Notes to Spirituality, Rhthm, Form
[notes by the translator are given in square brackets]
1 ['La Peinture et ses Lois: ce qui devait sortir du Cubisme', La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, 2nd series, No 12, 1923 (1922, acc Bibliothèque Nationale), pp. 26-73. English translation in Albert Gleizes: Painting and Its Laws, Francis Boutle publishers, London, 2000.]
2 [Coomaraswamy was a friend of the English Stonecutter Eric Gill whose own ideas on art were much influenced by the Art and Scholasticism of Jacques Maritain. Both Gill and Coomaraswamy often quote St Thomas Aquinas, the representative figure of scholastic philosophy. Indeed the formula that 'art should imitate nature in its mode of operation not in its natural appearances' - ARS IMITATUR NATURAM IN SUA OPERATIONE, often quoted by Gleizes, comes from St Thomas. Gleizes himself regarded the emergence of scholasticism as a sign that the religious, rhythmic spirit had failed but we will see later in this essay that he believed that on purely artistic matters, Aquinas' views were entirely'traditional'.]
3 [The quotation is very typical of Coomaraswamy's thought, but I am unable to place it precisely. I have therefore been obliged to translate it from the French.]
4 [Gleizes distinguishes between intelligence and intellect. It is the latter that is the subject of our so-called 'intelligence tests'. The intelligence, in Gleizes' use of the word, is that which is in us that is capable of contemplating God. It is akin to what, in the Orthodox hesychast tradition, is called the 'noetic faculty'. It is for this reason that I generally translate it with a capital 'I'.]
5 [This same quotation is attributed to Boethius in Gleizes’ ‘Souvenirs' - see Albert Gleizes in 1934 on this website]
6 [See note (2) above]
7 [Homocentrisme - Le Retour de l'Homme Chrétien; Le Rythme dans les Arts Plastiques, Sablons (Eds Moly Sabata), 1937]
8 The traditional 'wise ignorance of the fool' ("docte ignorance de l'idiot") which was misunderstood by the dialecticians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - Note by Gleizes.
9 I have shown elsewhere, in Art and Science for example, that Cubism, in opposing single point perspective. restored to sight its living characteristics. The eye is in fact an organ which when stopped creates space and in movement creates time. It is centred and it realises extension; it senses the fluctuations of a cadence and a rhythm and it realises periodical time and continuous form. When we recognise this, we can then understand how Cubism has to a large extent helped in the recovery of 'Man' that is talked about a little everywhere these days - and that people are still searching in the SUBJECT instead of recognising him in his own OBJECT, in his role as Man, consequently as 'living man', rejoicing in all his faculties put into action. - Note by Gleizes.
10 [The term is used by Jean Metzinger in his 'Note sur la peinture', Pan, n° 10, Oct-Nov 1910]
11 [The technique summarised here is described in more detail in Albert Gleizes in 1934. The text can be found on the rpesetn website. See also in the section 'Pictures by Gleizes', the paintings from 1934 onwards.]
11 Louis Vauxcelles in Gil Blas - Note by Gleizes.