Pablo Picasso and the Cubist Movement - Essay Example

Pablo Picasso and the Cubist Movement Modern artists working since the early part of the 1900s have dedicated themselves to depicting the range of human emotions within the colors and lines of their work. The modernists, such as Picasso, focused on the emotions themselves with little or no reference to the symbols or issues of the times in reaction to the perfectionism of the photograph and the machine age. They felt that the only way to portray the realism of the subject was to break the rules of art in order to explore images of pure emotion. Lyotard (1984) describes this process as an attempt “to make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible” (78). This “something that can be conceived but not seen nor made visible” is often referred to as the sublime, a quality of transcendent greatness “with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation” (Wikipedia, 2006). The presence of this sublime element, then, inspires the imagination in a specific direction based on which elements remain visible or understandable. Its significance is in the way in which it brings attention to the uncertainty of meaning inherent in the work, such that no resolution makes itself apparent. For artists of this period, the best way to achieve this sublime element was to forget the training they received in art school in order to recapture the sense of wonder and imagination reflected in art produced by children through the use of ‘primitive’ geometric forms. To understand how the sublime can be communicated through visual art, the work of cubist master Pablo Picasso will be discussed in terms of materials, subject matter, content, composition, color and impacts of context or the time period in which they were produced. The cubist movement is now widely recognized as an early phase of the avant-garde. Author Peter Wollen recognized it in 1975 as a means of breaking the boundaries of traditional signifiers and make reference instead to the relationship between the signifier and the signified (Wollen, 1975). As this idea expanded, the traditional approach to art of making reference to an established set of symbols was further broken down and explored through abstraction and minimalism. The ultimate breaking down of this was the examination of how the art medium was able to communicate a world of transition and change, reality and illusion within the very context of its delivery. “What soon emerged as the dominant strand was that theorized by Clement Greenberg as art’s self-interrogation of its own practices and materials, as calling attention to itself” (Lapsley & Westlake, 1989: 190). The idea was no longer a case of representation of the world, but rather a representation of art and its ability to convey an idea. This approach appealed primarily to those within the world of high art who were aware of the overall focus and understood the importance of the process in the understanding of the work. This artistic exploration was based not only on scientific ideas emerging at the time, but also upon sociologic concepts that were becoming increasingly evident with closer world integration. The ideas expressed through the Cubist and subsequent movements plunged into the realm of phenomenology, in which it is recognized that what appears to a subject’s consciousness may not match exactly with the view of the world held by a majority of others. Alfred Schutz, in his examinations of Edmund Husserl’s writings regarding scientific objectivism, revealed the concept that we use subjective ideas and meanings in order to define an apparently objective social world (Orleans, 2007). These subjective observations could be something as simple as what our definition of bright red might be through the most complex concepts of self or time, but were nevertheless often held to be objective truths, universally agreed upon and quickly understood. With increased globalization in the social and business worlds, the fallacy of this assumption became increasingly revealed, especially as the ideas being explored in the avant-garde of the Americas was becoming increasingly distant from that being explored by Europeans and vice versa (Wollen, 1975). With this realization, artists began to explore how their viewpoint remained unique from that of other artists and of other individuals by concentrating on the emotions or the essence of the experience rather than the representation of it (Walker, 2005). It was determined that while symbols, shapes and even colors could have different meanings to different people, it was also recognized that human emotion is generally experienced the same universally. What triggered these emotions differed, but the process of evoking emotional response could also be treated in a more or less universal way. Thus, it was also being recognized that the viewpoints held by individuals within the general audience would necessarily bring their own distortions into the dialogue established between the art, the artist and the viewer and this would affect the way the art would be experienced. This is not to say that the Cubist movement grew out of nothingness. According to Michael Delahunt (2007), both Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the two artists most credited with founding the movement, were inspired by the works of French impressionist painter Paul Cezanne and the pointillist painter Georges Seurat as well as by the intellectual works of the Fauves and the primitive pieces coming out of Africa. While their approaches changed and expanded over time, from the beginning of the 1900s through to Picasso’s later works, to be discussed here, there were several key elements that remained unchanged. For example, the focus on the picture plane and the break-up of images into smaller fragments and fractals remained, to some degree, important throughout Picasso’s career. This can perhaps be better understood by taking a closer look at some of his work. Picasso’s works, characteristic of the modern abstractionists, focused on presenting graphic images of emotions without relying on true representations of objects. In his paintings “Figures on Beach” (1931), “Weeping Woman” (1937) and “Girl Before a Mirror” (1932), Picasso presents each figure as an abstract collection of geometrical shapes arranged in such a way as to denote the specific emotions and feelings his figures are experiencing. His use of color goes a long way toward conveying the emotions he wished to express just as the relative hardness or softness of his lines worked to establish the relative sharp or dull nature of the feelings. Another aspect of his art that infuses all three of these paintings is the concept of portraying motion or action through the representation of more than one viewpoint at a time. In “Figures on Beach” (1931), this concept of movement is shown in the various placements of the eyes and nostrils of the figures and the seemingly random placement of the woman’s breasts. The confusion of straight body parts that allows arms and legs to almost become interchangeable also reflects the idea that these people are not remaining in stationary positions but are instead allowing their arms and legs to become tangled as part of their embrace. The most stationary aspect of the couple thus appears to be the more shaded upper thigh and buttock of the woman as the one of the only truly recognized forms. The warm colors of the figures and the gentle shading of the beach suggest an intimate embrace full of love rather than the more livid and pulsing tones typically associated with sudden passion, indicating a more mature love underlying the act of copulation. This idea is reinforced by the smooth curves and general avoidance of sharp angles. The warm tones here are further cooled by the presence of the gently sloping blue ocean and sky of the background while the excitement of the pose is reinforced by the depiction of the triangular-topped white tower. Picasso’s colors in “Woman Weeping” (1937) are predictably dark and muted, consisting primarily of dark earth tones suggesting the woman’s connection with the earth and universal suffering. Her eyes are the only white spaces not constrained in the center and spill out tears that paint a white and gray-blue handkerchief-shaped area out of the front of her face. However, because Picasso was interested in showing emotions, he made the handkerchief transparent for all but color, depicting the woman’s gnashing and gritted teeth as they open for weeping, move against each other in fear and gnash the edge of something in anger. Her tears are also diamond-shaped daggers digging into her fingers and her own fingernails as she attempts to hide her face behind her hands. The sharp angles and jagged edges of this central section reveal the stabbing sharpness of her sorrow while the more muted lines of the periphery denote the long-term suffering this present pain will become. “Girl Before a Mirror” (1932) depicts a somewhat happier emotion, yet remains overall just as complicated as the “Woman Weeping”. The bright reds and yellows and intricate patterns of the wallpaper of the room establish an energetic, optimistic outlook for the girl looking in the mirror that is not reflected in the mirror’s image. The colors in the mirror are darkened, deep reds, purples and blues that reflect a darker self-image than reality. Her body, somewhat pear-shaped and well-proportioned as suggested by the relative sizes of the circles drawn to denote stomach and breasts, is also distorted in the mirror’s image. The mirror image emphasizes the roundness of the stomach region, bloating it larger than the original and sagging further down while the breasts are reflected as much smaller, unevenly spaced and completely unstable. What is painted with black horizontal stable lines on one side of the painting is reflected in the mirror as downward curving green stripes, indicating an emphasis on the lower extremities and a serious instability of the upper reaches. In Picasso’s works, it can be seen that colors and shapes take on extreme importance in conveying the emotional content of the work. In each of the paintings explored, the subjects are only abstractly presented through the heavy use of geometric shapes and blocks of color, allowing them to become symbols of the general rather than true depictions of real people. Solid areas of color and intricate attention to detail further refine and define the impressions Picasso was struggling to convey fully conscious that his interpretation of life and color and form was necessarily different from the interpretations others would observe within his work. While Picasso focused on merely conveying the emotions felt regarding various issues or events, he was not necessarily able to completely shut out references to his contemporary world. His “Woman Weeping”, for example, is clothed in fashions that were common in his day but not so common in today’s world. However, these details are scarce, enabling his artwork to reach beyond the here and now of the painting and well into the future with equal appeal and application. References Delahunt, Michael. (2007). “Cubism.” Artlex. Available 5 January 2008 from Lapsley, Robert & Westlake, Michael. (1989). Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester University Press. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Orleans, Myron. (March 1, 2007). “Phenomenology.” Encyclopedia of Sociology. Available 5 January 2008 from Picasso, Pablo. (1931). “Figures on Beach.” Oil on canvas. Online Picasso Project. Available 5 January 2008 from Picasso, Pablo. “Girl Before a Mirror.” Oil on canvas. (1932). Online Picasso Project. Available 5 January 2008 from Picasso, Pablo. (1937). “Weeping Woman.” Oil on canvas. Online Picasso Project. Available 5 January 2008 from Walker, Anna. (2005). The Structural Film: Moving Towards a Cinema of Consciousness. Available 5 January 2008 from Wikipedia contributors. (2006). “Sublime (philosophy).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available 5 January 2008 from Wollen, Peter. (1975). “The Two Avant-Gardes.” Printed in Readings and Writings. London: Semiotic Counter-Strategies, (1982). Read More