Cubism is a style of art from the early 1900s. Painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque did not try to make people and objects look smooth and real from one angle. They showed them as geometric shapes — cubes, angles, flat planes — sometimes as if you were seeing more than one side at once. The name comes from French cubisme. One story is that in 1908, as a new canvas by Braque was carried past, someone said, "Encore des cubes! assez de cubisme!" — more cubes, enough cubism. Other people credit the painter Matisse, or the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who helped the word spread. You meet it in art class and in museums, not when you talk about measuring boxes.