Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/55

47 While the Cubist painters were depicting objects from two or more angles simultaneously—showing them not only from the "outside" but from the “inside” as well—scientists were penetrating to the "inside" of the elementary particles of the material world. While the Cubists were defying common sense,
 * a tide of discovery in science evoked strangely analogous ideas; the atom was found to be not a solid body, as previously supposed, but a complex of positively and negatively charged particles held in cohesion by their opposing energies. One implication of this discovery is that if all the atoms that make up a human being were to be concentrated

into a solid mass, the human being would occupy an area about the size of a pinhead. Another aspect of the “abolition of space" was connected with radio and the invention of the aeroplane. Hertz was filling the air with invisible electro—magnetic waves, enabling men to communicate instantly from distant points on the globe. Heavier—than—air flying machines were transporting people across continents at hitherto unheard-of speeds. Cecily Mackworth describes the Cubists' techniques as
 * a visual translation of the new preoccupations that were

being forced on men by their sudden precipitation into the Age of Science and the Age of Speed. This did not at all mean that the Cubists glorified aeroplanes or speed, or that new technologies and inventions formed the "contents" of their art. The relationship was far more a sub— conscious one. It was overwhelmingly in the realm of form-in the manner of perceiving the world—-that the Cubist revolution took place.

The Cubists sensed and gave voice to the profound sense of uncertainty and apprehension which was widely felt at the time. "The rainbow", wrote Apollinaire,