Please cite your favorite passages from The Moment of Cubism
You are encouraged to create a work which can take any form of your choice
Please cite your favorite passages from The Moment of Cubism
You are encouraged to create a work which can take any form of your choice
‘I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing
from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without
hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me
through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have
subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own
way out, heedless of the will that is within me.’
The new kind of suffering which was born in 1914 and has persisted in
Western Europe until the present day was an inverted suffering. Men
fought within themselves about the meaning of events, identity, hope.
Religious faith, even if nominally accepted, was irrelevant. The mean-
ing they sought had to relate to a possibility that could not be dismissed
or forgotten because it was being constantly demanded by the new,
existing means of production and communication and calculation — by
what people came to call technology: the possibility of a unified world.
In a Cubist picture the conclusion and the connexions are given. They are what the picture is made of. They are its content. The spectator has to find his place within this content whilst the complexity of the forms and the ‘discontinuity’ of the space remind him that his view from that place is bound to be only partial. (Form and Concept)
The artist becomes responsible not simply for the means of conveying a truth, but also for the truth itself. Painting ceases to be a branch of natural science and becomes a branch of the moral sciences. (The Theatre Stage)
“As long as constant contact with the outside world can sustain the ardor of my curiosity, and my hand remains the quick and faithful servant of my perception, I have nothing to fear from old age. I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature, and I desire no other fate than to have worked and lived in harmony with her rules. Beside her grandeur, her power, and her immortality, the human creature seems but a miserable atom.” – Monet
Monet’s quote on page 84 caught my attention because it’s a step towards gratitude which helps overcome apprehension amidst existential crises. With all our world’s issues, such as our growing population reaching Earth’s holding capacity, the refugee crisis, the Earth warming and water levels rising, the threat of nuclear war by world leaders on social media; the future is uncertain. However, when humans are gone, the Earth will go on and during this time, we can try our best to live as sustainably as we can afford, be curious and create as much as we can. In the end, we are nothing but miserable atoms.
“If the word revolution is used seriously and not merely as an epithet for this season’s novelties, it implies a process. No revolution is simply the result of personal originality. The maximum that such originality can achieve is madness: madness is revolutionary freedom confined to the self.” (Process and Originality)
“‘Le cubisme a-t-il rendu sensible l’espace abstrait `trois dimensions géometriques, ou rendu abstrait le sensible? Posons la question. Si le cubisme a rendu abstrait le sensible, il se rattache `l’esthétique platonicienne, dans des conditions historiques (conditions de classe) qui ont amenéune sorte d’hyper-intellectualisme dit “moderne”. Mais peutêtre le cubisme doit-il se caractériser par la coéxistence et le conflit de ces deux aspects, de ces deux interprétations. Il aurait `la fois et d’une façon contradictoire (donc instable) intellectualisé le sensible et sensibilisé l’abstrait.’” (Political Conflict)
“Man was the eye for which reality had been made visual: the clear objective eye, the focal point of Renaissance perspective. The human greatness of this eye lay in its ability to reflect and contain, like a mirror, what was.” (The Eye of Man)
“The difficulties were probably both intellectual and sentimental. The naturalist allusions seemed necessary in order to offer a measure for judging the transformation. If the subject could not be identified by a naturalistic clue, the picture became abstract. Subsequently most abstract art has failed to solve the same problem in reverse: without reference to specific experience it is very hard to create any sense of urgency.
Perhaps also the Cubists were reluctant to part with appearances because they suspected that in art they could never be the same again. The details are smuggled in and hidden as mementos. It is this which gives these Cubist works their unrepeatable poignancy.” (Pure Theory)
“Theories about the artist’s inspiration are all projections back on to the artist of the effect which his work has upon us. The only inspiration which exists is the intimation of our own potential. Inspiration is the mirror image of history: by means of it we can see our past, while turning our back upon it. And it is precisely this which happens when a piece of music begins. We suddenly become aware of the previous silence at the same moment as our attention is concentrated upon future sequences and resolutions in which we can share.”
I contemplated this quote for a while and I like it because it makes me think about how we all are influenced by the past and history in a way that it has become a part of us that even our inspirations are based on it. We even don’t notice the fact that we all are shaped by history. we, constantly, look back at the past and try to make sense of what has happened to those who have gone through it and, in fact, we are doing it right because what or who we are today is the result of the past. interestingly, we don’t live in present, but we live in the past and future. Then we exist more and get our present time in the future when there is more investigation in our present.
“I find it hard to believe that the most extreme Cubist works were painted over 50 years ago. It is true that I would not expect them to have been painted today. They are both too optimistic and too revolutionary for that.”
“The Renaissance artist imitated nature. The Mannerist and Classic artist reconstructed examples from nature in order to transcend nature. The 19th-century artist experienced nature. The Cubist realized that his awareness of nature was part of nature.”
“The moment at which a piece of music begins provides a clue to the nature of all art. The incongruity of that moment, compared to the uncounted, unperceived silence which preceded it, is the secret of art. What is the meaning of that incongruity and the shock which accompanies it? It is to be found in the distinction between the given and the desired. All art is the attempt to define and make unnatural this distinction.
For a long time it was thought that art was the imitation and celebration of nature. The confusion arose because the concept of nature itself was a projection of the desired. Now that we have cleansed our view of nature, we see that art is an expression of our sense of the inadequacy of the given—which we are not obliged to accept with gratitude. Art mediates between our good fortune and our disappointment. Sometimes it mounts to the pitch of horror: sometimes it concentrates its energy upon the insistence that reality should be changed so that it may continue as it is, and become unchangeable. Sometimes it describes the desired.”
“Cubism changed the nature of the relationship between the painted image and reality, and by so doing it expressed a new relationship between man and reality.”
“Although often employed far less accurately during the following centuries, the metaphorical model for the function of painting at this time was the mirror. Alberti cites Narcissus when he sees himself reflected in the water as the first painter. The mirror renders the appearances of nature and simultaneously delivers them into the hands of man. And this function is in itself a symbol of man?s position.”
The meaning they sought had to relate to a possibility that could not be dismissed or forgotten because it was being constantly demanded by the new, existing means of production and communication and calculation — by what people came to call technology: the possibility of a unified world.
It is after 1914 that false ideology—by which people are deceived about the issues confronting them and deceive themselves—becomes the critical factor.
We begin with the surface, but since everything in the picture refers back to the surface we begin with the conclusion.
the possibility of a unified world.
The meaning they sought
a possibility
not be dismissed or forgotten
constantly demanded by the new
what people came to call technology:
false ideology
deceived confronting and deceive
the critical factor.
We begin with the surface,
but since
we begin with the conclusion.
I find it fascinating the McLuhan wrote this well before the advent of the ubiquitous iPhone and the internet. We are now very much extended into the whole of mankind and mankind in us which is not necessarily for our individual benefit and even though we have the option to unplug we have become addicted to the virtual connection.
‘In the electric age’, writes Marshall McLuhan, [3] ‘when our central, nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. . . . The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology. The age of mechanical industry that preceded us found vehement assertion of private outlook the natural mode of expression. . . . The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns. We are suddenly eager to have things and people declare their beings totally.’
The Cubists were the first artists to attempt to paint totalities rather than agglomerations.
“Painting became a schematic art. The painter’s task was no longer to represent or imitate what existed: it was to summarize experience.” (The Theatre Stage)
“In 1856 he wrote: ‘Reality is one part of art: feeling completes it . . . before any site and any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.’” (Raft of the Medusa)
“The moment at which a piece of music begins provides a clue to the nature of all art. The incongruity of that moment, compared to the uncounted, unperceived silence which preceded it, is the secret of art. What is the meaning of that incongruity and the shock which accompanies it? It is to be found in the distinction between the given and the desired. All art is the attempt to define and make unnatural this distinction.” (Cubism and Politics)
“Inspiration is the mirror image of history: by means of it we can see our past, while turning our back upon it.”
^ I chose this because I feel that art that is created is always an interpretation of something already existing – something we have seen before but re-‘created’ using our own perspectives and personal experiences.
“Art mediates between our good fortune and our disappointment.”
“Space is part of the continuity of the events within it. It is in itself an event, comparable with other events. It is not a mere container. And this is what the few Cubist masterpieces show us. The space between objects is part of the same structure as the objects themselves. The forms are simply reversed so that, say, the top of a head is a convex element and the adjacent space which it does not fill is a concave element.”
^This is interesting as being an artist, I am constantly thinking of how to fill spaces so that a piece would not come off as “empty”. Leaving untouched space gave off the idea of it being empty… which is definitely not the case but somehow registers as “empty” at first glance… Less can be more in the case of cubism I suppose.
pg 79: “On the last page of /All Quiet on the Western Front/ the hero thinks: ‘I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.”
pg 82: “The Eye of Man: Thus man could observe nature around him on every side and be enhanced by what he observed and by his own ability to observe without considering that he was essentially part of that nature. /Man was the eye for which reality has been made visual/: the clear objective eye, the focal point of the Renaissance perspective. The human greatness of this eye lay in its ability to reflect and contain, like a mirror, what was.”
pg 91: “The mass media and the arrival of new publics have profoundly changed the social role of the Fine Arts. It remains true, however, that the Cubists – during the moment of Cubism – were unconcerned about the personalized human and social implications of what they were doing. This, I think, is because they had to simplify. The problem before them was so complex that their manner of stating it and their trying to solve it absorbed all their attention. As innovators they wanted to make their experiments in the simplest possible conditions; consequently, they took as subjects whatever was at hand and made least demands, The content of these works is the relation between the seer and the seen. This relation is only possible given the fact that the seer inherits a precise historical economic and social situation. Otherwise, they become meaningless. They do not illustrate a human or social situation, they posit it.”
“…..but far from decreasing, my sensitivity has sharpened with age. As long as constant contact with the outside world can sustain the ardour of my curiosity, and my hand remains the quick and faithful servant of my perception, I have nothing to fear from old age. I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature, and I desire no other fate than (according to Goethe) to have worked and lived in harmony with her rules. Beside her grandeur, her power and her im- mortality, the human creature seems but a miserable atom.’” (Monet Pg84)
This is one of my favorite passages because it talks truely from a standpoint of artist and it’s will to unleash its creativity by being a part of what the artist would like to create. I find this relevant to modern eras, in the thought of having meaning behind your work. To wish for a close fusion with what the artist desires to achieve.
“A Cubist painting like Braque’s Nature morte avec cartes à jouer of 1912 is two-dimensional in so far as one’s eye comes back again and again to the surface of the picture……We begin with the surface, but since everything in the picture refers back to the surface we begin with the conclusion. We then search—not for an explanation, as we do if presented with an image with a single, predominant meaning (a man laughing, a mountain, a reclining nude), but for some understanding of the configuration of events whose in- teraction is the conclusion from which we began” (pg 87)
I enjoy this passages through then simplistic natural of the explanation on how to view a cubist painting. The details and the thought process one might face and question.
“The meaning they sought had to relate to a possibility that could not be dismissed or forgotten because it was being constantly demanded by the new, existing means of production and communication and calculation — by what people came to call technology: the possibility of a unified world.”
“The human greatness of this eye lay in its ability to reflect and contain, like a mirror, what was.”
” The totality is the surface of the picture, which is now the origin and sum of all that one sees.”
“Space is part of the continuity of the events within it. It is in itself an event, comparable with other events.”
” The content of their art consists of various modes of interaction: the interaction between different aspects of the same event, between empty space and filled space, between structure and movement, between the seer and the thing seen.”
“The greater extremism of contemporary artists is the result of their having no fixed social role; to some degree they can create their own.”
” The only inspiration which exists is the intimation of our own potential. Inspiration is the mirror image of history: by means of it we can see our past, while turning our back upon it. And it is precisely this which happens when a piece of music begins. We suddenly become aware of the previous silence at the same moment as our attention is concentrated upon future sequences and resolutions in which we can share.”
“For a long time it was thought that art was the imitation and celebra- tion of nature. The confusion arose because the concept of nature itself was a projection of the desired. Now that we have cleansed our view of nature, we see that art is an expression of our sense of the inadequacy of the given—which we are not obliged to accept with gratitude. Art mediates between our good fortune and our disappointment. Some- times it mounts to the pitch of horror: sometimes it concentrates its energy upon the insistence that reality should be changed so that it may continue as it is, and become unchangeable. Sometimes it describes the desired.”
When I read this part of the reading, it was a moment of me excitingly agreeing with what it was suggesting. The way “nature” was depicted in art is much like our social media today; what we see on a day-to-day basis that is served to us in a pedestal like form, and history repeats itself in the aesthetic.
“…madness is revolutionary freedom confined to the self.”
“Probably it is a mistake to talk of the ‘Art of Cubism’, as applied to the paintings produced in those seven years, for these paintings made a statement which transformed the function of painting and modified the meaning of Art to a degree which is still confusing us. It is for this reason that I prefer to think of the moment of Cubism, and of the paintings as evidence of what was understood and imagined in that moment.”
“It is extremely hard to reconstruct ideological attitudes of the past. In the light of more recent developments and the questions raised by them, we tend to iron out the ambiguities which may have existed before the questions were formed.”
“Painting became a schematic art. The painter’s task was no longer to represent or imitate what existed: it was to summarize experience. Nature is now what man has to redeem himself from. The artist be- comes responsible not simply for the means of conveying a truth, but also for the truth itself. Painting ceases to be a branch of natural science and becomes a branch of the moral sciences.
In the theatre the spectator faces events from whose consequences he is immune: he may be affected emotionally and morally but he is physic- ally removed, protected, separate, from what is happening before his eyes. What is happening is artificial. It is he who now represents nature —not the work of art. And if, at the same time, it is from himself that he must redeem himself—this represents the contradiction of the Cartesian division which prophetically or actually so dominated these two centuries.”
“To appreciate this we must abandon a habit of centuries: the habit of looking at every object or body as though it were complete in itself, its completeness making it separate. The Cubists were concerned with the interaction between objects.”
“The real break with tradition, or the real reformation of that tradition, occurred with Cubism itself. The modern tradition, based on a quali- tatively different relationship being established between man and nature, began, not in despair, but in affirmation.”
“The meaning they sought had to relate to a possibility that could not be dismissed or forgotten because it was being constantly demanded by the new, existing means of production and communication and calculation — by what people came to call technology: the possibility of a unified world.”
“The human greatness of this eye lay in its ability to reflect and contain, like a mirror, what was.”
” The totality is the surface of the picture, which is now the origin and sum of all that one sees.”
“Space is part of the continuity of the events within it. It is in itself an event, comparable with other events.”
” The content of their art consists of various modes of interaction: the interaction between different aspects of the same event, between empty space and filled space, between structure and movement, between the seer and the thing seen.”
“The greater extremism of contemporary artists is the result of their having no fixed social role; to some degree they can create their own.”
” The only inspiration which exists is the intimation of our own potential. Inspiration is the mirror image of history: by means of it we can see our past, while turning our back upon it. And it is precisely this which happens when a piece of music begins. We suddenly become aware of the previous silence at the same moment as our attention is concentrated upon future sequences and resolutions in which we can share.”
(uploaded reply to my individual page earlier but for some reason couldn’t on this page. tried again this morning and it worked)
“The Cubists imagined the world transformed, but not the process of transformation.”
“Cubism changed the nature of the relationship between the painted image and reality, and by so doing it expressed a new relationship between man and reality.”
?Probably it is a mistake to talk of the ?Art of Cubism?, as applied to the paintings produced in those seven years, for these paintings made a statement which transformed the function of painting and modified the meaning of Art to a degree which is still confusing us. ?
?Cubism cannot be explained in terms of the genius of its exponents. And this is emphasized by the fact that most of them became less pro- found artists when they ceased to be Cubists. Even Braque and Picasso never surpassed the works of their Cubist period: and a great deal of their later work was inferior.?
“Cubism constituted a revolutionary change in the history of art … The idea of art holding up a mirror to nature become a nostalgic one: a means of diminishing instead of interpreting reality.”
“To the Cubists, Cubism was spontaneous. To us it is part of the history. But a curiously unfinished part. Cubism should be consider not as stylistic category but as a moment … It was a moment in which the promises of the future were more substantial than the present.”
“… the future, instead of offering continuity, appears to advance towards them.”
My favrourite part is about the relation of the self to the secularized world. It is more understandable for me since this consequence happens again :
“There was no longer any essential discontinuity between the individual and the general. The invisible and the multiple no longer intervened between each individual and the world. It was becoming more and more difficult to think in terms of having been placed in the world. A man was part of the world and invisible from it. In an entirely original sense, which remains at the basis of modern consciousness, a man was the world which he inherited.”
Apollinaire’s poem:
“I have known since then the bouquet of the world
I am drunk from having drunk the universe while.”
“All the previous spiritual problems of the religion and morality world now be increasingly concentrated in a man’s choice of attitude to the existing state of the world considered as his own existing state.
It is now onl against the world, within his own consciousness, that he can measure his stature. He is enhanced or diminished according to how he acts towards the enhancement or diminishment of the world. His self apart from the world, his self wrenched from its global context – the sum of all existing social contexts – is a mere biological accident. The secularization of the world exacts its price as well as offering the privilege of a choice, clearer than any other in history.”
“I spoke of the continuing meaning of Cubism. To some degree this meaning has changed and will change again according to the needs of the present. The bearings we read with the aid of Cubism vary according to our position. What is the reading now?”
“Theories about the artist’s inspiration are all projections back on to the artist of the effect which his work has upon us. The only inspiration which exists is the intimation of our own potential. Inspiration is the mirror image of history: by means of it we can see our past, while turning our back upon it. And it is precisely this which happens when a piece of music begins. We suddenly become aware of the previous silence at the same moment as our attention is concentrated upon future sequences and resolutions in which we can share.”
Favorite Passages from “THE MOMENT OF CUBISM”
https://newleftreview.org/I/42/john-berger-the-moment-of-cubism
The sensation could reflect a desire to escape. The intervening years were and are mostly ones of horror. Yet they exist. They cannot be treated like a cloud that passes across the moon. And for all their horror, they must be counted years of progress. To dismiss them would be to retrogress
If the word revolution is used seriously and not merely as an epithet for this season’s novelties, it implies a process. No revolution is simply the result of personal originality. The maximum that such originality can achieve is madness: madness is revolutionary freedom confined to the self.
I do not wish to suggest a period of ebullient optimism. It was a period of poverty, exploitation, fear and desperation. The majority could only be concerned with the means of their survival, and millions did not survive. But for those who asked questions, there were new positive answers whose authenticity seemed to be guaranteed by the existence of new forces.