Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882 in a suburb of Paris, France. He grew up working with his father and grandfather, who were decorative house painters. He also attended art school at night. Initially, he was a member of the impressionist movement, but soon joined the Fauves. (The “Beasts” like Henri Mattise. They used bright colors to convey emotion.) Braque was fascinated with the effects of light and perspective and began experimenting with flattening images or showing multiple perspectives at once. He was good friends with Pablo Picasso and the two artists began experimenting with breaking their paintings down into the geometric shapes and combing more than one view point. The two artists often painted side by side, creating pieces that looked almost identical. The term Cubist wasn’t initially adopted by Braque and Picasso, but came from a critic, who wrote that Braque’s work was a canvas “full of little cubes” (Another example of someone criticizing an artists work, but the artist refusing to let it be a negative thing!) Within a few years, the movement was known as cubism and its popularity was spreading quickly. Cubist paintings are much easier to understand if you keep in mind the exaggeration of the shapes in a figure (for older students, mention that figures, landscapes and still life subjects were abstracted into their base shapes), along with the display of multiple perspectives at once. Braque mentioned “shattering an object into fragments” to better understand the form of the object. In 1912, the pair began to experiment with collage, creating what they termed “Papier Colle`” They pasted newspaper clippings, ads, and other papers into their work. This created a new texture and could add a different narrative to the piece.

Braque joined the French Army at the beginning of WWI and suffered a severe head injury, leaving him temporarily blind. After his recuperation, he returned to painting alone. Picasso moved onto other experiments, but Braque remained devoted to the Cubist method until his death at age 81.

Today we will paint our own canvas boards using the techniques that George Braque pioneered.

Set out the still life display on the cart. Put it somewhere centrally located if possible. Tell the students that they will not be able to touch the display, but they will be able to quietly move to a different spot in the room. Tell them that this will give them the chance to look at things from more than one angle; like Georges Braque did. Encourage them to mix the views together and focus more on the shapes of the objects than the objects themselves to create a cubist painting. If they are nervous about going right to the canvas, there is paper on the cart to do some preliminary sketches.

Tell the students to start by looking at the display and very lightly sketching it in on their canvas. Then they can quietly move to a different seat. Now look at the display again. How has it changed? Lightly add in elements from this new direction. (Remind the students that it is hard to get the graphite from their pencils off of the canvas, so make sure you draw super lightly!) Once they have created a composition they are happy with, they can paint the piece.

Don’t forget the general rules for painting:
1. Wet your brush
2. Only dip the tip into the paint (and only give them a small amount of paint to start-they canalways have more!)
3. Work from the background to the foreground. End with the small details!

Now, they can add in some of the paper. Cut or tear it into shapes that fit into their scene. Tell the students to use as much or little as they’d would like to create their artwork. They can stick it right down on top of the paint and it will stick to the canvas.