Cubism has always had a bit of an identity problem. As art, it was never quite what or who you thought it was. The fractured human and natural forms had a cockeyed elusiveness, like a guy turning the other cheek, giving you the cold shoulder and the evil eye all at once.
You’d hardly think a Russian — a guy from a social system symbolized by a quasi-cubist hammer and sickle clanking along for the “communist” good — could make this all better for the masses, cultured or otherwise.
That’s why it’s something of a revelation to encounter a persuasive aesthetic answer to several vexing isms, artistic and political, in “Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity,” opening Saturday at the Chazen Museum of Art and running through Nov. 26.