Unpick the construction of a Cubist painting by identifying the recognizable elements such as facial features, limbs or inanimate objects, and ignoring for the moment the color of the paint in each section. Look at Picasso's 1912 painting "Bottle and Wine Glass on a Table." Find the outline and features of the table, bottle and glass, and see how the elements appear to be drawn from different angles, each superimposed on the other.
Discard your preconceptions of how each subject should look, and instead imagine the other elements in the painting being represented in the same way. Look at Braque's 1911 painting "Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Mantelpiece,", for example, and look for the mantelpiece, the fragments and symbols of the bottle and the clarinet. Braque disintegrates them all, looking at each from a different perspective and drawing just parts of them. Look for a part of the bottle label, the clarinet mouthpiece, the sharp lines of the mantelpiece.
Incorporate the influences of the time in your unpicking of the images. Arne Glimcher, the film producer behind the 2010 film "Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies," links the emergence of film at the turn of the 20th century to the emergence of Cubist art, recognizing in the art the movement, myriad viewpoints, perspectives and the passage of time within a film -- a huge departure from the classic artistic depiction of a captured moment.
Compare the analytic paintings, such as those referred to earlier, with the sculptures and collages that were representative of synthetic Cubism. Analytic Cubism deconstructs form and represents subjects as fragmented lines and areas of tonal variation, whereas synthetic Cubism brings in elements of the real world, using paper, textiles and paint to challenge the traditional idea of art as two-dimensional.