Picasso

[petermarcus]

(ramblings, inspired by Joey)

Through high school, college, and a little after, I was an on-again-off-again artist. I used mostly pencils, though I did have a painting phase with acrylics and airbrush. I was all over the map in genre. Portraits, science fiction, abstract, surrealism. Knowing my ENTP (Myers Briggs) leanings, I now believe I was just learning with OJT. Once I figured out how to draw or paint a certain object or scene or style, I lost interest and moved on to some other style or some other concept. Looking back, I think I was a better draftsman than an artist. In other words, my technique was better than my compositional choice or my emotional empathy. Much like amateur photographers I've seen who can talk hours about shutter speed and lighting, yet whose photographs tend to be slightly crisper images of the same thing seen at drugstore one-hour photo labs.

Which brings me, obliquely, to Picasso. Through this time, I never really saw what the fuss was about. I wasn't much of an abstractist, though I attempted it a few times to see if I could grasp it. Leonardo Neirman, still perhaps my favorite artist, could move me deeply, yet incomprehensibly. Jackson Pollock...I could only appreciate the color. Picasso? He eluded me, but really, I never tried to figure him out.

I took a trip with a friend to Key West, on my 25th birthday. Of the dozen or so times I had been there, I had never visited the Hemingway museum until that time. Odd, perhaps, as I have always identified with Hemingway...but maybe not so odd as the admission fee was a little steep. I learned on the tour that Hemingway and Picasso were friends, and there was a Picasso abstract sculpture of a cat displayed in one of the rooms of Hemingway's home. Hemingway, to me, was the gateway to Picasso. There was no Damascus blaze of inspiration on that visit, but it did make me curious enough to start looking into Picasso a bit more. I still don't get a lot of Picasso. I never have enjoyed his Harlequin phase and I suspect I never will. His Blue and Rose periods don't grab me, either. However, I've started to be drawn (so to speak) to Picasso's interpretation of Analytical Cubism.

Picture the globe of Earth, all countries, all seas, exactly at the same time. To fully see the entire Earth as it exists -- a God's eye view -- you would need to be four dimensional. If we mortals want to see the whole planet at once, we would need to stretch it out into a wide, flat map. There are many techniques for doing this, all causing some sort of distortion.

Now, picture the complexity of doing this to a man playing a guitar, and trying to paint it. Each object -- the man, the guitar, the room -- and each subobject -- fingers, guitar neck, a wall -- would need to be unfolded, unwrapped, and placed on a canvas. Distortions result, especially when trying to figure out how to group all the component, unwrapped pieces. If you put like-objects together, or even if you put items close together based on proximity, the lighting gets warped; some pieces are lit from the top, some from the bottom. In this case, it helped to keep the colors tame, to help sort out the geometry. Picasso (and the other Cubists) didn't care about the distortions. Picasso was trying to completely deconstruct a scene into its corresponding parts and drop it onto a canvas -- a God's eye view on the surface, which led to further divine nuances in an artistic sense.

Later, Picasso and other Cubists started to incorporate real objects -- bits of newspaper, sand, brass keys -- in a further melding between art/representation and real life outside of the canvas. I'm still not quite there yet. In science, I prefer the application rather than the analysis, which is why I'm an hands-on engineer. In art, I prefer the analysis, rather than the application. Paradox, or balance?



Picasso -- The Guitar Player. 1910.

Comments

[ginamoog.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh I love this post!

Pablo Picasso is my favorite artist, I have books on him, 2 prints hanging in my livingroom.

However, I didn't care for his blue period either. I don't even look at him as an abstract artist, even though that is what he is 'classified' in. I think he was above the norm, and even though people see him as abstract, that is how he saw things, and how he did them.. I'm sure to him they weren't abstract at all. It's how he saw things. Because of course we all see things differently.


The Dream is my favorite.

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, abstract is a tricky term. In a sense, impressionalism and surrealism are "abstract", as they aren't representational. Yet, they're (rightly) different areas from what is called abstract.

It's really hard to place Picasso. After 90-something years of life, he tried so many different things...

That's a nice one. I don't always like much out of his Cubism. I do love his line art, like Don Quixote -- even though that one has been sooooo reproduced it's almost pop-art at this point. Or, the three- (four-?) line simplicity of "Femme":

Re:

[ginamoog.livejournal.com]

True, true. He has done so many things, including sculpture and some of those are just completely different from his art. I mean even if you compare his 'eras' you can't tell that it's the same artist:)

Another one I like is the nude, I think it's in the blue era.. I have that on my wall. And another one on my wall, it's a little boy, standing next to a man, but I can't find it anywhere online, it's so bizarre.

[sunshine-two.livejournal.com]

I have a copy of his 'three women' hanging in the apartment. I never get tired of it.