CUBIST TRANSPARENCY

It still seems amazing to me that the Cubists did not work transparently. we have touched on this concept some time ago, see the link to the page titled NO TRANSPARENT PAINTING.

The opacity with which the Cubists worked hit me again just now. I was scrolling thru a series of Picasso’s paintings, and came upon this one, titled Buffet (Nature morte aus verres et aux cerises).

And of course the Cubist tendencies to bend time and space are all there. The angular forms in the lower right of the painting do their typically Cubist thing as they contort and overlap. With complete opacity.

Then there are the white outlined shapes at the center of the painting. These forms, which presumably are water glasses, are depicted with transparency. You can see how the forms complete themselves.

This transparency is rare. And this is what amazes me. Why didn’t the Cubists think or push themselves to work transparently? A transparent cubism would have even opened greater vistas for them. They would not have been limited to time warping opaque planes on a two dimensional surface. They could have more completely bent and shaped their forms with transparency.

I used Picasso’s basic shapes on the lower right of his painting, and then approached them with transparency. You can see that on the right of my drawing. My depiction of overlapping transparency is not very good but that is not the point.

For in my drawing, you can see the beginnings of how Cubism and Transparency could combine to create new understandings.