Picassos Three Musicians - Research Paper Example

Picasso’s Three Musicians In the early years of the 20th century, the industrial age led to the perfection of the photograph, which reduced the prestige of hand-made art as the primary means of image capture. In reaction to the idea that art offered no greater means of expression than the simple representation of the external world that was much more economically and efficiently captured by the camera, artists such as Pablo Picasso launched into abstraction. They developed the ideas of abstraction as a means of representing the concept that there remained an element in the world that defied definition and could not be achieved by the photograph. This element was a concept they referred to as the sublime – an idea that remained just out of reach of definition and therefore could only be suggested, never represented (Penrose, 1985). This element has also been referred to as the meaning of an image as opposed to its form. It was the conveyance of this meaning that these artists were trying to suggest was the result of the audience’s understandings of the artist’s conception combined with his ability to transfer this into visual images. “It is worth emphasizing that there is no single or ‘correct’ answer to the question, ‘What does an image mean?’ or ‘What is this ad saying?’ Since there is no law which can guarantee that things will have ‘one, true meaning’, or that the meaning won’t change over time, work in this area is bound to be interpretative – a debate between, not who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’, but between equally plausible, though sometimes competing and contested, meanings and interpretations” (Hall, 1997: 9). It is possible to gain a more concrete understanding of what this means after having applied it to a representative work, such as Pablo Picasso’s painting “Three Musicians” (1921). The approach Picasso took in this piece is today called Cubist. It was used to portray Picasso’s understanding of the realism of his subject by exploring the result of reflections of the artist’s pure emotion as it became associated with the subject’s elemental or primitive shapes and forms. Lyotard 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” (Lyotard, 1984: 78). This “something which can be conceived” but not “seen nor made visible” is precisely what is meant when one uses the term ‘the sublime’. It is a quality of transcendent understanding that exists beyond the hard facts of line and shape. Its significance to this discussion is in the way in which the concept of the sublime focuses attention on the uncertainty of meaning inherent in the image. As it is applied in Picasso’s work, he provides just enough detail to make the subject accessible, but no clear resolution typically makes itself apparent so the viewer is forced to come to an understanding of his or her own. This approach forces communication between the artist, the art and the viewer which goes well beyond the representative images on the canvas and thus remains individual for each viewer. “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, 1989: 190). Within this context, this artwork ‘speaks’ and helps to illuminate Picasso’s society as well as our own only as much as we are able to interpret our own responses to the forms we find in the image. Picasso’s painting “Three Musicians” offers the viewer greater visual cues as to the intended subject than some of his other work. A large oil on canvas work measuring approximately 6’7” x 7’3 ¾”, the surface of the painting presents a very flat representation of three figures grouped in a loose triangle seemingly playing instruments. These figures appear in the characteristic costumes of stock characters in the Commedia dell’Arte. The two figures standing to the back are dressed in the outfits of Pierrot and il’Dottore. Pierrot is traditionally understood as a character of melancholy and loss. “He is often the butt of jokes, especially concerning his cowardice, but he never loses his dignity” (Rudlin, 1994). He is characterized by his baggy white clothes, his cone-shaped hat and his half-masked face in which his eyes are shaded but the bottom half of his face is visible and blue. In the painting, this character is busy playing a clarinet or saxophone-type horn. Dottore was a hack doctor who was fond of eating, drinking and having a good time but was not necessarily all that well grounded in concepts of reality. In most representations, he is completely involved in his own inner world. This character is recognized by his all black clothing and the red markings on his face that were intended to convey his love for drink (Rudlin, 1994). The character holds what seems to be sheet music on his lap in Picasso’s painting, which might suggest that he is singing or perhaps playing some kind of keyboard instrument. The frontal character in the center is the Harlequin. This character is immediately recognized by the piecemeal appearance of his wild clothing and is characterized in the theater as the ‘little devil’. He is highly acrobatic, delights in disguise and is often mischievous. In the painting, this character plays a guitar. These figures are backed by the strange shadow-like shape of a dog whose ears and front legs can just be discerned along the left side of the characters and his tail then appears between the legs of the Harlequin figure, perhaps suggestive of the character’s ribaldry. As is common with Picasso’s work, though, it is not truly possible to determine which characters are intended to be in the foreground and which in the background as various features seem to overlap others in incongruous ways. The picture plane is kept deliberately flat as Picasso built the work from flat pieces of decorative paper. Warm colors dominate the image creating a sense of delightful unity despite the drastic differences of the men’s personalities as expressed by the differences in the clothing that they wear. According to the museum description of the piece, “The three musicians and dog conjure a bygone period of bohemian life, enjoyed here by Picasso in the guise of a Harlequin flanked by two figures who may represent poet-friends of the artist’s: Guillame Apollinaire, who was recently deceased, and Max Jacob” (MoMA, 2006). Apollinaire is thought to be the black figure, who joins his song to that of his other symbolist friends even from beyond death and that is why the figure is draped in black rather than because he fits the depiction of Dottore; however, a look into the poet’s character reveals a similar range of jocosity and pretence in the poet’s work. Although he was not Belgian, he lived there long enough to pick up the dialect and thus wrote convincingly as if he had been a native (Bates, 1989). Thus, he meets the symbolism of the character on a number of levels. Part Jewish but converted to Catholicism only to be later interred in the German concentration camps (well after Picasso created this painting) (Kulik, 1999), it might be said that Jacob matches the depiction of the Pierrot as much as Apollinaire matches the Dottore. This leaves Picasso himself filling the role of the Harlequin, a role he adopts well through his dramatic explorations in painting and in his own exuberant personality (Berger, 1965). This analysis of the painting thus demonstrates the multitude of levels of meaning from a variety of interpretations. There is the original intent of the artist that may never be fully appreciated as he was informed by his personal experience with his friends. He was also undoubtedly influenced by the social events and tensions of his times, which may have influenced his decision to try to depict how often very different people, perhaps even of very different nationalities and experiences, can still come together to make beautiful and joyful music. Some of this message may be conveyed to the viewing audience based upon their own experience, knowledge of the commedia dell’arte or history of the painter and the painting itself. This examination reveals the way in which art is not static, but is instead interactive with its audience. This includes the political and social ideas of the audience’s present as well as the symbols they recognize in the particular forms used and what they understand of the art and artist’s history. The postmodern movement, with its emphasis on revealing the sublime, brings these ideas forward. The “only definition” of realism is that “it intends to avoid the question of reality implicated in that art” (Lyotard, 1984: 75) while work such as Picasso’s directly addresses the reality that all meaning is subjective. Works Cited Bates, S. Guillaume Apollinaire. New York: Twayne Publishing, 1989. Berger, John. The Success and Failure of Picasso. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965. Hall, S. Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1997. Kulik, William (Trans.). The Selected Poems of Max Jacob. Oberlin College Press, 1999. Lapsley, Robert & Westlake, Michael. Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester University Press, 1989. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. MoMA. “The Three Museums.” New York, 2006. May 4, 2010 Penrose, R. Picasso: His Life and Work. London: Granada, 1985. Rudlin, John. Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook. New York: Routledge, 1994. Read More