Greenberg: Collage

The use of the world "reality" when used in the context of art is something that needs to be addressed within the confines of abstraction.  Even though the term reality would not even come close to trying to describe cubist works. At first the cubist works were taking three demential objects and creating them in a to demential plane.  The imitation of printing was the key to Braques' cubist pieces to give them depth.  The way that the letters are placed they changed planes, because of the tension between surface and depth the eyes are tricked.Cubist paintings started to transform with the help of artists adding different substances to paint.  In doing so the texture was calling attention to the surface of the painting.  This texture contrasted with the printing on the paintings but because of the texture there was only room for the text on the surface.  With the telescoping effect the need to keep concentrating the surface was something of a necessity. Picasso says to have made his first collage in 1911. Braque was using simulated textures, typography and had begun the broaden and simplify the facet-planes in 1910.  Literal flatness is something that is always present, now instead of representing it, a piece of pasted paper becomes that plane. By placing layers on top of drawings and then adding other elements it starts to push back the space and make it seem what is layered in the back is in a visual space reseeding away.  Picasso and Braque opped for the re-representation of space and objects, this is where analytical cubism came to and end, and synthetic cubism started.  "Drawing in space was Picasso's way of taking something flat and reconstructing it out of pieces of paper to inhabit a three demential space. Braque and Picasso never returned to collage after 1914. Gris would start out with abstracted shapes and then place pictures overtop that were recognizable.  Grist uses the juxtaposition to create space and tension even with out fully sketching out depth in his collages.  Gris was the one artist to really stick to synthetic cubism and collage and master it.