TRANSPARENT CUBISM

Historians have divided Cubism into two segments. Analytic and Synthetic.

Analytic Cubism happened at the beginning of the movement, including the years 1908-1912.  The concepts of Analytic Cubism are central to Transparent Drawing.

“It is termed analytical cubism because of its structured dissection of the subject, viewpoint-by-viewpoint, resulting in a fragmentary image of multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes.”  1

The first word from the passage above that is resonant is analytical.  A definition of analytical is to separate a whole into its elemental parts or basic principals.  Transparency allows us to separate our enclosures into identifiable elements while at the same time drawing the entire form.  This is what we do when we Draw.  We analyze.  We work to understand how it fundamentally goes together by understanding all the parts.

The next term is multiple viewpoints.  We have adopted the term multiview into the Transparent Drawing lexicon.  Early Cubist images were generated via the incorporation of views from different sides of the object into the same image.  And this is exactly what we do when we Draw Transparently.  We incorporate visual information from different sides of the object into one drawing.

Structured Dissection.  What we do is structured.  I don’t think that we dissect necessarily, although the concept of dissection is something that has not occurred to me.  Nevertheless, what we do is orderly and sequential, and the Tate is saying that the early Cubists applied a similar rigor.

And we are intrigued by the term overlapping planes.  As they incorporated individual viewpoints, the planes of the views overlapped each other.  Our overlapping planes, because they are transparent, remain understandable.

If you follow the above set of terms, you will get an early Cubist oil painting.  It will be analytical, multiview, and overlapping.  It is just that it won’t be transparent.

The injection of transparency into the Cubist multiview analytical overlapping mindset changes the rules completely.  It is still analytical.  It is still multiview.  It is still overlapping.  But because it is no longer opaque, the entire image making process relaxes.

With transparency, you can have all the above, and still utilize a Cartesian grid if you want.  Or you can Draw Like A Byzantine in which the vanishing point is within you.  You can do whatever you want, because you are no longer having to wrestle with opaque, dense, thick, oil paints.

Why didn’t the early Cubists think in terms of Transparent Analytic Cubism?

1.  “Analytic Cubism.”  Tate.  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/analytical-cubism