Maya Deren’s Vision

Pablo Picasso’s Art

“He can compare similar portions of events widely disparate in time and place, and so recognize both the constancy of elements and their variable functions in one context or another, and he is able to perceive that a natural, chronological whole is not immutable, but that it is a dynamic relationship of functioning parts” (Deren 11).

Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Picasso’s Las Meninas

“He has dedicated himself to the effort to intervene upon it, to dissemble the ostensibly inviolate whole, to emancipate the element from the context in which it ‘naturally’ occurs, and to manipulate it in the creation of a new contextual whole-a new, original state of matter and reality-which is specifically the product of his intervention” (Deren 12).

Bombing of Guernica April 26, 1937

Bombing of Guernica April 26, 1937

Picasso’s Guernica

“A man so reduced to immediate perception only, has lost, in losing experience, all which makes him

human” (Deren 11).

As Deren’s vision narrates and Picasso’s art illustrates, everyone sees events, people and objects in the context of their personal experience. In essence, we see with everything we have already seen.