The Cubist Magic from the Pompidou Arrives in Tokyo

When Braque presented his works at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1908 he had not yet given a name to what later became one of the most important artistic avant-gardes of the first part of the twentieth century. The name "Cubism", as the French poet Apollinaire recalled, was instead attributed by Henri Matisse who was part of the jury of that Parisian event and who had rejected five of the eight canvases sent by Braque. Matisse made fun of Braque who had dared to reduce painting to a series of pale and insignificant “little cubes”. But what in Matisse's intentions should have been an insult, instead was a definition that Braque liked very much and he adopted it to give life - with Picasso and many other artists including Robert Delaunay, Marcel and Raymond Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Francis Picabia, James Riviere and Gino Severini - to the movement that revolutionized the art of the twentieth century. Indeed, it was a question of breaking away from the traditional spatial representations based on perspective and shading and composing paintings with geometric shapes, freeing painters from the common sense that had taught them since the Renaissance that painting was a method for reproducing reality. And while it is true that Braque, Picasso and the other acolytes of Cubism never pushed the boundaries of abstract art, Cubism spread quickly, exerting a decisive influence ever since on the diverse development of art around the world. This major exhibition at The National Museum of Western Art brings over 140 works from the collections of the Center Pompidou in Paris to Tokyo for the first time in 50 years - paintings and sculptures by 40 major artists - to comprehensively present a movement that was a true and very starting point of the art of the twentieth century.