José Luis Picón I Málaga, (EFE).- The revolution in art that led to the creation of cubism by Pablo Picasso had an unexpected ingredient, Mathematics, at the beginning of the 20th century marked by great scientific discoveries and by a great society’s interest in these advances.
“In those years there was a bustle of ideas, of exchange of art and science, and that permeated Picasso, who wanted to break and not be a continuist, not to follow the masters, but to make his own way,” he says in an interview with EFE. Mercedes Siles, Professor of Algebra at the University of Malaga.
Siles, who this Friday is offering his entrance speech at the Malaga Academy of Sciences, entitled “Picasso and Mathematics: a non-trivial encounter”, began to investigate this topic eight years ago, after visiting the exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Malaga “Movements and sequences”.
“I am a mathematician, and what I had was a mathematical look to see what I discovered in Picasso, although that look was broader because I also like poetry, literature or art”, she explains.
The cubism revolution
It has focused on the environment of 1905, when the artist from Malaga “was 24 years old and the entire revolution that cubism brought about began to take shape.”
“At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th there were great discoveries such as X-rays, work was done with radioactivity, the first science fiction films appeared and, also in 1905, the Theory of Relativity”.
For Siles, “beauty, Mathematics and art is a short list that always walks parallel”, and in the artist’s group “there were also mathematicians, and what the Theory of Relativity, the fourth dimension and space-time implied was in the mind of society, of Picasso and his friends who met at the Bateau-Lavoir in Paris”.
Another influence of Picasso is Dürer, who experienced “a very similar revolution” in the Renaissance, because in his time “it was about basing painting on Mathematics, perspective emerged” and the German artist, “to mathematize art, worked also with cubes and studies the subject of proportions”.
“Picasso had Dürer’s books, he knew him, all of this permeated his work and he made the revolution that cubism brought about,” says Siles.
Aware of the influence of mathematics on cubism
In his opinion, Cubism “is related to how to express that fourth dimension that appears with the Theory of Relativity, Picasso and his colleagues try to reflect it in their works, both in planes and in sculpture” and the man from Malaga “is going to ancient sources and is inspired by Dürer, who already used cubes for another purpose”.
Apollinaire, Picasso’s poet friend, spoke of the inspiration they all received from his time, but Siles believes that perhaps the artist did not recognize that influence of science because he was upset that at one point the birth of Cubism was attributed to Maurice Princet, the mathematician of that group of friends.
“I think that Picasso was aware of this mathematical influence, because science permeated society at that time, but he never said that Mathematics had influenced his work,” he adds.
He also considers that Picasso’s work process had some parallelism with Mathematics. “He said how he worked: he would make a painting and then destroy it, which gives an idea that there was no order, and in the end, after all the attempts, what he found was the original idea.”
“The mathematical work is not ordered either, and the creative processes both in Mathematics and in art are very similar. Mathematics is ordered when it is presented to you ready, like art”.
For this reason, although Siles admits that “it gives the impression that artistic creation goes one way and mathematics goes the other, they go very parallel”.
“They are not disparate worlds, but rather they run in parallel, just that each one produces a product. You see the product of art with your eyes, and that of Mathematics is more abstract”. EFE