Cubist paintings 1910-1912 and Piaget's theory of the development of objective permanence : on the existence of abstract and imaginary sense data
(Book - Regular Print)

Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03

Adviser: Cari Spring

Thesis (M.A.)--Prescott College, 2009.

Cubist painting and Piaget's development of object permanence have parallel characteristics that indicate the existence of two levels of human cognitive processing: abstract and imaginary sense data. These two levels of sense data delineate, at a previously inscrutable level, the perceptual and representational cognitive processes that unify or synthesize consciousness with the external world. The parallel characteristics elucidate why the Piagetian formative basis of sense perception informs the creation of Cubist paintings 1910-1912. Conclusions indicate that Cubists painted a representation of the perceptual environment (the world) pre-synthesis--as the senses perceive it--that is just as accurate as Realist artists depictions' of the perceptual environment post-synthesis--after the cognitive production of three-dimensional objects. The case study that forms the research of this thesis compares the Cubist deconstruction of objects with the infant construction of objects to show that both construction and deconstruction follow identical paths. The thesis finds that by positing two levels of sense data--proposed here to be abstract and imaginary sense data--the human mind forms a perceptual world matching the subjective mind with the external objective world.