How Picasso and Braque Play Games With Your Eyes, and Now Your iPad

Georges Braque once said that he and Pablo Picasso were “roped together like mountain climbers” during the formative years of Cubism—1910 through 1912. Picasso and Braque scaled the mountain of Western art tradition and then turned the mountain upside down through their artistic gamesmanship that took every aspect of what we knew of art up to then and made it look like child’s play. Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–1912, which runs at the Kimbell Art Museum through August 21, 2011, studies the aesthetic chess match the two artists played in tandem for those two years and allows viewers today to play and experiment along on their iPads. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Picasso and Braque Play Games With Your Eyes, and Now Your iPad."

[Image: Screen shot from the iCubist app for the iPad designed and produced by Reza Ali for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum.]

[Many thanks to the Kimbell Art Museum for providing me with the image above and a review copy of the catalog to Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–1912, which runs through August 21, 2011.]

Francis Alys: Gentle Tornado of Art

Like Godzilla, Charlie Sheen’s “My Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour continues to roam the countryside, fortunately leaving ontological, rather than physical, destruction in its path. In New York City, however, at the MoMA through August 1, 2011, a different kind of truth delivery is taking place. Belgian performance artist Francis Alÿs stars in the retrospective Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, which is more of a “gentle tornado of art” with a side order of truth, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. With a selection of his “greatest hits” in video form and some accompanying graphic works, Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception tells the story of how a Belgian architect came to understand the world via Mexico City, a whirlwind of corruption, beauty, and absurdity—like pretty much everywhere else. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Francis Alys: Gentle Tornado of Art."

[Francis Alÿs (Belgian, born 1959). Tornado. 2000-2010. Video (color, sound), 39 min. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Volkswagen of America. © 2011 Francis Alÿs.]

[Many thanks to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for providing the image above from and other press materials for Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, which runs through August 1, 2011.]