Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Cubism: Break the subject into planes and set fragments from different viewpoints on one surface
- Type
- Set in Cubism's manner (Echo the Synthetic phase, cutting compact grotesques and stencil capitals as pasted paper), and let Purism's lettering (A light geometric sans aligned to the horizontals, held to two sizes) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Cubism's material (A narrow range of ochre, umber and grey with newsprint and woodgrain paper); bring in exactly one thing from Purism (Greys and ochres with a little blue, surfaces painted evenly and matte).
- Colour
- Build on #cbc7b3, #a76519, #151616 and admit one accent from #e4d0b1, #87523f, #11100c.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Cubism Avoid fragmenting for decoration alone—if the planes no longer describe the subject from real viewpoints, the result reads as random shattering, not Cubism.
- Purism Bringing anecdote or ornament back turns the objects from standardized types into picturesque still lifes, and the clarity of the machine age is lost.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Cubism (style, 1907–1925) and their accent from Purism (style, 1918–1925). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Cubism exists for: diagrams and covers that must show several faces or stages at once, or subjects a photograph cannot hold, shown taken apart and rebuilt as construction. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Cubism - Multiple viewpoints presented at once - Subjects broken down into facets - Muted earth tones and grey gradations - Collage of newsprint and lettering Composition: Break the subject into planes and set fragments from different viewpoints on one surface. Type and lettering: Echo the Synthetic phase, cutting compact grotesques and stencil capitals as pasted paper. ## Accent comes from Purism, used sparingly - Silhouettes of standardised everyday objects - Compositions built on horizontals and verticals - A restrained number of colours - Contour lines of overlapping forms Let one material quality come from it: Greys and ochres with a little blue, surfaces painted evenly and matte. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #cbc7b3, carry the structure in #a76519 and #151616, and let a single accent come from #87523f. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, technique, trust, futurity. ## What goes wrong - Cubism: Avoid fragmenting for decoration alone—if the planes no longer describe the subject from real viewpoints, the result reads as random shattering, not Cubism. - Purism: Bringing anecdote or ornament back turns the objects from standardized types into picturesque still lifes, and the clarity of the machine age is lost. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Cubism 1907–1925 / Style / Avant-garde
A pictorial revolution that freed the subject from a single viewpoint, reassembling facets seen from multiple angles on one flat plane. The fractured planes and muted palette of the Analytic phase, then the newspaper collage and lettering of the Synthetic phase, gave twentieth-century graphic design its founding premise: the picture is not a window onto reality but a field of construction.
- Purism 1918–1925 / Style / Modern Design Movements
A movement that attacked Cubism's drift into decoration and called for a return to forms fit for the machine age. Standardized objets-types such as bottles, glasses and guitars are painted within a horizontal-vertical order and a restrained palette. Through the journal L'Esprit Nouveau it became a norm for modern architecture and graphics.
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