I have to confess something: I never thought Picasso’s cubism was all that brilliant. It sort of reminds me of the kinds of things a 6-year-old does with magic markers, and a parent sticks up on the refrigerator with a magnet. Speaking of “refrigerator art”, anyway, this is delightful: a father with some experience at photoshop re-renders his 6-year-old’s cubist masterpieces:
(From: Sad And Useless where there are more)
That is all a bit nightmarish.
chigau@#1:
That is all a bit nightmarish.
That big smile means 2-dimensional ele-thing has plans to crush you.
No comment on the cubism (when it comes to art, I’m a philistine), but the bicycle drawing reminds me of this: https://www.behance.net/gallery/35437979/Velocipedia
Those are great! I’m afraid cubism never appealed to me, a dangerous stance for an artist who wants to make money now and then. Everyone is supposed to worship the amazing cubism!
Caine@#4:
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only person who’s not blown away by the cleverness of cubism. (I will note that Picasso allegedly experimented with hashish and opium…) It always struck me as the kind of thing an artist might come up with when they were really really fucked up.
John Morales@#3:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/35437979/Velocipedia
Fascinating!! I spent a lot of time fixing bicycles and when I saw that I immediately saw something was wrong but it took a second to figure it out. And it wasn’t till I read the caption that I found out there was more wrong. What a clever idea and how beautifully realized and photographed!
Cubism is so-o-o 20th century. Embrace the 21st centuries newest artistic tendency: abstract insurrectionism.
Suffice it to say that Picasso, for one, would not have taken “something a 6-year-old does with magic markers” as the insult you intend. Cubism, art in general, for Picasso, was about “unseeing” that is, moving away from the conventions of illusionism toward abstraction, accepting the basic fact that splotches of color on a flat surface is the object entire, and the urge to compare it with “the real world” is in a way an inability to see. History is contingent, and we take it for granted that art history has gone the way it has. But it required really fearless innovation to move beyond pictorial conventions and traditional European elite standards of what could be considered beautiful, or indeed “art” at all. No accounting for taste, and I’m not saying anyone should like it. But I think one should admit that cubism was not a prankster’s fancy or an attention-getting gimmick; it is revered as a movement because the style and the notoriety of its practitioners opened a gate that the Surrealists and Dadaists proceeded to throw down and hang on a wall, and all the wonder and glory of 20th century visual art follows directly on those subversions.
CJO@#8:
Thanks for that.
I admit I’d more or less assumed it was an opiate-inspired move between mainstream art and dada. I didn’t realize it was the other way around! (I also thought it was inspired by “nude descending a staircase” which for reasons I cannot explain, I find entirely brilliant compared to cubism, which I don’t like for the same reasons)
Now I have to actually read some art history.
Love this Marcus!