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| Cubist Wife puzzle |
The title of this one is A Cubist Wife. Initially, it was published as a puzzling arrangement of lines (with the black shapes not filled in). Provided with the title, readers were challenged to blacken shapes in such a way as to create a portrait of a "cubist wife." The result (as shown here) was then published in the newspaper a week later. There were endless variations on this (Cubist roosters, cows, donkeys and so on). Vorticism (sardonically discussed below) was essentially a wartime British variant of Cubism. Throughout the war, it was widely claimed that camouflage (particularly dazzle ship camouflage) had been designed by Cubists, Vorticists or others who had been excessively drinking.
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CUBIST PHOTOGRAPHY, signed "The Walrus" in Punch (Melbourne), April 19, 1917, p. 3—
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CUBIST PHOTOGRAPHY, signed "The Walrus" in Punch (Melbourne), April 19, 1917, p. 3—
I have done my best to get a grip of the Cubist idea, but my success has been indifferent. I once saw a capital photograph of some eggs. It was a straightforward, realistic rendering of their beautiful form, with the dainty lights and shades, and cast shadows and reflected lights. It was not a great creative work, and inspired, perhaps, no loftier an idea than a hankering after omelettes, but the producer of that photograph evidently saw eggs as I see them, and so tickled my vanity. But along comes your cubist, and we find that when he looks at a cream-colored hen's egg—or, perhaps, to escape the assaults of the literary purists, I had better say a hen's cream-colored egg—he (that is, the Cubist) sees a grossly irregular duodecagon, and the color thereof is a gruesome green with splodges of pulsating purple. I do not deny that he does see exactly that. Probably he does. But tho best thing for him to do is not to make a song about it. but to push off sharp for the nearest brain specialist.
If the Vorticist photographer produces an egg—of course, in the pictorial sense only—it will probably resemble a farthing Catherine wheel just expiring on a bent pin; and after a year or two of mental effort he may evolve a poetical tag to attach to it :
A vision of a shattered albumenized yolk.
Of late the inmate of a high-explosive shell.
Indirectly, this appearance of Cubist, and Vorticist, and Post-Impressionist symptoms in photographs proves that photography is Art. The question as to whether it is or not has caused sackfuls of trouble in the past, but this settles it. If photography is not Art, how can it catch horrible diseases that attack Art, and Art only? Another puzzle is solved at the same time. I have often stood in front of exhibited prints and wondered what on earth was the matter either with them or with me; I can see now that they had symptoms of Vorticism, or that they were convalescent after a bad bout of Cubism. It will save much misunderstanding at future exhibitions if those prints from anything of the sort are labeled accordingly.
If the Vorticist photographer produces an egg—of course, in the pictorial sense only—it will probably resemble a farthing Catherine wheel just expiring on a bent pin; and after a year or two of mental effort he may evolve a poetical tag to attach to it :
A vision of a shattered albumenized yolk.
Of late the inmate of a high-explosive shell.
Indirectly, this appearance of Cubist, and Vorticist, and Post-Impressionist symptoms in photographs proves that photography is Art. The question as to whether it is or not has caused sackfuls of trouble in the past, but this settles it. If photography is not Art, how can it catch horrible diseases that attack Art, and Art only? Another puzzle is solved at the same time. I have often stood in front of exhibited prints and wondered what on earth was the matter either with them or with me; I can see now that they had symptoms of Vorticism, or that they were convalescent after a bad bout of Cubism. It will save much misunderstanding at future exhibitions if those prints from anything of the sort are labeled accordingly.
