Rose-Colored Cubist GlassesBy Sara

As human beings, we are blessed with three-dimensional vision. It is the ability to see every angle, consider every shadow, mull over every texture of an object or face. The way we physically see things often informs the way we look at them metaphorically--a problem, a decision, a relationship.

I'm not very decisive.

I have a hard time sticking with my first instinct. Given the chance, I'll pore over every detail and every available option. From life-altering decisions to what I want for dinner, I have an overwhelming compulsion to imagine every outcome. I agonize over the taste of French fries versus a salad (then, the field greens or the chef's salad?), or leaving loved ones for a new job versus waiting tables for the rest of my life, hoping that someone will realize my diligent coffee service would make me a great employee somewhere else.

When my eyes glaze over at the sight of a multi-paged menu, or insomnia kicks in when I can't keep my mind from going over the bigger decisions, that's when I wish for a narrower field of vision, a world with a couple less dimensions.

I don't claim to have a clue as the what the great Cubist painters were thinking when they painted. What I do know is that when I look at their artwork--those of Picasso, Braque, Gris, Mouly, Klee, et al.--I see life with fewer facets.

It's a world where something as complex as a guitar is broken down into a tan box crossed with a few lines for strings, a simple circle for the sound hole. Forget the frets, tuning keys, or pin. These few shapes and lines are all we need to understand what Braque was trying to communicate. That is how I wish I could see the world.

Paul Klee's Rose Garden is by far my favorite Cubist work, and one of my favorite paintings of all time. Its churches and buildings are reduced to squares and triangles. The roses distilled into green lines topped with red circles. All of it was painted in a monochrome palette of reds and pinks.

I've been seeing the Rose Garden every day for years (it hangs in my house), long before my foray into the art world, before I knew much of anything about Cubism or other movements. I knew from the start, though, that I loved this painting. The shapes and colors combine to give me a feeling that's hard to put into words: warmth, love, happiness, romance.

It's a cliché, I know, but it's almost like a poem translated into paint. It's clean, elegant, almost haiku-like.

I don't discount the effort and attention to detail that went into the works of art produced by Cubists. I do wish, though, that my life and the myriad of choices I face every day looked a little more like the two-dimensional Rose Garden.