Questions: Modern Art Movements: Cubism, Expressionism, Abstraction

Question 1

What formal problem did Cubism specifically address that distinguished it from prior Western painting traditions?

• A. The use of color to express emotion rather than describe reality
• B. The reduction of painting to pure geometric abstraction with no representational content
• C. The representation of multiple simultaneous viewpoints within a single image
• D. The rejection of all artistic technique in favor of chance and randomness

Answer: (C)

Cubism's defining innovation was showing an object from multiple viewpoints simultaneously — shattering the single-point perspective that had dominated Western painting since the Renaissance. Options A describes Expressionism, B describes later pure abstraction (e.g., Mondrian), and D describes Dada.

Question 2

Picasso invented Cubism independently, without significant influence from other artists or non-Western art.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Cubism emerged from close collaboration between Picasso and Georges Braque, who worked so similarly during the Analytic Cubism phase that their canvases were difficult to distinguish. Both were also decisively influenced by Cézanne's flattened planes and by African and Iberian sculpture's non-perspectival treatment of form. Single-inventor narratives almost always oversimplify collaborative and cross-cultural artistic development.

Question 3

Several early 20th-century movements — Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, and abstract art — all arose in the same era but proposed very different answers. What shared historical pressure prompted them all?

Model answer: The crisis of meaning triggered by World War I, industrialization, and — more broadly — the question of what painting is for now that photography can record visual reality mechanically.

Photography's invention in 1839 had gradually removed one traditional justification for painting (accurate depiction). WWI then shattered confidence in progress, rationalism, and inherited values. Each movement responded differently: Dada with nihilistic rejection of art itself, Surrealism by excavating the unconscious, Expressionism by externalizing psychological states, abstraction by pursuing spiritual or universal harmony beyond appearances.