Are Our Minds Wired to Enjoy Cubism?

When Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque first brought Cubism onto the modern art scene in the first decade of the 20^th century, the initialreviews were mixed. Like-minded artists and art lovers embraced Cubism as a startling new way of seeing breaking violently with the representational art of the past. Many others, however, saw only madness and perhaps a little fraud in these images taking everyday objects and representing them from every angle simultaneously. Preferences for modernism or classicism certainly played a big role in responses. But what if we could wipe away those preferences? Would an unprejudiced viewer accept and maybe even enjoy Cubist paintings? A team of researchers recently tackled that question by testing whether art novices shown a series of Cubist works expressed a liking for the works and if detectablility—whether or not the viewer could visually reverse engineer the image back to its everyday source—played a role. Their results not only suggest that Cubism can be enjoyed by the novice, but that more difficult (but not too difficult) works to untangle tickle the pleasure zones of the mind. Are our minds wired to enjoy Cubism? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are Our Minds Wired to Enjoy Cubism?"

Anything But Grey

Born Jose Victoriano González on March 23, 1887, Juan Gris oddly chose the Spanish word for grey as his artistic pseudonym. Gris’ life was anything but grey and dull, spent amidst the excitement of early twentieth century Paris in the company of fellow Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Gris even painted Picasso’s portrait (above, from 1912) to pay tribute to the man who helped him become a serious painter. In many ways, Gris is a poor man’s Picasso, at least of the Cubist period, coming from Spain to Paris to paint many of the same subjects in the same style as Picasso. No less an authority than Gertrude Stein believed that Gris "was the one person that Picasso would have willingly wiped off the map." Whether Picasso wanted Gris gone out of anger over being copied or out of jealousy isn’t clear.

Like Picasso and many other artists of the period, Gris loved the Commedia dell'Arte, especially the figure of the Harlequin. Harlequin with Guitar (above, from 1919) could easily make Picasso’s Three Musicians a quartet. Gris’ work actually predates Picasso’s famous work by two years. Both works exemplify the style of Synthetic Cubist that replaced the brown studies of early Cubism with bold, energetic color. In the 1920s, Gris took that bold color and designed set designs for Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. Before becoming a painter, Gris made a living, however meagerly, selling humorous illustrations to newspapers and magazines. That wit comes through in his harlequin as well, which becomes more of an excuse for the play of color and form than a real body at work.

When you look at a painting such as Gris’ Violin and Playing Cards (above, from 1913), it’s hard to distinguish what is really going on—the case in many cubist paintings, which are often more like intellectual puzzles to be solved. Thanks to the different wood grains, you can distinguish the violin from the table. The playing cards on the table and the wallpaper are easy enough, too. When you get to the other shapes surrounding the violin in black, green, and purple, it takes some imagination to picture them as the shadows of the violin. Not only does Gris separate the instrument from its shadow, but he dissects the shadow itself into the secondary colors reflected in it. Sadly, Gris died before turning forty, leaving his wife and son as well as a world of artistic possibilities behind. The history of Cubism duly notes the contributions of Picasso and Braque, but in that colorful tale we should find a little room for a touch of grey, er, Gris.

With Fearless and Eager Eyes

On August 30, 1891, in tiny Druskininkai in Lithuania, still under the rule of the Russian Tsars, Jacques Lipchitz was born. Lipchitz created some of the most beautiful Cubist sculptures ever made. Many of Lipchitz’s works grace the Philadelphia region, including The Spirit of Enterprise (above), which stands on the banks of the Schuylkill River along Kelly Drive, near Boathouse Row. At the base of the sculpture, the following quote from Theodore Roosevelt appears: “Our nation glorious in youth and strength looks into the future with fearless and eager eyes as vigorous as a young man to run a race.” From his humble beginnings to his prime in Paris to his American years after World War II, Lipchitz always looked “into the future with fearless and eager eyes” and never gave up his sense of wonder and hope for the world.


Lipchitz flourished among the artists of Montmartre and Montparnasse in the 1910s and 20s, befriending fellow Cubists Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, among others. In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes visited Lipchitz’s studio and not only bought several works but also commissioned a series of bas-reliefs for The Barnes Foundation. In exchange, Lipchitz introduced Barnes to his friends Chaim Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani. (Modigliani’s portrait of Lipchitz and his wife is above.) Thanks to this introduction, Barnes purchased several works by Soutine and Modigliani, helping bring not only Lipchitz’s stirring Cubist sculpture to America but also the works of these two unique masters.


Lipchitz fled Paris in 1940 with the help of American journalist Varian Fry just before the Nazis invaded. America became Lipchitz’s home for the rest of his life, and Philadelphia captured a special place in his heart. I’ve always loved his The Spirit of Enterprise and Government of the People (which stands in the Municipal Services Building Plaza in Philadelphia, near JFK Boulevard and Broad Street), but my favorite Lipchitz will always be his Prometheus Strangling the Vulture (above), which stands proudly at the top of the PMA’s famous “Rocky Steps.” Lipchitz takes the ancient myth of the vulture endlessly torturing Prometheus and rewrites the ending, allowing Prometheus to gain the upper hand and end his torment. Lipchitz’s sculptures always maintain this wonderful spirit of hope, even in the face of war and oppression, which has made him one of the most popular and accessible of modernist sculptors.