Somewhere around the fall of 1907, George Braque rediscovered the art of Paul CTzanne and met Pablo Picasso for the first time. These two events would have a significant impact on the future of art. Braque discovered in the late impressionist work of CTzanne a geometrical use of form and spatial relationships that would become the basis of Cubism.
Braque and Picasso essentially created the artistic method of Analytic Cubism between 1910 and 1911. Analytic Cubism analyzes the form of objects by shattering them into fragments spread out on the canvas. This method of painting is a non-illusionistic and non-imitative way of depicting the visual world. Artwork in this style tends to appear abstract, but is, in fact, a carefully planned re-arrangement of the objects in the image. Objects in the image are often fragmented into their various sides so the viewer's eye can recombine them. Analytic Cubism initiated the concept of abstraction in art. It also introduced the concept of distorting the image of observed reality to the point that the object itself may appear to be completely disintegrated.
Thus, Analytic Cubism breaks with the conventional Western model of linear perspective, which was based on Cartesian perspectivalism. Cartesianism privileges linear perspective and views the canvas as a transparent window or a flat mirror. The image created by the artist is a reflection, an epiphany of sorts, of the actual world. The painter captures an eternal moment on the canvas while the viewing subject, by uniting his gaze through the linear perspective used by the artist, essentially recreates the image the artist perceived. Art in Cartesian perspectivalism, therefore, was not created in either the artist's or the viewing subject's mind. Instead, it was divinely channeled through the artist. The image on the canvas was not representative of the artist, and its reception did not depend on the viewer.
CTzanne, who was a st...