Pablo Picasso said “Others have seen what is and asked why.  I have seen what could be and asked why not”.

In my imagination, I see a group of artists lounging around Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris discussing what is real…..what is reality…..what is imagination and creation.  I see Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Salvador Dali, Maurice Princet and Ernest Hemingway with Gertrude and her brother.  I see them pouring over Henri Poincare’s book, Science and Hypothesis looking for details about the fourth dimension.

I imagine a lot of standing up and pacing and arm flinging with emotion as these subjects are analyzed, scrutinized and thoroughly discussed.  I can imagine Picasso saying “Everything you can imagine is real”.  I love this visualization.  And, then Braque says “Real discoveries are made beyond the limits of knowledge”.  Gosh, doesn’t that sound like something Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla would say?

In their cubist paintings, Picasso, Braque and Chagall created images that on first glance look fragmented;  but as we look closely, they have actually shown ALL of the subject, from all angles.  The painting above, Le Reve, shows the woman full face and in profile.   Picasso said he was painting not what he saw but what he knew was there.  At that point, the rest is left to the viewers imagination.

Chagall said “I upset in order to find another reality”.  Did he mean for him to find another reality or to challenge us to do it.  I’d love to sit down with him, well with all of them, and ask “What did you think about Einstein’s Nobel Prize research and how much did the scientific discoveries of your time influence your lives and art?”

I love to read about the lives of these people who were instrumental in changing our world’s reality.  I love the idea that we, too, can use our imaginations to discover and create our own reality.