Large Female Nude by Pablo Picasso - Research Paper Example

Large Female Nude The work I chose to discuss for this paper is called "Large Female Nude" by Pablo Picasso. It also has another name in French which is "Grand Nu Dasant." This artwork was made by the artist on March 13, 1962. It is made on a block that measures 64 x 52.9 cm (25 3/16 x 20 13/16 in.) and printed on a sheet that measures 75.3 x 62 cm (29 5/8 x 24 7/16 in.). According to the museum, this artwork is a reduction linocut, trial proof printed in dark brown over reddish brown and beige. To understand this artwork, it is necessary to look at what it is, how it is made and how it fits in the artist's collection of work, his oeuvre. The picture this artwork shows is the outline of an overweight woman. The outline is filled with smaller lines that follow the lines of her muscles except in the area of her stomach. In this area, the lines move horizontal across her middle. The way these lines are drawn makes it look like the woman is moving and add energy to the art. The lines on the right side of the painting are light-colored and the lines on the left side of the painting are darker which makes the woman seem like she is not so flat, because the light is shading her. It looks like the woman is dancing because she has her hands held up on top of her head and one leg is positioned behind her with the knee bent. The other leg is straight, but it looks like it is facing me because the toes are in front. This makes me think I can see her from the front and from the side at the same time. The woman's face is turned toward the darker side of the painting and she has long, dark hair that falls over her shoulder and between her breasts. One of her breasts is straight toward me but the other is seen from the side but the one that is straight toward me is not on the side with the leg that is straight toward me. There is a light area of brown around the body of the woman, but it is wider along her dark side. This same solid brown color fills the area between her legs and the space between her face and her dark arm. There is a floor under her feet which is a wavy light line, but the rest of the artwork space is black. This artwork is described as a reduction linocut, which means that it was made in a special way. Instead of painting like most of his work, Picasso cut the image into a block and then paint was put on the block and a piece of paper was put on top of that and rubbed until the design moved onto the paper. To make this have more than one color, Picasso had to cut the block to make the background brown color of the woman and print it. The black parts would be the part of the block that he cut away and the brown part that outlines the woman would be the parts that stayed. Then he would need to cut out more of the block to show more details of the woman like the lighter color lines. If you look carefully, you can see that some of these lines go over the darker brown lines which means that they were printed after the darker lines. It is called reduction linocut because the artist has to keep reducing, or cutting away, the block in order to make the print. Even though these lines were already there in the darker brown, having to pull the block away in order to cut more of the lines away would have meant that it wouldn't be put in exactly the same place the next time when the lighter lines were being made. There is another tricky thing about this way of making art. Even though the woman is facing one way when I look at her, Picasso had to cut her like a mirror image in order to make her look the direction he wanted her to look. One of the reasons artists might use this way of making art is that they can make more than one copy of an image quickly, but they can still limit the number of artworks they print. Once the block has been carved the second time, no more new prints can be made. The style of the artwork that Picasso uses for this woman is the primitive style, which was a style that he made popular. In his work, Picasso wanted to show emotions without trying to use symbols or to show realistic images like the camera could make. He thought the best way to do this was to learn how to draw like the children, without a lot of worry about symbolic meaning and artistic training. Instead of following the rules of art, he wanted to show how artist's could follow the feelings of art. He also tried to show movement in his art by showing more than one time at a time. He would show the front view that you would see if the figure was coming toward you at the same time that he showed the side view like the figure was walking along next to you to try to capture time. He always uses his lines to show his movement, too, like in this artwork where the lines that fill the woman's body show a lot of movement and the curves of her body instead of just letting her be flat. One area where he still uses symbols, though, is in his use of color. By using the colors of brown and reddish-brown and beige, he shows that the woman has a close relationship with nature and with life. One painting that he did that reminded me a little of this artwork is called "Girl Before a Mirror." It uses the same techniques but in different ways. Picasso's artwork was very influential and different from what had been done before. He moved away from trying to show a perfect image and tried to show emotion instead. He wanted art to mean something more than what was just seen on the surface. He wanted people to think about it with more than just their eyes. This is why he showed his images from more than one viewpoint at a time, tried to create from a primitive perspective and still allowed color to show his ideas. Read More