Roger de La Fresnaye, Henri Le Fauconnier, Alexander Archipenko, František Kupka, Amédée Ozenfant, Jean Marchand, Léopold Survage, Patrick Henry Bruce among others. Section d'Or is basically just another name for many of the artists associated with cubism and orphism. Purism was an artistic offshoot of Cubism that developed after World War I. Leading proponents of Purism include Le Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant, and Fernand Léger.

Cubism and modern European art was introduced into the United States at the now legendary 1913 Armory Show in New York City, which then traveled to Chicago. In the Armory show Jacques Villon exhibited seven important and large drypoints, his brother Marcel Duchamp shocked the American public with his painting ''Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2'' (1912) and Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Roger de La Fresnaye, Marie Laurencin, Albert Gleizes, and other cubist painters contributed examples of their cubist works. Braque and Picasso themselves went through several distinct phases before 1920, and some of these works had been seen in New York prior to the Armory Show, at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery. Czech artists who realized the epochal significance of cubism of Picasso and Braque attempted to extract its components for their own work in all branches of artistic creativity—especially painting and architecture. This developed into Czech Cubism which was an avant-garde art movement of Czech proponents of cubism active mostly in Prague from 1910 to 1914.

Synthetic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism was the second main movement within Cubism that was developed by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others between 1912 and 1919. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage materials being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art work.

Considered the first work of this new style was Pablo Picasso's ''"Still Life with Chair-caning"'' (1911–1912), which includes oil cloth that was printed to look like chair-caning pasted onto an oval canvas, with text; and rope framing the whole picture. At the upper left are the letters "JOU", which appear in many cubist paintings and refer to the newspaper titled ''Le Journal''. Newspaper clippings were a common inclusion, physical pieces of newspaper, sheet music, and like items were also included in the collages. JOU may also at the same time be a pun on the French words jeu (game) or jouer (to play). Picasso and Braque had a friendly competition with each other and including the letters in their works may have been an extension of their game.

Whereas Analytic Cubism was an analysis of the subjects (pulling them apart into planes), Synthetic Cubism is more of a pushing of several objects together. Less pure than Analytic Cubism, Synthetic Cubism has fewer planar shifts (or schematism), and less shading, creating flatter space.

Cubism today

Far from being an art movement confined to the annals of art history, Cubism and its legacy continue to inform the work of many contemporary artists. Not only is cubist imagery regularly used commercially, but significant numbers of contemporary artists continue to draw upon it both stylistically and perhaps more importantly, theoretically. The latter contains the clue as to the reason for cubism's enduring fascination for artists. As an essentially representational school of painting, having to come to grips with the rising importance of photography as an increasingly viable method of image making, cubism attempts to take representational imagery beyond the mechanically photographic, and to move beyond the bounds of traditional single point perspective perceived as though by a totally immobile viewer. The questions and theories which arose during the initial appearance of cubism in the early 20th century are, for many representational artists, as current today as when first proposed.

Cubist sculpture

Cubist sculpture developed in parallel to Cubist painting, by many of the same artists. Different sources name the first cubist sculpture as either Picasso's 1909 bronze ''Head of a Woman'' or Otto Gutfreund's ''Anxiety'' (''Úzkost'' in Czech) shown in Prague in 1912.

Many other European sculptors were quick to follow their lead: the French Raymond Duchamp-Villon, whose career was cut short by his death in military service, the Ukrainian Alexander Archipenko, whose 1912 ''Walking Woman'' was the first to introduce an abstracted void, and the Lithuanian Jacques Lipchitz, identified as the first Cubist sculptor.

Just as in Cubist painting, the style is rooted in Paul Cézanne's reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones). And just as in painting, it had its course by about 1925, to become a pervasive influence and contribute fundamentally to Constructivism and Futurism.

Cubism in other fields

The influence of cubism extended to other artistic fields, outside painting and sculpture. In literature, the written works of Gertrude Stein employ repetition and repetitive phrases as building blocks in both passages and whole chapters. Most of Stein's important works utilize this technique, including the novel ''The Makings of Americans'' (1906–08) Not only were they the first important patrons of Cubism, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were also important influences on Cubism as well. Picasso in turn was an important influence on Stein's writing.

In the field of American fiction, William Faulkner's 1930 novel ''As I Lay Dying'' can be read as an interaction with the cubist mode. The novel features narratives of the diverse experiences of 15 characters which, when taken together, produce a single cohesive body.

The poets generally associated with Cubism are Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, André Salmon and Pierre Reverdy. As American poet Kenneth Rexroth explains, Cubism in poetry "is the conscious, deliberate dissociation and recombination of elements into a new artistic entity made self-sufficient by its rigorous architecture. This is quite different from the free association of the Surrealists and the combination of unconscious utterance and political nihilism of Dada." Nonetheless, the Cubist poets' influence on both Cubism and the later movements of Dada and Surrealism was profound; Louis Aragon, founding member of Surrealism, said that for Breton, Soupault, Éluard and himself, Reverdy was "our immediate elder, the exemplary poet." Though not as well remembered as the Cubist painters, these poets continue to influence and inspire; American poets John Ashbery and Ron Padgett have recently produced new translations of Reverdy's work.

Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is also said to demonstrate how cubism's multiple perspectives can be translated into poetry.

The composer Edgard Varèse was heavily influenced by Cubist writing and art.

See also

Czech Cubism

Purism

Orphism

References

Further reading

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ''Cubism and Abstract Art,'' New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936.

John Golding, ''Cubism: A History and an Analysis, 1907-1914,'' New York: Wittenborn, 1959.

Richardson, John. ''A Life Of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel 1907-1916.'' New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. ISBN 978-0-307-26665-1

External links

On-Line Picasso Project

Video decoding a Picasso Cubist still-life

The Czech Cubism Foundation

Category:Art movements Category:Modern art * Category:Edwardian era Category:Cubes

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name	Pablo Picasso
born	Malaga Spain
birth name	Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
birth date	October 25, 1881
birth place	Málaga, Spain
death date	April 08, 1973
death place	Mougins, France
resting place	Chateau of Vauvenargues
resting place coordinates
nationality	Spanish
field	Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking, Ceramics
training	José Ruiz y Blasco (father), Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
movement	Cubism
works	''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' (1907)''Guernica'' (1937)''The Weeping Woman'' (1937)
awards	}}

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso (; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor who lived most of his life in France. He is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' (1907) and ''Guernica'' (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the 20th century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th century art.

Early life

Picasso was baptized ''Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad'', a series of names honoring various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López. Picasso’s family was middle-class. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz’s ancestors were minor aristocrats. Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were “piz, piz”, a shortening of ''lápiz'', the Spanish word for ‘pencil’. From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.

The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son’s technique, an apocryphal story relates that Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, though paintings by Ruiz exist from later years.

In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his son’s drawings. The two argued frequently.

Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements like the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso’s later work.

Career beginnings

Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine ''Arte Joven'' (''Young Art''), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply ''Picasso'', while before he had signed ''Pablo Ruiz y Picasso''.

By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal ''Salon'' at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso. In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.

In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the ''Mona Lisa'' from the Louvre in 1911. Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

Personal life

In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring some fame and fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915.

After World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, ''Parade'', in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova’s insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev’s troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on ''Pulcinella'' in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer.

In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso’s marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova’s death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso’s death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women.

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

War years and beyond

During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picasso’s artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint, producing works such as the ''Still Life with Guitar'' (1942) and ''The Charnel House'' (1944–48). Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance.

Around this time, Picasso took up writing as an alternative outlet. Between 1935 and 1959 he wrote over 300 poems. Largely untitled except for a date and sometimes the location of where it was written (for example “Paris 16 May 1936”), these works were gustatory, erotic and at times scatological, as were his two full-length plays ''Desire Caught by the Tail'' (1941) and ''The Four Little Girls'' (1949).

In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot. She was 40 years younger than he was. Picasso grew tired of his mistress Dora Maar; Picasso and Gilot began to live together. Eventually they had two children: Claude, born in 1947 and Paloma, born in 1949. In her 1964 book ''Life with Picasso'', she describes his abusive treatment and myriad infidelities which led her to leave him, taking the children with her. This was a severe blow to Picasso.

Picasso had affairs with women an even greater age disparity than his and Gilot's. While still involved with Gilot, in 1951 Picasso had a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who was four years younger than Gilot. Eventually, as evident in his work, Picasso began to come to terms with his advancing age and his waning attraction to young women. By his 70s, many paintings, ink drawings and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model. Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961. The two were together for the remainder of Picasso’s life.

His marriage to Roque was also a means of revenge against Gilot; with Picasso’s encouragement, Gilot had divorced her then husband, Luc Simon, with the plan to finally actually marry Picasso to secure the rights of her children as Picasso's legitimate heirs. However, Picasso had already secretly married Roque, after Gilot had filed for divorce. This strained his relationship with Claude and Paloma.

By this time, Picasso had constructed a huge Gothic home, and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, and in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. He was an international celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.

In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau’s ''Testament of Orpheus''. In 1955 he helped make the film ''Le Mystère Picasso'' ''(The Mystery of Picasso)'' directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Death

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.” He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.

Children

Paulo (4 February 1921 – 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) — with Olga Khokhlova

Maya (5 September 1935 – ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) — with Marie-Thérèse Walter

Claude (15 May 1947 –) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) & Paloma (19 April 1949 – ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) — with Françoise Gilot

Political views

Aside from the several anti-war paintings that he created, Picasso remained physically neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to join the armed forces for any side or country. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Picasso was already in his late fifties. He was even older at the onset of World War II, and could not be expected to take up arms in those conflicts. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it.

In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government, But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: “I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.” His Communist militancy, common among continental intellectuals and artists at the time although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalí (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship): : '' Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.'' :(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.)

In the late 1940s his old friend the surrealist poet and Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist André Breton was more blunt; refusing to shake hands with Picasso, he told him: “I don’t approve of your joining the Communist Party nor with the stand you have taken concerning the purges of the intellectuals after the Liberation”.

In 1962, he received the Lenin Peace Prize. Biographer and art critic John Berger felt his talents as an artist were “wasted” by the communists.

According to Jean Cocteau's diaries, Picasso once said to him in reference to the communists: "I have joined a family, and like all families, it's full of shit".

He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States in the Korean War and he depicted it in ''Massacre in Korea.''

Art

Picasso’s work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1905–1907), the African-influenced Period (1908–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919).

In 1939–40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.

Before 1901

Picasso’s training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist’s beginnings. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in ''The First Communion'' (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted ''Portrait of Aunt Pepa'', a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called “without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.”

In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.

Blue Period

Picasso’s Blue Period (1901–1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This period’s starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects—Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting ''La Vie'' (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The same mood pervades the well-known etching ''The Frugal Repast'' (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso’s works of this period, also represented in ''The Blindman’s Meal'' (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of ''Celestina'' (1903). Other works include ''Portrait of Soler'' and ''Portrait of Suzanne Bloch‎''.

Rose Period

The Rose Period (1904–1906) is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.

African-influenced Period

Picasso’s African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'', which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.

Cubism

Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and “analyzed” them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque’s paintings at this time have many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragments—often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages—were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

Classicism and surrealism

In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This “return to order” is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, the artists of the New Objectivity movement and of the Novecento Italiano movement. Picasso’s paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Raphael and Ingres.

During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picasso’s ''Guernica''.

Arguably Picasso’s most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War—''Guernica''. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”

''Guernica'' hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 ''Guernica'' was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum when it opened.

Later works

Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in mid-1949. In the 1950s, Picasso’s style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velazquez’s painting of ''Las Meninas''. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix. He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge -high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the ''Chicago Picasso''. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city. Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.

Commemoration and legacy

Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso’s early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picasso’s firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father’s tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso’s close friend and personal secretary.

Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. ''Garçon à la pipe'' sold for US$104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. ''Dora Maar au Chat'' sold for US$95.2 million at Sotheby’s on 3 May 2006. On 4 May 2010, ''Nude, Green Leaves and Bust'' was sold at Christie's for $106.5 million. The 1932 work, which depicts Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter reclining and as a bust, was in the personal collection of Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody, who died in November 2009. Christie's won the rights to auction the collection against London-based Sotheby's. The collection as a whole was valued at over $150 million, while the work was originally expected to earn $80 million at auction. There were more than half a dozen bidders, while the winning bid was taken via telephone. The previous auction record ($104.3 million) was set in February 2010, by Alberto Giacometti's ''Walking Man I''.

As of 2004, Picasso remains the top ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. More of his paintings have been stolen than those by any other artist; the Art Loss Register has 550 of his works listed as missing.

The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society.

In the 1996 movie ''Surviving Picasso'', Picasso is portrayed by actor Anthony Hopkins.

Recent Major Exhibitions

''Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris,'' an exhibition of 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs from the Musée National Picasso in Paris. The exhibit touring schedule includes:

8 October 2010 – 17 January 2011, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA.

19 February 2011 – 15 May 2011, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA.

11 June 2011 – 9 October 2011, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, USA.

12 November 2011 – 19 February 2012, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

28 April 2012 – 26 August 2012, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

See also

Pierre Le Guennec

Notes

References

Nill, Raymond M. “A Visual Guide to Pablo Picasso’s Works”. New York: B&H; Publishers, 1987.

External links

Biography and works of Pablo Picasso

Picasso: Genius in Color — slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Gallery of Picasso's Women

Picasso painting on glass scene from Visit to Picasso by Paul Haesaerts

Pablo Picasso — Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved 14 June 2007.

Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat

Cubism, The Big Picture

Artists Rights Society, Picasso's U.S. Copyright Representatives

Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Pablo Picasso. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California

Picasso: Drawing With Light – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Footage of Pablo Picasso at Second World Peace congress in 1950

Art History Archive

Essays

''Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picasso’s ‘Minotauromachy’ '' by Chaim Koppelman

Museums

Guggenheim Museum Biography

Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)

Honolulu Academy of Arts

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)

Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)

Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)

Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)

Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)

Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)

National Gallery of Art list of paintings

Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster (Münster, Germany)

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Los Angeles, California)

Sammlung + Picasso Donation Rosengart (Lucerne, Switzerland)

Category:1881 births Category:1973 deaths Category:People from Málaga (city) Category:Ballet designers Category:Cubism Category:Figurative artists Category:French Communist Party members Category:Lenin Peace Prize recipients Category:Modern painters * Category:People from Paris Category:Spanish communists Category:Spanish expatriates in France Category:Spanish painters Category:Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War Category:Spanish potters Category:Spanish sculptors Category:20th-century sculptors *Pablo Picasso Category:School of Paris

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name	Georges Braque
birth name	Georges Braque
birth date	May 13, 1882
birth place	Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise
death date	August 31, 1963
death place	Paris
resting place	Saint-Marguerite-sur-Mer, Normandy
nationality	French
field	Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking
movement	Cubism, Fauvism
patrons	Fernand Mourlot
influenced by	Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso }}

Georges Braque^[p] (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.

Youth

Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882, in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.

Fauvism

His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" (Beasts) in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.

In May 1907, he successfully exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. The same year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced by Paul Cézanne, who had died in 1906, and whose works were exhibited in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly affected the avant-garde artists of Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism.

Cubism

Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting "House at L'estaque".

Beginning during 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar style of painting. At the time Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African tribal masks and Iberian sculpture, while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” The invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris. These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.

A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and ''papier collé.''

French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term ''Cubism'', or "bizarre cubiques", in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas." The Cubist style spread quickly throughout Paris and then Europe.

The two artists' productive collaboration continued and they worked closely together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army. In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness. He was trepanned, and required a long period of recuperation.

Later work

Braque resumed painting in late 1916. Working alone, he began to moderate the harsh abstraction of cubism. He developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure. He painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure. During his recovery he became a close friend of the cubist artist Juan Gris.

He continued to work during the remainder of his life, producing a considerable number of paintings, graphics, and sculptures. Braque, along with Matisse, is credited for introducing Pablo Picasso to Fernand Mourlot, and most of the lithographs and book illustrations he himself created during the 1940s and '50s were produced at the Mourlot Studios. He died on 31 August 1963, in Paris. He is buried in the church cemetery in Saint-Marguerite-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. Braque's work is in most major museums throughout the world.

Style

Braque believed that an artist experienced beauty "… in terms of volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty [he] interpret[s] [his] subjective impression...” He 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.

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 still-life 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.

During the period between the wars, Braque exhibited a freer style of Cubism, intensifying his color use and a looser rendering of objects. However, he still remained committed to the cubist method of simultaneous perspective and fragmentation. In contrast to Picasso, who continuously reinvented his style of painting, producing both representational and cubist images, and incorporating surrealist ideas into his work, Braque continued in the Cubist style, producing luminous, other-worldly still life and figure compositions. By the time of his death in 1963, he was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the School of Paris, and of modern art.

Notes

:[p] - The name ''Georges Braque'' is pronounced as "Zhorzh Brahk".

References

Fry, Edward F. (1966). "Cubism 1907-1908: An Early Eyewitness Account". ''Art Bulletin'' 48: 71–73.

Mullins, Edwin (1968). ''The Art of Georges Braque''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Solomon_R._Guggenheim_Museum

Picasso, P., Rubin, W. S., & Fluegel, J. (1980). ''Pablo Picasso, a retrospective''. New York: Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0870705288

External links

Artcyclopedia - Links to Braque's works and information

Georges Braque works at insecula.com

Peintures de Georges Braque (French)

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Category:1882 births Category:1963 deaths Category:People from Argenteuil Category:French painters Category:French sculptors Category:Fauvism Category:Cubism Category:Collage Category:Still life painters Category:French military personnel of World War I

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name	Alan Vega
background	solo_singer
birth name	Boruch Alan Bermowitz
born	June 23, 1938 Brooklyn, New York, United States
instrument	Vocalist
genre	Protopunk, Punk, Electronic, Experimental, Minimalism, No Wave, Industrial, Synthpop, Rockabilly, Post-Punk
occupation	Musician, Sculptor, Painter
years active	1971–present day
label	ZE Records
associated acts	Suicide, The Sisterhood
notable instruments	}}

Alan Vega (born Boruch Alan Bermowitz on June 23, 1938) is an American vocalist, primarily known for his work with electronic protopunk duo, Suicide. He is also an established sculptor.

Career

Alan Bermowitz was raised in a Jewish household in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In the late 1950s he attended Brooklyn College, where he studied both physics and fine art, studying painting and drawing under Ad Reinhardt and Kurt Seligmann and graduating in 1960. In the 60s he became involved with the Art Workers' Coalition, a radical artists group that harassed museums, once barricading the Museum of Modern Art. In 1969 funding from the New York State Council on the Arts made possible the founding of ''MUSEUM:A Project of Living Artists'' – an artist-run 24 hour multimedia gallery at 729 Broadway in Manhattan. Calling himself Alan Suicide, he graduated from painting to light sculptures, many constructed of electronic debris. He gained a residency at the OK Harris Gallery in SoHo where he continued to exhibit until 1975. Barbara Gladstone continued to show his work into the 80s.

Seeing Iggy Pop perform at the New York State Pavilion in August 1969 was an epiphany for Vega. In 1970 he began experimenting with music with Martin Reverby. Together, they formed Suicide, along with guitarist Paul Liebgott. The group played twice at the gallery before moving on to the OK Harris Gallery. Calling himself "Nasty Cut", he used the terms "Punk Music" and "Punk Music Mass" in flyers to describe their music which he adopted from an article by Lester Bangs. In 1971 the group dropped Paul Liebgott and added Mari Reverby on drums, though she didn't play in their live performances. With Bermowitz finally settling on Alan Suicide as a working name, they began to play music venues. Suicide went on to perform at the Mercer Arts Center, Max's Kansas City, CBGB and ultimately, achieve international fame.

In 1980, Vega released his eponymous first solo record, which contained "Jukebox Babe", defining the rockabilly style that he would use in his solo work for the next several years. In 1985, he released the more commercially viable ''Just a Million Dreams'', which nevertheless proved unsuccessful.

Vega teamed up with Martin Rev again in the late eighties and released the third Suicide album, ''A Way of Life'', in (1988). Shortly thereafter he met future wife and music partner Liz Lamere, while piecing together sound experiments that would evolve into his fifth solo album, ''Deuce Avenue'' (1990). ''Deuce Avenue'' marked his return to minimalistic, electronic music, similar to his work with Suicide, in which he combined drum machines and effects with free-form prose. Over the next decade he would release several more solo records as well as perform with Suicide. In 2002, he constructed ''Collision Drive'', an exhibition of sculptures combining light with found objects and crucifixes. 2007 saw the release of Vega's tenth solo album, ''Station'', on Blast First Records, being "his hardest, heaviest album for quite a while, all self-played and produced."

In 2002 Deitch Projects mounted "Collision Drive", the first exhibit of Vega's art in 20 years.

In 2008, British label Blast First Petite released a limited edition Suicide 6-CD box set and monthly tribute series of 10" Vinyl EP's, to mark the occasion of Alan Vega's 70th birthday Musicians who contributed to the tribute series included The Horrors, Lydia Lunch, Primal Scream, and Miss Kittin.

In 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France, mounted ''Infinite Mercy'' – a major retrospective exhibit of Vega's art. This included the screening of two short documentary films: ''Alan Vega'' (2000) by Christian Eudeline, and ''Autour d’Alan Vega (extraits)'' (1998) by Hugues Peyret.

Myth

Prior to the announcement of the 70th birthday release in 2008, Vega was thought to have been ten years younger. The 2005 book ''Suicide: No Compromise'' lists 1948 as his birth year and quotes a 1998 interview in which Vega talks about watching Elvis Presley on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' (1956) as a "little kid". A 1983 ''Los Angeles Times'' article refers to him as a 35 year old. Several other sources also list 1948 as his birthdate.

Two 2009 articles confirm the 1938 birth date, one in ''Le Monde'' about the Lyon exhibit and one in the magazine, ''Rolling Stone''.

Vega also long claimed to be half-Catholic, but later, in a 2008 interview with ''The Jewish Chronicle'', admitted he lied to "fuel the myth".

Quotations from Alan Vega

"... I never heard anything avant-garde. To me it was just New York City Blues." (1980)

"Suicide was always about life. But we couldn't call it Life. So we called it Suicide because we wanted to recognize life." (1985)

"Where I grew up in Brooklyn, man, a punk was like a wuss, the guy who ran away from the fight. “You’re a punk. You’re a weasel. You’re nothing.” Now it has this connotation of being the tough-guy thing. The revolution, are you kidding? So I liked the word and used the term “punk music mass,” maybe inadvertently trying to turn it into something else. One day I wake up and there’s the word punk all over the place. That’s when it became meaningless to me. Somebody said that Suicide had to be the ultimate punk band because even the punks hated us." (2008)

Discography

:''For recordings made with Suicide, please see Suicide discography''.

Albums

''Alan Vega'' (1980)

''Collision Drive'' (1981)

''Saturn Strip'' (1983)

''Just a Million Dreams'' (1985)

''Deuce Avenue'' (1990)

''Power on to Zero Hour'' (1991)

''New Raceion'' (1993)

''Dujang Prang'' (1995)

''Getchertiktz'' (1996) With Ric Ocasek and Gillian McCain

''Cubist Blues'' (1996) With Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn

''Endless'' (1998) With Pan Sonic as ''VVV''

''Righteous Lite'' (1998) With Stephen Lironi as ''Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus''

''Re-Up'' (1999) With Étant Donnés, Lydia Lunch and Genesis P-Orridge

''Sombre'' (1999) Original score to the film by Philippe Grandrieux

''2007'' (1999)

''Resurrection River'' (2004) With Pan Sonic as ''VVV''

''Station'' (2007)

''Sniper'' (2010) With Marc Hurtado

Compilations

2006 – ''Silver Monk Time – A Tribute to the Monks'' (29 bands cover The Monks) label play loud! productions

2006 – ''The Wiretapper 16'' free cd issued to subscribers of ''The Wire'' and available on some over the counter issues, but not all.

2008 – ''Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP Series'' (covers of Vega's work by Bruce Springstein, Primal Scream, Peaches, Grinderman, Spiritualized, The Horrors, Sunn 0))+Pansonic, Julian Cope, Lydia Lunch, Vincent Gallo, LIARS and Klaxons.

Books

''Cripple Nation'' – 2.13.61 (1994)

''100,000 Watts Of Fat City'' – Editions Anna Polerica (2000)

Notes

References

External links

Category:Living people Category:Synthpop musicians Category:Protopunk musicians Category:1938 births Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Jewish musicians Category:Post-punk musicians Category:American experimental musicians Category:American sculptors Category:American painters Category:American performance artists Category:ZE Records artists

de:Alan Vega es:Alan Vega fr:Alan Vega it:Alan Vega

name	Alex Chilton
landscape	yes
background	solo_singer
birth name	William Alexander Chilton
born	December 28, 1950 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
died	March 17, 2010 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
instrument	Guitar, vocals
genre	Rock 'n' roll, power pop, proto-punk, hard rock, blue-eyed soul, indie rock
occupation	Musician, singer, songwriter, record producer
years active	1966–2010
associated acts	Box Tops, Big Star, Tav Falco's Panther Burns
spouse	Laura Chilton }}

William Alexander "Alex" Chilton (December 28, 1950 – March 17, 2010) was an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was not repeated in later years with Big Star and in his indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew a loyal following in the indie and alternative music fields, and is often cited as an influence by many mainstream rock artists and bands.

Early life and career

Chilton grew up in a musical family; his father, Sidney Chilton, was a jazz musician. A local band recruited the teenager in 1966 as their lead singer after learning of the popularity of his vocal performance at a talent show at Memphis' Central High School; this band was The Devilles, later renamed Box Tops. The new group recorded with Chips Moman and producer/songwriter Dan Penn at American Sound Studio and Muscle Shoals' FAME Studios.

As lead singer for the Box Tops, Chilton enjoyed at the age of 16 a number-one international hit, "The Letter." The Box Tops went on to have several other major chart hits, including "Neon Rainbow" (1967), "Cry Like a Baby" (1968), and "Soul Deep" (1969). Aside from the hits "The Letter", "Neon Rainbow" and "Soul Deep", all written by Wayne Carson Thompson, many of the group's songs were written by Penn, Moman, Spooner Oldham and other top area songwriters, with Chilton occasionally contributing a song. By late 1969, only Chilton and guitarist Gary Talley remained from the original group, and newer additions replaced the members who had departed. The group decided to disband and pursue independent careers in February 1970.

Chilton then began performing as a solo artist, maintaining a working relationship with Penn for demos. During this period he began learning guitar by studying the styles of guitarists like Stax Records great Steve Cropper, recording his own material in 1970 at Ardent Studios with local musicians like producer Terry Manning and drummer Richard Rosebrough, and producing a few local blues-rock acts. His 1970 recordings and productions from that time frame were released years later in the 1980s and 1990s on albums like ''Lost Decade'' (New Rose Records) and ''1970'' (Ardent Records).

1970s career

After a period in New York City, during which Chilton worked on his guitar technique and singing style (some of which was believed to have been influenced by a chance meeting with Roger McGuinn at a friend's apartment in New York, when Chilton was impressed with McGuinn's singing and playing), Chilton returned to Memphis in 1971 and co-founded the power-pop group Big Star, with Chris Bell, recording at engineer John Fry's Ardent Studios. Chilton and Bell co-wrote "In The Street" for Big Star's first album ''#1 Record'', a track later known as the theme song of ''That '70s Show''.

The group's recordings met little commercial success but established Chilton's reputation as a rock singer and songwriter; later alternative music bands like R.E.M. would praise the group as a major influence. During this period he also occasionally recorded with Rosebrough as a group they called The Dolby Fuckers; some of their studio experimentation was included on Big Star's album ''Radio City'', including the recording of "Mod Lang." Rosebrough would occasionally work with Chilton on later recordings, including Big Star's ''Third'' album and Chilton's 1975 solo record ''Bach's Bottom''.

Moving back to New York in 1977, Chilton performed as "Alex Chilton and the Cossacks" with a lineup that included Chris Stamey (later of The dB's) and Richard Lloyd of Television at venues like CBGB, releasing an influential solo single, "Bangkok" (b/w a cover of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine"), in 1978. This period learning from the New York CBGB scene marked the beginning of a key change for Chilton's personal musical interests away from multi-layered pop studio recording standards toward a looser, animated punk performance style often recorded in one take and featuring fewer overdubs. There he made the acquaintance of punk rockabilly band the Cramps. He brought them to Memphis, where he produced the songs that would appear on their ''Gravest Hits'' EP and their ''Songs the Lord Taught Us'' LP.

In 1979, Chilton released, in a limited edition of 500 copies, an album called ''Like Flies on Sherbert'', produced by Chilton with Jim Dickinson at Phillips Recording and Ardent Studios, which featured his own interpretations of songs by artists as disparate as the Carter Family, Jimmy C. Newman, Ernest Tubb, and KC and the Sunshine Band, along with several originals. While criticized by some as a druggy mess, this album is considered by many to be a lo-fi masterpiece. ''Sherbert'', which included backing work by Memphis musicians including Rosebrough, Memphis drummer Ross Johnson, and Lesa Aldridge, has since been reissued several times. Beginning in 1979 Chilton also co-founded, played guitar with, and produced some albums for Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which began as an offbeat rock-and-roll group deconstructing blues, country, and rockabilly music.

1980s onwards

Chilton moved to New Orleans in the early 1980s, while also touring regularly with Panther Burns and occasionally as a solo artist, as documented in his poorly received 1982 solo release ''Live in London''. After a six month span of working outside music at tree-trimming and dishwashing jobs in New Orleans, he resumed playing with Panther Burns in 1983. His new association with New Orleans jazz musicians (including bassist René Coman) marked a period in which he began playing guitar in a less raucous style and moved toward a cooler, more restrained approach, as heard in Panther Burns' 1984 ''Sugar Ditch Revisited'' album, produced by Jim Dickinson.

Immediately upon completing the recording in mid-1984, Chilton returned his focus to his own solo career. He stopped playing regular gigs with Panther Burns and took with him the group's bassist, Coman. Chilton then formed a trio with Coman and Memphis jazz drummer Doug Garrison. The trio immediately began touring intensely and recording at Ardent Studios, releasing in 1985 an EP, ''Feudalist Tarts'', that featured his versions of songs by Carla Thomas, Slim Harpo, and Willie Tee, and releasing in 1986 ''No Sex''. The latter EP contained three originals, including the extended mood piece, "Wild Kingdom," a song highlighting Coman's jazz-oriented, improvisational bass interplay with Chilton.

During this period, in his recordings Chilton began frequently to use a horn section consisting of Memphis veteran jazz performers Fred Ford, Jim Spake, and Nokie Taylor to imbue the soul-oriented pieces among his repertoire with a postmodern, minimalist jazz feel that distinguished his interpretative approach from that of a simple soul revivalist style. Chilton forged a new direction for his solo work, eschewing effects and blending soul, jazz, country, rockabilly and pop. Coman left Chilton's solo trio at the end of 1986 to pursue other projects, forming (with Garrison) The Iguanas, three years later, with other New Orleans musicians; both would record occasionally with Chilton after departing.

Chilton was the subject of the song "Alex Chilton" by American rock band The Replacements on their 1987 album ''Pleased to Meet Me'', on which Chilton was a guest musician playing guitar on the song "Can't Hardly Wait".

Chilton included on 1987's ''High Priest'' a cover of "Raunchy," his instrumental salute to Sun Records guitarist Sid Manker, a friend of his father from whom he'd once taken a guitar lesson; this song was also a standard in his early Panther Burns repertoire. Along with four upbeat originals, ''High Priest'' also included other covers like "Nobody's Fool," a song originally written and recorded in 1973 by his old mentor Dan Penn. His EP ''Black List'' contained a cover of Ronny & the Daytonas' "Little GTO," along with an original song, "Guantanamerika." He also produced albums by several artists beginning in the 1980s, including the Detroit group The Gories, occasionally producing Panther Burns albums well into the 1990s.

Touring and recording as a solo artist from the late-1980s through the 1990s with bassist Ron Easley and eventually drummer Richard Dworkin, Chilton gained a reputation for his eclectic taste in cover versions, guitar work, and laconic stage presence. Chilton recorded an acoustic solo record of jazz standards in New Orleans' Chez Flames studio with producer Keith Keller, entitled ''Cliches'', and continued with a live CD released in 2004, ''Live in Anvers''.

From the mid-1990s on, he added to his schedule concerts and recordings with the reunited Box Tops and a version of Big Star. In 1997, Chilton and original Box Tops Danny Smythe, John Evans, Bill Cunningham and Gary Talley regrouped in Memphis at Easley Studios to record ''Tear Off'', the last Box Tops album, which was only released in Europe. Chilton subsequently toured with the original group annually. Chilton also reformed Big Star, with a line-up that included two members of The Posies, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. A new Big Star album, entitled ''In Space'', with songs penned by this lineup, was released September 27, 2005, on Rykodisc. Chilton was present at his home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and evacuated on September 4, 2005.

Death

Chilton was taken to the hospital in New Orleans on March 17, 2010, complaining of health problems, and died the same day of a heart attack. He is survived by his wife, Laura, a son, Timothee, and a sister, Cecelia. He had been scheduled to play a concert with Big Star at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas on March 20; the show instead took place as a tribute to Chilton, with guests Curt Kirkwood, Chris Stamey, M. Ward, Mike Mills, John Doe, Sondre Lerche, Chuck Prophet, Evan Dando and original member Andy Hummel (who died 3 months later) joining the other members of Big Star.

Discography

Albums

''One Day in New York'' - (Trio, 1978, reissued 1991 on Art Union Records)

''Like Flies on Sherbert'' - (Peabody, 1979; Aura, 1980 UK)

''Bach's Bottom'' - (Line, 1981, remixed & reissued 1993 on Razor & Tie)

''Live in London'' - (Aura, 1982 UK)

''High Priest'' - (New Rose/Big Time, 1987; reissued 1994 on Razor & Tie)

''Clichés'' - (Ardent, 1994)

''A Man Called Destruction'' - (Ardent, 1995)

''1970'' - (Ardent, 1996) (recorded between his tenures with the Box Tops and Big Star, but unreleased until 1996)

''Cubist Blues'', with Ben Vaughn and Alan Vega - (Discovery, 1997, reissued by Last Call in 2006 with an extra disc recorded live)

''Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy'' - (Last Call, 1999)

''Set'' (Bar/None, 2000) (U.S. release of ''Loose Shoes'' LP)

''Live in Anvers'' - (Last Call, 2004)

Singles and EPs

''Singer Not the Song'' (EP) - (Ork, 1977)

"Bangkok" / "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" - (Fun, 1978)

"Hey Little Child" / "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena" - (Aura 1980 UK)

''Feudalist Tarts'' (EP) - (New Rose/Big Time, 1985; reissued 1994 on Razor & Tie)

''No Sex'' (EP) - (New Rose/Big Time, 1986; reissued 1994 on Razor & Tie)

''Black List'' (EP) - (New Rose, 1989; reissued 1994 on Razor & Tie)

Compilations

''Lost Decade'' - (Fan Club, 1985)

''Document'' - (Aura, 1985)

''Stuff'' - (New Rose, 1987)

''Best of Alex Chilton'' - (New Rose, 1991)

''19 Years: A Collection of Alex Chilton'' - (Rhino, 1991)

''Top 30'' - (Last Call, 1997)

Appears On

''Medium Cool'' - (New Routes, 1991), Chet Baker tribute

''Downtown Does The Beatles Live At The Knitting Factory 1992'' — (Knitting Factory Works, 1992)

''The Weedkiller's Daughter'' — (John & Mary, 1993)

''See My Friends'' — (Ray Davies, 2010)

References

External links

Last Call Records artist page

Box Tops official band website

Alex Chilton Biography at Bar/None Records

Big Star site from Rykodisc

Jeff the Joker's Alex Chilton, Big Star & the Box Tops: Interviews & Reviews (Archived 2009-3-13)

Rolling Stone Interview 2/2000

Alex Chilton: The Gibson Interview

Alex Chilton - Daily Telegraph obituary

Category:1950 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:American rock singers Category:American male singers Category:American rock guitarists Category:American record producers Category:Songwriters from Tennessee Category:Musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:Protopunk musicians Category:People from Memphis, Tennessee Category:Big Star members

br:Alex Chilton cs:Alex Chilton da:Alex Chilton de:Alex Chilton es:Alex Chilton fr:Alex Chilton nl:Alex Chilton pt:Alex Chilton ru:Чилтон, Алекс sv:Alex Chilton