Cubism is just plain neato. I think it’s so interesting that artists chose not to draw, paint or sculpt exactly what they saw, but instead create something that is purely perceptual, an experience. I was lucky enough to re-discover a fantastic cubist sculpture today as I showed a few people around the Museum. The Modern and Contemporary collection really does have some amazing cubist examples. I have always really liked Jacques Lipschitz’s work, and today I was reminded why.
Lipschitz’s Bather is a bronze sculpture of a woman bathing. It may be difficult to detect the figure of the woman through all the edges and corners, but look harder – she’s there. Sometimes I think that cubist work is very similar to one of those 3-D picture puzzles where an image appears as long as you “relax your eyes.” Once your eyes are relaxed, the woman’s figure really just pops out at you.
Another aspect that fascinates me about the ideas behind cubism is how the artists manage to turn natural and organic shapes into a geometric puzzle. It seems that cubism somehow strips its subject down into its most basic form. Apparently these cubists really did know what they were doing.