Focus on this artwork and explore the Mobile perspective.
Rather than depicting the Man with Pipe from one point of view, Metzinger uses the concept he developed in 1910 of 'mobile perspective' to portray the subject from a variety of angles. The sitter’s face, clothes, hat are observed from a succession of spatial angles or locations captured over an extended period of time, resulting in a complex series of profile and frontal views seen simultaneously. The chairs, table and objects place on it, are seen from entirely different angles from the sitter.Cubist portraits typically presented the sitter in half length, with few identifying attributes; however faceted or fragmented the forms, the likeness was preserved through replication of the sitter's distinctive features. Figures were often treated frontally and shown sitting behind a table like the café patron in Man with Pipe. The café, a favorite subject and setting since the Impressionists, is a major theme in Cubist painting, too, as a setting for figures and also as a source for still-life objects. In Man with Pipe Metzinger turned away from the all-over faceting of his subject and toward the use of distinct, brightly painted shapes. A few "cubes" are clustered near the center of the painting, and the objects in the foreground have structural dislocations. (Carnegie Museum of Art)
right Cubist Carnegie Museum of Art