Braque, Georges (1882-1963)
Les Arbres (Trees)
1908
Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
We can still recognize the shapes and colors of the trees, and we know that the artist painted in the area of the fishing village of l’Estaque that year. But still, nothing looks as it should. It is all reduced to geometric, “cubist” shapes that tip and tumble uneasily before the gaze. That nature is no longer easy to step into. Cubism marks art’s farewell to imitation. The “destruction” of the landscape in art is happening at the same time as industrialization is doing so, and natural science is abandoning the stable worldview it had hitherto had. Nature was no longer static and predictable. In painting, people were on their way to leaving landscape painting behind. (SMK)