Cubism 1907-1920s (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/cubism.html)
At that time there were many developing revolutionary ideas about art, combining instinct and intellect with sensation. The breaking away began quite noticeably in the mid to late 19th century with artists like Courbet, Manet, all the Impressionists, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. If these artist had not begun to question the traditional principles of painting, the Fauves (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/fauvism.html) and the Cubists could never have expressed themselves with so much liberty. The climate was right for new ideas, on a continuum to abstraction of all kinds.

Some significant factors leading up to new ways of looking at art and painting especially:
1. Photography – probably the most significant
 1839 Daguerre’s invention
 1888 Eastman began to mass market the Kodak camera
2. Impressionism (http://www.impressionism.org/)
3. Revolutions in Europe, significant ones in 1848, same year as the Communist  Manifesto of Marx and Engels
4. Technological inventions (collapsible paint tube 1841)
5. General changes in modern life and scientific principles

In Cubism, there are said to be three stages of development (some variation in this)
1. Facet Cubism – artist began to separate objects of figures into definite geometrical elements while placing them in a composition
2. Analytical cubism – objects increasingly broken down, presentation of several aspects of the object at once
3. Synthetic cubism – further liberated from traditional reality and appearance
In first phase there was a strong influence from African sculpture, as well as painters Cezanne and Seurat.
The phenomenon eventually led to collage, for Braque and Picasso, by 1912. They began to glue paper and cloth on to the pictures – this mixture of material blurs the boundaries between the real and the painted.
Cubism was the point of departure for many artists for a long time, despite first negative reception and has been called the first and the most influential of all movements in 20th century art.

Cezanne and  influence
Since 15th century, artists had begun using rules of perspective, with detail and accuracy, depicting everything as right size and shape in relation to other objects. Everything in the painting was seen from a single viewpoint. French artist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/) was beginning to change that approach, partly to construct a representation of how we really see the world and partly to create new ways of representing space. His works illustration a combination of simultaneous viewpoints and begin to show an abstract treatment of volume and space

A retrospective exhibition was held in 1907 after his death, which was attended by many artists, including Braque and Picasso. They were inspired to continue the experiment with perspective. They produced a kind of “anti-perspective,” by  trying to give up the illusion of space all together. These combine pieces simultaneous seen from different angles and different times. The broken shapes and surfaces highlight the contradictions involved in trying to paint three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.

Georges Braque (1882-1962) (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/braque_georges.html)
There was an intense collaboration between Braque and Picasso for a number of years. Braque’s 1908 “Maisons á L’Estaque” (at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland) was the work to be described by an art critic as “nothing but a pile of little cubes.” As is often the case, that was the origin of the name of the movement.

Political aspect
By 1912, the French Chamber of Deputies had a heated debate about the inclusion of several cubist painting, including those by foreign artists, at their “Salon d’automne.” These works were being called “jokes in very bad taste,” “anti-artistic,” and “anti-national.” In spite of the Fine Arts Minister’s claim not to interfere in artistic matters, the debate continued, some pressure was applied, and some works were removed. After the newspapers took it up, it became a “cause,” and one result was that cubism is frequently associated with political subversion.

In discussing the development of Cubism, French artist Fernand Leger (1881-1955) said: “All that could be done with color had already been done – what remained for us was line”
Early cubists changed the technique of painting through the use of new materials and scientific principles, in particular the relativity of time-space, which introduced the idea of movement – in order to arrive at a more complete knowledge of an object.
It has been said that modern life demanded a change in pictorial expression. And this connection between art and science is key to Martin’s play.

Role of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” 1907
(http://www.moma.org/collection/conservation/demoiselles/index.html)
This was painted after the Cézanne show, when Picasso and Braque were beginning to experiment with abstraction and is regarded as a key work in this development. There are other influences as Picasso was introduced to African art because of some masks at Paris museums and also in the collection of an artist friend.
The faces are inspired by these masks and also ancient Spanish statues; they represent something mythic and primitive. Earlier versions included a sailor and student holding skull. The final version is less symbolic and more ambiguous
Picasso did not display this painting, but invited friends and associates to come to his studio to see it. The reaction was horror even among these friends and he left it rolled up for many years. The first time it was reproduced was 1925. It was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1939, where it remains as one of the most famous works of the 20th century.

The painting has been described as “a field of broken glass. It is fragmented and disjointed. It is no longer an image of the external world but contains a world of its own, analogous to nature but constructed according to its own principles, its own three-dimensionality. This is Picasso’s counterpart to Matisse’s “Joy of Life”
(http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/582.html)
(and other similar pieces) – he has taken the abstraction in those works to a new level, and is said to have “used primitivism as a battering ram against the classical conceptions of beauty and the human body.”
After some debate and in considering a number of suggestions from his friends, he came up with the title of the painting, which refers to a street in the red light district of his native Barcelona (the ladies of Avignon).