1. Hughes asks, "how can you make paintings that might reflect the immense shifts in the consciousness that this altering technological landscape implied?"
What is abstraction?

2. Cubism does not present a coherent "way of life" as an impressionist painting might. Little to do with nature, most are still lifes in which man-made objects predominate over natural ones like fruit or flowers. Cubism does not "woo the eye or senses." (Boorstin)The notion that perspective is not a concrete thing, that the looker affects the act of looking, that the eye and its objects inhabit the same plane, the same field and influence one another was a patently 20th century notion. Paul Cezanne labored to give this idea aesthetic form in his painting. Most important is his exploration of the relativity of seeing, "coupled with an equally vast doubt that he or anyone else could approximate it in paint." His paintings are about relativity. He treats shadows as shapes in their own right...harmony in form and color. "The idea that doubt could be viewed as heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne's old age is one of the keys to our century, a touchstone of modernity itself. Cubism would take it to an extreme.

3. Les Demoiselle d’Avignon-1907

4. Ma Jolie-Pablo Picasso-1911

5. Guitar Player-Pablo Picasso 1910

7. Green Still Life-Pablo Picasso-

8. Three Musicians-Pablo Picassso-1921

9. Guernica-Pablo Picasso-1949

10. Three Women-Fernard Leger 1921

11. The City-Fernard Leger-1919

12. Nude Descending A Staircase Marcel Duchamp 1912