Pablo Picasso Blue Period

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” - Pablo Picasso Art is a representation of the spirit of the artist. It is a form of communication between the artist and the onlooker. It can have special or different meanings for everyone. “The giant of twentieth-century art was the Spanish-born Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).” (Fiero) Picasso is one of the most well known artists of all time. He has taken the world to many places through his artwork. Picasso was a natural born artist, his father Jose Ruiz Blasco, was also a painter. Picasso expressed a desire for art early and attended the fine arts academy in Barcelona at the age of fifteen. Picasso had many artistic periods through his life. The most commonly accepted are The Blue Period, The Rose Period, Africaninfluenced Period, Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. (Wikipedia) Following the suicide of a great friend Picasso reduced his color palette to various shades of blue. This time is defined as his “Blue Period” (1901-1904). By nature, we tend to associate colors with emotions and blue to us represents sadness. It was true in Picasso’s case as sadness and resignation best characterize this period of work. At the age of nineteen Picasso moved to Paris with Carlos Casagemas. He was very poor at the time which may have been a contributing factor to the sadness of his paintings. It was a vicious cycle because the sadness turned away buyers, which only made him continue in poverty. It was during this time that Picasso was under the influence of Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings and stuck with the traditional Western modes of pictorial representation. (Fiero) It was said that this period was Spanish inspired. His piece, Blue

Nude was painted during this time. I have this painting in my bedroom. I found it very thought provoking and was shocked to learn that this was done during such a desolate time for him. This is one of the reasons I chose to write about him. The Rose Period (1904-1906) was a time when Picasso used cheerful orange and pink colors. He was happy in his relationship and many believe this may have been why he transitioned from the cool dark blue tones. Harlequins, circus performers and clowns were the dominating subjects painted during this period. (Wikipedia) During this time artists were viewed as social outcasts and martyrs of society, which may have been why the Harlequin became a personal symbol to Picasso. Picasso’s highest selling painting, Boy with Pipe, was produced during this period. (Paintings Name) It was said that this period was French inspired. The Rose Period marks the end of Picasso’s main style being a figurative painter. The African Period (1907-1909), sometimes referred to as the Black Period, was a period in which Picasso was greatly influenced by African sculpture. During a visit to Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris he fell deeply under the spell of African art. The Black Period was a reaction against the mainstream art trade. He adopted the credo that art must be subversive and initiated a bold new style. The most prominent piece during this time was Les Domoiselles d’Avignon, a painting of five nude prostitutes. Although it went along with the tradition of nudes in a landscape setting, it violated every shred of tradition at the same time. The contrast between sexuality and femininity and the African masks shocked Picasso’s friends. These same friends, who were not saints themselves, declared Picasso insane at the sight of this painting and avoided him for a long time. He

reached his goal of becoming an innovative genius but realized after his own friend’s reaction that politics were involved. This piece was only sold in 1925. (Paintings Name) With the help of Georges Braque Picasso developed a style of painting called Analytic Cubism (1909-1912). Monochrome brownish and neutral colors were used as both artists took apart objects and analyzed them in terms of their shape. Cubism is one of the most radical restructuring of the way that a work of art constructs its meaning. Cubism is a term that was derived from a reference made to geometric schemes and cubes. Cubism has been known as the first and the most influential of all movements in twentieth century art. Picasso re-worked the canvas of Les Domoiselles and at least three of the figures are rendered not from a single vantage point but from multiple viewpoints, as if one’s eye could travel freely through time and space. (Fiero) In the cubist canvas, the recognizable world of the senses disappears beneath a scaffold of semitransparent planes and short, angular lines; ordinary objects are made to look as if they have exploded and been reassembled somewhat arbitrarily in geometric bits and pieces that rest on the surface of the picture plane. (Fiero) A lot of Picasso’s analytic cubism pieces were unemotional uneventful subjects such as still lives. Cubism served as a link between Georges Braque’s faceting, a technique that allows the artist to dissect and reconstruct a subject in a way that shows its essence more than its actual appearance, and the pure abstract art that followed cubism. The second phase of Cubism was Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919), which emerged when Braque first included three pieces of wallpaper in a still-life composition. Both Braque and Picasso considered them selves’ space pioneers and started pasting random objects on the surface of a canvas, a technique known as collage. The result was not a painting

or a sculpture but instead both at the same time. During this time Picasso also created the first assemblages – artworks that were built up, or pieced together, from miscellaneous or commonplace materials. Within a decade sculptors were employing the strategies of Synthetic Cubism in ways that reflected abstract time and place. Picasso and Braque moved towards abstract art. They both believed that the art of a painting should not just copy nature, but rather be an independent art form and the purpose of painting would become the painting itself. No other artist, even the famous Van Gogh, was as famous in his lifetime as Picasso. Perhaps it was from his constant changes in style and the controversy surrounding that. For Picasso’s 91 years he greatly contributed to the development of modern art in the 20th century and a great deal of his works live on.

Bibliography  Fiero, Gloria K. The Humanistic Tradition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2011. Paintings Name. 22 November 2011 . Wikipedia. 22 November 2011 .