Cubist Portraiture and its Influence on American Pop Art

Cubism was an avant-garde movement in painting and sculpture pioneered by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Fernand Leger. Cubist painters deconstruct everyday objects, landscapes, and human subjects into geometric shapes in an attempt to represent their three dimensional nature on a two dimensional medium without using naturalistic one-point perspective or shading. Cubism, as a form of abstract expressionism, is a technique used as a visual language of expressing a feeling or emotion. American pop artists use this visual language in new ways. The work of American pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and George Condo was influenced by abstract expressionism, especially the tradition of cubism. Lichtenstein’s pop art paintings draw from comic book and cartoon illustrations, primarily depicting scenes of romance and violence popularized in this style after the second world war. Lichtenstein was able to seamlessly integrate this comic book style with practices of abstract expressionists like Picasso and Leger. The pop artist used the integration of these styles to discuss the relationship between high art and consumer culture, standards of taste in art and advertising, and the gender politics of representation. Lichtenstein was interested in discussing modernized society, consumerism, and industrialization through his art. George Condo’s work consists of widely varying practices and mediums. In his paintings he pays homage to Diego Velazquez, Goya, and the abstract expressionists, specifically Willem de Kooning and Picasso. Condo integrates the fury of scattered marks and frustrated forms popularized in the emotive paintings of de Kooning with cubist portraiture similar to that of Picasso. Like Lichtenstein in the tradition of pop art, Condo’s art forces the viewer into a reflection of fast-paced modern life in New York city. The disarray of markings and disorientation of human form creates a commentary on the social issues of an industrialized society.

Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1927, Oil and charcoal on canvas, 1999.363.66

Pablo Picasso depicts the head of a woman with one continuous black line and misshapen features. This painting belongs to a series of sixteen with similar subject matter. This is a portrait of Picasso’s wife, Olga Kokhlova. Picasso had lost interest in Olga and moved on to a new lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter. This painting depicts Picasso’s failing marriage and his wife’s emotional instability.

Pablo Picasso, Harlequin, 1927, Oil on canvas, 1997.149.5

Harlequin was one of Picasso’s known alter-egos. The bicorn hat, the lozenges on the bottom right, and the shadow of Picasso’s profile on the left reinforce that this painting is a self portrait. At the time this was painted, the same year that Picasso painted Head of a Woman, the artist felt trapped in a marriage with his mentally unstable wife. Picasso’s shadow profile looks on at the disorientation of Harlequin as a result of this failing marriage.

Fernand Leger, Divers, Blue and Black, 1942-1943, Oil on canvas, 1999.363.37

Fernand Leger paints Divers, Blue and Black while living in Marseilles awaiting his voyage to the United States. A crowded swimming pool is depicted through the cluster of interwoven bodies painted with bold black outlining. These bodies dive into broad blocks of color with no outlining, a common theme throughout Leger’s later work. Leger continued to create paintings of swimming pools after he arrived in New York, the series consists of twenty-five works. The bold outlining and color blocking are techniques adopted by Roy Lichtenstein.

Fernand Leger, Three Musicians, 1924-44, Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, 334.1955

While this painting exhibits less of the cubist qualities examined in this curation, Leger was one of the three premier painters in cubism in the 20th century. Three Musicians was part of the inspiration for the abstracted Roy Lichtenstein painting, Stepping Out, as the figure on the left was mirrored and replicated 34 years later. Additionally, both paintings consist primarily of the three primary colors and thick bold outlining. It is speculated that Leger is painting Picasso (seated, center), Braque (left), and himself (right) as the trio of contemporary cubist painters.

Roy Lichtenstein, Stepping Out, 1978, Oil and magna on canvas, 1980.420

Roy Lichtenstein presents a comic-book like pop art abstracted representation of a man and a woman. While allowing for a level of irony not included in the paintings of his cubist influencers, Lichtenstein creates a discussion on the plight of the modern man with his work. Many of his paintings, including Stepping Out, are a commentary on ways in which mass media and consumerism shape modern life and human emotions.

George Condo, Rush Hour, 2010, Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, and pastel on canvas, 2011.306

Condo refers to this style as a “drawing painting” because of its linear nature and conglomeration of mediums on the canvas. In the piece Condo depicts a cluster of commuters, including some recognizable characters that the artists includes in various works. Similar to the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, Condo paints with a rush of lines and shapes from which bits of human form are exposed. The disorientation or fracturing of bodies is influenced by the multiple viewpoint deconstruction of cubism. Condo uses this technique to represent the disorienting hustle and bustle of modern city life.