Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, 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 #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
These two are already listed as related, 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
An original image that takes its structure from Cubism (Style, 1907–1925) and its accent from Purism (Style, 1918–1925). Structural cues: Multiple viewpoints presented at once; Subjects broken down into facets; Muted earth tones and grey gradations; Collage of newsprint and lettering. Accent cues, used sparingly: Silhouettes of standardised everyday objects; Compositions built on horizontals and verticals; A restrained number of colours; Contour lines of overlapping forms. 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. Let one material quality come from the second style: Greys and ochres with a little blue, surfaces painted evenly and matte. Mood: Rebellion, Technology, Trust, Futurism. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition 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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