The Founders of Cubism, Ardent Fans of Film
Arne Glimcher’s discursive documentary, “Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies,” argues that films, from the earliest days of Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers, were a crucial formative influence on Modern painting, especially Cubism.
Using prolific visual comparisons, it tries to show how Cubism, founded by Picasso and Braque in 1907, supposedly translated the movies’ revolutionary portrayal of time, space and motion into fine art. Photography had already captured moments that might have eluded the eye. The movies enabled visual artists to freeze blocks of time and analyze them at varying speeds. In consciously anatomizing motion and adopting multiple perspectives, the documentary implies, the Cubists may even have been trying to co-opt the brash new art form.
“Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies” is filled with celebrated talking heads, including Martin Scorsese, who produced the film with Mr. Glimcher and Robert Greenhut; artists like Julian Schnabel, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl and Lucas Samaras; and the video performance artist Robert Whitman (the most articulate), discussing the relationship of movies to the artists’ work. Much of the documentary is a jumble of people extemporizing about this and that, but there is no connective overview....
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Using prolific visual comparisons, it tries to show how Cubism, founded by Picasso and Braque in 1907, supposedly translated the movies’ revolutionary portrayal of time, space and motion into fine art. Photography had already captured moments that might have eluded the eye. The movies enabled visual artists to freeze blocks of time and analyze them at varying speeds. In consciously anatomizing motion and adopting multiple perspectives, the documentary implies, the Cubists may even have been trying to co-opt the brash new art form.
“Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies” is filled with celebrated talking heads, including Martin Scorsese, who produced the film with Mr. Glimcher and Robert Greenhut; artists like Julian Schnabel, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl and Lucas Samaras; and the video performance artist Robert Whitman (the most articulate), discussing the relationship of movies to the artists’ work. Much of the documentary is a jumble of people extemporizing about this and that, but there is no connective overview....