A late Cézanne such as the Mont Sainte Victoire of 1904-6 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art is characterized by certain extreme simplifications: most notably, by a highly developed insistence on a frontal viewpoint of the whole scene; by a suppression of the more obvious elements suggestive of depth; and by a resultant contracting of foreground, middleground, and background into a distinctly compressed pictorial matrix. Sources of light are definite but various; and a further contemplation of the picture reveals a tipping forward of the objects in space, which is assisted by the painter’s use of opaque and contrasted color and made more emphatic by the intersection of the canvas provided by the base of the mountain. The center of the composition is occupied by a rather dense gridding of oblique and rectilinear lines; and this area is then buttressed and stabilized by a more insistent horizontal and vertical grid which introduces a certain peripheric interest.

Colin Rowe, Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal

Frontality, suppression of depth, contracting of space, definition of light sources, tipping forward of objects, restricted palette, oblique and rectilinear grids, propensities towards peripheric development, are all characteristics of Analytical Cubism; and, in the typical compositions of 1911-12, detached from a more overtly representational purpose, they assume a more evident significance. In these pictures, apart from the pulling to pieces and reassembly of objects, perhaps above all we are conscious of a further shrinkage of depth and an increased emphasis which is now awarded to the grid. We discover about this time a meshing of two systems of coordinates. On the one hand an arrangement of oblique and curved lines suggests a certain diagonal spatial recession. On the other, a series of horizontal and vertical lines implies a contradictory statement of frontality. Generally speaking, the oblique and curved lines possess a certain naturalistic significance while the rectilinear ones show a geometricizing tendency serving as a reassertion of the picture plane. But both systems of coordinates provide for the orientation of the figures simultaneously in an extended space and on a painted surface, while their intersecting, overlapping, interlocking, their building up into larger and fluctuating configurations, permits the genesis of the typical Cubist motif.

Понтормо

Giuseppe Terragni dopo il ritorno dal fronte russo

У творчості Джузеппе Террані концептуальна неоднозначність розвивається завдяки використанню двох базових і протилежних концепцій простору. Перша розглядає простір як субтрактивний, тобто такий, що утворюється шляхом вирізання частини з масиву. У цьому контексті простір метафорично сприймається як порожнина, видовбана в абстрактному суцільному масиві. Друга концепція простору, яке бере свій початок у Відродженні, розглядає простір як адитивний, тобто сформований із послідовності умовних шарів, подібно до колоди карт. Субтрактивний простір передбачає наявність центру і є доцентровим за своєю концепцією; натомість адитивний простір більше зосереджується на периферії, краях і кутах, тому є відцентровим за своєю концепцією.

Peter Eisenman, From Object to Relationship II: Giuseppe Terragni

Бальдассаре Перуцці