Cubism

Abstract

It is one of the paradoxes in the history of ideas that cubism, which so greatly inspired philosophical approaches among the twentieth century avant-garde, was characterized by its representatives as an atheoretical or even antitheoretical movement. Pablo Picasso himself was aware that cubism had been explained through mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis, music, and who knows what else. All this was to him nothing but literature or nonsense, which resulted in blinding people with theories (interview with Marius de Zayas, 26 May 26, 1923, in Fry 1966: 168). What is the use of saying what we do—this is Picasso’s position—if anybody can see it? Georges Braque maintained that the only thing that matters in art is that which you cannot explain. And Juan Gris was no less lapidary.