Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, painting by Pablo Picasso

Cubism is synonymous with Pablo Picasso, but it wasn't this legendary artist alone who began the movement of cubism. Cubism was also jointly pioneered by french artist, George Braque. This avant garde art era was seen as radical, but was also highly influential in it's day, and continues to be. The cubist artist breaks up the object he is painting, disassembling it into an abstraction of (cube-like) pieces splayed all over the canvas. This was done so the artist could display the object in a multitude of arrangements, angles and representations, viewable all at once. It was common cubist form that all faces of an object would be painted, this revolutionized the way objects could be depicted in painting. It was also said to be a cheeky response to ambiguity in painting, and an attempt to engage the viewer in seeing the painting as a man-made construction.

The first school of Cubism was Analytical Cubism. These are the famed Picasso's that appear to be masses of intricate gray, beige and black from far away, but up close are closely detailed and structured. These paintings were not about use of color and were usually of scenes of nature, the scenes were taken apart and analyzed, the artist putting them back together in a new way.

This week I received an email from an old roommate to inform me that an art history professor of ours from the semester we spent in Italy had unexpectedly died over the weekend. The news surprised me; I hadn’t really known him very well, even when I was a student of his, but he was easily one of the best teachers I ever had. The enthusiasm and knowledge he demonstrated in on-site lectures were unmatched, and at every site we visited, small groups of tourists would inevitably start listening in and following us at a distance, until he laughingly told them there was no need to be shy; they were welcome to join us. More than once, the ends of his lectures were met with rounds of applause from people none of us knew at all.

One thing he made his students understand is that art is about connections between people. Just as his love of art united those unknown tourists – Australian and Japanese vacationers wandering through the Roman Forum or Vatican City – to us – American students sipping espresso and imagining ourselves very cosmopolitan – he showed us that art could connect us to people across time and space. As we stood in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi staring in awe at Caravaggio’s energetic paintings of the life of St. Matthew, he made us understand what those first viewers must have felt as they gasped in fascinated awe and shock at the unconventional and humane representations of such an auspicious saint. When we studied the cold, fascist sculptures in Mussolini’s EUR section of the city, we shared the chilled, stark apprehension that people felt decades ago.

Art in any form, from all periods brings enjoyment to those who visit museums. Artists’ who have created these masterpieces are memorable for their artistic abilities alone, while their personal lives for the most part have remained obscure. The sprinklings of private and personal information gathered about an artist only serves to tantalize us further. Most artists have chosen to represent drama through creativity, not by first hand experiences. Caravaggio was an exception for he broke all rules of the established polite society while establishing himself as Master Painter.

Caravaggio (1571-1610) was considered a Grand Master of the Late Renaissance. He revolutionized Italian Art so much so that the techniques and symbolism he began during his short painting career transformed into the Baroque Movement. After his death his paintings had a profound and far reaching effect on future generations of artists, especially the Dutch Master, Rembrandt.

Enter, the reflection of the human emotional spectrum, the back-lashing antithesis to impressionism: expressionism (taking place mostly in Germany, 1880's-1925.) If you think you don't know expressionism, think again. Envision Edvard Munch's The Scream or or the jazzy colorful compositions of Kandinsky and there you have it. Expressionism took the ideas of impressionism, such as painting by feeling and ignited them into a dreamy fire. The goal of this movement was to capture life, to express the very sensation of being alive.

I truly think this capture of life-essence shines through in the work. The paint on the canvas is distorted to reflect the artist's emotions. One descriptive emotion that is often thrown around simultaneously with this movement is angst. Angst is an emotion that is still often taboo in our society, one that was not really focused on in art before. This movement was covering new ground, depicting life more accurately, bringing in the idea of self awareness.

Where impressionists focused on the visual of the objects they painted, expressionists focused solely on the feeling, tapping into raw emotions and their subconscious, then recording this human experience on the canvas. Expressionists thought that they only way to truly paint something correctly was to paint the way the artist experienced it. The result was often dynamic, vivacious palettes of colors bringing to life extremely bold compositions.

Ever see a painting of a bowl of fruit and wonder, “What the heck would make somebody paint a bowl of fruit…and why should I want to look at it?” To be honest, I used to be one of those people – and I still can be sometimes. Still lifes (yep, in this context it’s “lifes,” not “lives”) often take me more energy and concentration to enjoy than a landscape or portrait does, but usually, the extra focus is worth the additional work.

Still life paintings, which are essentially just paintings featuring inanimate objects positioned by the artist in a plain or nondescript background, have a long history in European painting and have even been found in ancient tombs. Since those earliest known interpretations of the genre, the point has tended to be the same – take ordinary objects and position them in a way that they leave the viewer with a symbolic moral.

Today, you and I might look at that painting of a vase of flowers and think, “Sure, it’s pretty, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.” A lot of the reason that you and I don’t see the symbols is that we don’t live in the same cultural context in which the painting was created. To the people who lived in the time in which the canvas was painted, the symbols would be clear. Sure, to us, a watch might not symbolize temperance like it did for the 17th century Dutch, but to them, a pink ribbon probably didn’t symbolize the battle against breast cancer like it does for us. And plenty of the symbols do make sense, if you just think about them a little bit. A lemon? Well, that’s the simultaneous bitterness and sweetness of life. How about a delicious looking strawberry with a small spot of mold on it? Life is good but short, so enjoy it while you can. See – it’s not so hard to figure out, is it?