How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso): Ambiguity and Fragmentation in Radical Innovation

Abstract

In structural analyses of innovation, one substantive question looms large: What makes radical innovation possible if peripheral actors are more likely to originate radical ideas but are poorly positioned to promote them? An inductive study of the rise of Cubism, a revolutionary paradigm that overthrew classic principles of representation in art, results in a model where not only the periphery moves toward the core through collective action, as typically asserted, but the core also moves toward the periphery, becoming more receptive to radical ideas. The fragmentation of the art market in early 20th-century Paris served as the trigger. The proliferation of market niches and growing ambiguity over evaluation standards dramatically reduced the costs of experimentation in the periphery and the ability of the core to suppress radical ideas. A multilevel analysis linking individual creativity, peer networks, and the art field reveals how market developments fostered Spanish Cubist Pablo Picasso's experiments and facilitated their diffusion in the absence of public support, a coherent movement, and even his active involvement. If past research attests to the importance of framing innovations and mobilizing resources in their support, this study brings attention to shifts in the structure of opportunities to do so.

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Organization Science
Articles in Advance, pp. 1–17
ISSN 1047-7039 (print) ISSN 1526-5455 (online) http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0819
© 2013 INFORMS
How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso):
Ambiguity and Fragmentation in Radical Innovation
Stoyan V. Sgourev
Department of Management, ESSEC Business School, Cergy 92000, France,
sgourev@essec.fr
In structural analyses of innovation, one substantive question looms large: What makes radical innovation possible if
peripheral actors are more likely to originate radical ideas but are poorly positioned to promote them? An inductive
study of the rise of Cubism, a revolutionary paradigm that overthrew classic principles of representation in art, results
in a model where not only the periphery moves toward the core through collective action, as typically asserted, but the
core also moves toward the periphery, becoming more receptive to radical ideas. The fragmentation of the art market in
early 20th-century Paris served as the trigger. The proliferation of market niches and growing ambiguity over evaluation
standards dramatically reduced the costs of experimentation in the periphery and the ability of the core to suppress radical
ideas. A multilevel analysis linking individual creativity, peer networks, and the art field reveals how market developments
fostered Spanish Cubist Pablo Picasso’s experiments and facilitated their diffusion in the absence of public support, a
coherent movement, and even his active involvement. If past research attests to the importance of framing innovations and
mobilizing resources in their support, this study brings attention to shifts in the structure of opportunities to do so.
Key words : innovation; market fragmentation; ambiguity; emergence; creativity; Cubism
History: Published online in Articles in Advance.
Introduction
In 1907, an awkward and unfinished painting was
unfurled to a small audience that was visibly aghast at
the sight. One considered it “raw and cacophonic,” a sec-
ond considered it a “veritable cataclysm,” and a third
thought that the artist “would soon commit suicide.”1It
would come to be known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
widely credited as the first Cubist painting. After its
tumultuous debut, the painting was rarely shown in pub-
lic until 1939, when it was acquired by the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. So how could a painting—
controversial from the outset and concealed from view
for so long—attain such wide recognition as the most
influential artwork of the 20th century?2
This question captures the convoluted historical trajec-
tory of Cubism as a revolutionary paradigm and artistic
technique that overthrew classic principles of repre-
sentation, dispensing with the idea of a single fixed
viewpoint that had dominated art for centuries. Cubist
works embody multiple angles so that many different
aspects of an object can be simultaneously portrayed.
In this paper, the rise of Cubism is used as a source
of insights into radical innovation—the form of inno-
vation that challenges and renders obsolete established
technologies, standards, and products. Such innovation
is derived from the recombination of extant knowledge
or an entirely new knowledge base and is character-
ized by highly uncertain commercial potential (Hill and
Rothaermel 2003).
The need for conceptual refinement of the process of
radical innovation is underlined by the inconsistencies in
existing accounts. In innovation and creativity research,
interest is moving away from individual traits to inter-
personal ties (Perry-Smith and Shalley 2003, Burt 2004),
but scholars disagree on whether actors linked to many
others or those with few such links are better positioned
to innovate. Certainly, those at the core of the social
structure have better opportunities to access and com-
bine resources and ideas from many places (e.g., Collins
1998, Burt 2004). By virtue of their centrality and rela-
tive absence of constraints, these actors are better posi-
tioned to innovate through recombination. Thus, Collins
(1998) argues that marginal actors rarely produce ideas
of consequence. However, an established sociological
tradition treats marginal actors as key agents of change,
unconstrained by peer pressure and binding role expec-
tations; as a result, they are more likely to champion
dissenting ideas threatening the status quo (Coser 1965,
Merton 1972). Marginal actors serve as boundary span-
ners or “tempered radicals” (Meyerson and Scully 1995),
weakly embedded in the dominant culture and capable of
importing ideas or practices from the outside (Hargadon
and Sutton 1997).
Related to the question of origin is that of the tra-
jectory of innovation. In the dominant view, innovation
takes place through collective action, orchestrated by
well-connected brokers that combine previously unre-
lated ideas or actors (Burt 2004). Innovations succeed
1
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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when their originators mobilize others to cooperate in
the new practices that their vision requires (Becker 1982,
p. 308). By dint of their influential position, core actors
are more effective in mobilizing support for innovation
than peripheral actors, who are hindered by their low
status in convincing others to partake in their project. Yet
these observations have resulted in conceptual ambiguity
with respect to radical innovation: if peripheral actors are
less encumbered by communal norms and more likely to
originate ideas threatening the status quo, but are poorly
positioned to mobilize the support to enact them, it is
unclear what drives the actors’ success under such unto-
ward conditions.
In trying to resolve this tension, studies have sug-
gested that an intermediate position is the most appro-
priate platform for recognizable novelty (Cattani and
Ferriani 2008). However, this proposition is better suited
to forms of innovation that do not upend the status quo
but enrich it through a new combination. Innovation that
destroys, rather than enhances, capabilities (Tushman
and Anderson 1986) presents the challenge of articulat-
ing the conditions under which resource scarcity can be
overcome. One scenario is that of core actors reaching
out to the periphery (e.g., Cattani and Ferriani 2008). Yet
there are strong reasons for skepticism as to the extent
to which core actors would advocate ideas from the
periphery. High-status actors typically seek to preserve
their rank by avoiding association with low-status actors
(Podolny 1993) or divergent practices that threaten a loss
of legitimacy (Zuckerman 1999). Core actors also have
a disincentive to invest in innovations that, if success-
ful, may erode their market power (Henderson and Clark
1990). As a result, it is usually new entrants that pioneer
radical innovations (Tushman and Anderson 1986).
The opposite scenario—that of peripheral actors
“swaying” the core—is generally thought of as a grad-
ual shift from the periphery to the core (Perry-Smith
and Shalley 2003, p. 99), whereby peripheral actors ac-
cumulate the resources needed to co-opt the core or
overcome its resistance. This occurs by way of institu-
tional entrepreneurship, where actors frame their inter-
ests within the social context, convincing others to go
along (e.g., Greenwood and Suddaby 2006); and of col-
lective action, where movements assemble resources,
legitimate the novelty, and integrate it within the preva-
lent order (Haveman and Rao 1997). Through individual
and collective agency, contradictory interests are aligned
around a breakthrough innovation. Yet questions remain
about the fit with cases of rapid diffusion and the extent
to which a heightened role for agency is always mer-
ited. Sociological studies show that the opportunistic
use of discrepancies at the core (Padgett and Ansell
1993) may allow peripheral actors to mount a success-
ful challenge to the core in a sudden and contagious
manner, irreducible to individual or collective strategiz-
ing (Kuran 1995). In line with long-standing work on
“emergent” change and “distributed agency” in innova-
tion (e.g., Constant 1980, Rosenberg 1983), these studies
suggest that radical innovation can diffuse at a greater
speed than the resource endowment of key actors allows
and that it can succeed, not despite, but because of the
absence of a coherent collective project.
Motivated by these substantive discrepancies in the
conceptualization of the process of radical innovation—
in particular, the manner in which radical ideas suc-
ceed in the absence of a strong resource base, this
paper examines the defining rupture in the history of
art—the rise of Cubism in early 20th-century Paris.
Nineteenth-century innovations such as impressionism
have been widely analyzed in sociological and organi-
zational research (e.g., White and White 1965, Becker
1982, Wijnberg and Gemser 2000), but Cubism is
notably absent. The likely reason is that it developed
in a way that does not fit easily within the dominant
accounts. As I intend to show, neither a movement from
the core to the periphery nor the reverse can summa-
rize with high precision the evolution of Cubism. An
inductive study of early Cubism gives rise to a third
model, where the success of radical ideas is driven by
the simultaneous movement from the periphery to the
core and the reverse. The contribution of the study is in
identifying as the trigger for this development two struc-
tural conditions, field-level fragmentation and ambiguity,
which encouraged radical novelty by reducing both the
costs of experimentation in the periphery and the core’s
resistance.
The analysis documents how the appearance of viable
market niches and the resultant ambiguity over evalu-
ation standards encouraged aesthetic differentiation and
collective action in support of exotic art, which further
reinforced market fragmentation and loosened control
over art production. This feedback loop emerges in an
analysis encompassing analytical levels that are familiar
from past research but are rarely studied together: indi-
vidual creativity, peer networks, and the field. It is in
their interaction that one can find the explanation for the
rapid diffusion of Cubism and the unparalleled contem-
porary fame of a painting that so spectacularly failed to
impress at first sight.
Theory
In the dominant thinking on change in the art world,
innovations succeed when their originators mobilize oth-
ers to cooperate in the activities associated with their
vision, building an organizational base and taking over
audiences and sources of support (Becker 1982, p. 305).
The success and permanence of ideas rests on the organi-
zation, rather than on the intrinsic worth of works, which
is always difficult to ascertain (Becker 1982, p. 310).
The magnitude of change is determined by mechanisms
of collective action and the status of the originator; those
initiating new art worlds are active in the intellectual
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
Organization Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–17, © 2013 INFORMS 3
currents growing out of existing practices (Becker 1982,
p. 314). Marginal actors are poorly equipped to insti-
gate significant changes because of their isolation and
relatively idiosyncratic visions and methods that make
it difficult to secure the apparatus needed to promote
their ideas (Becker 1982, p. 314). Core actors are well
prepared to repel radical change, art worlds tend to be
conservative, and groundbreaking innovation is rare.
The same sense of the near impossibility of radical
innovation permeates Collins’ (1998) structural theory of
creativity, which posits a similar core–periphery struc-
ture of the intellectual community, with an inner circle
and a layered periphery where most members reside. The
inner circle is the habitat of “stars,” which have many
ties to other eminent members and are directly involved
in organizational transformations. Creativity comes to
those who are well positioned, who know of diverse pos-
sibilities, who have a sense of trends, and who encounter
each other face-to-face (Collins 1998, p. 74).
What is problematic in the accounts where creativity
flows to the well connected, as Collins (1998, p. 69)
himself recognizes, is that there is little to differenti-
ate reputation from creativity. Furthermore, there are
empirical exceptions to the “coreness” rule (i.e., notable
isolates) and a positive role for physical and social isola-
tion in the early, formative years of intellectuals (Collins
1998, p. 34). However, even when the coreness assump-
tion is so relaxed, control remains at the core. Challenges
from the periphery are inevitable, but the possibilities for
change in the governing system of rules and practices
“vary within a relatively small range” (Becker 1982,
p. 314), as the corrosive power of challenges is diluted
in connecting to the core. Upon receiving recognition
for their work, peripheral actors become more visible
within the field and gradually move to its core. This
action pattern is well suited to explaining the gradual
artistic change of the impressionist fold (e.g., Wijnberg
and Gemser 2000), but it is seemingly less so in cases
of radical innovation. Such cases run into the same
conceptual difficulties that Kuran (1995) identifies for
political revolutions: that is, they are characteristically
rare and sweeping in scope, unexpected, and largely
unpredictable.
Past research suggests that the manner in which
peripheral actors manage to overcome their poor
resource endowment is through institutional entrepre-
neurship, i.e., by recombining practices, technologies,
and ideas; building network alliances; enacting favor-
able institutional arrangements; and framing the inno-
vation to appeal to collaborators and core actors (for a
review, see Hargrave and Van de Ven 2006). Innova-
tions are typically observed as collective achievements
in constructing an infrastructure in a path-dependent pro-
cess (Schoonhoven and Romanelli 2001, Lounsbury and
Ventresca 2002). Disruptive innovations are thus highly
unlikely to succeed when lacking proper infrastructure
(Hargadon and Douglas 2001). This, however, raises the
question of the degree to which an innovation contin-
ues being disruptive when undergoing multiple stages
of “framing.”
Other research traditions point to other possibilities.
The success of innovations may have less to do with
purposive action and elaborate framing strategies than
with changes in the institutional field that disseminate
ideas or technologies through pressures for conformity
(Meyer and Rowan 1977) and competition for resources
(Carroll and Hannan 1989). Actors may imitate or
adopt under pressure or in expectation that others will
adopt faster, with bandwagons forming irrespective of
the innovation’s content (Bikhchandani et al. 1992).
Hence, the periphery may prevail over the core in
sequences that combine external shocks and endogenous
self-organization in a nonlinear dynamic resembling a
revolution (Macy and Willer 2002). Such rare but conse-
quential occurrences are highly complex and ambiguous
in nature (Axelrod and Cohen 2000).
One particularly apt illustration is Padgett and
McLean’s (2006) analysis of the rise of financial
capitalism in medieval Florence, occurring through
a punctuated-equilibrium dynamic whereby the social
structure “tipped” into invention. Unlike incremental
innovations improving on existing ways of doing things,
including activities, conceptions, and purposes, inven-
tions are “discontinuous system tippings, rooted in
reproductive feedbacks among dynamic multiple social
networks” (Padgett and McLean 2006, p. 1544) that pro-
foundly and irreversibly alter the ways in which things
are done. An invention is thus qualitatively distinct from
incremental innovation in that it “reverberates out to
alter the interacting system of which it is a part” (Padgett
and McLean 2006, p. 1464). What is most notable about
the described invention is the spontaneous manner in
which it occurred, with Florentine elites constrained by
external events and network changes into pursuing a rad-
ical form of innovation that succeeded partly because it
was never planned as such.
These observations implicate a different approach
to groundbreaking innovation, which incorporates more
explicitly the role of ambiguity, fragmentation, and
opportunism. This approach shifts attention onto prop-
erties of the field, such as its level of fragmentation, the
diminution of conventions regulating behavior, and the
emergence of new segments with their own ideologies.
When a field fragments, its members separate them-
selves so that interactions across a particular category
boundary (aesthetic, ethnic, or economic) are reduced
(Orbell et al. 1996). More cohesive fields, marked by
dense relations, encourage mutual sharing and the artic-
ulation of common interests and practices (Friedkin
1998). Deviance is easier to identify and penalize
in cohesive fields than fragmented fields, where sub-
groups with distinct identities undermine the assertion
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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of common norms (Coleman 1990). Hence, fragmenta-
tion is expected to favor innovation to the extent that
members of fragmented fields, confronting normative
inconsistencies and weak peer pressure, are more likely
to depart from established norms and are less likely to
be penalized.
The diversity of meanings and practices that arise
from fragmentation invites ambiguity—the lack of clar-
ity and certainty by virtue of the coexistence of two
or more distinct ways of interpretation (Engel 1967).
Ambiguity fosters the reinterpretation of ideas (Clemens
and Cook 1999), essential to creativity. As Weick
(1995, p. 95) remarks, the confusion created by multi-
ple meanings invokes social construction and invention.
Ambiguity enhances the role of intermediaries, such as
critics of dealers, who typically support the diffusion of
styles that leave ample room for interpretation (Caves
2000). Considering the critical role of ambiguity in the
development of modern architecture (e.g., Engel 1967),
there are good reasons to expect that it also featured
notably in the rise of Cubism, when confusion over
standards of evaluation entered irreversibly into the art
domain.
This expectation accords with a research tradition that
sees ambiguity and opportunism, rather than planning or
self-interest, as the raw materials from which historical
facts are constructed (Padgett and Ansell 1993). Many
historical processes are ambiguous in nature, unfold-
ing in a diffuse and opportunistic manner (Lachmann
2000). For example, Padgett and Ansell (1993) show the
decentralized nature of political centralization in Renais-
sance Florence, with new elites capitalizing on favorable
developments by opportunistically harnessing heteroge-
neous interests. Processes of this type are accompanied
by considerable uncertainty over the endpoint and sud-
den opportunities for action with unanticipated conse-
quences (Lachmann 2000).
These observations are integrated into a conceptual
model that builds on previous work in important regards
but attributes a more decisive role to field-level frag-
mentation and ambiguity as factors of radical innovation.
The rise of Cubism—an empirically rich though unfa-
miliar case in organizational studies—provides an oppor-
tunity to assess the relevance of key constructs from
dominant theories of innovation to the way in which
Cubist experiments on the margins achieved credibility.
Examining the origin and trajectory of the new style,
this study details how field-level properties forged an
opportunity structure for radical novelty and enabled the
emergence of new creative forms and roles that fur-
thered artistic independence. The model developed helps
explain the most unyielding features of Cubism—its
unusually rapid diffusion, stylistic incoherence, and the
perplexing reticence of the artist traditionally viewed as
its originator.
Data and Method
As radical innovation is, by definition, a rare event, the
case method is well suited to studying it (e.g., Hargadon
and Douglas 2001). Based on a survey of primary and
secondary data, this study presents a comprehensive ren-
dering of the early Cubist years, intertwining the histor-
ical narrative with references to relevant theories. Given
the vast existing literature on Cubism, the objective is
not to uncover unknown facts but to systematize and
reinterpret existing knowledge in a way that illumi-
nates key aspects of radical innovation and promotes
theoretical advancement. The main advantage of this
meta-analytic approach is the ability to validate findings
across different accounts, looking for a sufficiently high
level of agreement on facts of theoretical relevance.
To ensure the comprehensiveness of the survey, art
historians were consulted for the initial selection of
works; those that were systematically referenced were
then added. The extensive search resulted in a large
number of books and articles by artists, dealers, cura-
tors, critics, and art historians. Primary sources were
consulted, but the narrative is mostly based on schol-
arly work in art history. Considerable care was taken to
ensure that the selected works spanned the full century
since the events to avoid biases stemming from period-
specific trends. In addition, selected periodicals from the
period of interest were examined to gain insights into
the public reaction to Cubism.
The analytical scope of the study is delimited in sev-
eral ways. First, although it positions Cubism relative to
prior stages in the history of art, the analysis focuses
on the early Cubist period (1907–1914), brought to an
end by the outbreak of the First World War. Second, the
analysis is concentrated on the emergence of Cubism in
the Parisian art world; its international diffusion is not
detailed here. Third, the potential role of factors external
to the art world is only sketched. Although recognizing
that the intellectual turmoil from simultaneous transfor-
mations in the fields of philosophy, physics, and poetry
likely reduced the costs of experimentation in art, my
attention is on factors internal to the art world and on
their implications for the pursuit of radical novelty.
The boundaries of the studied field are defined as com-
prising the set of interdependent individual and collec-
tive actors operating in art production, together with their
exchange partners and funding sources (Scott 2004). This
functional definition of the field around the production,
exhibition, and sale of art follows an established prac-
tice in this research area of analyzing what is known
as the “art world.” In the period studied here, the art
world includes artists, dealers, critics, salons, and buy-
ers. Artists are categorized as belonging to the core or
periphery of the art world, based on representation by
key dealers, sales, and participation in salons (e.g., White
and White 1965).
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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The coherence of a field is based on the dominant
set of rules, norms, and relationships that organize it
(Zucker 1977). This work covers a period in the history
of art when the coherence of the art world precipitously
declined, marked by the emergence of new artistic ide-
ologies and camps in its periphery. For this reason, atten-
tion is focused on the process of fragmentation in the
systemic periphery, including the proliferation of ideolo-
gies, groups, and market niches. What is not covered
here is the acceleration of this process in later decades,
transforming the principles of production and mobility in
the art world and eroding the traditional core–periphery
structure (see Plattner 1998).
The study unfolded in the “grounded-theory” tradi-
tion, with the objective of discovering a sufficiently gen-
eral substantive theory based on a multitude of diverse
facts and accounting for much of the relevant behav-
ior (Glaser and Strauss 1967, p. 244). Both systematic
and fortuitous procedures were used at the early stage to
discover relevant data. A systematic search ensued for
data that confirm and elaborate prior observations with a
back-and-forth movement between data and theory. For
example, after early analyses suggested the utility of the
concepts of ambiguity and fragmentation, I looked for
additional data that clarified their role in the innovation
process, and I then revisited that role from different the-
oretical angles.
The scope of the analysis encompasses both the origin
and diffusion of the innovation in a multilevel frame-
work. In consideration of the well-documented need for
multilevel accounts of the relational drivers of innovation
and creativity (e.g., Cattani and Ferriani 2008), the anal-
ysis features three levels: individual creativity, peer net-
works, and the art field. The data collection began with
the key protagonists (Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque)
and inquired about the extent of their integration in the
art world through sales and exhibitions, as well as their
personalities, ideologies, and impact on the development
of Cubism. At the second stage, I identified the networks
to which these protagonists belonged and the connec-
tions to other peer networks related to Cubism. The third
stage encompassed the field, documenting the structural
changes in the system of art production and distribution
in that period. Consistent effort was directed at estab-
lishing the explanatory power that could be attributed
to each of these levels and to the self-reinforcing inter-
active cycles between them, which are characteristi-
cally present in radical innovation (Padgett and McLean
2006). The fourth stage was dedicated to process, exam-
ining the diffusion of Cubism over the studied period
by means such as individual and collective exhibitions,
manifestos, statements, stylistic changes, and participa-
tion in salons. Particular care was taken to establish
the speed and trajectory of diffusion, the extent of indi-
vidual and collective entrepreneurship, and the reac-
tion of the core to the Cubist challenge (i.e., resistance,
indifference, or co-optation). It is at this stage that the
limitations of existing accounts were highlighted and
the outlines of a new model emerged. I went back and
reconsidered previously collected data to obtain a higher
level of confidence in the validity of the new framework.
To make sure that alternative explanations are properly
accounted for, the principal findings were reassessed
within competing theoretical frameworks; for example,
the rapid diffusion is attributable to well-coordinated
collective action, to changes in the structure of the field
that facilitate wide adoption, or to self-interested strate-
gies of influential protagonists.
The rest of this paper unfolds as follows: The next
section presents the social structure of Cubism, includ-
ing the main artistic camps and their interaction. Then,
I document the critical developments in the art market
in early 20th-century Paris, followed by a discussion of
Picasso’s role in Cubism. The last section discusses the
conceptual implications of the way in which a radically
new aesthetic asserted itself.
The Essentials of Cubism
If many innovation studies confront issues of classifi-
cation in regard to the discontinuity of an innovation
(Dahlin and Behrens 2005), Cubism has the advan-
tage of a universally acknowledged breakthrough. The
rise of Cubism was a momentous paradigm shift, often
described as the most important and radical artistic
revolution since the Renaissance (e.g., Golding 1968).
It marked the culmination of a tendency of accelerat-
ing innovation and “contemporaneity” in art, with artists
coming to see themselves as lonely explorers of the
unknown, free of any obligations to the past (Ackerman
1969, p. 377). If the criterion of modernity in art lies
in the rejection of Renaissance representational princi-
ples, modern art dates from approximately 1850 with
the pioneering work of Gustave Courbet (Hodin 1967,
p. 181). It is with French romanticism that the concept
of an “avant-garde” ahead of and in opposition to the
culture of its time originated (Ackerman 1969, p. 375).
If those who first saw Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
could not agree on what it actually was, they all agreed
that it was strikingly different from anything they had
seen before. This incoherent and unfinished painting
marked the first systematic effort to capture the three-
dimensionality of the world by breaking up, analyzing,
and reassembling the objects into abstract forms, intro-
ducing distortions, multiple viewpoints, and ambiguous
spatial relations into visual representation (Antliff and
Leighten 2001, p. 10). The origin of the revolution
observed in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was not simply
in the work itself and the visual riddles that it posed—as
shocking as these were. It was in the process by which it
was produced—a sequence of problem stating and prob-
lem solving that defined picture making as a serial oper-
ation of problem reformulation (Baxandall 1985, p. 73).
Traditionally, the artist first worked out a finished design
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
6Organization Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–17, © 2013 INFORMS
and then carried it out; in Cubism, these phases were
interpenetrated (Baxandall 1985, p. 39) so that the artist
began to draw with only a vague idea of the endpoint.
Cubism was thus both a content innovation—as a new
visual style—and a process innovation, providing a new
method of creating pictures. Although the content was
what attracted attention at first, it was the method that
had the more lasting influence in art. As a set of tech-
niques and ideas about art production, Cubism provided
the “grammatical language” of modern art, with inno-
vation, search, and reformulation elevated to guiding
principles in a creative process where the final product
appears almost incidental (Berger 1989, p. 9).
It is generally believed that Cubism originated in a
joint effort by Braque and Picasso over 1907–1908. The
term “Cubism” was first applied by the critique Louis
Vauxcelles to a few landscapes by Braque in 1908,
commenting on his manner of reducing everything to
cubes. The next year, the same critic coined the expres-
sion bizarreries cubiques (“cubic eccentricities”), and
by 1911, the term Cubism was in wide use. Cubism is
remarkable for the speed with which it developed; crit-
ical changes took place over months or even weeks as
opposed to years or decades in older historical styles
(Fry 1966, p. 10). It became the dominant avant-garde
idiom in Paris as early as 1911, and by the outbreak
of the First World War, there were a large number of
Cubist painters. Cubist motifs were used in sculpture
and, to a lesser extent, in the applied arts and architec-
ture. Cubism was tremendously influential in the history
of modern art, playing a part in the technical and stylis-
tic experiments that constituted nearly all avant-garde
developments in art in the first half of the last century
(Cooper 1970, p. 12).
Notwithstanding the large body of research on
Cubism, its early period remains elusive. When Braque
and Picasso met in October 1907, Picasso was the more
renowned of the two. He had already acquired a reputa-
tion as an original artist, with works from his Rose and
Blue Periods purchased by important collectors (Golding
1968, p. 19). Despite his rising stock, he appeared
strangely averse to exhibiting his work in public. He had
not shown at an exhibition since 1902 and had never
submitted to any of the salons that showcased artistic
output (Barr 1946, p. 19). One could only see his work
in his studio; this is where he invited a few friends—
writers, art dealers, and artists—to see Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon. The painting perplexed the audience. No one
spoke well of it until a few years after its completion,
and almost no importance was attached to it until the
leader of the surrealists, André Breton, took it out of
hiding by reproducing it in his book La Révolution sur-
réaliste in 1925 (Andersen 2002, pp. 34–35).
That the “landmark” painting of modern art had meant
more to art historians than to Picasso’s contemporaries
is easier to understand in view of the structure of the
avant-garde, divided into two distinct, almost indepen-
dent camps, known as “salon” and “gallery” Cubists.
The former camp showed at the public salons, and the
latter preferred private galleries and abstained from par-
ticipation in public events. The gallery camp included
the relatively closed and self-contained Montmartre-
based circle of poets and collectors centered on the stu-
dios of Braque and Picasso, whereas the salon camp
included the circle of writers and artists associated with
the artist Henri Le Fauconnier and who were regular
exhibitors at the salons (Cottington 2004, p. 5). Phys-
ical and social distance separated the two—there was
only one artist with a foothold in both camps (Cooper
1970, p. 70). Cubism was thus the first art grouping to
be divided into different sectors (Cottington 2004, p. 4).
The Networks: The Two Wings of Cubism
Braque and Picasso developed a close working rela-
tionship apart from the rest of the artistic community
(Cox 2000, p. 55).3Picasso, having stopped exhibit-
ing in Paris years ago, was joined in his withdrawal by
Braque, whose last exhibition in the prewar period was
in 1909 (Cox 2000, p. 84). As a result, their paintings
were publicly accessible only at the tiny, little-known
gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who became their
exclusive dealer.
This peculiar behavior of public withdrawal was in
stark contrast to the practices of self-promotion in the
art market, which demanded consistent efforts at rais-
ing one’s own profile with whatever means possible
(Cottington 1998). The voluntary seclusion of the artists
was reflected in several linked developments—the lim-
ited visibility and impact of their work in the early period,
the lack of a tangible public response to it, the avoidance
of public statements explaining their pursuits, and their
emphatic refusal to be associated with the Cubist artists
exhibiting in the salons. During their years of collab-
oration, Picasso and Braque maintained resolute public
silence concerning their work, making no recorded state-
ments in the prewar period (Chipp 1984, p. 198). Their
remarks came decades later and were rare, fragmentary,
and occasionally contradictory (Rubin 1989b, p. 41).
In the absence of Picasso’s and Braque’s public state-
ments or public exhibitions in Paris, save for what
was shown at Kahnweiler’s gallery, there was no mea-
surable public reaction to their pursuits. A survey of
leading French newspapers in that period reveals very
few, scattered references to their work—an impres-
sion of invisibility confirmed by leading Cubist scholar
William Rubin.4Yet other forms of Cubism did elicit
a response from the public, directed toward the visi-
ble, salon Cubism. The nucleus of the group included
Jean Metzinger, Robert Delauney, Henri Le Fauconnier,
Albert Gleizes, and Fernand Léger, who recognized their
stylistic affinities at the Salon d’Automne in 1910 and
whose successful campaign to be allowed to exhibit
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as a group at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911
marked the official launch of the Cubist movement.
This group was soon joined by a number of artists,5
and by 1912, Cubism expanded and internationalized.
That year, the first exclusively Cubist exhibition was
held (“Section d’Or”), featuring 200 works by 30 artists.
However, as the number of self-styled adherents to
Cubism grew and groups with different ideas attached
themselves to the Parisian core, the semblance of unity
disappeared (Cooper 1970, p. 104). Delaunay was the
first to break away by forming his own small group
in 1912; Gleizes and Metzinger created another group
shortly thereafter.
A major conceptual schism opened in the Cubist com-
munity in 1912 over whether realism or abstraction
was the ultimate goal of Cubism, leading to the forma-
tion of another group headed by the principal champi-
ons of abstraction, the brothers Jacques Villon, Marcel
Duchamp, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon (Cooper 1970,
p. 105). The fragmentation of the Cubist camp moti-
vated the efforts of critics (most importantly, Guillaume
Apollinaire) to reconcile the differences between the fac-
tions and explain the unruly elements of Cubism as part
of a constructive movement, but these efforts proved in
vain; no coherent style had evolved by 1913 (Cooper
1970, p. 106), and the outbreak of the First World
War only served to precipitate the demise of the Cubist
movement.
Until 1914, the development of salon Cubism was
characterized by its quick diffusion in France and abroad,
considerable stylistic variation, persistent public confu-
sion over its nature, and seeming independence from
the Cubism of Braque and Picasso. The “bifurcation” of
Cubism into its salon and gallery camps was reflected in
the limited social contact and artistic exchange between
them. Golding notes (1968, p. 51) that the Cubist sec-
tion of the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 had little
to do with the work of Picasso and Braque—a conclu-
sion reinforced by the salon Cubists’ insistence on their
separateness from the two artists.6Indeed, salon Cubists
had not met Picasso personally nor had observed his
work during the formative period of Cubism from 1907
to 1911 (Chipp 1955, p. 71). It was only in 1911 that
they were exposed to his and to Braque’s work, but the
set of techniques that they experienced were refracted
through their own interests and were altered in funda-
mental ways (Cottington 2004, p. 63).7It seems that each
camp’s awareness of the existence of the other emerged
as late as 1910–1911 and was accompanied by mutual
wariness (Cottington 2004, p. 61).
As much network research suggests (e.g., Burt 1987,
2004), the structural schism created favorable condi-
tions for “brokerage” between camps, but—with two
exceptions—these opportunities were not exploited. The
first exception involved Metzinger, who used his early
affiliation with the gallery camp to assert himself as the
informal leader of the salon Cubists (Cottington 2004,
p. 61); the second involved Apollinaire, who was the
only person capable of moving freely within both camps,
characterized by Cooper (1970, p. 104) as the “perfect
fixer, most adept at glossing over irreconcilable differ-
ences.” Yet the differences in market orientation, buyers,
supporters, and aesthetic views proved too great to over-
come, even for an extraordinarily skilled and articulate
mediator such as Apollinaire.
This structural split and the refusal of gallery artists to
conceptualize or assert authority over the style (Cooper
1970, p. 108) reinforced ambiguity in the development
of Cubism. In the absence of a unifying figure or a the-
ory, the Cubist idiom was used by artists as a platform
for experimentation, rather than as a pathway toward a
collective style. The combination of an open and excit-
ing new artistic language, a fragmented avant-garde, and
decentralization helps explain how Cubism diffused so
rapidly. There is much to implicate the classic diffu-
sion S-curve (Burt 1987)—Cubism’s impact was imme-
diate and extensive, spreading to almost every part of
the Western world (Golding 1968 p. 29). From 1910 to
1914, many artists converted to Cubism (Golding 1968,
p. 183), but by 1912, some were already abandoning it
in pursuit of a distinct style (Golding 1968, pp. 34–35)
in a sequence of convergence and divergence, attach-
ing themselves to Cubism before departing in search
of distinct goals. A good example is Marc Chagall,
who, though opposed in spirit to Cubism, was briefly
involved in it, employing the technique in his depic-
tions of a world of fable, folklore, and fantasy (Cooper
1970, p. 131). Similarly, the Cubist language served as a
springboard for Piet Mondrian to cross from reality into
abstraction (Cooper 1970, p. 141).
As a result of Cubism’s decentralization, new ten-
dencies began arising from the outset, owing much to
the original language but soon giving rise to distinctly
new schools (Chipp 1955, p. 81). With artists adopt-
ing and adapting Cubist ideas, new movements between
1912 and 1914 assumed a very different character from
gallery Cubism, running the gamut from those seeking
to represent the movement, to others pursuing abstrac-
tion, to art of mockery and nihilism (Cooper 1970,
p. 102).8As a result, confusion reigned over the “true”
nature of Cubism, aggravated by Picasso’s and Braque’s
withdrawal that left the salon public and many critics
almost completely unaware of their existence (Chipp
1955, p. 63). To the Parisian public, Cubism was what
it saw and read about, and that was largely the work
of salon Cubists (Cooper 1970, p. 108) arousing intense
debates and establishing them as a distinct group in
the public mind (Chipp 1955, p. 68). The controversy
raised by Cubism in the salons and the press encour-
aged the artists to reply and try to systematize a move-
ment lacking a coherent set of formative principles. The
salon Cubists gave lectures, held discussions, and met
regularly with critics and writers (Chipp 1984, p. 194).
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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However, with the international diffusion of Cubism
and the proliferation of movements, the confusion grew;
not only the public but also the artists themselves were
puzzled, and as a result, critics and writers went to con-
siderable lengths from 1912 to 1913 to clarify what
Cubism was and to categorize its manifestations (Cooper
1970, p. 103).9This state of confusion was never to be
resolved, as attested by the critic Pierre Reverdy in 1917:
This confusion 6over Cubism7has now lasted long
enough 0 0 0 on all sides, there is the feeling of a need to
come together and understand one another better 0 0 0 it is
not only among the public, but among the artists them-
selves, that the ambiguity has existed from the start and
still, unfortunately, persists.
(Reverdy 1917, translated in Fry 1966, p. 143)10
The ambiguity of early Cubism has continued to frus-
trate art historians to this day. Cubist art proved remark-
ably diverse; different artists saw different things in it
and used it to different ends. It never congealed as a
coherent movement like impressionism did; it was never
a system or a clear style that artists could adopt as it
stood (Cooper and Tinterow 1984, p. 11). By encour-
aging differences in expression, it undermined the crys-
tallization of a common style. It satisfied a latent need
for expressive freedom, permitting artists to show real-
ity in any way they chose and giving them the equally
radical freedom for making art out of anything they
wanted (Wilson 1983). This novel aspect of Cubist
art is aptly captured in Olivier Hourcade’s words that
“the prime interest of Cubism is the absolute difference
between one painter and another” (Hourcade 1912, cited
by Cooper 1970, p. 97).11 It is with Cubism that artists
acquired the freedom to assert their differences in a way
that set them apart not only from other artists at large
but from adherents to the same style. Yet this presup-
poses that difference was perceived at the time as a valu-
able goal to pursue in art, in terms of both aesthetic and
monetary value. It is this major transformation that is
documented next.
The Field: The Art Market in Turn-of-the-
Century Paris
White and White (1965) argue that the success of the
impressionists had less to do with rejecting entrenched
aesthetic norms—had they only done that, they might
have remained obscure—than with how the artists
coupled the new aesthetic with the establishment of
a commercial and critical system to support their art.
Similarly, the market played a critical role in Cubism’s
emergence (Fitzgerald 1996). It is widely believed that
Cubism could not have been born elsewhere but in Paris;
no other city featured a comparable century-long his-
tory of outstanding artistic activity, a tradition of intel-
lectual freedom, great museums, and the opportunity to
live cheaply at the edge of society without suffering
the ostracism typical of more conservative countries
(Fry 1966, pp. 11–12). Early 20th-century Paris was
a dense artistic hub, luring artists from all corners of
the world.
The French art market underwent significant struc-
tural changes in the late 19th century. With the objec-
tive of promoting the development of a free market,
the state divested itself of the responsibility for running
the prestigious annual art salon. A series of measures
were introduced to allow a wider variety of artworks to
be produced for an increasingly diversified and expand-
ing bourgeois clientele (Orwicz 1991, p. 574). Several
independent art salons emerged (Salon des Indépen-
dants in 1884, the Société National in 1890, and Salon
d’Automne in 1903) whose liberal exhibition policies led
to a steep rise in the number of submissions. In the days
of state monopoly, the salon averaged 3,000 exhibits,
but by 1914, that number rose to 5,500. The number
of artists at the Salon des Indépendants rose from 150
to approximately 1,000 between 1896 and 1910; mean-
while, the number of exhibits reached 5,669, which was
too large for the available public buildings and required
the use of temporary structures (Bidou 1910). According
to the critic Pierre Tournier, the total number of exhibits
at all salons in Paris in 1910 was approximately 15,000
(Tournier 1910); Louis Vauxcelles estimated that number
to be 17,000 in 1911 (Vauxcelles 1911).12 To get an even
better sense of the intensity of competition, census data
indicate that the number of French describing themselves
as artists rose from 22,500 to 35,500 between 1872 and
1906 (Charle 1990, p. 237). That the market was over-
crowded and artists faced discouragingly long odds of
success was plain to see; as Vauxcelles (1911) observed,
the market was saturated, with only a tiny proportion of
works being bought by amateurs and not many more by
the state (pp. 443–444).
The saturation of the art market had several notable
consequences: the gradual shifting of its center of grav-
ity from the salons to galleries, the growing appetite for
speculation and risk, the proliferation of market niches,
and the vigorous pursuit of self-promotion. Under the
pressure of oversupply, the efficiency of the salon as a
sales outlet was reduced toward the end of the 19th cen-
tury (Cottington 1998, p. 19). The shrinking opportuni-
ties for career advancement in the salon-dominated art
world exerted pressure for the reorganization of the mar-
ket, with galleries appearing to cater to exotic tastes.
If there already was a network of private dealers in the
late 19th century (White and White 1965), those deal-
ing in contemporary art were too few to support the
avant-garde; the rise in their numbers and the emergence
of buyers targeting the work of nonacademic, experi-
mental artists occurred only in the decade after 1900
(Cottington 1998, p. 204).
The contemporary sector had a hierarchical structure,
with a few galleries (Durand-Ruel, Bernheim-Jeune, and
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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Petit) occupying the higher end of the market and
controlling a network of smaller galleries that showed
the work of unknown artists, edging up their prices
and handing them on to the major galleries that had
the means to build up stock (Cottington 1998, p. 43).
This “feeder” system allowed the major galleries to
control the lucrative part of the market, but it blunted
their incentives to take supply-side risks. Capitalizing
on the increasing demand for contemporary art, as a
result of economic growth and rising living standards
(Sorlin 1969), the galleries avoided risk by promoting
established rather than unknown artists. Demand-side
developments seemed to warrant this approach; although
the bourgeois clientele was becoming more receptive to
new art, it remained cautious, showing a preference for
works that did not stray far from the established norms
(Cottington 1998, p. 20). Consequently, most dealers
preferred to ride evolving tastes, providing their clients
with what they wanted but not guiding them into new
market segments (Assouline 1988). Their conservatism
resulted in the expansion of market opportunities for
those willing to take risks and explore the low end of
the market, the speculators or so-called dénicheurs.
“Dénicheurs” is a French word for amateurs discover-
ing rare objects. In the art domain, it applies to buyers
capable of ferreting out artworks of rising value over
time. This type of buyer emerged in Paris in the mid-
1890s. Such buyers were attracted by the rising prices of
impressionist paintings, which led to an increase in the
prices of postimpressionists (mostly Paul Cézanne) and
of the painters who were seen as their heirs (Cottington
1998, p. 44). This run-up in prices and the legitimacy
it conferred on new tendencies in art encouraged specu-
lative interests at the low end of the market—the work
of young, unknown, and experimental artists, ignored
by the leading dealers but of considerable interest to
dénicheurs with a newly acquired confidence that a care-
ful selection of contemporary works may yield a sizeable
premium only a few years later. The contraction of the
payoff period at a time of practically no inflation signifi-
cantly reduced the costs of investment in terms of work-
ing capital, making it attractive and feasible for amateurs
of art to capitalize financially on their discernment.
This tendency is best illustrated by an art-collecting
syndicate formed in 1904 to pursue investment oppor-
tunities in contemporary art. Its name, La Société
de la Peau de l’Ours (“The Bear-Skin Company”),
referred to Jean de la Fontaine’s fable about two hunters
selling the skin of a bear before trying to catch it (and
ultimately failing), signifying the clear understanding
(even pride) that the members had of the risks of their
investment strategy. The syndicate pooled an annual sum
of money from 14 members to purchase works by bud-
ding artists that would be sold at auction a decade later.
Strictly hewing to their original plan of how to disburse
the limited funds they disposed of, the syndicate, headed
by André Level, fulfilled their mission aptly, realizing a
profit at a March 1914 auction that amounted to approx-
imately 8% a year (Fitzgerald 1992, p. 77).
The commercial success of these bargain hunters is
remarkable for revealing several key developments in
the Parisian art market at the time. It demonstrated that
new, unproven art was valuable not only because it was
profitable or brought aesthetic pleasure but also because
of the opportunity it presented to exercise judgment of
merit in selecting among the multiple offerings in the
market. In other words, the art market was already suffi-
ciently developed and contained enough variety to make
individual selection tantamount in valuation. Hence, the
selection process was a function of the plurality and
fragmentation of the market, but on its turn, it reinforced
these by encouraging artists to differentiate themselves
in ways that made them visible and marketable. Differ-
ence, as opposed to belonging to a style or a group, was
becoming an asset of increasing value, as there emerged
an organizational system that supported the work of
marginal artists and enabled them to exist outside the
dominant art channels, the salons, and the leading gal-
leries. This alternative market space was constituted only
toward the end of the first decade of the 20th century
through the efforts of dénicheurs, who asserted their
individual aesthetic preferences by circumventing the
salons and the leading galleries and buying from the tiny
galleries showing new art or buying directly from the
artists. Thus, Level, buying on behalf of The Bear-Skin
Company, went directly to the studios in Montmartre
and by 1906 had his purchases focused on Picasso.
The support of the dénicheurs was critical in provid-
ing a modicum of stability to artists who deviated from
what was exhibited in the salons. The key figure in this
regard was that of the young dealer Kahnweiler, who
followed in the footsteps of successful dénicheurs by
buying directly from a few unknown artists, constantly
searching and choosing from among the thousands of
paintings on offer. Kahnweiler was inspired by Paul
Durand-Ruel’s success in promoting the impressionists
in the late 19th century: he bought what appealed to him
personally and imposed it on the public rather than pro-
vided what the public desired. Kahnweiler’s conviction
that an artist and a gallery did not need public approval
but only required a few loyal and reliable buyers that
would allow him to support the artist in the long run was
instrumental in the creation of the gallery Cubist camp.
His most notable innovation of offering his artists exclu-
sive contracts to buy their output at preset prices—a
practice unheard of in the cautious Parisian market—was
driven by his understanding that only by controlling their
full production could he shield them from the criticisms
of the hostile public and position them in the long run as
a counterweight to the dominant styles (Assouline 1988).
The success of this classic “niche” strategy reflected
the deepening fragmentation of the art market, which
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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fractured popular tastes, opened up resource space for
artistic experiments, and deflected public attention away
from them. The public withdrawal of Braque and Picasso
was thus enabled by the continual support of a few,
almost exclusively foreign, buyers13 who allowed them
to work independently of the opinions of critics and
the public, achieving some level of economic indepen-
dence (Chipp 1955, p. 39). Critics hostile to Cubism
found it hard to believe that, against a torrent of ridicule,
the number of Cubist works continued to rise rather
than diminish. Negative responses did not seem to curb
the avant-garde’s momentum, as the growing plurality
and market niches made it possible for the first time
for artists to dispense with public judgments altogether
and be self-sufficient within their chosen milieu (Charle
1990). This changing environment made radically new
art aesthetically and economically viable in ways that
were unavailable to artists even a few years earlier. As
Caves (2000, p. 42) remarks, “Picasso’s arrival on the
art scene was well-timed.”
Individual Creativity: The Role of Picasso
The question of Picasso’s role in the rise of Cubism is
deceivingly easy to answer. Over the last two decades,
art historians have become more skeptical of his preem-
inence in early Cubism, as attested to by studies assert-
ing the leading role of Braque in the formalization of
the language (e.g., Rubin 1989b) and the inappropriate-
ness of reducing salon Cubism to mere imitation (e.g.,
Cottington 1998). Picasso can be viewed as the origi-
nator of Cubism to the extent that he picked the right
problems to solve,14 with his idiom serving as a medium
in which these problems could be addressed by others
(Baxandall 1985, p. 72) and on account of his extraor-
dinary knack for experimentation, which served as the
trigger for the systemic “tipping” into abstract art.
Picasso is unique in his discontinuity (Berger 1989,
Cowling 2002), embodying to a rare extent the creativ-
ity of a “fractionalizer,” spinning off possibilities at a
prodigal speed (Collins 1998, p. 131). This contention
finds support in recent psychological research, which
articulates creativity as a constrained stochastic pro-
cess. Building on Campbell’s (1960) blind-variation and
selective-retention model, Simonton (2004, 2007) con-
tends that creativity requires the generation of “blind”
variants of an idea that are then selected for devel-
opment into the final product through trial and error.
These variants do not emerge de novo—most new ideas
are assumed to represent recombinations of past ideas,
drawing on a sample of creative ideas of oneself and
others. The sampled ideas are subjected to chance com-
binations, but the vast majority of variants tend to fall
into a well-defined range. Support for the model was
found in analyzing the sketches of Picasso’s Guernica,
revealing that progress toward the final outcome was a
sequence of nonmonotonic variants; whether these went
in the right or wrong direction can be ascribed to chance
(Simonton 2007). Picasso did not know exactly where
he was going, and he actively explored the range of pos-
sibilities before selecting the subset that would define
the completed project.15
This perspective on creativity as an unpredictable,
chaotic, even inefficient process (e.g., Eysenck 1993)
helps account for the early steps of Cubism and more
broadly, for the role that highly creative persons play at
historical “switch” points. Experimental research shows
that exceptional creativity is associated with such per-
sonality traits as associative richness, divergent think-
ing, defocused attention, and weak latent inhibition, and
it is enhanced by exposure to random, complex, and
incoherent stimuli (Peterson and Carson 2000, Wan
and Chiu 2002) of the type profusely found in the
bohemian den of Montmartre. Behind the cacophony
of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was a personality unusu-
ally comfortable with the stochastic search for possibil-
ities and the playful rehashing of popular themes. That
Picasso “stumbled” upon the foundations of a radically
new style of expression is not a new argument in art his-
tory (e.g., Berger 1989), but when put in the context of
relevant psychological and complexity research, it exem-
plifies the nonlinear dynamic of “deterministic chaos”
in which relatively minor, spontaneous perturbations of
salient preconditions act as the trigger for a wholesale
system transformation (Axelrod and Cohen 2000).
Determining Picasso’s role in the diffusion of Cubism,
however, necessitates a structural analysis. That Cubism
developed far from the core of the art world confirms the
established view that the periphery is a source of radi-
cal novelty (Phillips 2011).16 Picasso’s positioning, how-
ever, is poorly defined on a single dimension. Embedded
in a small coterie of friends and supporters, he occupied
a peripheral position, as defined in the classic network
terms of friendship and advice (or participation in exhi-
bitions). Yet he was not unknown; he had important sales
from his Rose and Blue Periods and was already seen
by many as a promising artist. Zuckerman and Sgourev
(2006) contend that “motivational” networks, based on
identification with a role model, are important sources
of status differentiation, independent of any physical
(friendship or advice) ties. Picasso’s reputation as an
adventurous artist and his commitment to artistic inde-
pendence made him central in the artistic motivational
networks—few were privileged to see his paintings in
his studio, but word of mouth by way of his friends, such
as Apollinaire, served to reinforce his artistic presence.
Picasso’s self-isolation has posed a persistent conun-
drum to scholars, as it contradicts the “entrepreneurial”
role typically associated with the originators of move-
ments (e.g., Becker 1984). Art historians tend to use
personality factors, his foreign status, and poor com-
mand of French as an explanation (e.g., Cooper 1970),
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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whereas more sociological accounts (Baxandall 1985,
Cottington 1998) see it as an ideological stance, with
opinions divided over whether it was intended. How-
ever, there is little disagreement that, as Cooper (1970,
p. 108) remarks, “Picasso’s aloofness made of him a
somewhat legendary and prestigious figure.” That his
withdrawal reinforced his appeal was already felt by
some of his more insightful contemporaries, such as
Vauxcelles, who observed in October 1912: “I am afraid
the mystery in which Picasso shrouds himself feeds his
own legend” (quoted in Cottington 2004, p. 17). Simi-
larly, André Salmon described the painter as a mystifier
(Salmon 1911).
His peculiar positional duality of being “visibly”
peripheral and “invisibly” central at the same time can be
seen as supporting the value in innovation of an interme-
diate structural position (Cattani and Ferriani 2008) com-
bining detachment, favorable to experimentation, and
credibility, facilitating diffusion. However, as Phillips
(2011) argues, the U-shaped relationship between cen-
trality and innovation would likely disappear when the
disconnectedness of innovators (the degree to which
one is distinctly disconnected from others in a system)
is taken into account. It is thus structurally possible
for actors to display both high centrality and high dis-
connectedness, given that a “disconnected” identity is
imputed by others to a legitimate but distinct other, with
it often emerging independently of whether the actor was
active in its construction. This suggests that disconnected
actors may be successful in innovation not because of the
specific actions that they undertake but because of the
favorable interpretation of these actions by members of
the audience.
This perspective is usefully applied to Picasso’s posi-
tional duality. He was preoccupied with artistic inde-
pendence and avoiding stylistic rigidity (Cowling 2002).
Maneuvering between insider and outsider roles permit-
ted him to protect his freedom of constraints and, in a
way, promoted his reputation as an innovator and pre-
vented him from sullying it in bickering over Cubism.
This double play is reminiscent of the behavioral pattern
of “multivocality” (Padgett and Ansell 1993), marked
by the combination of public and private motivations
and abstention from direct action. Similarly, Picasso’s
detachment and evasiveness enabled the protection of
creative independence in the face of constant efforts by
critics to identify a consistent pattern in his work (Berger
1989). The need to reconcile stylistic inconsistencies and
accommodate contradictory urges for creative freedom
and material success (Cooper 1970) placed him in an
indeterminate structural position. Once in this position,
success in achieving one’s ambiguous goals flows with-
out much tactical intervention or effort, marked by pub-
lic silence, obscure responses, and opportunism (Padgett
and Ansell 1993). From this angle, some contradic-
tions become easier to understand, as in his creating the
impression of being concerned only with things artistic
while pitting dealers against each other to extract the
best terms of sale (Cox 2000, p. 84). The shrewd posi-
tional play enabled him to be seen by the public as a
personification of the “agent provocateur” (Rubin 1989b,
p. 38), which is a principal reason why, in the chaotic
1930s art world, he was seen as the most credible orig-
inator of the style (Golding 1968, p. 17). Critically,
Picasso’s multivocality was not feigned but rooted in
profound aesthetic and behavioral contradictions, which
permitted him to act in a credible, “persistently incon-
stant” (Cowling 2002, p. 24) manner throughout his
protean career.
This reading echoes the contrarian views that
Picasso’s main contribution was less to the formal lan-
guage of Cubism and more as a model of daring, whose
radical, rambling explorations inspired artists with a
dominant conservative orientation, such as Braque, to
take uncharacteristic chances (Rubin 1989b). Similarly,
others contend that Cubism transformed Picasso and that
his success had little to do with his work or actions,
being the product of the idea of a freewheeling genius
that he provoked (Berger 1989). The modern art world
evolved in a way that reinforced the reputation of an
artist who never ceased to experiment, maintained his
distance, and stayed above the fray. The rich historical
texture of Cubism was thus reduced over time to his
towering presence by virtue of the high “aesthetic fit-
ness” (Richards 2004) of his work and philosophy to an
art world that increasingly came to value and demand
shock and innovation (Wartofsky 1993).
Discussion
Vincent van Gogh developed a strikingly new artistic
language but sold only one painting before his death
in 1890. Only two decades later, another foreigner in
Paris developed a strikingly new artistic language, which
brought him sales and acclaim. This paper documents
how, in a relatively short period of time, structural trans-
formations made it possible for radical experiments to
appear credible and for these artists to achieve the recog-
nition that so cruelly escaped their predecessor.
If there is ample evidence for the ability of core actors
to reshape technologies and fields or for the advance-
ment of peripheral ideas through collective action, this
study highlights the role of structural change in facil-
itating and conditioning these processes. The manner
in which Cubist experiments on the systemic margins
achieved prominence in the absence of a strong resource
base reveals not only that the periphery moved toward
the core by means of collective action but, crucially, that
the core also moved toward the periphery by becoming
more receptive to radical ideas. In this, fragmentation
processes proved essential by creating new, viable mar-
ket niches; by lowering the costs of experimentation; and
by reducing the ability of the core to prevent or control
disruptive innovation.
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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Paradigm shifts are typically portrayed as a product
of elaborate mobilization and framing strategies (e.g.,
Hargrave and Van de Ven 2006). The advancement from
the periphery to the core is aided by collective action
of assembling resources, building coalitions, developing
institutional infrastructures, and legitimating the innova-
tion within the prevalent order (Haveman and Rao 1997,
Rao et al. 2003). This framework can be usefully applied
to salon Cubism. The artists exhibiting at the chaotic
salons preferred to be recognized as one of a class,
preferably a class that could be discussed (Baxandall
1985, p. 56). The salon Cubists pursued tactics of self-
promotion that combined individual and collective goals.
These included obtaining a distinctive “group” profile at
the salons, staking out a unique position in the aesthetic
debate through articles and manifestoes, and securing a
public forum in the press (Cottington 1998, pp. 50–51).
These tactics were similar to those of the impressionists
decades earlier (see White and White 1965), campaign-
ing for the legitimacy of their group based on adherence
to a common style and trying to overcome their lack
of resources by rendering that style comprehensible and
acceptable to critics and the public at large.
At the same time, key developments in early Cubism
do not conform to this model. If impressionism diffused
slowly—the style appeared in approximately 1860 but
entered the artistic canon in the 1890s—the trajectory of
Cubism was different, with the new language diffusing
across Europe within a few years of the first experi-
ments, in the absence of strong market or public support.
As shown, artists were converging on Cubist ideas as
a launching pad for subsequent differentiation. Cubism
never constituted a coherent movement, anchored in a
self-referential gallery camp that only collaborated with
salon artists on exhibitions abroad, never in France. To
a degree unseen before, the originators of the style shied
away from, rather than sought, public attention.
Ambiguity and Fragmentation in Radical Innovation
These observations motivated the development of a con-
ceptual model that extends prior research by attributing a
more comprehensive role to structural preconditions for
the emergence and diffusion of radical innovation. The
substantive focus is on the impact of fragmentation—
the process of proliferation of groups or niches with
their own ideologies and the weakening of the conven-
tions that regulate collective behavior. The impact of
fragmentation was identified across three dimensions:
(a) creating opportunities for differentiation and col-
lective action, (b) enhancing ambiguity over dominant
solutions, and (c) reducing the capacity of the core to
resist and suppress ideas and practices originating in the
periphery. These developments are summarized below.
The increasing fragmentation of the art world in
early 20th-century Paris led to the appearance of market
niches for exotic art, with limited but sufficient economic
support to enable survival. By 1910, the network of
buyers and dealers in this art was dense enough to pro-
vide an alternative selling channel and exhibition space
to the salons and galleries (Cottington 1998). The role
of these niches in the rise of Cubism was critical, as
they nurtured the creative independence of Picasso and
Braque in complete disregard of the hostile public opin-
ion. The lack of visibility diverted attention and ridicule
away from them, making it possible to avoid the com-
promises that submissions to the salons and the need
to appeal to mainstream tastes inevitably asked for. As
the costs of experimentation were suddenly reduced and
dealers began to assume the risk of failure, the precon-
ditions were created for the pursuit of art that was not
simply different, but radically so.
At the same time, the proliferation of niches and the
multiplication of aesthetic positions that resulted from
it gave rise to an unprecedented level of ambiguity,
marked by a remarkable diversity of meanings, prac-
tices, ways of interpretation, and principles of evalua-
tion. The refusal of principal figures to assert authority
over the development of the style only served to rein-
force the confusion over what Cubism stood for. With
a growing taste for experimentation and no clear guide-
lines to follow, avant-garde artists adopted and then
adapted Cubist ideas in a sequence of convergence and
divergence that produced an unusually accelerated diffu-
sion rate. As a result, the conservative members of the
core faced for the first time a moving and poorly visi-
ble target; the rapid diffusion made it difficult for them
to keep up with developments and encouraged artists
toward ever more radical experiments that made the less
radical ones appear acceptable. The poor visibility of
experiments outside the salons markedly reduced the
ability of gatekeepers to control artistic production and
evaluation standards. These are important reasons why,
already by 1913, a large part of the elite was prepared
to accept, or at least not ridicule, radically new work
(Cottington 1998, p. 192).
The notion that radical innovation can be facilitated,
rather than impeded, by the lack of cohesion and clarity
relates to recent efforts to reassess the role of ambigu-
ity and fragmentation, such as Phillips’ (2011) exami-
nation of structural disconnectedness in innovation and
Lingo and O’Mahony’s (2010) analysis of ambiguity res-
olution in creative processes. Ambiguity is seen in the
latter as the key factor in collective creative projects—
an observation echoed in this study, which affirmed a
similar role for ambiguity to that in the emergence of
modern architecture (e.g., Engel 1967). It also lent sup-
port to Weick’s (1995) claim that the confusion created
by multiple meanings encourages creative reinvention,
as attested to by the proliferation of styles in Cubism.
Useful links also transpire to work on multivocality in
innovation (Padgett and McLean 2006) and heterogene-
ity in institutional change (e.g., Clemens and Cook 1999,
Kraatz and Moore 2002).
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
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Taken together, these studies suggest that the toolkit
applied in the study of innovation can be substantively
enriched by better incorporating the impact of fragmen-
tation and ambiguity. If past research has documented
the importance of framing new ideas and mobilizing
resources in their support, this study directs attention to
the origin and distribution of opportunities to do so. The
“net” significance of institutional entrepreneurship in the
success of radical ideas can only be established in con-
sideration of structural shifts in the costs and risks of
experimentation, shaping the ability of marginal actors
to challenge the core and of the core to resist those
challenges. This argument resonates with sociological
observations that structural transformations condition the
opportunity structure of actors, reinforcing incentives for
innovation or pushing them to innovate to maintain their
position (e.g., Kuran 1995, Lachmann 2000, Padgett and
McLean 2006).
The “Coevolution” of Actors, Networks, and Fields
A related question concerns the degree to which the
success of radical innovation can be explained through
coherent action and clear interests. A defining character-
istic of Cubism was that it was “not an organized move-
ment, but a current of tendencies, with multiple, often
contradicting personalities and groups pursuing parallel,
but not identical solutions to linked problems” (Cabanne
2000, p. 62). Art historians make clear that Cubism
emerged in a process irreducible to simple causal links
or a straight line; that line was “imprecise and tangled,
like a road that appears only when traveled and is vis-
ible only when traveled over many times” (Fry 1966,
p. 46). The analysis illustrated that paradigm shifts may
occur through the spontaneous convergence of diverse
interests, in a self-organizing process with an uncertain
endpoint (e.g., Kuran 1995). This is not to say that pro-
tagonists did not pursue clear goals but that these goals
did not congeal into a coherent collective project.
The “emergent” nature of Cubism’s rise attests to
a long-standing theme in technology and innovation
research that inventions should be viewed as a cumu-
lative synthesis of a relatively large number of steps
that cannot be prearranged (Constant 1980, Rosenberg
1983). Recent work describes radical innovation as a
product of “distributed” agency, emerging from pro-
cesses that differ from those which any actor initially
envisioned (Garud and Karnøe 2003) and unfolding
in a succession of small steps with partly unintended
consequences that stimulate unexpected turns (Djelic
and Quack 2007). This combination of stochastic and
deterministic processes illustrates aptly how genesis and
path dependence go hand-in-hand (Padgett and McLean
2006). The analysis contributes to this literature by
identifying conditions leading to emergent, rather than
designed, invention, where accelerating cultural and eco-
nomic changes encouraged “mindful deviations” and set
in motion the nonlinear coevolution of actors and fields,
defined by Garud and Karnøe (2001) as “path creation.”
A fragmenting art market altered the individual and col-
lective opportunity structures by stimulating experimen-
tation and differentiation that, in their turn, reinforced
fragmentation. It is when feedback loops of this type are
added or modified in the transformative process of struc-
tural reproduction that a system tips into a new trajectory
of evolution (Padgett and McLean 2006, p. 1468).
Generalizability and Limitations
The analysis does not imply that radical innovation
should always unfold in the way described but that the
developed model applies meaningfully beyond the focal
context. There are several reasons to expect that the
role attributed to fragmentation and ambiguity in radi-
cal innovation is not limited to art. First is the structural
nature of the process. If there is ample evidence for
the proliferation of market subsegments upon the intro-
duction of a new technology (e.g., Appel 1970), this
study highlighted the reverse process, where fragmen-
tation facilitates disruptive innovation. As the former is
well established across industries, including art and phi-
losophy (e.g., Collins 1998), there are good reasons to
expect the broad relevance of the reverse process too.
There has been much more emphasis in past research on
the cohesion than the fragmentation of fields, but there
is evidence that fragmentation shapes the opportunities
for collective action and facilitates the rapid diffusion
of new, unexpected combinations of existing ideas (e.g.,
Sgourev 2010). Second, if ambiguity and fragmentation
characterize the creative industries to a greater extent
than others, the growing competition, segmentation of
tastes, and uncertainty over dominant technologies in
more traditional industries recreate to a significant extent
the conditions featured here (Lampel et al. 2000). Third,
what was diffused in this case was not simply an artis-
tic style but a production technology, drawing parallels
to diffusion in more typical settings and reminiscent of
open source projects, where technologies are adopted
and adapted by communities of peers to serve both col-
lective goals of technological advancement and individ-
ual goals of differentiation and status achievement (e.g.,
Lakhani and von Hippel 2003).
In response to calls for multilevel analysis of innova-
tion (e.g., Cattani and Ferriani 2008), the rise of Cubism
was examined as a function of individual creativity, col-
lective action, and field change. This approach can be
applied to different types of innovation—technological,
strategic, or artistic. It proved useful in understanding
particular features of Cubism that have long bewildered
art scholars—for example, how structural processes
made it possible for Picasso to exert influence with little
direct intervention and public visibility. In this regard, it
is tempting to draw parallels between his reticence and
the mystical aura surrounding celebrated entrepreneurs,
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
14 Organization Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–17, © 2013 INFORMS
such as Steve Jobs, wielding immense influence over
the hi-tech universe despite his stated disregard for what
customers want. The extent to which this behavior con-
stitutes a distinct role in innovation or an alternative
model to traditional accounts of entrepreneurship, and
the conditions under which it can be sustained over
the long run, need to be addressed in future research.
This study serves as a reminder that innovative geniuses,
“hero” entrepreneurs, powerful movements, or a wide-
ranging social network are useful concepts, but they do
not exhaust the empirical richness of innovation cases.
The most important limitation of this work concerns
the role attributed to ambiguity and, specifically, the
relationship between content and field-level ambiguity.
The analysis asserted that fragmentation fostered ambi-
guity: the proliferation of ideologies and the lack of clear
standards, which reinforced the ambiguity of the Cubist
style. Content and field-level ambiguity were thus seen
as coevolving, with content ambiguity inviting diverging
interpretations and an incoherent movement preventing
the crystallization of a unitary Cubist style. However, the
precise role of field-level ambiguity in innovation can be
established only in settings where the level of content
ambiguity is consistently low or fluctuates to a degree
that permits the disentanglement of the two types of
ambiguity. Unfortunately, this is not possible to achieve
in a context where content ambiguity remains so consis-
tently high, as in 20th-century art.
Other possibilities for future research are given by the
need to establish how ambiguity in markets or fields
varies over time and its impact on different types of
innovation, inviting work in a more dynamic perspec-
tive. More attention also needs to be paid to the concep-
tual link between fragmentation and ambiguity: to what
extent is the increase in fragmentation accompanied by
an increase in the level of ambiguity? In terms of pro-
cess, a stronger connection must be established to diffu-
sion research, which tends to see these factors as more of
an obstacle than a facilitator of diffusion. However, the
latter is consistent with studies documenting cascades
of self-reinforcing support for initially unpopular ideas.
Centola et al. (2005) show that in fragmented fields,
where attention is limited to immediate others, unpopu-
lar norms can emerge locally and then spread out, with
actors lending support to what originated with a few
“pioneers” and was opposed by the vast majority. This
model can be used to explain the unusually quick accep-
tance of abstract expressionism (e.g., Jackson Pollock,
Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko) in the 1950s. Shar-
ing an attitude of isolation, these artists were preoc-
cupied with highly esoteric conceptual problems that
made their art difficult to understand even by critics;
despite a tepid public response, however, within a few
years, the public “suddenly and unexpectedly accepted
the new art on its own terms, whatever these were”
(Ackerman 1969, p. 374). There is a delicious irony
that the entrepreneurial salon Cubists remain relatively
forgotten by history while the gallery artists, refraining
from active involvement or conceptualization of their
work, changed so profoundly the trajectory to success.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Anca Metiu, Georgi Dimitrov, Damon
Phillips, Ezra Zuckerman, Simone Ferriani, Gino Cattani,
Wesley Sine, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments and suggestions. The responsibility for any inaccu-
racies in the text is solely his own.
Endnotes
1These were the reactions of, respectively, Henri Matisse,
Gertrude Stein, and André Derain. For a more detailed descrip-
tion of the painting’s reception, see Cowling (2002 p. 160).
2Methodological issues aside, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon
comes out on top in Galenson’s (2009) ranking of the most
important works of art, based on the number of reproductions
in art history textbooks.
3Braque’s words that the two were “like mountaineers roped
together” convey the sense of working in close collaboration
and harmony, to a degree that made some of their works in
that period very difficult to differentiate (Cooper 1970, p. 42).
4At a symposium on Cubism, Rubin (1989a, p. 47) asserted
that “looking in the newspapers for something that would
throw light on a public reaction to Braque and Picasso,
between, say 1909 and 1912, is an idle thing. One will find
occasional biographical snippets by Salmon and others, but
the idea of any serious journalistic confrontation with the pic-
tures is certainly problematic 0 0 0 0 In terms of the ‘public’
responding—there were certain artists, not too many, and the
occasional friend, that got into the studio, and there were a
handful of collectors and maybe a few non-buying amateurs
that occasionally dropped into Kahnweiler’s gallery and maybe
150 people saw the show at Uhde’s [an art dealer] 0 0 0 when you
put it all together you still have a very small number indeed,
and nothing that can be identified as a public.”
5The most notable of which are Roger de La Fresnaye, André
Lhote, Jean de Segonzac, Duchamp, Villon, Gustave Moreau,
Francis Picabia, Marie Laurencin, Alexander Archipenko,
Duchamp-Villon, and Juan Gris.
6The best example is the decision of Metzinger and Gleizes
(1912) to illustrate their book Du Cubisme with reproduc-
tions of Cubist works, including five each from Gleizes,
Metzinger, and Léger; one from Picasso; and none from
Braque. The selection reveals their sense of independence from
the “gallery” camp.
7Cottington (2004, p. 61) refutes the popular notion of the
“derivative” nature of “salon” Cubism: “Formal qualities that
were common to the paintings—fragmented, geometric forms
distributed evenly across the visual field, were close enough to
those that characterized the paintings of Picasso and Braque
two or three years earlier to have led generations of art histo-
rians to assume that the former were simply derivative of the
latter. It needs to be said that this is largely erroneous.”
8Orphism, Futurism, Rayonism, Vorticism, Suprematism,
Dadaism, and Purism are the principal trends.
9Notably, these include André Salmon’s La Jeune Peinture
Française and Gleizer’s and Metzinger’s Du Cubisme in 1912.
Paradoxically, Braque and Picasso were perhaps the only
artists who did not attempt to explain the movement (Chipp
1984, p. 194).
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Sgourev: How Paris Gave Rise to Cubism (and Picasso)
Organization Science, Articles in Advance, pp. 1–17, © 2013 INFORMS 15
10Originally appeared in the 1917 article “Sur le Cubisme,”
which first appeared in Nord-Sud (Paris) (March 15), pp. 5–7.
11Originally appeared in the Paris-Journal on October 23,
1912.
12See also Cottington (1998, p. 42).
13Assouline (1988, pp. 141 and 147) specifies the support-
ers of their early Cubist work as Sergeï Chtchoukine, Ivan
Morozoff, Hermann Rupf, Roger Dutilleul, Vincenc Kramár,
Wilhelm Uhde, and Gertrude Stein.
14The problems of pressing salience in the early 20th century
can be summarized as follows: (1) how to represent three-
dimensional objects on a two-dimensional canvas without cre-
ating a mere illusion of depth, (2) how to resolve the tension
between form and color, and (3) how to resolve the conflict
between fictive instantaneousness and sustained engagement.
In offering a moment of experience on the canvas, must the
painter acknowledge openly the fact that this is a record of sus-
tained perceptual and intellectual engagement with the object?
(Baxandall 1985, pp. 44–45).
15This is well illustrated by Picasso’s own words: “Variation
does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expres-
sion this only means that he has changed his manner of think-
ing and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be
for the worse” (quoted in Barr 1946, pp. 270–271).
16The position that Picasso’s isolation had a decisive role in
the emergence of Cubism is best represented by Cabanne’s
statement (2000, p. 31): “This rupture with the tradition of
the bourgeois Occident needed a stranger, an exile with-
out roots, no parents, almost no friends, a being resolutely
solitary, imprisoned in his anger and revolt, to carry it
through with such terrible violence and such contempt for its
consequences.”
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Stoyan V. Sgourev is a professor of management at ESSEC
Business School. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford Univer-
sity. His research interests include innovation and evaluation
practices in the cultural industries, in particular opera and the
art market, the rise of modernism in the early 20th century,
and the evolution of commercial capitalism in the 18th-century
Dutch Republic.
Copyright: INFORMS holds copyright to this Articles in Advance version, which is made available to subscribers. The file may not be
posted on any other website, including the author’s site. Please send any questions regarding this policy to permissions@informs.org.