Cubist Revolt and the Fourth Dimension

"Why must art be clinically “realistic?” This Cubist “revolt against perspective” seized the fourth dimension because it touched the third dimension from all possible perspectives. Simply put, Cubist art embraced the fourth dimension. Picasso's paintings are a splendid example, showing a clear rejection of three dimensional perspective, with women's faces viewed simultaneously from several angles. Instead of a single point-of-view, Picasso's paintings show multiple perspectives, as if they were painted by a being from the fourth dimension, able to see all perspectives simultaneously. As art historian Linda Henderson has written, “the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry emerge as among the most important themes unifying much of modern art and theory."