Triktixa -- would it be an infringement of copyright? You could claim it under artistic appropriation.

Also -- I just wanted to congratulate you on the fact that the phrase "Br****si d***o" is a Googlewhack! (asterisks used to preserve googlewhack status..)

No, this is where it's from!
http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/brancusi/highlights3.html

'just a weak justification for analytic Cubism's break away from realism'

whoops -- that should be an 'against', not a 'for'. To reiterate -- I think that Cubism does break away from realism, and I do NOT think that Cubism is super-realist -- rather, the opposite. I apologize for my typo.

"Do you really see Cubism as a flattening of the Image?? - I would agree that in the post-Cubist holocaust of proto abstraction such artists like Mondrain or Rothko flattened the image, but there is true depth and a great sense of three dimensionality that can be found in much of cubism esp the Analytical epoch. Even in Synthetic Cubism there is a three dimensionality to the work."

Yes, I do. Cubism has a sense of depth, but within a shallow plane. This is what I've been talking about -- a simultaneous depth and flatness, as a sort of semi-reconciliation of the image and the medium. Cubism doesn't have a "great sense of three dimensionality", though -- it's not a window onto a world, not a Michelangelo piece with proper Renaissance perspective.

I mean, around the early 1910s, Picasso (and Braque) is being influenced by Cezanne, who is also continuously flirting with flattening the image at the time -- look at his Mont-Sainte-Victoire. So I do think so, also from a genealogical standpoint.

In the 'Houses at L'Estaque' by Braque example that you gave, the houses are very solidly three-dimensional, but at the same time are pressed and flattened by the tree and in the foreground, as if the houses are tumbling out of the image, but the tree forces them flat again. There's this incredible tension between the houses having depth, and the entire image being rendered as flat. I think this tension is the core of cubism.

about the sign:
"I would actually suggest there to be the opposite happenings within Cubism."

Well, I'll explain - in Picasso's painting 1912 Violin, he introduces newspaper into the painting. The newspaper stands as both the surface of the violin, and the surface/wallpaper behind the violin, at the same time. The single cut-out outline of the newspaper both indicates the boundary of the violin, and also the negative space of the violin. The same sign/object functions as two different signifiers. There's a sense of depth brought on by the placement of the two sheets of newspaper, but at the same time, they're both newspaper on top of canvas, so it's clear that the canvas itself is flat. Here, even in synthetic cubism, is this tension between flatness and depth.

"In paintings like this and MANY like it Picasso and Braque show off multi-percpectival views within the work. Can this really be denied?"

Jagged, incoherent angles do not mean that the painting harbors several different perspective viewpoints. Perspectival viewpoints implies a very realist, objective way of looking at things, but you too seem to reject the notion that Cubism is realist.

How do you deal with the fact that Picasso's and Braque's paintings are not coherent in terms of their 'many internal perspectival viewpoints'? That is, don't you think that if "looking at an object from many different points of view" was their intention, then they would have created images with strict, proper vanishing-point perspectives, but with several of these perspectives combined in a single image? Instead, their paintings aren't geometric enough, are 'imperfect' lines and creations joined together...

Also -- you seem to dislike anything after cubism -- you mention the "post-Cubist holocaust of proto abstraction".. care to explain why?

Sorry, Dan Proops - I'm not ignorant of cubist ideology, it's just that you're adhering to a popular misunderstanding of cubism.

Really, an "ability to show different viewpoints" is just a further adherence to the sort of positivism and scientific knowledge, and eventually just a weak justification for analytic Cubism's break away from realism/mimetic depiction -- that is, "Picasso and Braque are actually being super-realist, in that they're being more scientific and actually showing something from many different sides".

The viewpoint I argue -- that cubism is about a flattening of the image to adhere and echo with the flattening of the picture plane, is actually a viewpoint that Picasso's friend and dealer Kahnweiler (as well as Clement Greenberg, later in the 60s) argued for. Also -- arguably, Picasso is being influenced by the linguistics of Saussure, and utilizing a single sign (a tilted plane) to represent many different aspects of the image.

In short -- to say that Cubism is a representation of a single object from many viewpoints at once, is just a copout against having to accept that Cubism is actually not realist, not mimetic, is just a continuation of the 19th-century positivist notion of painting that Picasso and Braque was in fact moving against.

the cubist mentality of setting up objects and environments and viewing them from different vantages from within the same space

Ahh! When will stop thinking that cubism is a simultaneous viewing of a single thing from many different viewpoints? I repeat -- this is not what cubism is -- cubism is really a simultaneous reconciliation and rebellion against the flatness of the picture plane, by creating smaller faceted planes (within the painting) that 'jut out' slightly.

Oh, and #2 -- nope. Although not specifically in concord with the computer-pixel, look at Gerhard Richter (http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/detail.php?paintID=6089), which was two years before Dali. Ellsworth Kelly painted some pieces in the 50s, I think, too.