What is the difference between analytical and synthetic Cubism?
Analytic Cubism comes before Synthetic. You can think of one as a deconstructive turn, which dismantles the conventional codes of representation and shatters the unities of space and time, while the other is a reconstructive move that picks up the fragmented elements and pieces them back together according to the logic of multiple perspectives and hybrid, often conflicting realities. In the earlier analytical stage, color drops out so Picasso and Braque can concentrate on rethinking how space can be mapped on a flat surface by fragmenting one-point perspective into multiple perspectives. What began as a form of “volumetric flatness” around 1908-09 progressively evolves (or devolves) into a complex grid network by 1911 where the illusion of mass is increasingly flattened and fragmented, suggesting what Einstein had already discovered: that you cannot think space without thinking time, and you cannot think time without thinking space. When the paintings of 1911 became almost impossible t
