African tribal art was a major influence on the Modern Art movement of Cubism.
Artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are credited with initiating one of the most influential art movements of the early 20th century: Cubism, named for the angular shapes it represented. The Cubist artists were attempting, in a two-dimensional form, to present an object as it appeared from multiple angles. High school students can use information about Cubism to further their studies of geometry and history or to create their own Cubist-inspired self portrait.
Cubist Artists
Have students choose an artist who worked within the Cubist movement, or whose works were highly influential to the Cubist artists. Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse all worked in this artistic style. The artists Paul Cezanne and George Seurat are credited with creating styles of art that provided a bridge between the work of the late 19th-century Impressionists and the modern art of the 20th century. Students can research the lives of one of these artists, or show how the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (like Seurat and Cezanne) led to the Cubist art movement and the beginnings of Modern Art.
Cubist Photo Montage
Show your students images of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)," painted in 1912. Discuss with your class how the artist managed to depict a figure in motion in a still, two-dimensional painting. Have your students create a series of photographs of a person or object in motion. They should be careful to make sure that each of the photographs they choose for their final product shows a different step in the process of motion. Once they have their photographs selected, have them use the Duchamp painting as a guide for cutting up their photos and creating a single collage montage of their chosen subject in motion.
Cubism and Math
Choose a selection of Cubist paintings that prominently depict geometric shapes and angles and show them to your students. Once you have gone through the examples with the students, challenge them to search the Internet and collect their own series of Cubist images that depict strong images of angles and geometric shapes. Finally, assign each student the task of creating his own work of Cubist art based upon a criteria of specific angles and shapes that must be included in the final image. Post the classroom's images side by side for discussion.
African Art and Cubism
Not only were the Cubists highly influenced by the most recent artistic movements in European art, they were also creating their art in response to the landscape and animal life of the African continent as well as African art such as tribal masks. Show students the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by Pablo Picasso. It demonstrates the influence of African tribal masks on this artist's depiction of the human face. Have students research more of Picasso's work (and other Cubist artists) to find more evidence of influence of the African landscape and distinctive tribal art in their European paintings of the early 20th century.
