User:SDRitchey777/RubikCubism

Rubik's Cubism An art term used to describe the folk art as well as an advanced pointillist style art made using a standard Rubik’s Cube, a popular puzzle toy of the 1980’s. The earliest simple forms of the art probably occurred with independent “cubers” even in the first years after the cube became popular.

The earliest recorded artworks appear to have been created by Fred Holly, a legally blind man in his 60’s in the mid 1980’s. . These early pieces focus on geometrics and color patterns. There don’t appear to be other recorded art pieces until the mid-1990’s by a few cube aficionado’s involved in the puzzle and game industry. . Among these simple pieces are “BASIC” created by Jacob Davenport 1996, Andrew Plotkin’s 1997 “CubeScape”  and Kristin Looney’s 1998 “Test Pattern”.

These pieces render simple images and words with the cubes. Davenport notes that the first standard design sizes of the Wunderland Groups self-described "folk Art" used 104 cubes. The basic 3x3 Rubik’s Cube was pirated by a number of Game companies followed with 4x4 and 5x5 cubes. The Wonderland Group also created a few pieces with these larger cube sizes, although they appear to have remained in the category of pure geometrics. Among the most complex and artistically developed images from the Wunderland Group's 1996-2002 period are Alison Frane’s  "Halloween", and Paisleys and Todd Sudbrink "Green Apple". These early art cubers did not pursue the form to larger or more complex images.

The art form reached another level of development and maturity with the development of fully pointillist cube art pieces. The two primary artist practicing this form as of the date of this writing (June 2009) are Robbie Mackinnon of Toronto Canada and a street Artist who uses the alias "Space Invader' or "Invader". These artists appear to have developed independently of the Wunderland Group and also independent of from each other.  Robbie MacKinnon of Toronto Canada began his Cube art development while teaching English in China.  MacKinnon appears to have stepped up almost directly to full scale pop art pieces due to his art school background.  Street Artist “Space Invader’ takes his name from the early video game.  Space Invader's initial simplistic cube art forms evolved from his Simple Mosaic Tile "Invader" street art projects.  Even Invader's early Rubik's Cube Folk Art pieces (2005) mimic the early Wunderland images as they depict video game images (which Invader" knew from his apparent juvenile fascination with the Video games. ,,.

MacKinnon's art appears to have move more directly into the POP art phase, bypassing the Folk art images derived from vidoe game characters and images. Mackinnons work is also becoming commercially available and has been exhibited in at least one venue along with Pop artist Andy Warhol's work. .