I was just reading Chapter One : The Medium is the Message, from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan ©1964 when I saw “To a highly literate and mechanized culture the movie appeared as a world of triumphant illusions and dreams that money could buy. It was at this moment of the movie that cubism occurred and it has been described by E. H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion) as “the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas.” For cubism substitutes all facets of an object simultaneously for the “point of view” or facet of perspective illusion. Instead of the specialized illusion of the third 4 dimension on canvas, cubism sets up an interplay of planes and contradiction or dramatic conflict of patterns, lights, textures that “drives home the message” by involvement. This is held by many to be an exercise in painting, not in illusion. In other words, cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole. Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced that the medium is the message. Is it not evident that the moment that sequence yields to the simultaneous, one is in the world of the structure and of configuration? Is that not what has happened in physics as in painting, poetry, and in communication? Specialized segments of attention have shifted to total field, and we can now say, “The medium is the message” quite naturally. Before the electric speed and total field, it was not obvious that the medium is the message. The message, it seemed, was the “content,” as people used to ask what a painting was about. Yet they never thought to ask what a melody was about, nor what a house or a dress was about. In such matters, people retained some sense of the whole pattern, of form and function as a unity. But in the electric age this integral idea of structure and configuration has become so prevalent that educational theory has taken up the matter. Instead of working with specialized “problems” in arithmetic, the structural approach now follows the lines of force in the field of number and has small children meditating about number theory and “sets.” “
I looked for Gombrich’s book.
Gombrich’s book, Art and Illusion is reviewed on the Bookey website https://www.bookey.app/book/art-and-illusion and here are a few relevant quotes from there : “In “Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation,” Professor E.H. Gombrich delves into the profound exploration of how artists across history have created convincing images, unearthing the intricate relationship between perception, representation, and reality. Drawing from a vast array of examples from cave paintings to contemporary art, Gombrich invites readers to ponder the fundamental question: how do we see, and how has this influenced the way we depict the world around us?“
“Perception in art is a deeply complex phenomenon. Gombrich argues that perception is not merely the passive reception of visual stimuli but an active process influenced by various cognitive and psychological factors. How we perceive an object is significantly shaped by our prior experiences, knowledge, and expectations. This concept contrasts with a more naive view of vision as a direct and unmediated window to reality. For artists, this means that the act of rendering what they see is inherently interpretative. They must not only confront the raw data provided by their senses but also navigate the layers of meaning and context that come with it.”
“other periods might emphasize different aspects of realism. For instance, the Impressionists in the late 19th century focused on capturing the transient effects of light and color rather than precise forms. Their work was not less realistic but rather focused on a different aspect of visual experience. By the same token, the advent of photography in the 19th century shifted the artistic landscape, as the camera could capture minute details with unprecedented accuracy. This technological development challenged artists to redefine what it meant to portray reality, often leading them into more abstract or experimental directions”
“The act of breaking away from traditional schemas often leads to innovation and new artistic movements. Artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, through their pioneering work in Cubism, rejected conventional schemas of form and perspective. By deconstructing subjects into geometric shapes and presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously, they expanded the boundaries of artistic expression and invited new interpretations of reality.”
“One notable case study is the work of Pablo Picasso, whose name is synonymous with artistic innovation. Picasso’s experimentation with form, perspective, and material led to the creation of Cubism, a revolutionary movement that fundamentally altered the way in which visual reality was represented. By deconstructing objects into geometric shapes and presenting multiple viewpoints simultaneously, Picasso and his contemporaries in Cubism introduced a new way of seeing that diverged sharply from traditional representations of space and form. This avant-garde approach opened up new possibilities in visual art, demonstrating how radical experimentation can lead to substantial shifts in artistic paradigms.”
That’s another book I’ll have to get!
