The Distorted Body, Cubism’s influence on the contemporary

Written by

 Mirjam Toldam

Figure 1. Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907 http://moma.org/collection/conservation/demoiselles/history.html

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Fig. 1) is considered by writers on art history to be a corner stone of modern art, a mirror in which contemporary art is a reflected (J. Jones, 2007). Picasso’s cubism revolutionized the visual language of the art world of the time and changed conceptions of form and perspective. The flatness of the painting style in Figure 1, is reminiscent of other modern expressionist masterpieces but what sets Les Demoiselles d’Avignon apart are the distorted shapes. I think Pablo Picasso in his urge to express how he saw the world, had to reinvent painting. I believe that in the artistic process he discovered a new methodology of visual language based on angles and cubes. The distortion of the human bodies are symbolic and an expression of the soul of society, a conversation about taboos around sex and gender. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is from the beginning of the 19^th century and smells of bohemian piety. For myself researching deeper into cubism changes the way I see art and the world around me.

 

The language of cubism is very much a conversation of sculpture although being two dimensions and very flat in painting style it contains aspects of architectural ambition like an unattained three dimensional longing. The angles and edges of the figures in the painting draw me in and take me on a journey into a landscape of architectural elements. It is 101 years since Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon yet the painting is still relevant for our contemporary world (J. Jones, 2007). I think cubism is an inspiration because of its blunt disregard of previous aesthetics. It set an example, leading the way ahead through new and innovative methods, changing the contemporary art palette. I see myself mirrored in the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and I see sculpture.

 

 

The landscape as body the body as landscape

 Figure 2 Henry Moore Recumbent Figure 1938, Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=9663

The suggestion of the body integrating with landscape suggests to my mind the human urge to belong. Accommodating distortion is necessary to be one with the ‘Other’. Recumbent Figure by Henry Moore (Fig. 2) evokes an emotional response in me towards the ‘Other’, a compromise, to coexist, not only to share space but amalgamate with the ‘Other’. The roundness of the sculpture gently draws and invites me to experience the sensation of being absorbed. The female nurturing characteristics of the round breasted Recumbent Figure and the landscape incorporated live in equilibrium of belonging. I like to compare the safety within that relationship to the mother-child symbiosis wherein the child is still consumed within the bosom of its life giver (mother), so attached that it knows no separation from the ‘Other’, they subsist as one organism.

Henry Moore was a British artist in the 1930’s influenced by the artistic traditions of Africa, Cycladic and pre Columbian cultures. Through retrospective past art forms and classical sculpture with spiritual and cultural functions he sought to sculpt ‘the Greek spectacles from the eyes of modern sculptor’ (Phaidon, 2007, p.957). Henry Moore’s Recumbent Figure is, according to the Phaidon editors (2007, p.957), categorized as primitivism in modernism. I think that Henry Moore in this sculpture intended to call the people of his day back to a primal experience, make something of the past alive to his contemporaries, highlighting truths that Western people had perhaps started to avoid or forget. We all start in the bosom of our mother and end up in the soil of the land, we will be immersed into nature and we are meant for belonging, we will always long for a true connection to the ‘Other’.

Abstraction and figuration

  “A few years ago somebody asked me, ‘When did you go figurative?’ There’s this sort of ridiculous idea, it’s a very silly idea left over from the twentieth century, that abstraction and figuration are legitimate poles. I’ve incorporated the two things from the very start and been fascinated by the idea that there is really no distinction. It’s just a question of scale” (Art:21, n,d).

Matthew Ritchie states in the above quote that his idea of the distorted figure is one of a holistic worldview. He establishes a notion of being a part of and consumed by the ‘Other’. Placing his sculpture installations in order to direct the audience around the space in Proposition Player (Fig. 3) he confronts them with the ‘Other’. The conversation is about the distorted body as abstraction and suggests a philosophy of abstraction becoming figuration determined by scale.  

 

 

 Figure 3 Matthew Ritchie Proposition Player 2003 Installation view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Retrieved from: www.pbs.org/…/slideshow/?slide=434&artindex=94

 

 

 

Figure 4 Matthew Ritchie The Universal Cell detail 2004 Mixed media installation, Retrieved from: http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?slide=436&artindex=94

In Matthew Ritchie’s The Universal Cell (Fig. 4) the Installation becomes the negative space surrounding the human being. This existential reflection on life is beautifully poetic. The audience is invited into sculpture to reflect on life and experience the physicality of the prison of a cultural tissue and structures of human behavior, expectations we mentally carry with us every day (Art:21, n,d). To me The Universal Cell (fig. 4) becomes a metaphor of the biological cells, the building blocks to all living things and a reflection on the whole created from a multitude of the same components, the cells. I reflect on my body that it may in itself be a form of sculpture bending to suit its surroundings and this accommodation creates the distortion within.  

Conclusion 

The concept of the distorted body whether expressed through cubism, primitivism or abstraction (Figs. 1-4), is to me an attempt to convey something important that is impossible to express through straight lines and classical methodologies.

The ideal of the classical Greco-Roman sculpture was physical perfection in the depiction of the body. A shift happened in modernity where the ideal no longer is a physical image of perfection but rather the expression of emotion and that becomes the ideal. The distorted is therefore an expression of implied emotion and demands a response that connects contemporary humans to significant truths whether they be physical, emotional, existential or moral. Whether emotions can be trusted to be true is another query.