Kub, cube, cubisme : Picasso et Braque en 1912

Kub, cube and cubism : Picasso and Braque in 1912. This article follows the complete history of the term “cubism” in France, both among the critics and the popular press of the early 1900s. In particular, it analyses the latter’s ironic association of the modern artistic movement with the Swiss-German food company Maggi’s most famous product of the time -the bouillon cube. It then examines the reception of this popular pun by the two artists most commonly linked to cubism, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Underscoring Braque’s and Picasso’s ironic integration of the term inside their works in 1912, the article maintains that these works should be read as a critical response to efforts by artists and critics of the time to create a definitely formal and conceptual codification of a “cubist aesthetics”.