My musings over:
Cubism as Film Adaption – Anne S. Lewis, Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2010. A slide show is given in the online version.

“Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies”. a film recently opened in New York is directed by Arne Glimcher. It explores the influence of early film on the Cubism of Picasso and Baroque. The film explains the relationships between the simultaneous angles edited in films and the fragmented forms and multifaceted perspectives of cubism. To the plausible evidence, the musings of a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Bernice Rose, are quoted finding relationship between the ‘Serpentine Dance’ transformed by a complex manipulation of light and color (a spectacle of billowing clothes, at the Universal Exposition,1900, Paris) and curtains in “D’Avingnon” (1907) of Picasso. Anne S. Lewis, the writer of this article quotes that it was the influence in the sense of “permissions given—old restrictions removed.”

It was Braque who around 1912-1913, systematically explored the principles of inverse perspective, disorientation and fragmentation, and split representation learnt through exposure to primitive art, and the art of Ancients. Cézanne’s experiments were the motivational force. On the
other hand, Picasso’s ‘D Avingnon’, is at once an intrusion upon and revealing of the sensuality of young flash with the use of styles, symbols and stage-drama.

Picasso’s classical cubism speaks the artistic intent and struggle to keep the flatness of the surface with coordinates. It was more clearly the Italian Futurists (around 1910) efforts to use the filmstrips imagery of stroboscopic images of motion, and strive to keep the flat surface. But, still the use of time factor in film to unveil the various facets seems to be beyond these flat canvases—although the gradual emphasis could create a rhythm of time. Secondly, in film the transitions used to relate the fragments is unthinkable without involving time factor—a limitation of the canvas. For that reason, in Indian Art treatises ‘painting’ is considered ‘ardha chitra’—partial painting in contrast to sculpture, ‘chitra’. Striving to create a ‘full-faceted imagery,’ Picasso tried cubistic sculptures, but without capturing the time factor.

An open minded study of Ancient and Primitive art could open the way. South Indian bronze sculptures (i.e. Shiva Cosmic Dance) are the examples of a further dimension where the ‘fertile moment’ denotes past and future movement in time through the ‘projections and recessions’ of the limbs.

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