Perpetual Ripplets: On Cubism

Yuko Otomo
January 2017

Celebrating Arteidolia’s 3 Year Anniversary
Yuko Otomo’s article from April 2014

Le Bateau Lavoir, Montmartre, Paris, 1904

 Part One

V.
Things break up into pieces.
Light & shadow join their company.

Here.

An apple’s sweetness
never gets called into question.
A pear’s form terminates.

VI.
Things fall into pieces.
Light & shadow escape from their world.

An apple’s sweetness
is now a thing of the past.
A pear’s form is
reborn as Essence

for the first time.

  – from Picasso Museum

When I first visited Musée Picasso in Paris, I wrote a 14 part poem on the history of his art. The period when he was involved in Cubism has always been my favorite phase of his ever-changing creative history; and the above parts “V” and “VI” of the poem are about his early adventures in Cubism.

The first human impulse or impetus to make a visual mark on the surface of things must definitely have been abstract. Lines and dots. Then, shapes appeared, combining lines and dots. Gradually, humans developed the skill to depict things eyes saw. As the development of the skill of re-presenting the images furthered, most abstract impulses became pattern-making mainly for decorating, directing or symbolizing things. As time went by, the representative quality of mark making became more and more polished for whatever need we might have. Soon, narrative elements and skills to tell a story or something started to develop and evolve. Humans kept themselves busy learning how to use representation to narrate things with their visual skills more & more throughout history. In the meantime, abstraction stayed with us for a long time as a parallel visual element, mainly as pattern-making, until the emergence of Modernism, which brought in another abstraction.

So, to think Modernism created abstraction for the first time in human art history is partially wrong since abstraction had been with us from the beginning of time and has never left us. At the same time, it is partially right. When Cubism ignited the unimaginable revolution in the development of human visual elements and psyches, the concept of abstraction resurfaced again, or I should say, for the first time in a serious sense as a visual art discourse, but this time, not as pattern-making but as a (visual) thought process. Up until Picasso and Braque broke the habitual mold of visual representation in art, east or west, north or south, humans had been busy polishing various skills of copying the reality our eyes saw in one way or another. Even the symbolic images and fantasies were based on the memories of our visual cognitions.

It is fascinating to think on why and what for this visual (r)evolution took place at the dawn of the 20th century. Fortunately, the well-preserved works resulting from an incredible collaborative challenge shared by Picasso and Braque give us a great chance to examine how. I started my Perpetual Ripplets by writing on Ad Reinhardt as the inaugural piece, and then went on to write about Malevich and will soon write on Italian Futurism.* Interestingly, all three subjects I’ve chosen so far for the column have one common thread. Cubism. They all went through it one way or the other.

Some think of Cubism as just a phase of one visual style in the history of art. But to my understanding, it is an adventurous breakthrough of human consciousness that changed humanity as a whole totally. For the first time, humans dealt with a new dimension of ideas and visions to go beyond our visual or intellectual cognition of the reality that we live in. Cubism forever liberated human consciousness from its habitually linear and mono-focus thinking. It encouraged an expansion of our minds. The effects of this new impulse went beyond the field of visual art, but to music, literature, dance and architecture. Here, for the first time, humans encountered the notion of abstraction as a creative thought process not as a pattern-making method. Humans opened the door to see the invisible and to hear the inaudible.

Whenever I visit Paris, I like to go to the top of Butte Montmartre where all the pioneering artists used to live and hang out. Now it’s a nest of thriving tourism, but I still love to walk around the area to be in touch with a sense of the past, although I am well aware of my cheap sentimentality. Bateau Lavior… Lapin Agile… Moulin de la Galette… I stand in a small square in front of what is now just a nameplate, but gone, Bateau Lavior, and I think of Picasso, Braque, Apollinaire and others who lived or frequented there…

Triggered by the collaborative discovery of Cubism by Picasso and Braque, the concept of (new) abstraction was ushered into the consciousness of humanity. Apollinaire championed it with a phrase calling it “a new ‘pure’ painting in which the subject is vacated.” Once it opened the door to a new creative thought process, Cubism’s influences never saw an end. Italian Futurism, Neo-Plasticism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Orphism, Dadaism and even Surrealism – Cubism one way or the other baptized them all. The most ironic and curious thing about it is the fact that the originators themselves turned their heads against it at the end of the journey that they themselves had started. Nevertheless, these various Modernism movements influenced by the concept of Cubism definitely changed humanity. The after-effects of the change are still vivid even in the 21st century, since history is an ever-moving massive flow with various elements intertwined intricately.

1906-1908. Only a few years of the back and forth practice between two artists involuntarily changed the entire human race over how we conceive our reality. Since this (r)evolutionary discovery took place almost a little over a century ago, we have never been the same.

Postscript 1:

* @ Guggenheim Museum, “Italian Futurism, 1909-1944”, Feb. 21- Sept. 21, 2014.

Postscript 2:

I do not like the terminology: Synthetic Cubism and Analytical Cubism used for the different phases of its development. I’d rather use “ the early” and “the late” instead.

Part Two

Picasso & Braque: Pioneering Cubism
@ MoMA Sept. 24 1989 – Jan. 16, 1990

“We were like mountain-climbers roped together.” – Braque

“Almost every evening, either I went to Braque’s studio or Braque came to mine, each one of us had to see what
the other had done during the day.” – Picasso

“We gave up Cubism because we loved painting.” – Braque

Witnessing discoveries and developments of Cubism created by Picasso and Braque gives me a perfect chance to think of what it means to search, when most artists of our time have stopped doing such endeavors. Whether it’s originated in Cezanne’s late work or combined with other elements, Cubism definitely opened its world via the adventure challenged by the two. This exhibition provides me with such a comprehensive and rare opportunity to do a chronological study on how the two kept moving, being obsessed with the new world they unintentionally opened.

It is quite overwhelming to observe the way Picasso and Braque kept creating works, exchanging their creative energy back and forth, and it is hard not to feel curious over the mysterious creative process of their adventure. My intuition tells me that the essential “ambiguity” of Braque’s will, out of nowhere, triggered the opening of the new world with no particular intentions, and Picasso with his clear, solid and strong will followed him to till the soil of this virgin land.

How interesting it is to realize that most of the great discoveries of any kind usually happen to be born out of some ordinary coincidences or accidents rather than out of the intentionally set frameworks of conscious and logical thinking! Something triggers something else, and then, this something else bears something unexpected that develops into something new… The reason that I use the expression an ambiguity of the will to describe Braque’s personality is not negatively motivated. This quality of the ambiguity of a will makes it possible for an artist to live in the zone between consciousness and sub-consciousness. Braque’s ambiguity of the will happened to give a push to the birth of Cubism because it made him able to reside in the gap between the two, rather than in the world of conscious logics alone. Yet, it was not easy for Braque himself to grasp the meaning of what happened. Picasso was strong willed and had a solid, logical personality. It is clear that Picasso was the one who understood the meanings of the new world that Braque had unintentionally opened.

I see an irony of one reality, observing all the works left by both artists in a chronological order. Picasso could not actualize what he understood as an idea in his act of painting; Braque managed to give birth to something he had no idea of as he painted. In other words, the concept of abstraction that Cubism consequently ushered into the world – and its evolution that helped the liberation of painting from the role of copying three dimensional reality – was born out of the unintentional ambiguity of Braque’s will. It’s interesting to realize that the genesis of Cubism originated in Cezanne’s late work that had the same phenomenal mechanism. For a thought process based on sensation *(*one of Cezanne’s favorite words!) to get connected to metaphysical thinking, away from the thought process based on conscious logics, this ironic reality of an ambiguity of will is needed. It allows a logical thought process to rest while the thought process based on sensation becomes the leading force. Such metaphysical thinking is only possible when the sense based thought process leads the logic based one.

Picasso’s will was too solid and positively strong to make this phenomenon happen in his own world. Being good at something does not always bring in good results. The quality Braque had – and Picasso didn’t have – caused this irony. It is evident that the flattening of the picture plane, resulting from the complete equalization of the tonal value system, took place only in Braque’s work. Cubism in Picasso’s painting ended up as “Cubistic depictions of the three dimensional world,” not Cubism with a concept of a new value system. In Braque’s work, light/darkness has perfectly equalized values and balance. Neither lightness (painted with light colors) nor darkness (painted with dark colors) pushes the other. None of them goes inward or outward. Usually, dark color pulls the energy inward as light color disperses itself outward. This probably happens through our habitual cognitive tendencies regarding light and shadow. Yet, in Braque’s, because of the ambiguity of his will, both outward and inward bound motions of light and dark colors cease to push each other, proving a perfectly equalized weight, intensity, direction and value of their inherited elements.

When you examine Picasso’s work, you can see his blind spot. His dark color never gets liberated from the role of shadow in three dimensional reality. Even in his work inspired by and based on Cezanne’s “Trees & Rocks’ – and in his still life work, the dark color always stays behind the light color. In other words, his dark color is never liberated from the conventional role of shadow as his light color keeps the role of light. This traps Picasso’s Cubist work in the three-dimensional elements, which they both are trying to break away from. On the contrary, Braque’s Cubism succeeds in achieving a new neutrality and equality of light and dark, and that eventually leads further into the concept of abstraction. No matter, Picasso could not create a genuine Cubist work because he was born with a positively strong willed personality.

It’s fascinating to give a thought as to why this unintentionally started new movement needed these two artists and why they created identical work, one after another, working in a parallel togetherness. Especially, it’s even more exciting to add a thought on the strength and weakness of both these personalities crisscrossing their virtues. Picasso is a smart painter; he would never miss what’s happening in front of him. Something Braque has in his painting but missing from Picasso’s is the liberation of the conventional roles of light and dark color. I am not sure if he was already aware of the flattening of the picture plane effect clearly, but I am quite sure Picasso must have been clearly aware of this phenomenal shift. The pace of their creation gets more and more intense, propelled by the eagerness of this “chase.” Picasso pushes harder and harder trying to prove the new element: the negation of the roles of light and dark in his work, but in vain. It is quite intense to see this phase of the search done by the two.

Braque caused a revolution to take place unintentionally out of the weakness of his personality. But was he aware of what had happened? Was he able to recognize the meanings of its results? I don’t think so. It seems to me that his understanding of Cubism never left the level of breaking the reality of the world into Cubistic shapes. Picasso was an extremely intelligent and highly alert artist. He would never have missed the new shift taking them to a completely unimaginable new terrain: the quality of two dimensions. Yet, he could never activate the shift in his world. A certain overly vigorous psychic touch you see in some of his work could be caused by the frustration of this struggle. If you observe their work in parallel chronologically, it is possible to see in which work this moment of “jump” from the old to the new terrain takes place.*

For the search of Cubism, the subject matter didn’t mean much. What to deconstruct and to analyze is not a problem here. It could be anything. A guitar; fruits; a table; trees, bodies, faces… any subject suitable for the sentiment of their time was sufficient enough for the experimentation to keep going. Collages in later Cubism took the same pattern of Picasso following Braque. The identical images of Basilique du Sacre Coeur by the two with different visual elements give us a perfect example of this ironic reality with clarity.

Soon the search came to an end, also unintentionally. And the two artists started to take different paths, totally separated from each other.

Postscript:

* I regret that I did not take detailed memos to prove this.

Oct. 24, 1989