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Like the earthquakes and explorations depicted on the covers of Gertrude Stein's notebooks, this study responds to artistic and linguistic fault lines and charts new territories. The author's concern is both with a general theoretical question - the relationship between painting and poetry, between the visual and the verbal - and with a specific period of artistic history - the early years of the twentieth century, when Cubism flourished.

Rather than seeing any conflict or irreconcilable division between painting and poetry, Scobie proposes, as a model for their relation, the Derridean notion of 'the supplement.' This relation is grounded in the pervasiveness of language, in the ways in which language surrounds, imbues, structures, and supplements both verbal and non-verbal images.

Working from the double focus of theory and history, this book does not attempt to develop a consecutive argument, but rather navigates around its topics, adopting a slightly different approach in each chapter. It begins with a general theoretical discussion of the role of language in painting and in art history, then moves to a series of specific discussions of aspects of Cubism, considering the paintings of Georges Braque, and the writings of Gertrude Stein and Guillaume Apollinaire. It concludes with an examination of the experimental form of concrete poetry, including sound and visual poetry, especially the Cubist-influenced work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Earthquakes and Explorations will interest those studying art history, literary criticism, and critical theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, contains color photographs of the the paintings and an enthusiastic essay on this art
This book describes the genesis of Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism. The author presents the history of these isms in a way that is very readable. He presents not only the history of this art but also asides about how the artists felt about each other and emphasizes that Futurism was a reaction against Cubism and Constructivism a reaction against Futurism. These artists were not just reacting against the academic art of the time known as Academicism. However, the fact that they were united in their opposition to Academic Art, is shown by the artists themselves who would refer to their predecessors, when angry with them, as academicists. I feel that the author did a good job in describing the ideas behind each period of art. For example he shows some of the ideas the artists had, such as the Futurist emphasis on movement; "Nude Descending a Staircase" by Duchamp, which is pictured, in color, is a very good example of this preoccupation. The author gives glimpses into the artist's struggle to realize their ambitions as laid out in their frequently written manifestos. I found this to be the most interesting aspect of the book; as an aspiring artist myself, their alternate frustrations and eventual success rang a bell with me and gave me hope for my own work. If you happen to see this book at a used book store I recommend picking it up, you will not regret it. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more