Gilding yesterday, and completing The Infinite Tiredness Of Ageing. Today I've underpainted Self Portrait as Dreamer. It didn't take as long as expected but perhaps too long to then paint the companion piece, Self Portrait as Dream.
Today I've considered many innovations. Fundamentally cubism is aesthetic and tries to represent the images of objects, and thus is an externalisation of mental impressions. Cubism seeks to transmit image data, not ideas - apart from those contained in the image data(!) but even then the ideas are even less lucid than non-cubist equivalents. Consider the myriad interpretations of a Vermeer lyre player. A cubist lyre player has less intellectual content. By using abstraction, the object was simplified in all ways (except in aesthetic ways; the picture looked prettier). Today I noticed that cubism and abstraction are not necessarily associated, even if Picasso always associated them. It appears that Picasso had the skill but didn't have the patience to paint finely. It is quite possible to represent complex impressions using non-abstracted cubism, a sort of photo-cubism. Abstraction is an essential component of all art, and neurology, but abstraction even in visual art need always not be visual. Fundamentally, for example, I paint abstracted ideas.
Enough musing. Tomorrow I'm off to Birmingham to drop off a picture for the R.B.S.A. Prize Exhibition, perhaps paint the Self Portrait As Dream too, or parts of it.
