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Home , Cubism, Head (Csaky), Maurice Princet, Pablo Picasso

Second sight

Artist: Pablo

Les Demoiselles d’

AS THE witnessed special effects called who had playfully all the time. Why not ■ dawned, was conjured up by Georges Méliès, a keen interest in advanced project multiple perspectives all seething with new ideas. They who was famous for taking mathematics. Princet joined at once, Picasso wondered. were batted about in cafés, bodies apart and reassembling Picasso’s bohemian circle, It was while viewing an discussed in newspapers and them in bizarre ways. hanging out with them in bistros of African analysed in literary magazines. X-rays, discovered in 1895, and taking part in their hashish- that Picasso experienced a As in the rest of Europe the bolstered Picasso’s belief that smoking sessions. In June 1907, moment of illumination. What city’s culture was dominated by what you see is not always what Princet visited Picasso’s studio Princet had been trying to teach the avant-garde: an intellectual you get. He arrived at the same just when the artist had become about geometry suddenly movement that questioned conclusion after seeing the work stuck on how to proceed with made sense. Earlier he had all forms of knowledge, in of primitive Iberian sculptors, Les Demoiselles. discovered that he needed to particular classical intuitive who represented not what they Princet showed Picasso a book fuse French conceptual and notions of space and time. saw but what they knew. by Esprit Jouffret about complex primitive Iberian – At the same time, In composing Les Demoiselles, polyhedra in four . To now he understood how to add began work on a that Picasso employed these illustrate his results, Jouffret had multi-dimensional geometry to would change art forever. revelations. Its images resemble projected these objects onto the the mix. It is well known that Les nothing we see in the world, but two-dimensional plane of the The result was the face of the Demoiselles d’Avignon marked are assembled from body parts paper in order to show them from squatter, a projection from the the birth of exactly seen from different perspectives fourth , in which one century ago, but it is less or as a result of multiple actions “Much of Picasso’s front and profile views are seen known that much of Picasso’s caught on a single frame. simultaneously, her inspiration came from science, The painting is laid out like inspiration came swivelled 180 degrees. The seeds technology and mathematics. a motion picture in five frames from science” of cubism had been planted. Picasso took a keen interest of increasing geometrisation: Two years earlier, another in photography, which he saw from the Egyptian-Gauguinesque different perspectives in unknown iconoclast – also as a technology that allowed figure on the left, through the succession – like walking around spellbound by Poincaré’s one to play with space. He was middle figures (fusions of an object. Picasso was amazed. Science and Hypothesis – had well aware of the work of such French and Jouffret was a friend of the published his first paper on cinematography pioneers as primitive Iberian sculpture), to polymath Henri Poincaré, whose precisely the same topic: the Étienne-Jules Marey – who the strange angles of the figure now classic book Science and nature of simultaneity. Perhaps developed a technique for on the right, to the “squatter” Hypothesis was all the rage. it is not surprising that Albert making multiple exposures on beneath her – the figure that In smoky bistros, Princet gave Einstein in Bern, Switzerland, a single photographic frame – underwent the most extreme informal lectures on Poincaré’s and Pablo Picasso in Paris and Eadweard Muybridge, who transformations in Picasso’s book to Picasso and his gang. should both have been working explored motion through a hundreds of preliminary sketches. Picasso was particularly struck on the problem of space and n ce flore cala, series of frames. Picasso’s notion of viewing an by Poincaré’s suggestion of how time. After all, it was at the very At the cinema, Picasso and object from several perspectives to represent an object in four core of the avant-garde. l s york/ n ew his circle of friends – most of at once also grew out of his dimensions by projecting a them not artists but literati who fascination with four-dimensional succession of perspectives. With Arthur I. Miller is emeritus professor of kept him well informed of the geometry. Early in 1907, he was a nod to Jouffret’s book, Poincaré the history and of science at latest scientific advances – introduced to an insurance actuary wrote that geometers do this University College London art, art, moder n of mu s eum the

50 | NewScientist | 29 September 2007 www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com 29 September 2007 | NewScientist | 51