A question about cubism.
C6H10N2O2
experiements with space and perspective that picasso and others were engaged
in. Nevertheless one thing still bugs me, perhaps someone can explain it to me.
I liked surrealism from the first time I saw it because it was imaginative but
retained a (sorry I don't know the proper terms for this) a composition that in
some ways remained realistic. Some paintings looked like you were taking a
photograph of a bizarre world. The textures and highlights, colors and edges
remained intact despite the bizarre things that were being shown.
The cusbist works I have seen were without exception very crude and unnatural
looking in the color choices. In may ways the color schemes looked like
something a child who is just learning about his crayon box would concoct. The
edges look sloppy and haphazard and the textures seem like experiments with the
textures of paint rather than an attempt to capture some vision or otherworldly
vision.
If the heart of cubism (my understanding) is the shattering of perspective, why
should these other aspects of the visual composition of a piece be altered.
Salvador Dali may have drawn limp watches, but they still retained many of the
visual cues that made them seem shiny, liquid, metallic, and in some sense
real. When I look at nude descending a staircase, I see many of the interesting
spacial anomolies that I am guessing that picasso wanted me to see, but I don't
see the the silky texture of the womans skin, the gleam in her eye, her hand
gripping the railing tightly, etc... Why did Picasso throw these things out?
She looks like lifeless carboard pieces captured in the fascinatingly
unravelling space of the picture?
Thanks
Direct replies to C6H1...@aol.com appreciated
Mboy103
It was Duchamp, not Picasso who painted "Nude ......" and
I think as in literature, there is something desirable in being ambiguous about
your subject. You have assumed it is a woman. Is that a valid assumption? If
I in my turn see it as a man, due to my projecting, we are experiencing the
image differently. Therefore, we engage in and can participate in the image
on a personal level. It invites us to project. Just a thought.
Bob C
>
> If the heart of cubism (my understanding) is the shattering of perspective, why
> should these other aspects of the visual composition of a piece be altered.
> Salvador Dali may have drawn limp watches, but they still retained many of the
> visual cues that made them seem shiny, liquid, metallic, and in some sense
> real. When I look at nude descending a staircase, I see many of the interesting
> spacial anomolies that I am guessing that picasso wanted me to see, but I don't
> see the the silky texture of the womans skin, the gleam in her eye, her hand
> gripping the railing tightly, etc... Why did Picasso throw these things out?
Duchamp, not Picasso. Ok, now that we've got that over with...
In the traditional painting of a person descending a staircase, the
person would be depicted frozen in time but with their weight
distributed in such a manner so that we know they are in the act of
descending. When was the last time you actually saw a person frozen in
time? Why did the traditional artist throw out the concept of time?
Why does a painting have to show you the texture of a womans skin or the
gleam in her eye? Don't you already know what those things look like?
When you look at the painting of the nude descending the staircase, are
you capable of imagining a real person descending a real staircase, or
does your imagination limit you to only imagining a set of abstract
planes positioned on an abstract staircase? If you can imagine the real
person on the real staircase, are they any more or less real because of
the way they have been depicted in the painting in front of you? Isn't
it possible that the Duchamp nude actually opens up more possibilities
for the imagination then the traditional one would have?
It seems to you that it is important that images accurately depict the
relationships of colors, values, size, shape, and location as seen from
a single viewpoint at a single instant in time, or that they at least
appear to be distortions of such an accurate depiction. You consider
this to be more "realistic" than other modes of representation. But are
those relationships the things which are really first and foremost in
your mind when you experience the real world?
Which is the more realistic depiction of a scene - one which shows the
details in the same way you would have seem them if you were there, one
which makes you feel the same way you would have felt if you were there,
or one which makes you understand how the artist felt when the artist
was actually there? Since the artist is the only one who was ever really
at the scene, isn't the latter the most "realistic" and the others
clearly artificial?
Why should the surface of a painting have to relate to some other
real-life scene anyway? Isn't the surface itself a part of real life?
Just a few questions for you to think about. Hope you like them!
- Bob C.
Rhiannon
>Why does a painting have to show you the texture of a
womans skin or the
>gleam in her eye? Don't you already know what those things
look like?
I agree. I feel the objective of many painters is to
encourage us to see the less obvious. To focus on the
elements one would not normally see. As for the woman being
frozen in time it is not difficult to understand that this
is precisely how the artist might have seen her. Capturing
that one solitary moment as he saw her at her perfect best.
Even in real life we are sometimes caught in those moments
without realizing it.
>Isn't it possible that the Duchamp nude actually opens up
more possibilities
>for the imagination then the traditional one would have?
Absolutely. I have never cared much for abstraction,
especially Piccaso as mentioned in another post, but I do
appreciate that both artists were trying to stimulate the
imagination and expose us to the possibility of seeing the
unseen.
>It seems to you that it is important that images accurately
depict the
>relationships of colors, values, size, shape, and location
as seen from
>a single viewpoint at a single instant in time, or that
they at least
>appear to be distortions of such an accurate depiction. You
consider
>this to be more "realistic" than other modes of
representation. But are
>those relationships the things which are really first and
foremost in
>your mind when you experience the real world?
A good example is water. The blue-green of tropical waters
can be amazingly beautiful but pour water into a glass and
it is transparent. Or how the view across pavement on a
sorchingly hot day turns the scenery into liquid, shimmering
and dancing before our eyes.
Or the black patches on hot asphalt that looks wet from a
distance but is actually bone dry once you reach it.
Perception, deception, perspective, all of it can and is
altered to some degree even in nature.
>Just a few questions for you to think about. Hope you like
them!
>- Bob C.
I think you ask good questions. However I do respect that
every individual does not appreciate all art in the same
way. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but you raise
several issues well worth considering and discussing.
Cheers!
MAngel1234
shape and color and texture were all important. picasso particularly made a
point to distort his works through shape, texture, color,and geometry-not just
cubist-but through all of the periods.
colors represent mood-as do texture-not for any sake of reality but for
emotional reaction.
when the reaction is of confusion, rage, hatred, sorrow, love, emptiness,
etc.-picasso is succesful because few other artists were depicting these things
so transcendantly.
many reacted the same to warhol's sensationalism-seeing "real life" in such
obscure ways as the marillyn's and soup cans over and over-repeated in
flourescent counter-culturalism to the point that the fixation was finally made
norm.
i think it is difficult to match dali in with a discussion on cubism-for he was
never a self-intended politician of the canvas. he wanted people to see what he
saw, and was -i think it is fair to say-elected his position as leader to the
surreal movement. in his self-proclaimed interviews he said thus-that he was
horrified to be held so high in the "frightening politics of france" in that
era-but it is what inevitably marked his work i think-as dreamscaped
succesfully planted on the canvas...or the pop-art lobster telephone for that
matter.
dali represented the strength and super reality and sheer weight of the dream
state-reality does tie in for this to take place-the boulder-esque heads
resting upon tiny twigs-super-consciousness in dreamt states of being.
perhaps cubism and dali's form of surrealism were two opposite ends of the same
pole-
for me the difference is that so much choice reasoned into picasso's work-he
disfigured, mutilated, disfunctioned, and restructured purely out of choice,
where i believe that dali painted and drew and created his essence as he could
deliver upon personal quests-the manifestation of "choice" never seems to enter
in to his work-
picasso could draw a perfect landscape-a rose, a woman, man, horses, anything
collected from his early days, but dali always had a strong-inseparable style
attached to his images.
another interesting barrier-cubism exists solely in structure and form-it is of
necessity to it's style-but dali's outstanding images of surreealism tend to be
more eerily formless in many instances-not so much the persistence of memory
clock but moreso in the dreadful human landscapes and desert stretches so
detailed with secondary visual structures one felt lost and that he/she could
wander in the image for days.
such as reflections that appear identical to their originals, but in the
ripples of water become something horrid or simply different,
or floral arrangements with insects that represented freedom from rebellion to
his spanish culture.
such things that <worked> into his dreamy realms with such detail-they were
real-like the skin on a lady and the gleam of an eye-
but totally unbreakable from his style.
Mange...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/dbrecs/sp.html
visual arts, graphical art topics
MAngel1234
i like the new comments made-many good points.
i personally love abstract that really drives an emotional purpose and up to
imaginative super-realism.
i thought of something interesting with the points raised about water in the
last post.
imagine the surface of slightly transluscent water surfaces becoming the "skin"
or dressing of substance for other forms-like a dali-esque form or shape.
just a thought:)
Bob C
>
> I think you ask good questions. However I do respect that
> every individual does not appreciate all art in the same
Absolutely.
I once read an analytical discussion of art which tried to demonstrate
that art objects first establish certain patterns and meet certain
expectations, and then become art because of the ways in which they
deviate from those patterns and expectations. If you don't recognize the
patterns or have the expectations appropriate for a particular style,
then the work will look crude, the variations will not be discerned, and
it will not appear to be art.
"Taste" is basically the set of expectations which we bring to the art
experience.
Developing "tastes" takes time, desire, and effort, and we all choose
for ourselves where to best expend that effort (this is where experts
and critics become extremely useful since they can help us make that
choice most efficiently). Just because someone has a taste for something
doesn't make that thing "good" and having not acquired a taste for
something is not a deficiency but simply a personal choice.
There are elements of quality which can be discussed independently of
taste, but sometimes it can be very difficult to avoid confusing one
with the other and, in any case, the relevance of those elements will
not be independent of taste.
> ... but you raise
> several issues well worth considering and discussing.
> Cheers!
Thanks. BTW: are you the Rhiannon from riskybus? Just curious. Want to
guess what my handle on rb is?
- Bob C