Beauty

Sailing
Lyonel Feininger

Gelmeroda
Lyonel Feininger

This is cubism in an entirely new light, it's mind blowing. I was never keen on cubism because I like many, have the tendency to fall into the trap of meriting an art piece solely on beauty and the emotions it evokes in me. It's not wrong to be naturally inclined towards beauty but having an inquisitve spirit to question the purpose of an artwork and how the form conveys the emotion it does, even if it is an unpleasant one, opens up a whole new galaxy in the appreciation of art.

It's amazing how much depth these paintings contain through the overlaps of simple shapes and the translucency of colour. For Sailing, movement is depicted despite the triangle being angular and hardly bearing any association to the amorphous wind or fluid waves. Gelmeroda looks better in print, and my jaw literally dropped when I first saw it. The shapes merely suggest human figures which went against conventions of realism, and yet managed to capture the stillness and serenity of the town setting.