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Cubism, Picasso and Michelangelo: what unites them?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the painters of Paris began to experiment with new ideas. Among others, Cezanne was breaking with the idea of ​​”informing” the world of nature in painting. He was cutting natural shapes into geometric “chunks.” Sisley was taking a scientific approach to color, devising “programs” to trigger a psychological response in the viewer. Seurat, in his too short life, developed a method of placing small spots of color, each placed close to its complement, so that the viewer’s brain would do the work of blending these color ‘pixels’ optically. This became known as pointillism.

  • ‘Bits, Programs, Pixels’ – Today, in the computer age, everything sounds strangely familiar to us. Two influential schools of art direction emerged in the 1890s: Impressionism and Cubism.

Cubism affirms Pablo Picasso as its founder.

PicassoHis stupendous production includes paintings and drawings, sculptures, collages and ceramics. He produced art prints and designed ballet sets. His talent for self-promotion was at least as extraordinary as his energy to make art.

Miguel AngelThe incomparable sculptor, he was also the architect of many of Rome’s most famous buildings. St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is a tourist attraction, but it may never have been completed without the genius of Michelangelo.

After 40 years, construction had stalled because the original plans for its vital component, the huge and iconic dome, proved unworkable. Michelangelo was called in to redesign the dome and his intervention forged the engineering solution, combined with the stunning beauty of the design.

In his writings, Michelangelo modestly declared himself “not a painter.” He clearly identified his skill as a painter as secondary to his work as a sculptor but left us the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to judge his self-assessment.

Each of these men, so far apart in time, place, artistic style and personality, shows two traits in common. Are:

1. Innovative thinking.

2. Ability to convey ideas using the simplest language.

Michelangelo once gave this advice to painters: “Painting comes closest to perfection when it most resembles sculpture.”

Miguel Ángel wanted to involve people on their most human levels: emotional, intellectual and spiritual. To accomplish this, he knew he had to persuade the viewer to “suspend disbelief” in the same way that a novelist does.

The artwork must tell a story with enough impact to capture the audience’s attention. It must be ‘larger than life’. However, it must be realistic enough to make us forget that it is an artifact, “just” a painting or “just” a sculpture, made by a human being “just” like us.

In painting, this trick relies on the painter’s ability to create an illusion of “depth” in a two-dimensional surface.

  • This principle maintained the Truth of painting for hundreds of years.

Picasso told the world something different: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”

Cubism is based on the creation of a single image plane, devoid of any sense of “depth.” Shown in this shallow space, all objects are reduced to their simplest expression as cylinders, spheres, cones, and cubes. Cubist paintings are deliberately separated from human sentiment.

They remind us that we are looking at something artificial, not a representation of something we can find in life.

  • And, of course, this is the truth about art.

Art historians trace Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement from its inception in 1906 to its final phase in 1921. From our present point of view, fifteen years seems like a short life span for an idea that caused so much upheaval throughout the world. art world.

Michelangelo’s art, especially his sculpted figures like the ‘Pietà’ in the Vatican and his ‘David’ in Florence, has the power to take our hearts and shake our minds, 500 years later.

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