CIM Introduction Response

Reading about modernism, its causes, Matisse, and Picasso always make me think about the play: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin. The play is about a group of people who are drinking at the Lapin Agile, waiting for Picasso to arrive because he often frequents this bar. There are a few guest appearances by other well know figures such as Elvis Presley (although he is never called this it is very apparent who he is). Lewis talks about the historians who reject mimesis and thus reject Matisse and the later Picasso as true modern artists. Viewing these statements, and also those defending their artistic value, in light of what happens in the script I find that I do think they are part of the modernism art movement. This play is most often presented in that thrust theatre which, like theatre in the modernist period, abandons the traditional proscenium format and forces the audience to participate more in the play because one can see those across the stage. The play also breaks the fourth wall when one of the characters asks for an audience member’s program to look something up.

The passage on cubism made me rethink, in part at least, my views on this style of art. Although I still do not particularly enjoy this approach, thinking if cubism as a way of showing how our eyes interpret the world before the images reach our brains and are deciphered there is an interesting concept and makes me appreciate the initial idea and how it is carried out much more than I ever had before.

Being bilingual, I really found the section on the arbitrariness of language very applicable. Because I was raised learning German and English, I have never had to translate for one language to the other; the words just meant something to me. This was a very difficult concept for me to grasp when I was little and I could never understand why other people did not understand what I could. Dog, Hund, and canine all evoke the same image in my head. The “language game” brings our grammar rules into play. It was fascinating to watch German children in the second year create English sentences. The word choices and the especially the grammar were often incorrect but the concept was still transmitted and you could see how and why they made the choices that they did. Rules have become such an integral part of our society. They managed to function just fine in the 1700 without any spelling system.

New movements are a rejection of the old ways so in that regard, modernism as a general concept is nothing new. Nothing truly new is ever created; we just take the old and present it in a new way. Being as most movements in this world are cyclical, we will eventually move back to a more conventional way of representing art. One of the easiest areas to see this in is fashion because it affects us all. The hippie styles that were so popular in the ‘70s are now popular again.