Paint boats or go bravely cubist – why play around in the middle?

My understanding of Cubism is that it never left representation behind. "Going bravely Cubist" would be about how you represented the boats, not whether they were there. No boats (or bulls, or bottles, or women, or whatever) = abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Kline, Rothko...). Cubism is the refraction of reality, not its abandonment.