Meredith for class 10/26

• In Buffet-Picabia’s text, the word she chooses to describe her confusion about abstract painting as a “confession.” Why do you think she needed to “confess” that these abstract works left her in “a state of perplexity”?

• What do you make of the contrast between Picabia’s statement on “Réverence” (“Here Is Something Which Does Not Eulogize Times Gone By”) and the title of “This Thing is Made to Perpetuate My Memory” (both on p. 63)? Do these lines contradict each other, or are they working in concert? What effect is achieved by the juxtaposition?

• Possible thesis for Buffet piece: “In the midst of this international fair, however,
  there was a little isle of grace where the life of the arts and the spirit had been preserved and where, aloof from official circles and activities, it developed an exceptional revolutionary quality” (260).