Picasso in 'Oppenheimer'? The link between cubism and quantum mechanics.

Christopher Nolan’s latest biographical thriller “Oppenheimer,” which premiered on Aug. 15, is still being screened in theaters across Korea. Nolan highlights the intriguing historical background and characters’ multilateral aspects.

Left, main poster for the film "Oppenheimer," and right, Pablo Picasso's painting "Woman Sitting with Crossed Arms" (1937) [UNIVERSAL PICTURES/MUSÉE PICASSO-PARIS]

Christopher Nolan’s latest biographical thriller “Oppenheimer,” which premiered on Aug. 15, is still being screened in theaters across Korea. The film is three hours long and full of enough scientific jargon to give you a headache. Regardless, it has accumulated more than 3.2 million ticket sales here and may soon reach the $1 billion mark.

Its popularity is likely because the life story itself of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), often called the “father of the atomic bomb,” and the historical background is interesting. Nolan’s brilliant direction that brings out the intriguing historical background and characters’ multilateral aspects no doubt also played a large part. And the visuals are astonishing. For instance, the scene of the Trinity nuclear test, which is mankind’s first-ever atomic bomb test, is simultaneously realistic and dry, like a documentary, while still exquisitely reflecting the sensory and psychological experiences of the observers in the scene, which makes it even more dramatic.

Defamiliarizing reality What makes the film more interesting is the hints of modern art featured throughout the film. The first instance is when young Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) stares at a cubist painting of Pablo Picasso’s “Woman Sitting with Crossed Arms” (1937) during his stay in Europe. The scene is followed by another scene showing sparks of light and swirls of blue, signifying how young Oppenheimer begins to conceive quantum physics. In fact, Korea was able to witness the original version of the painting in the movie, as it was exhibited during the anniversary exhibit for Picasso’s 140th Birthday at the Seoul Arts Center in southern Seoul in 2021. The painting is now at Musée Picasso-Paris.

As for why Picasso’s painting appeared in the film: The American magazine Art News writes that some people have pointed out “divined similarities between developments in Picasso’s art and developments in physics,” quoting Gertrude Stein, who had been a close friend of Picasso’s: “The things that Picasso could see were the things which had their own reality, reality not of things seen but of things that exist.”

The article points out that Picasso and Oppenheimer both interpret reality as something unique and novel. Picasso created works of Cubist art, which illustrate the world as seen from various perspectives and at multiple moments, differing from conventional fine art, which depicts the world as seen from a single perspective and moment. This feature is easily seen in "Woman sitting with crossed arms" (1937), where the woman’s front and the side profiles are combined in one figure. Oppenheimer, through quantum physics, was able to recognize and calculate the phenomena of atoms, the "things not seen but that exist," and even smaller particles.

Unlike other conventional western painters who would transfer an object to canvas by looking at it from a single perspective, Picasso created cubism, which considers multiple perspectives and depicts a subject by analyzing it, breaking it up and reassembling it in an abstract form. As for Oppenheimer, he was able to recognize and measure “the things not seen but that exist” — atoms and subatomic particles — through quantum mechanics.

Poster of Christopher Nolan's fillm "Oppenheimer" (2023) [UNIVERSAL PICTURES]

In fact, Picasso’s Cubism may be better aligned with the theory of relativity, another grand axis of modern physics, than with quantum mechanics. That’s because the theory of relatively undermines the classical belief in physics that says time and space are absolute and shows that time flows differently depending on the observer, and that time and space are intertwined, not separated.

For instance, at the speed of light, time stops. Therefore, it allows the observer to see both the front and the back of an object. Usually, it takes time for you to physical move to see the front and then the back of something.

Cubism paintings show an object as seen from multiple perspectives; therefore, it can be said that it conveys the idea of relativity of space and time. It also connects to Oppenheimer’s quantum theory in that it deals with “things that have their own reality, but do not exist and cannot be understood intuitively.”

The fact that Picasso was a communist is also associable.

Oppenheimer’s interest in communism led him to be deprived of access to confidential information, which takes up a large proportion in the movie. When Picasso joined the Communist party in 1944, he is quoted in the film as saying that “Communists were the bravest to fight the Nazis and Fascism in France and Spain.”

This was in fact a widespread ideology among intellects in the western world. Oppenheimer did not join the party, but sent donations to support the Spanish Republican Armed Forces fighting against Francoist Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Escher’s Impossible Staircase in 'Inception' As well satirized in George Orwell’s 1945 novel “Animal Farm,” the Soviet Union transformed into another Fascist nation under Stalin’s rule. While Picasso tried to avoid reality, Oppenheimer did not. After the Non-Aggression Treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, he criticized the communist party and submitted his reasons for doing so in his security hearing in 1954. Thus, many historians view the deprivation of security clearance as the result of a heated political battle, which the movie also implies.

It is in these abstract ways that Nolan connects his work with contemporary art. Another representative example is his masterpiece film, “Inception” (2010).

A scene from Nolan's "Inception" (2010) [WARNER BROTHERS]

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972)'s painting "Ascending and Descending" (1960) [WIKIPEDIA]

In the film, the main character Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his colleagues use experimental dream-sharing technology to perform corporate espionage and infiltrate their targets’ subconscious and extract information. They also implant forged thoughts into the targets’ subconscious: an “inception.”

Cobb’s team subtly embeds the dreams into three layers so that the inception is left unnoticed. To oppress the target, a staircase that could never actually be constructed in reality gets inserted in to the dream — a staircase that never ends, somewhat like a Möbius Strip. Then an image similar to the famous painting “Ascending and Descending” by renowned Dutch painter Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) appears.

In the original painting, lines of monks seems to be ascending or descending the stairs. However, they cannot completely ascend or descend the stairs and have to endlessly return to the starting point. In fact, such a staircase is impossible in the real, three-dimensional world. However, Escher creates an optical illusion by elaborately twisting the proportion of objects and expressing the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface.

So why is the staircase called the Penrose steps? Escher’s painting is based on the Penrose triangle, devised by the Nobel Prize-winning British mathematician Roger Penrose. But Penrose’s idea for the triangle originated after beholding Escher’s paradoxical paintings in Amsterdam. It is said that the paintings inspired him to come up with “something impossible.” Penrose and Escher exchanged inspirations, which served as enigmatic features in Nolan’s film.

Joker makes his appearance in Nolan's film "The Dark Knight" (2008) [WARNER BROTHERS]

Nolan’s representative character Joker in “The Dark Knight” (2008) is also said to have been created after being inspired by the paintings by Francis Bacon (1909-1992). While promoting the film, he said in an interview with Tate Modern Museum that “Francis Bacon has always been my favorite artist. I am drawn to the bleakness of his paintings, especially. […] The makeup artists and I were trying to figure out a way to make the clown makeup look somehow more realistic and threatening.”

Francis Bacon's "Two Studies for a Self-Portrait" (1970) at Christie's joint exhibition of Francis Bacon and Adrian Genie, held in Boontheshop Cheongdam last year [MOON SOYOUNG]

The director said he “took a book of Bacon’s paintings and showed them a lot of different distortions of the way the paint would run together and how the colors would mix.” This is how the slightly worn-through quality and sweaty makeup of Joker was born.

Nolan also stated in his interview that “in order for movies to express something beyond talk or narration, it needs the teaching and guidance of art.”

In his recent movie “Tenet” (2020), a forged work of Francisco Goya stands as a symbolic object that hints at the themes of stealth, abduction, blackmailing and the revelation of truth. The timeless allure of such celebrated artists elevates the main themes in Nolan’s film to an even more emblematic and intricate level.

BY MOON SO-YOUNG [moon.soyoung@joongang.co.kr]