Cubism, Visual and Literal

Georges Braque, Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe, and Glass (1913)

A success, a success is alright when there are there rooms and no vacancies, a success is alright when there is a package, success is alright anyway and any curtain is wholesale. A curtain diminishes and an ample space shows varnish.

Louis Casimir Marcoussis, Still Life with Three Fish (1925)

One taste one tack, one taste one bottle, one taste one fish, one taste one barometer. This shows no distinguishing sign when there is a store.

Pablo Picasso, Table with Loaves and Bowl of Fruit (1909)

Any smile is stern and any coat is a sample. Is there any use in changing more doors than there are committees. This question is so often asked that squares show that they are blotters. It is so very agreeable to hear a voice and to see all the signs of that expression.

Georges Braque, Woman with Guitar (1914)

Cadences, real cadences, real cadences and a quiet color. Careful and curved, cake and sober, all accounts and mixture, a guess at anything is righteous, should there be a call there would be a voice.

Text from “Rooms” section of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914), in which convetional meaning becomes fractured, split apart, and reorganized.

3 thoughts on “Cubism, Visual and Literal

  1. I remember reading “Tender Buttons” freshman year of college. I was so frustrated by it that I literally threw the book across the room every couple of pages.
    I definitely apppreciate it more now, but only AFTER studying modern art history. Such an interesting connection.
    Love the passages you’ve pasted here. Something nice to read on this dreary Thursday afternoon. Nice post.

  2. Thanks–yep, it’s still a dense, weird read Perhaps not totaly successful. I find it easier to read with the pictures interspersed somehow.

    Glad you enjoyed 🙂

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