Question

explain difference between traditional and cubist portraits?

Answer 1

The art movement known as cubism arose out of the need to define and represent the then new modern reality. This new reality was complex and ambiguous, shaped by new inventions, philosophical speculation and cultural diversity. The new technology and scientific discoveries were radically changing the pace of life and the way society perceived the nature of things. Whereas in the past, life had been static, science and technology were now forcing modern man to experience time, motion and space more dynamically. All of a sudden he was thrust in a world of expanding vision and horizons, of accelerated tempo and mobility and of fluctuating perspectives. Furthermore, the ambiguity and sense of uncertainty generated by this new rush of stimuli was interpreted by the theory of relativity that evolved through F. H. Bradley, Whitehead, Einstein, and the new mathematics. What these philosophical theoreticians suggested was that we live in a world of shifting perspectives, where the appearance of objects is in a constant flux depending on the point of view from which it is seen. Finally, the experience of reality was also being altered by the cultural interactions taking place between the East and West, the primitive and the industrialized. In other words, each culture brought along with it a new, idiosyncratic way of looking at things, and the interchange occurring between cultures obscured the perception of truth. Relativity became everything.


The problem facing the modern artist became how to formally depict this new dynamic vision of life. For the painter, specifically, the dilemma became representing the flux of time, motion and space in a medium that lent itself to the mere capture of the fleeting moment. Cubism was born as a response to this predicament, and it is no accident that the movement was a Parisian phenomenon, considering the city's artistic legacy and its magnetic ability to attract the most gifted young artists and writers from all over the world. Paris offered them great art museums, a tradition of moral and artistic freedom, and an artistic bohemia where they could live cheaply on the margin of bourgeois society.