Einstein and Picasso: Parallel Biography

In “Einstein, Picasso” Arthur Miller has attempted to draw parallels between two figures whose work changed the course of history in their respective areas. He examines the factors involved in their revolutionary achievements: these may lie in their similar personal qualities as well as in the influence of the intellectual environment and ideas of their time. In Miller’s view conclusions can be drawn with regard to common aspects of creativity in science and art. While this book is flawed, and many of its conclusions are arguable, it provides a thought provoking and stimulating attempt in this direction.

The author of the book, Arthur I. Miller, is professor of history and philosophy of science at University College, London. The book is not a personal philosophical musing on cross culture; it is obviously fruit of extended research and is thoroughly documented. There are over fifty pages of notes and an extensive bibliography. Most of the book is a parallel biography of the two men, and the last chapter contains the author’s conclusions on creativity in art and science. Yet the ostensibly objective sections of the material are shot through with the author’s personal ideas. This is legitimate but in the present case not always convincing.

Professor Miller claims that the similarities in the personal and working lives of Einstein and Picasso are uncanny and documented, and the book is a somewhat strained attempt to draw these parallels. The critical reader may find as many differences as parallels. Yet Miller makes a convincing case for the effect of the intellectual climate of the time on the work of both men, most significantly in the works of Poincare, with which both were familiar. Einstein of course was familiar with the scientific thought of his day, but so, it seems, was the artistic community of Paris. Picasso’s circle included a mathematician who used to meet with the artists and lecture them on non-Euclidean geometry as all they sat together in Montmartre cafes.

The biographies of the two men run in alternating chapters, and both are detailed only up until the first revolutionary works: Picasso’s cubist masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, and Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper. After that there is only a sketchy biographical outline; the author seems to discount the importance of any work or biographical events which followed because they do not go to prove his point. Miller’s main point is that cubism and special relativity, both involved a new geometric way of looking at the world, and that this common ability to free themselves from constraints of previous viewpoints is what united the two men and allowed them both to change the world. For this reason he spares few words for Einstein’s other two ground breaking 1905 papers, or their effect on the development of science.  Indeed one of the odd things about a book is that the author, a historian of science, seems to feel much more at home in the artistic milieu. The story of Picasso’s beginnings in Montmartre is given with fascinating and vivid detail, and deep insight into the artistic process, and this alone would make the book worth reading. According to the book jacket, Miller is an expert on Einstein and has written previous books about his work. It’s possible that this very expertise causes him to neglect Einstein somewhat in comparison to Picasso in the present work.

Picasso and his era

Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881 and his gifts were evident before he could speak. He was accepted as an extraordinary artistic talent while still in his teens, and allowed to skip all the preliminary courses in the Barcelona school of Fine Arts. His first serious exhibition was held in 1900, before he was 20. He made several trips to Paris, and a few years later moved to Montmartre to live. There he led a wild existence among other artists, with much sex, alcohol and drugs, a strong sense of belonging to a mutual intellectual community, and long frenzied discussions of art, culture and philosophy. 

Paris at the beginning of the century was in ferment. The Impressionists had overturned academic art some years earlier, painting out in the open air rather than in studios, discovering that shadows had color, and breaking the previous boundaries of acceptable expression. Post-Impressionists such as Cezanne and Gauguin went further beyond the bounds of realism. In literature too there was a dramatic avant-garde movement, exemplified by Alfred Jarry whose play Ubu Roi caused such an uproar at its first performance that it took fifteen or twenty minutes to restore order .  Picasso’s friends were caught up in this. A constant companion was the poet Apollinaire, a leader of the revolt against the symbolist poets of the previous century. Another strong supporter was Gertrude Stein, who entertained the major intellectuals of the era in her salon, where Picasso was a frequent visitor. Miller does a wonderful job in conveying the intellect and the intellectual sophistication and searching of the artists of that era. They did not loll in their studios waiting for inspiration: they read widely, constantly investigated and discussed new ideas, seized upon the various innovations of their time, artistic as well as scientific, as fodder for their creativity.

Science at that time was an exciting topic, of which the artists were well aware. Miller attributes strong influence to the discoveries of X-rays in 1895, radioactivity in 1896 and the electron in 1897. All these, he claims, imparted a philosophical message “that what you see is not what you get: There are limits to human perception.” (p.25) Newspapers were full of articles about the new discoveries and the possibilities they opened up for independent thought free of the constraining perspectives of the past. This was a major part of the intellectual climate of the time, which certainly must have influenced both Einstein and Picasso.

In Miller’s view, the two major influences on Picasso’s departure from realism were an exhibition of African primitive art, and new ideas about non-Euclidean geometry. The former is undeniable. The latter is not strongly supported in the book by evidence though of course it may nonetheless be true. Miller bases this claim on Picasso’s acquaintance with Maurice Princet, known as “le mathematician du Cubisme” (p.100 and several quoted sources). Princet was an insurance actuary who read widely about the new non-Euclidean geometries. He was a regular frequenter of Picasso’s group. A column in a Paris newspaper describes him as “a mathematician for whom the efforts of modern painters have inspired curious reflections…..Princet preoccupies himself especially with painters who disdain ancient perspective. He praises them for no longer trusting the illusionary optics of not long ago, and takes them for great geometers.”  The same author quotes him as “Princet who alone knows his true part in what we call improperly the invention of Cubism.” (p.102-103). Miller admits that Picasso and others did not say much about Princet, but concludes nevertheless that he played a substantial role in Picasso’s work. In reading Miller’s book one finds no direct evidence at all (in the artists’ own words, for instance, or interviews with them), that they were affected by these ideas, but Miller finds sufficient proof  in the fact that they spent time with this educated insurance man, and in the fact that Poincare’s work was widely read at the time.

There is considerable and illuminating discussion in the book of the onset of Cubism. I admit that reading it hugely enhanced my appreciation of painters such as Braque in whom I had previously had little interest. Undoubtedly a revolutionary aspect of the Cubists’ work, led by Picasso, was the simultaneity of different viewpoints in one painting, and Miller makes much of this “relativistic” aspect of the work. Perhaps such ideas were indeed in the air, and it is a pity that the book does not include a more focused and documented discussion of the point. Certainly, since the Renaissance paintings had a single perspective, this treatment of one figure from various different viewpoints at once was revolutionary and at first difficult to accept. When Picasso began his cubist masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” he left off his social activities and secluded himself in the agonies of creation. The painting was poorly received at first and it took several years for even the most advanced and discerning men of the time to grasp its value.

click here to see the painting

Picasso Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (from everyschool.org)

 Einstein

The treatment of Einstein is less detailed and vivid. This may be because his life up until the amazing year of 1905 was less colorful and his milieu less noteworthy. Miller tries to draw parallels between the two men’s early lives but they seem feeble; there is nothing remarkable about two different men in their 20’s having passionate love affairs! Einstein in his youth was not generally successful as was Picasso, and could not even get a university position following his education. Both men had a circle of friends with whom they discussed current ideas, but again, who at such a period of his life does not? Picasso worked in close connection and often rivalry with other brilliant painters such as Matisse. This is not true of Einstein, whose close professional companions were not of his caliber.

The author’s discussion of the process behind Einstein’s work is illuminating and makes one feel his other books on the scientist must be well worth reading. One point is that Einstein knew which problems were worth following. For example he took Planck’s radiation law as axiomatic in order to ascertain “what general conclusions can be drawn from it” (p. 83) where other physicists tried to rederive it and failed. Miller points out that Einstein must have been familiar with Poincare’s book “La Science et l’Hypothese. “In Poincare’s opinion physics faced three pressing fundamental problems: the ether-drift experiments; the peculiar way in which ultraviolet light liberates electrons from metals, known as the ‘photoelectric effect’; and the erratic microscopic dance of pollen grains and dust particles, known as ‘Brownian motion.’” (p.185). Miller stresses over and over the fact that both Einstein and Picasso were influenced by Poincare. One might conclude that the world needs Poincares in order to generate creative and scientific revolutions, rather than Einsteins or Picassos! But the implication may in fact be that Poincare’s work reflected the attitude of his era as well as his own personal insights, and that is the reason it found reverberation in the work of the two geniuses.

Miller sees importance in Einstein’s love of music, and in his feeling that creative thinking is essentially non-verbal. “For Einstein, creative thinking occurred in visual imagery, and words ‘were sought after laboriously only in a secondary stage.’”(p.188). Thus Miller seems to associate musical and visual patterns as opposed to abstract scientific thinking. This is arguable. Music may be considered the most abstract of the arts as opposed to painting. Perhaps just for this reason many scientists have loved music rather than visual art; Bohr was the exception. Miller’s intent in the association of music and imagery is to show the artistic impulse behind Einstein’s thought. Like much of the book, the association, though debatable, gives rise to interesting considerations.

The author stresses the importance of visual images in Einstein’s thinking, exemplified by the thought experiments, which he portrays as a revolutionary new technique. One of the more annoying sections of the book deals with the further development of art and science after the revolution, which the two men had initiated. Miller’s claim is that both areas went further into abstraction and abandoned visual imagery. In the case of modern art this is just not true, but the scientist too may be annoyed in reading of Feynman diagrams as a prime example of the absence of visual imagery!

Concluding remarks

While there is much to argue with, Miller does succeed in pointing out common strains in both the personal and professional life of Einstein and Picasso. Both were “men of immense egos and irresistible force and charm, yet who preferred emotional detachment.” (p. 241). Both were courageous, driven by their search for the truth to work with restless isolation, and break new paths despite the lack of support from contemporaries. Both were apparently not very nice people on a personal level! Both treated the women in their lives badly (and both had many women in their lives) and were not good parents. I was dismayed to read that Picasso abandoned friends in time of need: Apollinaire was falsely accused of an art theft in 1911 and Picasso pretended not to know him. Max Jacob the artist was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where he died, and Picasso offered no help.  There are no such dreadful stories of Einstein, but Miller claims that in both cases “their humanism was better in the abstract.” (p.242)

Though a scientist, Einstein used visual imagery just as did the artist. Though an artist, Picasso approached his work with intellectual creativity nourished by the scientific perspective of the time. The research that led to the great Cubist breakthrough was no less driven and thorough than the research of the scientist. Conversely, Einstein’s ideas were rooted in a passionate aesthetic demand for symmetry not far removed from that of an artist.

Both men did great work at the beginning of their career. There, however, in my opinion though not in Miller’s, the similarity ends. He claims that Einstein was unable to accept the revolution he instigated, in his instinctive distaste for quantum mechanics, just as Picasso could not accept art that had lost any semblance of the figurative. For this reason, he argues, neither man could make further creative steps along the lines they had instigated. However the fact is that Picasso continued creating brilliant and innovative masterpieces till the day he died. He painted “Guernica”, one of the greatest works in the history of Western art, in 1937. It is possible that his rejection of totally non figurative art is not a reactionary blindness but attests to the fact that figurative art may have more value! This cannot be said of Einstein’s aesthetic rejection of quantum mechanics.  However this is another example of the book’s thought-provoking quality. The author tries to point out similarities between art and science. But this example provides insight into the differences between them. The development of art is not linear and new breakthroughs do not invalidate the old. Vermeer and Rembrandt are still relevant, while nobody save the historian has much interest in brilliant essays on the ether or caloric.

The book concludes with an essay on creativity in science and art. Since the parallels drawn throughout the book often seem lame, it is hard to relate seriously to the essay. Nevertheless one finishes the book with a sense of the breadth and fascination of human activity, and it provides material for much further thought on the relationship and differences between the arts and sciences, and in the common influence they derive from their era.

Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty that Causes Havoc, by Arthur I. Miller, pub. Basic Books, New York, 2001

See also: Jewish Theatre Website