Page 23 - Studio International - March 1967

The all-round view

'The way in which the story of the all-round view weaves back and forth between science and painting
shows that the Two Culture Divide supposed to separate science from literature is by no means such a
barrier between science and the visual arts.'

C. H. Waddington

One of the many strands that have come together to quence of this intellectual climate that the Cubists, in
make up the complex and ramifying history of painting order to produce 'a complete representation', set them-
in the last century has been the attempt by many painters selves the ambition to look at things, as Apollinaire put
to come to terms with a world dominated by science. To it, 'from all sides at once'. 'Picasso,' he said, 'also has
admit this is a commonplace; to examine just how the meditated on geometry.'
story has worked out in detail is by no means so usual. What they wanted to do was something more ambitious
Although the subject of this essay is undoubtedly one of than merely superposing a number of snapshots taken
the major themes in the dialogue between science and from different positions. They were attempting to create
painting in our time, there have as yet been rather few an image which did not merely incorporate the possibility
discussions which do more than scratch the surface of the of a changed viewing point but also dealt with space as
material. something more than a tract of emptiness within which
The story begins with the Cubists and theoretical the object stands. They had, probably, the notion that
physicists interested in relativity; goes on to modern space should be conceived of as a system of relationships,
experimental optics, involving lasers and wave front but their ideas were worked out in the practice of painting
analysis; and takes in some aspects of Op Art, and rather than in theory, and were hardly definite enough
Abstract Expressionist texturology' painters such as to be capable of precise intellectual formulation. Braque
Mark Tobey and Dubuffet. once attempted to describe it by saying (in one version) :
Amongst the roots of the Cubist revolution there were `In a still life, it's a matter of a space which is tactile, and
not only influences such as negro sculpture and Cezanne, even manual, which one can contrast with the space of a
but, as the painters' friend and apologist Apollinaire landscape, which is visual space ... In the tactile space,
kept emphasizing, some admixture of the special theory we measure the distance which separates us from the
of relativity. Probably it would be better to call it, not a object, while in visual space, we measure the distance
mixture, but a reflection in a distorting mirror. Certainly which separates the things between themselves.'
Apollinaire himself and, even more certainly, neither John Golding, in his monograph on Cubism, gives a
Picasso nor Braque had any very clear notion what the slightly different version of the same thought, in which
special theory of relativity says. However, some whiff of tactile space is not so closely linked to the still life and
its general intent seems to have filtered through the cafe contrasted to the landscape. And he goes on to explain it
gossip of Paris; sufficiently, in fact, to be decisive in as follows: 'In front of a still life by Chardin or Courbet,
determining the particular character taken by the formal for example, one can say that one object must be
revolution which the painters began. separated from another behind it by so many inches, and
They were, Apollinaire claims, trying in the Cubist so on. Braque, on the other hand, wanted to paint those
pictures 'to give us a complete representation of men and distances or spaces, to make them as real and concrete
things ... the appearance of these objects is less valuable for the spectator as the objects themselves. In order to
to us than our own representation; our deformed reflec- accomplish this it was necessary to convey the sensation
tion in the mirror of intelligence'. And they had some of having walked round his subjects, of having seen or
notion that 'the mirror of our intelligence' had just "felt" the spaces between them.' This is clearly some-
witnessed the breakdown of classical ideas of space and thing beyond the attempt, which we have discussed
time. Fitzgerald and Minkowski had shown that when above, to get beyond the classical picture of an object as
one material body is moving in relation to a second, its an isolated thing seen at one instant from one point of
length, as measured from the second body, is altered in a view; Braque wishes also to see it as something inter-
way depending on the relative motion. If we have a woven in a network of spatial relations with everything
number of bodies moving in relation to one another, else surrounding it. This is an endeavour which has been
like the planets, each one has its own appropriate frame very characteristic of much later painting, and has
of space, to which its measurements relate. And Einstein, relations with scientific ideas such as those of permeating
in his Special Theory of Relativity, pointed out that there electromagnetic or other fields, cybernetic control
is no way of determining, indeed no meaning in asking, mechanisms, and the like. But, though it did not last
which of these frames is 'correct'. As Eddington put it: long at its first appearance, it certainly played an
`We have been confronted with something not contem- important part in the earliest cubist works, and is, I
plated in classical physics—a multiplicity of frames of think, the reason why these paintings, of the so-called
space, each one as good as any other.' It was a conse- `Analytical Cubist' phase, still seem so very modern and