The Medium is the Message

Like everyone else, I found the McLuhan reading extremely difficult to get through. I found the commentary on Cubism, however, to be quite interesting. In Cubism, the chapter's thesis is clearly spelled out: the painting itself "means" nothing other than the fact that it is a human-made construction. Using Braque's "Woman with a Guitar" as an example, the painting, though on one level an image of a woman with a guitar, is in no way life-like; no one will look at Braque's work and immediately say that it means to say anything about women or guitars. Rather, a Cubist painting is a commentary on the medium itself-- on the absurdity of attempting to recreate a real scene with paint on a flat canvas. The logic behind a work of Cubism, thus, is echoed in the very arguments Evans was attempting to defend the discipline of history against.

-Ian