Becoming The Third Dimension: Cubism In In The Skin Of A Lion :: essays research papers fc

Becoming the Third DimensionImages splatter against the beautys face like a moth on the windshield when gazing at the pigmented speckles dappled along the textured canvas hanging on the wall in the local gallery. Examining the seemingly incomplete picture before them, the viewer may inquire as to the perception of the painted figure from various angles as opposed to the solitary linear image presented by the artist. Mona Lisas intriguing make a face may birth more questions if the art critic could view it from a profile, or the back of her head, or even from the underside of the canvas as a whole. Although a picture may say a 1000 words, a panoramic view of the same subject would utter a hundred thousand more. Realizing the human desire to know and understand what they witness in full, artists such as Pablo Picasso began a style known as cubism between 1907 and 1914. Cubism acknowledges the idea that objects (and maybe ideas?) are three-dimensional and should therefore be expres sed as that. The cubist theory drives itself into the minds of artists of numerous mediums including literature. But in bringing a prismatic timber to a two-dimensional topic, the audience is bombarded with more questions than answers given. This reader then is likely to draw a blank at the images forming in his mind as he pieces the angles together. By producing these multiple angles, whether it be in art or literature, the creator fails to emphasize any particular perspective and often leaves one of them open without explanation, that of the reader. through its development in the literary cubism method, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje defies the readers initial perception of a single story by trivializing the specify linear view of the lead character and in turn completing the two-dimensional view of the story by invoking the readers own perspective. In composing this multidimensional story line, Ondaatje eradicates the readers inclination to base the story off of th e linear perspective of one character by delineating the main characters nugatory existence. Obliterating the linear perspective concept, the informant allows the cubist conditions of portraying a three-dimensional story contrived from the perspectives of a multitude of characters to unfold. This destruction begins when he states, in reference to Patrick Lewis homeland, that "He was born into a region which did not appear on a map until 1910, though his family had worked there for twenty years and the land had been homesteaded since 1816" (Ondaatje 10).