Much of Cubist art uses only a few muted colors in a particular painting.
Painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed Cubism in the early 20th century; the style went on to influence artists around the world. The term "cubism" was coined by Louis Vauxcelles, an art critic, who referred to the geometric shapes Braque used in a landscape painting as "cubes" (although some art historians say that Henri Matisse suggested the name). The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website, also notes that Primitivism and non-Western artists influenced Cubist art.
Two-Dimensional Focus
According to the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, one of the most fundamental aspects of cubism is the accentuation of the two-dimensionality of the canvas, rather than traditional focus on perspective, shadow, light and proportion. Cubist painters took images, such as the human form or a landscape, and converted them to geometric shapes, which they deliberately placed in two-dimensional arrangements on the canvas.
Multiple Perspectives
Cubist painters and sculptors believed that the essence of a subject could only be presented or captured by showing the subject from multiple points of view at the same time, according to Artcyclopedia. The result was often a distorted view of a person, as though she were in motion. Likewise, multiple images of circles or other geometric shapes, even shown in different colors and sizes, can be meant to signify a single object seen simultaneously from different angles.
Lack of Emotionality
Cubist subjects tended to depict ordinary people in ordinary settings with a lack of emotion. Still-life subjects were also popular with Cubist artists, especially in the early years of the movement. The prevalence of grays and browns underscored the de-emphasis of emotional. Later on, as more artists brought their own styles and sensibilities to the medium, the types of subjects grew. With the general growth abstract art, which can trace its roots to Cubism (which really only existed formally from about 1907 to 1914), the idea of capturing raw emotions, rather than specific subjects, in painting and sculpture eventually took hold.
