Portraiture and Critical Reflections on Being by Euripides Altintzoglou

Author:Euripides Altintzoglou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Picasso’s and Braque’s Cubism

But where do Picasso and Braque stand in relation to cubism’s theorisation? In 1917 Pierre Reverdy collected and published twenty aphorisms that Braque used to note down in the margins of his drawings.90 In these, Braque expands the depreciation of the subject in figurative paintings, only to add that painting’s primary concerns are objective and formal, which deal with the “unity” and “lyricism” of the new techniques and aesthetic attitudes. Elements of Platonic aesthetics are reflected in Braque’s clarification of artistic aims as an attempt to “constitute… pictorial fact[s]” and not to “reconstitute… anecdotal facts”. In the same spirit, Braque agrees with Metzinger and Apollinaire’s dismissal of imitative creativity by adding that “[external] appearance is the result” and not the focus of imitation. In the last section of his aphorisms Braque adopts a ‘dualist voice’ in his view of the function of the senses as deformative as opposed to being a formative function of the mind. In his encouragement of work that aims at “perfect[ing] the mind” Braque claims, from a dualist position, that “there is no certainty except in what the mind conceives.” Braque’s dualist mistrust of the senses is further expressed in the concluding part of the collection where he is demanding a “containment” of emotions, further emphasised by his final aphorism: “I love the rule which corrects emotion.”

Picasso expressed his views on cubism in an interview with Marius de Zayas in 1923.91 What is easily discernible from the interview is that Picasso is somewhat critical of attempts to theorise cubism through mathematics (e.g., fourth dimension), of psychoanalytical (e.g., Freudian) literature, and so forth, mostly due to their focus on the process of research rather than on found disclosure. Accordingly, in order to emphasise the importance of action in painting over and above abstract intention, Picasso refers to a Spanish saying in which “facts” rather than “reasons” matter in love. Moreover, he defines art as a lie “that helps us realise truth”.92 By extension, then, artists should employ their skills to produce truthful lies. For Picasso, what makes artistic research on the lines of the new science problematic is its misleading “attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable”.93 In other words, one cannot paint, describe, or represent what has not been found yet or exists as a theoretical category; on the contrary, painting is the outcome of formal research into painting itself.

For Picasso, nature and art are antithetical. The only relationship between them that he accepts is based on the premise that “through art we express our conception of what nature is not.”94 Accordingly, Picasso redefines the work of great realists such as David and Ingres as autonomous artistic products and not as attempts to paint nature. In this, Picasso argues that the identity of categories such as “concrete” and “abstract” is inaccurate; such forms should be discussed as “more or less convincing lies” which are “necessary to our mental selves” since through them “we form our aesthetic point of view of life.”95 Towards the closing part of his comments Picasso touches upon the matter of stylistic variation.

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