Cubist at Heart
Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque are generally regarded to be the fathers of cubism. Their styles lent abstraction to the real world depicted by impressionist artists and prompted people to look at art from many different perspectives, both physically and mentally. 
Accordionist by Pablo PicassoCubist paintings tend to have many surfaces, intersecting at odd angles and giving the viewer a distorted sense of the subject.
If one were to translate cubism from the realm of art to the practices of science and engineering, it would provide a deeper understanding of the fundamental methods by which the best researchers are able to consider situations and solve problems. It is often advantageous to look at one's research from many angles, as this provokes a richer set of paths toward an eventual solution. In my work, this is imperative, as I must constantly find balance among many constraining ideas, much in the same way a cubist painter would search a subject for facets of artistic beauty before considering how to incorporate them into the canvas.
One of my Mensa people found an art and personality quiz at the BBC, which analyzes the relationship between a person's art style preferences and personality traits. It's pretty short, so it's worth a look, even though it told me I should be interested in impressionism instead of cubism.
That said, I'm off to get a hair cut from Gino on Murray. :)
Comments
I took the "art and personality" test. The test indicated that I like impressionism. Well, I knew that going into the test. I have impressionist artwork hanging up in my house. I have books about impressionism on my bookshelves. Yes, I like impressionism. I'll never forget the course in art history that I took in high school. It was both my most challenging class and my most rewarding one. I try to be an aesthete.
Posted by: arc | October 10, 2006 10:14 PM
Sorry to interrupt your blog (I don't really know how they work)...The test also thought I should like impressionism, BUT correctly found that I prefer cubism, even though I'm not the usual party-loving, extraverted cubist fan. Very interesting to read your comparison of cubism with science. Maybe there's a correlation with analytical types and cubism.
Posted by: One of the People | October 12, 2006 11:13 AM