Picasso Cubism Quotes

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

Every so often a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it. Picasso did it with cubism, then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. —Willem de Kooning

Cubism is a part of the daily life in Spain, it is in Spanish architecture. The architecture of other countries always follows the line of the landscape . . . but Spanish architecture always cuts the lines of the landscape.

It's like Picasso. Cubism.' Fi wrinkled her brow at the subject change but nodded at him to go on. 'That's what it feels like. Someone took reality, pulled it in all directions, cut the stretched out bits into pieces, and then glued everything back together in the wrong places.

Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and, above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso -- who subsequently kept African art objects in his studio until his death. Cubism was new only for Europeans, for it was partly inspired by specific pieces of African art, some of them from the Pende and Songye peoples, who live in the basin of the Kasai River, one of the Congo's major tributaries. It was easy to see the distinctive brilliance that so entranced Picasso and his colleagues at their first encounter with this art at an exhibit in Paris in 1907. In these central African sculptures some body parts are exaggerated, some shrunken; eyes project, cheeks sink, mouths disappear, torsos become elongated; eye sockets expand to cover almost the entire face; the human face and figure are broken apart and formed again in new ways and proportions that had previously lain beyond sight of traditional European realism. The art sprang from cultures that had, among other things, a looser sense than Islam or Christianity of the boundaries between our world and the next, as well as those between the world of humans and the world of beasts. Among the Bolia people of the Congo, for example, a king was chosen by a council of elders; by ancestors, who appeared to him in a dream; and finally by wild animals, who signaled their assent by roaring during a night when the royal candidate was left at a particular spot in the rain forest. Perhaps it was the fluidity of these boundaries that granted central Africa's artists a freedom those in Europe had not yet discovered.

But it was the work in a hall devoted to Picasso, from his harlequins to Cubism, that pierced me the most. His brutal confidence took my breath away.

He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with bird-like grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your Cubism era. Cool.

It is Boden’s third form of creativity that is the more mysterious and elusive, and that is transformational creativity. This describes those rare moments that are complete game changers. Every art form has these gear shifts. Think of Picasso and Cubism, Schoenberg and atonality, Joyce and modernism. They are like phase changes, when water suddenly goes from a liquid to a gas.

In the following year my father took us on a rare excursion to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. My parents worked very hard, and taking four children on a bus to Philadelphia was exhausting and expensive. It was the only such outing we made as a family, marking the first time I came face-to-face with art. I felt a sense of physical identification with the long, languorous Modiglianis; was moved by the elegantly still subjects of Sargent and Thomas Eakins; dazzled by the light that emanated from the Impressionists. But it was the work in a hall devoted to Picasso, from his harlequins to Cubism, that pierced me the most. His brutal confidence took my breath away. My

Like Picasso and Braque, Mondrian explored the influential ideas of Paul Cézanne, who greatly influenced the analytic Cubists with his idea that all natural forms can be reduced to three figural primitives: the cube, the cone, and the sphere (Loran 2006; Kandel 2014). Mondrian recognized the plastic elements in analytic Cubism, and he began to echo the Cubists’ use of geometric shapes and interlocking planes. He reduced a specific object, such as a tree, to a few lines and then connected those lines to the surrounding space (fig. 6.4), thus entangling the branches of the tree with its surroundings. Yet whereas Cubist works played with simple shapes in a complex arena of shattered space, Mondrian’s art became more reductionist. He distilled figures to their most elemental forms, eliminating altogether the sense of perspective.

FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL He loved her from the time he was a child until the time he accompanied her to the cemetery; he loved her in his memories as well. That is what made him feel that fidelity deserved pride of place among the virtues: fidelity gave a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions. Franz often spoke about his mother to Sabina, perhaps even with a certain unconscious ulterior motive: he assumed that Sabina would be charmed by his ability to be faithful, that it would win her over. What he did not know was that Sabina was charmed more by betrayal than by fidelity. The word fidelity reminded her of her father, a small-town puritan, who spent his Sundays painting away at canvases of woodland sunsets and roses in vases. Thanks to him, she started drawing as a child. When she was fourteen, she fell in love with a boy her age. Her father was so frightened that he would not let her out of the house by herself for a year. One day, he showed her some Picasso reproductions and made fun of them. If she couldn't love her fourteen-year-old schoolboy, she could at least love cubism. After completing school, she went off to Prague with the euphoric feeling that now at last she could betray her home. Betrayal. From tender youth, we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offense imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking ranks. Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown. Though a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, she was not allowed to paint like Picasso. It was the period when so-called socialist realism was prescribed and the school manufactured Portraits of Communist statesmen. Her longing to betray her father remained unsatisfied: Communism was merely another father, a father equally strict and limited, a father who forbade her love (the times were puritanical) and Picasso, too. And if she married a second-rate actor, it was only because he had a reputation for being eccentric and was unacceptable to both fathers. Then her mother died. The day following her return to Prague from the funeral, she received a telegram saying that her father had taken his life out of grief. Suddenly she felt pangs of conscience: Was it really so terrible that her father had painted vases filled with roses and hated Picasso? Was it really so reprehensible that he was afraid of his fourteen-year-old daughter's coming home pregnant? Was it really so laughable that he could not go on living without his wife? And again she felt a longing to betray: betray her own betrayal. She announced to her husband (whom she now considered a difficult drunk rather than an eccentric) that she was leaving him. But if we betray B., for whom we betrayed A., it does not necessarily follow that we have placated A. The life of a divorcee-painter did not in the least resemble the life of the parents she had betrayed. The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal.

I want to reach for her, to feel the comfort of her unfamiliar touch. But I don’t. I just watch. “He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with birdlike grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your cubism era. Cool.

He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with birdlike grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your cubism era. Cool.

Useless Effort Well Spent A topic that often comes up among seekers is the question of effort versus non-effort on the spiritual path (or no-path). Great teachers are divided on this. Some prescribe maximum effort in spiritual matters. Others say there is nothing to be done, that you are already That which you seek. Those who advocate effort admit their own realizations did not come as a result of their efforts. Those who say there is nothing to be done have usually realized this truth after diligent inquiry and meditation. What's a seeker to do (or not-do)? In thinking about this we might first inquire if effort and action are the same. Experience tells us no. Enjoyable activity often feels effortless, and doing nothing is sometimes difficult. Effort appears to be more a state of mind, a description of the way we do or not-do, not the what—more to do with thoughts about an action than the thing itself. Experience also tells us that when these thoughts of effort are absent—whether from activities or meditation—things generally go better. Which leaves the question of action versus non-action in spiritual matters. Should I practice meditation, read books, attend meetings, find teachers... or not? To do, or not to do? ... it may be that in the end Self-realization is all a matter of destiny, yet it does appear that yearning and intent might play a role. Again, observation teaches us that it's in the area of one's greatest interest and activity that providence is most visible—that opportunities materialize, coincidences occur, revelation happens. Einstein had no epiphanies about cubism. Picasso none about math. Which brings us back to the koan: "To do, or not to do?" The answer, I suppose, is "Yes." Act tirelessly without effort. Do nothing without being idle. Live life on the pinpoint of paradox and leave the rest to God. Advaita is right. You are already That which you seek, and there is nothing you can do to cause Self-realization. Hold this truth close as you effortlessly seek Self-realization with everything you've got, and Grace may befall you.

When Picasso painted his first cubist picture, he was twenty-six: all over the world several other painters of his generation joined up and followed him. If a sixty-year-old had rushed to imitate him by doing cubism at the time, he would have seemed (and rightly so) grotesque. For a young person's freedom and an old person's freedom are separate continents. "Young, you are strong in company; old, in solitude," wrote Goethe (the old Goethe) in an epigram. Indeed, when young people set about attacking acknowledged ideas, established forms, they like to do it in bands; when Derain and Matisse, at the start of the past century, spent long weeks together on the beaches of Collioure, they were painting pictures that looked alike, were marked by the same Fauve aesthetic; yet neither thought of himself as the epigone of the other—and indeed, neither was. In cheerful solidarity the surrealists saluted the 1924 death of Anatole France with a memorably foolish obituary pamphlet: "Cadaver, we do not like your brethren!" wrote poet Paul Eluard, age twenty-nine. "With Anatole France, a bit of human servility departs the world. Let there be rejoicing the day we bury guile, traditionalism, patriotism, opportunism, skepticism, realism and heartlessness!" wrote André Breton, age twenty-eight. "May he who has just croaked… take his turn going up in smoke! Little is left of any man: it is still revolting to imagine about this one that he ever even existed!" wrote Louis Aragon, age twenty-seven. I think again of Cioran's words about the young and their need for "blood, shouting, turbulence"; but I hasten to add that those young poets pissing on the corpse of a great novelist were nonetheless real poets, admirable poets; their genius and their foolishness sprang from the same source. They were violently (lyrically) aggressive toward the past and with the same (lyrical) violence were devoted to the future, of which they considered themselves the legal executors and which they knew would bless their joyous collective urine. Then comes the moment when Picasso is old. He is alone, abandoned by his crowd, and abandoned as well by the history of painting, which in the meantime had gone in a different direction. With no regrets, with a hedonistic delight (his painting had never brimmed with such good humor), he settles into the house of his art, knowing that the New is to be found not only up ahead on the great highway, but also to the left, the right, above, below, behind, in every possible direction from the inimitable world that is his alone (for no one will imitate him: the young imitate the young; the old do not imitate the old).

After all, they were not Cubists. Because Cubism did not exist … all these fetishes were for the same thing. They were weapons. To help people not to be ruled by spirits anymore, to be independent. Tools. If you give spirits a shape, you break free from them. Spirits and the subconscious (in those days we weren’t yet talking about the subconscious much) and emotion—they’re all the same thing. I grasped why I was a painter. All alone in that museum, surrounded by masks, Red Indian dolls, dummies covered with dust. The ‘Demoiselles’ must have come that day: not at all because of their forms, no; but because it was my first exorcizing picture—that’s the point. “And that’s why later on I also painted pictures like the ones I had painted earlier on—Olga’s portrait, other portraits. You can’t be a witch-doctor all day long! How could you live? “That’s another thing that cut me off from Braque. He liked the Negroes, but as I’ve said because they were good sculpture. He was never just a little afraid of them. He was just not interested in exorcism. Because he never felt what I’ve called Everything, or life, or what shall I say—the World? Everything around us, everything that is not us: he never thought it hostile. Nor even strange: can you imagine that? He was always at home…. Still is, even now … he hasn’t the least notion of these things: he’s not superstitious.

But there were also men of far greater value who were drawn to Cubism, men whose language was paint or sculpture: among them Léger, Picabia, Delaunay, La Fresnaye, Le Fauconnier, Dufy for a while and Friesz, Lhote, Kisling, Herbin of the Bateau-Lavoir, Survage, Marcoussis, Diego Rivera, Mondrian, Archipenko, Brancusi, Lipchitz, and perhaps the most important of them all, the three brothers Jacques Villon, Duchamp-Villon, and Marcel Duchamp.

Nature morte à la chaise cannée,” in which he glued a piece of oilcloth that imitated chair-caning to an oval canvas; then over and around it he painted some ordinary café objects—a glass and a sliced lemon, severely analysed, a newspaper with the first three letters of Journal large and plain, a trompe-l’oeil pipe-stem. The result, which he framed with rope, is a bewildering array of different realities at a variety of levels, fused into a whole by some magic peculiar to Picasso: it is also the very first of all the collages and the forerunner of what the theorists, though neither Picasso nor Braque, were to call synthetic Cubism.

Others he never could persuade; his attempts to do so angered them, producing a flood of vituperation and acrimonious mockery. A witty Italian summed it up in a burlesque interview with Picasso, who is here supposed to be speaking: “In art, the mass of people no longer seek consolation and exaltation … but whatever is new, odd, original, extravagant, or scandalous. I myself, since Cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and critics with whatever bizarre extravagances passed through my head, and the less they understood the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, rebuses, and arabesques I became famous, famous very quickly. And for a painter fame means selling, making money, making a fortune, growing wealthy. So today, as you know, I am famous and I am rich. But when I am quite alone I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the ancient, splendid sense of the word. Giotto and Titian, Rembrandt and Goya, were true painters; I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and to the utmost of his powers has exploited the silliness, the vanity, and the stupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may seem; but it has the merit of being sincere.

It has been said that in the “Jeune fille à la mandoline” Picasso was getting the best of several worlds, and certainly he makes use both of immediate and of remote symbols in what even the most sullen and dogged opponents of Cubism confess to be a