Causes of Northern Europe's Reformation

The Reflection of Social Change The artistic trends, obviously, based on the development of social and political change. No one can denounce the social effect on art, especially during the time of the World War I. It was about time for the artists gave vent to their hatred and disgust with this first modern war by creating a new artistic style “Cubism”. This artistic style is the reflections of disillusionment, and social fragmentation in the first modern war.

Take a review on the previous artistic styles from the Renaissance up to the time before World War I; most paintings were focused on the geometric concern with three-dimensional perspective. Cubism, however, is distinguished for its two-dimensional shape with new expression. The horrible and violent of the World War I brought much bad effect on the people in society such as the feeling of hopelessness, disillusionment. Many traditional beliefs, optimistic perspectives had broken down.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Oil on Canvas (244 x 23...

World War II nurses

Picasso - Cubism 1937

Therefore, Cubism was created to depict these kinds of broken feeling. It was characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes. . In Culture and Values: The Survey of The Humanities, Lawrence Cunningham et al described Violin and Palette of Georges Braque that: “the violin is recognizable but the older notion of the violin as appearing “real” has been replaced by the artist’s vision of the violin as a problem to be solved according to his vision and through his analysis.”(563) Even though the artist used only two-dimensional perspective; we can understand and recognize the fragmented emotion and social issue of artist at that time. Thus, Cubism with its challenging techniques and new expression could be seen as a typical artistic style to demonstrate artists’ emotion and analysis toward society.

Even though it is not easy to observe the beauty of Cubism, this artistic style is a significant artistic style to depict diverse aspects of society as a whole. Cubism impresses me for its challenging view and new techniques. The beauty of arts, obviously, can not be easily observed without throughout understanding about social background. Studying humanities, I have the ability to understand the social problem and appreciate the beauty of such an interesting and complicated art “Cubism”.

Works Cited:Cunningham, Lawrence and Reich, John, Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities, Thomson Wadsworth, 2002.