But even if the window had now gone, the act of stepping through it had yet to be taken. Despite everything, art for the Impressionists was still ultimately a matter of "reflection". The activity of the artist was emphasized as never before-but this "subjective" activity was still only that of depiction and perception. Reality was still only experienced as sensations and impressions. The experience of reaching out, seizing and transforming reality was still unexpressed.
Cubism was a rebellion against Impressionism. This rebellion, however, took the form of an insistence on carrying many of Impressionism's central principles to their logical conclusion. The Cubist painters not only devalued the concept of what the object "was supposed to be". They actively attacked the concept, dislocating, splitting, refracting, distorting and otherwise radically altering the familiar mental stereotype of every object painted. They not only chose the very humblest objects to paint: cafe tables, cheap chairs, coffee cups, newspapers, old musical instruments and so on. “hey placed obstacles in front of the intellect to prevent its immediate recognition of what these objects were.
- "Cubism", writes McLuhan,
- by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favour of instant sensory awareness of the whole.[1]
No longer is the objective world "out there", at a measurable distance from the eye, while the "ego" or "self" is in its own four walls. One seems to be "inside" the objects depicted, and on all sides of them, while they seem to be inside one's own mind and eye.
- ↑ Understanding Media, London 1964, p 13.
