""What madman, or what clever-dick with the instincts of a counterfeiter was the first to paint a sphere in trompe l'oeil on a surface that is vertical and rigorously flat! And that's what they teach at the Beaux-Arts [academy]! How could such idiocies ever have survived the verdict of Pascal?" [quote of Albert Gleizes ]. That was how, in 1906, Albert Gleizes was feeling his way towards Cubism and condemned in advance those who never saw anything in it other than a shibboleth [mot d'ordre]. It was still nothing more than a need he felt, the need not for an intellectual art but for an art that would be something other than a systematic absurdity. Quite clearly nature and the painting make up two different worlds which have nothing in common, and what is quite in its place in the one cannot also be in its place in the other."
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Jean Metzinger
Jean Metzinger (24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a French artist who lived and worked in Paris for most of his professional career. Inspired by the work of Georges Seurat and Paul Cézanne, he is one of the founders of Cubism, along with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Albert Gleizes.
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