Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko - Essay Example

Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko -An Essay in their Art practices and Ideas Introduction: Art history shows versatile artists and the various influences that worked on their art. The historical, social and personal factors played a major role in many artists’ works. There have been changes in the artistic trends and techniques over the periods and many art movements have existed. Modern period saw avant-garde and huge innovations in the art techniques and themes. Pablo Picasso is the name that no art history can miss out when it records Modern Art. Mark Rothko is yet another name that appears in Modern Art, though a bit later than Pablo. This paper will look into the influences and ideas that shine through the art work of both Picasso and Rothko, give a quick overview of their art practice and look into the formal qualities of their art work. Pablo Picasso: Pablo Picasso had become very popular in the art circle by 1910. His art period started around 1900 and lasted till his death. However, in his very young age, he created some of the significant paintings in Spanish art history. In 1896, his The First Communion portraying his sister gained acclaims. Similarly, Portrait of Aunt Pepa was painted when he was just fourteen years old. It was called as “one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting” by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot (1972). These paintings were realistic until they became tinged with symbolism after 1900. There were a series of landscapes rendered in unnatural mixture of violet with green which were mainly due to the influence of Rossetti, Edvard Munch and Lautrec. He was also greatly influenced by his love of Greco’s paintings that he found in the Madrid art galleries. He created numerous, nearly a thousand art works of a variety of genres: paintings, print works, sculptures and ceramics. His art life is divided into major periods based on his style, technique and themes. In the Blue Period, which lasted till 1904, most of his paintings portrayed a gloomy side of life in thin, half-starved figures often melancholic in shades of blue. Blindness was also an often occurring theme then. An example is The Frugal Repast, which depicted a blind man and a sighted woman. His paintings during this period might have got influenced by the loss of his close friend. Later, in the Rose Period, which lasted for the next three years, his paintings took on a more lively and friendly pink tones and figures from circus. Harlequin became a personal symbol. His work was influenced by Fernande Olivier and her presence in his life. Later, there was a short stint of African influence on some of his paintings like Les Demoiselles dAvignon till 1909. His meeting several giants of art world in Paris, his art technique took a turn and his works reflected Cubism. He was inspired by Paul Cezanne and portrayed characters as geometrical shapes, in different perspectives, which later came to known as Synthetic Cubism. It employed collage in art. Then, an influence of Surrealism is felt in his later works. It was in 1937, one of his landmark paintings Guernica was created on a mural on canvas in black color. It used symbolic forms lie a dying horse and a weeping woman which were noticed in some of this later works. He said about Guernica: “it isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them” (PBS, 2009). He used art as a complex medium. The Last Period of Picasso’s art witnessed a mixture of techniques, themes and styles. They were more colorful, which were criticized by his contemporaries, but then identified as uniquely belonging to the emerging Neo-Expressionism way ahead of its times. Many Art historians and critics say that Picasso’s art style and techniques changed as much as the women in his life changed. With every personal experience, loss, happiness and relationship had a strong influence on his art technique. He also gained much from the historical art as well as his contemporary giants, whom he met in Paris. He played an active role in the modern avant-garde depicting the techniques used by Realism, Symbolism, Surrealism, Cubism, Synthetic Cubism and Neo-Expressionism. Mark Rothko: Rothko was not so young when he discovered the artist in him. Unlike Pablo Picasso, whose significant early art outputs can be traced to the period when he was 14, Rothko discovered the artist in him in 1923, when he was twenty years old. After taking art classes, he started on his art career. In the New York art school, he was the student of Gorky and Max Weber, one of the people who influenced Picasso in Paris. Having brought close to the artists belonging to the Avant-garde, Rothko’s paintings were bound to become historically significant. As a Russian Jew, Weber influenced even more than Gorky. Rothko adopted art a medium to express emotions and religious ideas. Also, Avery had a great impact on Rothko’s early works. In his Bathers/Beach Scene, the uses of colors signify this influence. Later, in 1935, Rothko’s art was influenced by his spirit of protest against the equivalence of American and literal painting. He started adopting Surrealistic techniques and used myth and symbols in his works. It was then that he gained recognition among the art circle. During the Second World War, in 1938, Rothko and his other contemporaries in America separated themselves from political movements out of fear of Nazi impact. During this period, his art is free of any political or religious propaganda. However, the influence of myth still persisted in his art. For him, "without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.” Moreover, his companions discussed Freud and Jung, the concepts of archetypes, collective unconscious, mythological symbols and transcendence. They were also influenced by Frazer’s Golden Bough. For a while, Rothke did not paint. But later, Nietzsche had a tremendous influence on his art. Rothke’s art aimed freeing modern man from spiritual emptiness which is primarily due to the lack of mythology. For him, these symbols and rituals had the power to free the unconscious in man. So, his art had “exhilarated tragic experience” as the subject matter that symbolized myth. So, they portrayed a stark contrast of violence and passivity, drawing imagery from Aeschylus Oresteia trilogy. The Omen of the Eagle is an example of this period, which had archetypal images of man and beast, bird and tree, where the eagle symbolically represented America and Germany, which claimed their ancestry in the Holy Roman Empire. His paintings were full of mythical symbols, rituals and images drawn from a variety of sources: Greek, Christian and Judo-Christian mythology. Later, he broke ties with Surrealism, after his marriage with Mary Alice as he felt that the world existed in the human mind as well as in the physical world outside human mind. So, beyond symbolism to represent the unconscious, his art moved into realms of abstractness. In 1945, Slow Swirl at Edge of Sea is typical of this style. Later, his No. 18 and the Untitled in 1948 showed the introduction of Multi forms in his painting. The signature style multi forms propagated artist’s and viewer’s intimacy with art. He was more into constructing spiritual experience from the large canvas to the famous Rothko Chapel. A close examination of this art works reveal that he used a mixture of natural substances like egg, glue along with resins to make some layers dry quicker than the others. This was a new technique he used instead of mixing colors. Rothke is one of the modern artists, who was greatly into his art and considered art as a spiritual and religious experience. He even said that “the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them” and for him color is just an instrument. Experience was foremost. His ethnicity, personal and social experiences would have definitely played a crucial role apart from the influence of other artists and his study of psychology and mythology. References Juan-Eduardo Cirlot (1972). “Picasso, birth of a genius”. London: Elek. Read More