Picasso and Cubism

 by David Anderson, Ph.D.

(an excerpt from the video documentary "Time Travel: Journey's into Time")

In importance, cubism has been compared to the revolutionary discovery of perspective in the Renaissance. 

In a cubist painting the solid reality of an object located in space and fixed in time... crumbled away.

The visual segments of the front, back, top, bottom, and sides of an object simply jump out and assault the viewer's eye… simultaneously!

Before this, the different surfaces of a cube would require and observer to walk around through space to view them in sequence... and this takes time.

But in a cubist painting the need to walk around the object in space and time is removed... and the collection of visual fragments would let the viewer experience the entire object from a single point in space and time.

Perhaps the only other place in the universe from which an observer could actually see these ideas would be from astride a beam of light!

Other Artists

Before Picasso's cubism were artists like Monet and Cezanne... who began experimenting with time in art in a different way...

Monet, painted the entrance to the Rouen Cathedral in 40 separate works... that in essence tried to capture a cathedral that existed in time as well as three dimensions of space.

And Cezanne, who in a single painting, would move in time around an object... creating works with perspectives that were distorted.

After cubism and Einstein's discoveries, many new art techniques would follow.

Salvador Dali perhaps reflected the new physics of curved space and time better than any other artist... 

M.C. Eschers works use a clever manipulation of perspective. What appears correct to the eye... on closer examination... is wrong. Escher takes what we think is our clear understanding of the shape and nature of three-dimensional space and makes us consider other kinds of geometry.

Another great artist, Constantin Brancusi, captured time in his sculptures in the most remarkable way... one of his most magnificent collection of works is located in Romania... 

These works symbolize the great river of time, turning the wheels of life in his table of silence... leading to a walkway through time... to the gate of the kiss, a symbol of life, marriage, and new beginnings...and then to the never-ending column... a remarkable work capturing characteristics of time that both art lovers as well as physicists can appreciate. 

To do one must first imagine.  There are many more examples where Art and science fiction intuited science fact.  But the pure imagination and genius of one man led the scientific revolution of our views of space and time.