[345] LECTURE XXVIII, Feb. 21, 1956 You remember that in the last hour I spoke to you about the nature of still life, about the nature of still life, the nature of pictures in which the organic elements are taken away, are not shown, and the inorganic elements out of which reality is constructed are visible. This is the foundation for the understanding of much of modern art^a, of that which is called abstract art. 1) MAN WITH A GUITAR, Braque^b--Here what you see is not the dissolution--yes, the dissolution of the surface reality of the human body into fundamental mathematical and physical structures. If you ask why is this a man with a guitar, I cannot give an answer, but it shouldn't be the problem; the problem should be that in such pictures, which have appeared in large numbers especially by Picasso^c and Braque and many of their followers, that in such pictures new forms of reality are discovered below the surface of reality, and this discovery is the decisive thing. The way in which it is composed doesn't indicate very much of the naturalistic basis out of which it has been

abstracted, and it shall not--you shouldn't ask this question. If you ask it, then the meaning of the whole thing is lost. But if you don't ask it, then you see that here is something which you don’t find in any other art, [it] comes so to speak out of the underground of reality into the surface. And then something happens which I showed you in connection with the still lives, that these non-organic forms of reality are filled with a kind of mystical or metaphysical or cosmic power, and that is most visible in them if you look at them and let the power of their symbolic character have effect on you.