In order to demonstrate that a knowledge of the art of the modernist period is helpful in studying modernist literary texts I aim to show the parallels between the artistic movement, Cubism, with aspects of 'Melanctha' by Gertrude Stein, and `To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf. I will use examples from these texts and Stein' s 'Tender Buttons' to show the strengths and weakness of this argument; by illustrating the contrast in response to the discipline of artistic technique on each author's writing aim to show that nothing in the creative process in uniform or limited.

Cubism, so named because it was based on a new mode of painting, where objects were represented in cube form, as building blocks of images composed to make a picture is the most relevant art form to discuss as a tool for understanding modernism. `The innovations of the cubist painters marked the...