Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The modern world was moving fast, with automobiles, factories, and mass communica-
tion. Motion pictures captured the fast-moving world, while Einstein explored the fourth
dimension: time.
Cubism: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Born in Spain, Picasso moved to Paris as a young man. He worked with painter and
sculptor Georges Braque in poverty so dire they often didn't know where their next bottle
of wine was coming from.
Picasso's Cubist works show the old European world shattering to bits. He pieces the
fragments back together in a whole new way, showing several perspectives at once (for
example, looking up the left side of a woman's body and, at the same time, down at her
right).
Whereas newfangled motion pictures capture several perspectives in succession, Pi-
casso achieves it on a canvas with overlapping images. A single “cube” might contain
an arm (in the foreground) and the window behind (in the background), both painted the
same color. The foreground and background are woven together so that the subject dis-
solves into a pattern.
Picasso, the most famous and—OK, I'll say it—the greatest artist of the 20th century,
constantly explored and adapted his style to new trends. He made collages, tried his hand
at “statues” out of wood, wire, or whatever, and even made art out of everyday household
objects. These multimedia works, so revolutionary at the time, have become stock-in-trade
today. Scattered throughout the museum are works from the many periods of Picasso's
life.
Futurism
The Machine Age is approaching, and the whole world gleams with promise in cylinder
shapes (“Tubism”), like an internal-combustion engine. Or is it the gleaming barrel of a
cannon?
A soldier—shivering in a trench, ankle-deep in mud, waiting to be ordered “over the top,”
to run through barbed wire, over fallen comrades, and into a hail of machine-gun fire, only
to capture a few hundred yards of meaningless territory that would be lost the next day.
This soldier was not thinking about art.
