Intro Into Modernism

Intro into modernism
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The art movement has evolved over time and before emergence of the modernist art pictorial forms depicting real world ideas were the norm. However, with modernization and increased use of technology, the modernist thinking developed with origins in Europe. Scientific discoveries and quantum physics challenged the prevailing notions on people’s understanding about reality and this inadvertently inspired the experimental forms of art depicted in the new art forms. Similarly, Fausim and Cubism which were elements of modernism emerged because of the artists desire to challenge the conventions of art. This paper delves into ways in which revolutionary ideas in science influenced modernism through the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In particular, the paper mostly focuses on the concept of time and space, but also highlights on the impact of relativity and quantum mechanics on modernism artists.
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are the most prominent artists who developed cubism in the early 20th century. The abstract art evolved of cubism as a result of the artists’ desire to change the prevailing traditions of Western art. In other words, they challenged the prevailing forms of representation, in order to reflect changes in the modern age. Hence, scientific theories as well as philosophies influenced the artists to represent new art in the form of cubism. Einstein’s ideas challenged the notion of the absolute status of space and time, whereby frames of reference are considered equal, and this idea was borrowed by the Cubist artists (Lauder et al., 2014). This art was further characterized with decomposing and recomposing art based on the idea that it was possible to manipulate forms while also viewing space as less stable because of the artists’ ability to use fragmentation to depict space and openness.
According to Whitehead (1977), the two main features of space-time are that things can be separated by time and space, but they are also together in time and in space. Another less common perspective is that a thing typically takes only one shape in time because, all things in space have limitations (Whitehead, 1977). In the Portrait of Wilhelm uhde by Picasso, the art work merely presents the portrait and there is no space separating different geometric shapes integrated in the figure. However, it is possible to get multiple perspectives from the painting as modernism did not depict things as being statistic in nature.
To demonstrate the importance of scientific though towards inspiring modernism is the importance attached to space and time in geometry. To Einstein, the property of homogeneity was one that played a key role towards understanding space and time in geometry. Homogeneity presupposes that all points in space are equivalent, meaning that without this property it would be impossible to understand relations between objects. In the Portrait of Wilhelm uhde, a deconstruction of the picture yields various geometrical shapes that are next to each and shapes include: the trapezoid, rectangle, isosceles, parallelogram, diamond, triangle and right triangle. The volumetric representations of the painting contain fragmented i...