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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Einstein vs. Picasso

October 23, 2009 by Scott Timberg


ONE of my favorite pieces of my own, one that sent me on a real intellectual journey, explored the similarities between albert einstein’s breakthroughs in physics and the ferment in modernist art and literature.

the artist einstein is usually likened to is cubist-era pablo picasso. these two unconventional bohemians were engaged in what scholar arthur. i. miller calls “the same problem,” as einstein shattered newtonian physics and picasso shattered the picture plane.
sunday is picasso’s birthday, so i’m posting my story, which was tied to a very fine show at the skirball cultural center.
i hope it proves as mind-blowing to read as it was to research and write.
fun fact: for this story i spoke to a freud scholar named michael roth, who at the time ran a school in california but is now the president of my alma mater, wesleyan.
ps. i also love the modern lovers song.

Filed Under: art, books, einstein, modern lovers, modernism, picasso, science, skirball, theory of relativity, wesleyan

Comments

  1. Pete Bilderback says

    October 26, 2009 at 8:55 am

    I’m looking forward to reading this.

  2. Alexandra says

    February 5, 2010 at 11:33 am

    Honestly! Even beginning to compare Picasso and Einstein!!! Picasso is a phenomenon created by the artdealers! Nothin more!

    http://ihatepicasso.wordpress.com/

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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