In this paper I argue that the development of cubism by Picasso and Braque at the beginning of the twentieth century can be illuminated by consideration of long-running philosophical debates concerning perceptual realism, in particular by Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary properties, and Kant’s empirical realism. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso’s dealer and early authority on cubism, interpreted Picasso and Braque as Kantian in their approach. I reject his influential interpretation, but propose a more plausible, Kantian reading of (...) class='Hi'>cubism. (shrink)

This article offers a contribution to the history of scientific ideas by proposing an epistemological argument supporting the assumption made by Miller whereby Niels Bohr has been influenced by cubism when he developed his non-intuitive complementarity principle. More specifically, this essay will identify the Bergsonian durée as the conceptual bridge between Metzinger and Bohr. Beyond this conceptual link between the painter and the physicist, this paper aims to emphasize the key role played by art in the development of human (...) knowledge. (shrink)

We introduce the CUBISM system for the analysis and deep understanding of multi-participant dialogues. CUBISM brings together two typically separate forms of discourse analysis: semantic analysis and sociolinguistic analysis. In the paper proper, we describe and illustrate major components of the CUBISM system, and discuss the challenge posed by the system’s ultimate purpose, which is to automatically detect anomalous changes in participants’ expressed or implied beliefs about the world and each other, including shifts toward or away from (...) cultural and community norms. (shrink)

We introduce the CUBISM system for the analysis and deep understanding of multi-participant dialogues. CUBISM brings together two typically separate forms of discourse analysis: semantic analysis and sociolinguistic analysis. In the paper proper, we describe and illustrate major components of the CUBISM system, and discuss the challenge posed by the system’s ultimate purpose, which is to automatically detect anomalous changes in participants’ expressed or implied beliefs about the world and each other, including shifts toward or away from (...) cultural and community norms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to draw important parallels between the way in which configured pictorial practices of early Cubism interpreted the idea of tactile space and the phenomenological concept of existential spatiality. It is argued that in dispensing with the “illusion of perspectival space” and deconstructing geometrical perspective, several Cubist artists developed a position of multi-perspectival realism with respect to what remains ungraspable in the three-dimensional visual rendering of space. Tactile space is the main theme of (...) early Cubist painting. Tactility remains concealed by linear perspective and three-dimensional space, and existentially primordial tactile space turns out to be the ungraspable which Cubist experiments has to disclose. At the same time, these artists succeeded in avoiding any kind of a reification of space as something that statically embraces what is situated in it. The paper is also preoccupied with Cubist “geometrical experimentation”. The claim is defended that it is precisely this experimentation that most essentially anticipates Heidegger’s analyses of the spatiality of the ready-to-hand and the spatiality of being-in-the-world. Parallels are also drawn with Merleau-Ponty’s spatiality of the perceiving-tactile body which was chiefly focused on the presupposition that the visibility attained through visual perception is imbued with invisibility stemming from the immediate tactility relating the perceiving body and the perceived entities – a presupposition shared by the early Cubists and the French phenomenologist. (shrink)

The practice of Ontography deployed by OOO, clarified and expanded in this essay, produces a highly productive framework for analyzing Salvador Dalí’s ontological project between 1928 and 1935. Through the careful analysis of paintings and original texts from this period, we establish the antecedents for Dalí’s theorization of Surrealist objects in Cubism and Italian Metaphysical art, which we collectively refer to as ‘Ontographic art,’ drawing parallels with the tenets of Graham Harman’s and Ian Bogost’s object-oriented philosophical programmes. We respond (...) to the question raised by Roger Rothman concerning Object-Oriented Idealism in Dalí’s work by showing pivotal changes to Dalí’s ontological outlook, from Idealism to Realism, across the aforementioned period, positing the Ontographic intentionality of Dalí’s ontological project in Surrealist art. (shrink)

This work constitutes our first advance in the study of the work of the writer, art historian, critic, and German anarchist Carl Einstein. He proposes an analysis of the methodological, theoretical matrix on which he establishes his unique historiographical conception of 20th-century art, focusing on the period between the rise of the German expressionist movement and the avant-garde consolidation of Cubism. The proposed hypothesis maintains that Einstein finds in Cubism (especially in the works of Picasso, Braque, and Gris) (...) a "method" for his model of critical historicization of twentieth-century art rather than an "object" of investigation. (shrink)

Phenomenology is often described as a paradigm shift that calls for a re-assessment of inherited themes and concepts. One of its most important contributions is the central role given to the embodied subject as opposed to the conception of the disembodied subject that has dominated philosophy since Descartes. If perspectival painting best represents the paradigm of modern philosophy since the Renaissance, it is the multiple perspectives of Cubist painting that best represent the phenomenological paradigm. While the relationship between phenomenology and (...) art has been widely studied, my aim in this article is to focus on the way in which Cubism represents the embodied, horizonal structure of our perception, and then to discuss the new form of contemporary art installation as an actualization of Cubist principles in the age of digital reproduction. The embodiment of the subject necessarily involves intersubjectivity, for others appear in the subject’s contextual frame of public space. While for Arendt the shift from private subjective space to public intersubjective space is effected through dialogue, I argue that it is also effected architecturally, for architecture facilitates dialogue by offering multiple perspectives on common space and shared time. I suggest, finally, that architecture’s multiperspectival strategies offer the humanities a useful model of a multidisciplinary methodology. (shrink)

An examination of the criteria implied in claims about the realism of cubism, Typified by those of hintikka in "concept as vision". It is argued that his analysis of cubism is inadequate and incoherent and that the artistic component of his attempted analogy between cubism and husserlian phenomenology is distorted and ineffective. For the realism of cubist preoccupation is to be understood, Not merely as a departure from so-Called illusionistic painting, But in terms of new pictorial techniques (...) and emphases: in terms of the internal elements, The unique character of the painting itself. (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 피카소의 큐비즘을 자리지정자와 자리포기자 사이에서 자리지키는자로 재구성하는 것이다. 현대회화의 역사에서 피카소의 공헌은 다양한 시점에서 파악된 대상을 본질적 형태로 환원하여 화면을 재구성한 것이다. 이러한 피카소의 공헌은 대상의 관점에서 본질을 드러낸 것이지만 주체의 관점에서 시점권력을 포기한 것이다. 시점 권력의 포기는 분석적 큐비즘을 지나 종합적 큐비즘으로 이행한다. 화가의 자리, 즉 하나의 시점포기의 가장 과격한 실천이라고 할 수 있는 분석적 큐비즘은 다양한 시점을 수용한 가운데 대상이 알아볼 수 없는 방식으로 해체한다. 피카소는 이 시기의 일부 그림에 작가의 권력을 확인하는 서명도 하지 않는다. (...) 그러나 종합적 큐비즘 시기 및 이후의 작품에서는 시점을 2~3개로 제한한 가운데 매개자로서 작가의 자리를 포기하지 않는다. 화가의 시점권력은 타자의 시점들로 해체되는 것이 아니라 해석하고 매개한다.BR 하버마스는 현대 철학자들에 의해 자리지정자로서 철학의 지위가 해체된다고 진단한다.BR그러나 철학이 해체될 경우 분화된 문화적 영역들 간 그리고 전문가와 생활세계 간의 매개가 불가능하다고 주장한다. 하버마스는 철학이 최고재판관의 권력을 휘두르는 자리지정자를 포기하더라도 자리포기자가 아니라 자리지키는자의 역할을 담당하여 다영한 학문영역과 다양한 관점이 교직하는 자리를 포기할 수 없다고 주장한다.BR 전통회화에서 큐비즘으로의 전환 그리고 분석적 큐비즘에서 종합적 큐비즘으로의 전환은 하버마스의 자리지정자, 자리포기자 그리고 자리지키는자의 전환과 상응한다. 이 논문은 하버마스의 글과 피카소의 그림 사이에서 시점, 즉 자리의 위상 변화를 추적한다.BR 이를 위해서 첫째, 하버마스의 자리지정자 개념과 큐비즘 이전의 전통회화를 다룬다(Ⅱ장). 여기에서 최고재판관으로서 철학과 주체의 권력 그리고 전통회화에서 화가의 자리지정자로서의 권력의 유사성을 다룬다. 둘째, 하버마스가 『도덕의식과 소통적 행위』에서 다룬 이성의 요구 자체를 공격하는 현대 철학과 전통회화의 원근법을 해체하는 분석적 큐비즘을 다룬다(Ⅲ장). 여기에서 철학과 주체 해체의 공과 과를 하버마스의 입장에서 다룬다. 동시에 피카소가 브라크와 함께 분석적 큐비즘을 단행한 이유와 발생한 문제가 무엇이었는지 살펴볼 것이다. 셋째, 하버마스의 자리지키는자와 종합적 큐비즘 이후 피카소 작품의 유사성을 다룬다(Ⅳ장) 이를 통해 하버마스가 철학과 주체의 자리를 포기할 수 없었던 이유와 이와 유사하게 피카소가 화가의 자리를 고수할 수밖에 없었던 이유를 밝힌다. (shrink)

Mikhail Lifshitz is a major forgotten figure in the tradition of Marxist philosophy and art history. _The Crisis of Ugliness_, published here in English for the first time, is a compact broadside against modernism in the visual arts that resists the dogmatic complacencies of Stalinist aesthetics.

This issue of Science in Context presents a sampling of current work by art historians examining modern artists' engagement with science as well as the relationship of photography to both science and art. The essays' topics span the mid-to-later nineteenth century to the 1960s and, thus, in a series of case studies provide an introduction to aspects of artistic modernism. Indeed, it is impossible to understand fully many of the radical innovations of modern art without some knowledge of an artist's (...) cultural context, and developments in science have often played a critical role in defining that milieu. Collected together, these essays also represent methodological models of historical work on art and science that serve as useful examples in this developing field. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 1-44.

Following up on its predecessor in this Journal, the article defends philosophy as a guide to making and analyzing art; identifies Cubist solutions to the Prometheus Challenge, including a novel analysis of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; defines a new concept of aesthetic attitude; proves the compatibility of Prometheus Challenge artworks with logic; and explains why Plato would have welcomed such artworks in his ideal state.

Kant’s account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant’s position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore and (...) Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime. I illustrate the worry by juxtaposing the finitist reading with analytical cubism. -/- . (shrink)