Lesson 5 - Scorsese Picasso Braque

This was a documentary produced by Arne Glimcher, with discussions from Martin Scorsese and various other artists and film producers. It was a cinematic tour through the effects of technological revolution and it tried to show how cubism, founded by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1907, supposedly translated the movies' revolutionary portrayal of time, space, and motion in fine art.

Pablo Picasso 

One of the things Scorsese says in this film was "Cubism was not a style. It was a revolution that instigated a profoundly radical change of form - in fact a radical change of vision itself." I found this interesting because the film itself seems to have been based around the assumption that changing technology drives artistic innovation. For instance, Picasso and Braque had a similar passionate interest in new technology and their art was based on the next big thing technologically speaking. They were fascinated by aviation and cinema and formed their own film club because of it. They were enthusiasts of technology and it was becoming because they were part of the generation that experienced this at the start.

What I liked about this documentary was that it wasn't just about art. It was taken out of the spotlight and combined with the effects of technology and film making, which is still art but in the new technological form and an incorporated element of popular culture.

Georges Braque 

What I found to be the most interesting there was an avant garde-esqueness to this film. Glimcher makes the case that the appeal of film has always been in its ability to heighten reality rather than accurately depict it. The film demonstrates how early cinema succeeded by defying audience expectation of the real. Though cinema is the most effective means available to show reality in its purest form, it's also a paradox because it resists the natural tendencies that drives the artists towards further abstraction of their own work which is what Glimcher claims in his case. He reasons that cinema's aim is to bend and twist reality in order to convey abstraction.