In 1916, Henri Matisse wrote to André Derain about La Science et l’Hypothèse: "Have you read this book? It contains some staggeringly bold hypotheses, such as the one about the destruction of matter. Motion exists only because matter is destroyed and reconstructed."
When Cubism becomes analytical
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La Science et l’Hypothèse is more than a classic of epistemology. Poincaré’s book played a decisive role in the development of early 20th-century art. In particular, it enabled Cubism to become analytical and gave its conceptual framework a scientific foundation. Above all, Jean Dominique
Antony Metzinger (1883–1956) and Juan Gris (whose real name was José Victoriano Gonzalez-Pérez, 1887–1927) sought to create an aesthetic equivalent of Henri Poincaré’s theories on the new geometries. This allowed them to move beyond the dialectical debate between content and form, abandon perspective altogether and reinvent the everyday world.
The avant-garde painters of the early 20th century were fascinated by the new picture of reality offered by science and by the "uncanny strangeness" of these new worlds. Art sought, by its own means, to corroborate the findings brought to light by science. Published in 1912, Du cubisme, the manifesto by Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) and Jean Metzinger, was steeped in Poincaré’s analyses. Its program followed Poincaré’s trinity almost to the letter, bringing touch, vision and motion together. Retinal art—that is, art accessible through sight alone—was thereby discredited. A painting was now expected to provide access to a "hyperreality." The objects of the world were redefined, as was the position of the perceiving subject.
The possibility of other geometries
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