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❝
What the Cubists had done was to create a new image of
reality,
influenced to some extent by the radical theories of the French philosopher
Henri Bergson. Rejecting any conception of painting as a kind of
window on the world', they broke decisively with the post-Renaissance
convention of depicting objects as if seen from a single viewpoint,
employing instead what Metzinger called 'mobile perspective' —
moving round objects, simultaneously recording not only different
images of the same object, but also the near and the far, the
seen and the remembered. The more radical also analysed, probed,
destroyed objects in order to reconstruct them, enhancing the
emphasis given to the surface plane of the picture while at the same time
progressively blurring the separation between the motif
(figure, object, etc.) and its environment.
❞
— From Peter Vergo's
Introduction to
Abstraction: Towards a New
Art: Painting
1910-20.
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❝
Compositionally, Violin and Palette
is a simple picture. A violin dominates the bottom
two-thirds of the canvas, sitting beneath some
sheet music that rests on a stand. Above that
is a painter's palette hanging from a nail
in the wall, to the side of which is a
green curtain. Braque has continued with
Cézanne's subdued palette of pale greens
and browns. Not this time, though, as an homage,
but out of necessity. He realized, as did Picasso,
that only by using a muted palette could he
successfully blend multiple viewpoints of the
same subject on a single canvas — a
variety of bright colours would be impossible
to configure for the artist and would present
us with an indecipherable mess. Instead, they
devised a technique where a straight line
would mark a change of view, while subtle
tonal shading would demonstrate to the viewer
that a transition was taking place. The added
benefit of this approach was an overall
design that was balanced and coherent.
❞
— Will
Gompertz,
What Are You Looking At?: 150
Years of Modern Art in the
Blink
of an
Eye.
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❝
They are metaphors of relativity and connection;
in them, the world is imagined as a network of
fleeting events, a twitching skin of nuances.
Fragments of lettering (BAL, MA JOLIE, a bar bill
reading 10.40, a musical clef) and clues to
real things (the strings and sound-hole of the
guitar in Braque's Portuguese❞
— Robert Hughes,
The Shock of the New: Art
and the Century of Change.
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BUT
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The quotes above state that
Cubism was intended to give more information
to the viewer than perspective does. However,
this may be a misunderstanding of the Cubists'
intentions, derived from mis-explanations
published at the time. Instead, Cubism
was exclusively concerned with unifying
the picture: "flattening" depicted
objects by reducing their shading and
colour, so that they merged into the
flatness of the canvas.
— Summarised from
Hal Foster,
Rosalind Krauss,
Yve-Alain Bois,
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh,
Art Since 1900.
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