Pablo Picasso Artworks - Essay Example

Pablo Picasso Artwork Pablo Picasso Artwork Introduction Artistic events have gone through many stages. Since the development of the art of painting, many changes have been effects. These changes relate to cultural, intellectual, and perceptional changes in the society and among involved persons. Between 14th century and 17th century, artistic events went through three stages. They went through the periods like Trecento, Quattrocento, and Cinquecento. In recent time, artistic events went through different movements. Examples are the expressionism movement, cubism, and surrealism (Pofahl, 2003). This paper discusses the artwork of Pablo Picasso. In order to show the different movements that Picasso went through, this paper compare the Girl in Chair (1952), and Drunk Woman is Tired (1902). The paper attempts to portray the reasons Picasso painted and why he changed the movement. Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso was a Spanish sculptor, stage designer, playwright, printmaker, ceramicist, and painted who lived between 1881 and 1973. He was an influential artist who helped develop and investigate many varieties of styles (Charles, 2011). For instance, he co-founded the Cubist movement in the 20th century. He is recognized with Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse as artists who revolutionized printmaking, plastic arts, ceramics, painting, and sculpture (Faerna, 2007).Picasso showed unusual artistic ability from his early years. Through his childhood and adolescence, he painted in a realistic manner. At the beginning of the 20th century, he changed his painting style after experimenting with various theories. Picasso’s work is categorized into movements. There are the expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Picasso’s expressionism can be further categorized into Blue period, Rose period, and African-influenced period. Cubism is can be classified further into Analytic cubism and Synthetic cubism. Comparison of the Girl in Chair and Drunk Woman is Tired There are many differences in the two painting. The differences lie in the painting style used. Picasso used expressionism in the Drunk Woman is Tired, while, in Girl in Chair, he used cubism and surrealism. In the Drunk Woman is Tired, Picasso is expressing his feelings of a real situation. In the painting, a drunken woman is asleep. The woman is emaciated and poor. She has no place to go. Picasso is thus using the painting to express his sympathy to her and to other people in the same situation. In the Girl in Chair, Picasso presented a corrupted image of a girl. Unlike in the Drunk Woman is Tired, the painting is not real. Picasso used cubism and surrealism to present a corrupted image of a girl. There are no emotions presented, as the painting is not of a true human being. It presences an imaginative idea connected with reality. Even though the paintings have human subjects, Girl in Chair has inhuman characteristics, which make it surprising and unnerving. The Drunk Woman is Tired easily acceptable as it depicts an image of a real person in a normal situation. Girl in Chair does not cause expression of emotion to the human race as the other does. Expressionism Expressionism was a modernist movement originally used in painting and poetry in Germany during the early part of the 20th century (Bassie, 2008). It was a reaction to naturalism, impressionism, and positivism (Richardson, et al 2012). The movement inspired artist to express the world from an individual perspective. Even though, in practice, expressionism is applied to the 20th-century work, in a broad sense, it can include the works of painters like El Greco and Matthias Grunewald. Picasso’s preparation under his father started before 1890. His progress is seen in his early works. In 1983, his juvenile quality in his works fell away. The year 1894 can be seen as the beginning of his career as an art painter. In mid 1890s, his displayed the academic realism clearly. In The First Communion (1896), he shows Lola, his sister. Again, in 1896, while aged 14 years, he painted The Portrait of Aunt Pepa (Calosse, 2011).Starting from 1897, Picasso started showing symbolist influence in his realism. In a number of his landscape paintings, he used non-naturalistic green and violet tones. His admiration of old master like El Greco and his contact to the works of Steinlen, Rossetti, Edward Munch, and Toulouse-Lautrec ushered him to personal version of painting (Picasso, et al 2007).In 1900, Picasso went to Paris, in France where his Parisian friend Max Jacob, who was both a poet and journalist, taught him the French language and literature. Picasso shared a room with Jacob. The two struggled to live, as there were severe desperation, cold, and poverty. Many works by Picasso were burned to keep the room warm. Picasso worked during the night while Max Jacob worked during the day. In the early part of 1901, Picasso left for Spain. In Spain, he encountered the same poverty that existed in Paris. He encountered many beggars, prostitutes, gaunt mothers and children, and physically challenged people. On 17 February of 1901, his best friend Carlos Casagemas, a Spanish art scholar and poet, shot himself due to the not returned affection for Germaine Pichot. Picasso met Casagemas at Els Quatre Gats café in Barcelona. The death of Casagemas affected Picasso. Beginning in the autumn of 1901, Picasso started painting numerous posthumous pictures of Casagemas. His painting of Casagemas closed with the sad symbolic painting in 1903 called La Vie. Picasso experiences affected his perception. With already developed personal version of painting, Picasso started presenting his emotional feeling on his artworks. He expressed his love for Casagemas and sympathy to the poverty-stricken people in the streets. Picasso drew unpleasant cartoons that depicted and sympathized with the situation of the underprivileged in Arte Joven (Young Art), a magazine he founded with Francisco de Asis Soler. Drunk Woman is Tired (1902).In the Drunk Woman is Tired (1902), Picasso used his expressionism to present his sympathy of the drunk woman. In the painting, a woman is asleep. On the table is a glass, which depicts the drunken nature of the woman. Picasso also depicts the chilliness of the room. In the painting, a woman has attempted to cover herself well. Picasso’s painting also depicts poverty. The woman seems to have no other place to go, and, therefore, she has knowingly covered herself to sleep. However, she is not able to cover herself well as apiece of cloth is short and can only cover her from the neck to the waist. The shortness of the cloth shows the woman’s deficiency. Furthermore, a woman is emaciated. She has a thin face. Her hair is not made. It is hanging all over. The face of the woman expresses dejection. It calls for sympathy. Through this painting, Picasso expressed his feeling towards the underprivileged people. He had tasted poverty while living with Max Jacob in Paris. Through his journeys in Paris and Barcelona, he had seen the real impacts of poverty. He had thus developed some sympathy for the poor, which he expressed in Drunk Woman is Tired (1902). Through, the painting, Picasso portrays the difficulties facing the poor people. He thus wants his admirers to understand the difficulties of the underprivileged people and sympathize with them. Cubism African artifacts influenced Picasso. Between the 1907 and 1909, Picasso went through the African-influenced period (Gimenez, 2012). The idea that Picasso developed in this period led him to the Cubist period. As mentioned earlier, there were two types of cubism. They were the analytic cubism and synthetic cubism. Analytic cubism is a painting style developed by Picasso and Georges Braque. The style was used between 1909 and 1912 when synthetic cubism was adopted. Synthetic cubism (1912-1919) was an improvement to the analytic cubism. In analytic cubism, George Braque and Picasso took out different objects and analyzed them according to their shapes. In the artwork of cubist, objects or figures are evaluated, broken up, and rearranged in abstract forms. Objects or figures are not depicted from a single viewpoint but many viewpoints (Apollinaire, Eimert & Podoksik, 2010). Surrealism Surrealism is a change in arts and literature that began in early 1920s. The movement is recognized for writings and visual artworks. It resolves the previous contradictions between reality and dream. Artists painted illogical, unnerving landscape with photographic exactness and created weird figures from normal objects. Surrealist works portray features of surprise and unexpected juxtaposition. Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term Surrealist in 1903, but the term was applied as from 1917 (Caws, 2004).Picasso went to Italy in February 1917, where he was influenced to create work in a neoclassical style. Picasso painted using neoclassical style to recall the works of Ingres and Raphael. However, in 1925, Andre Breton influenced Picasso to use surrealist style. Andre Breton declared in his article Le Surrealisme et la peinture that Picasso was a surrealist. At the time, Picasso’s work depicted cubism and neoclassical style. Due to the announcement, Picasso developed new images that showed his emotions. The images depicted psychic fears, violence, and eroticism. Picasso’s transition was glued to cubism and thus his work showed a fusion of primitivism and psychological resonances. Surrealism revitalized Picasso’s eroticism and primitivism. Girl in Chair (1952) Picasso used both Cubism and surrealism in Girl in Chair (1952). The image is of a girl seated on the seat. However, the image is corrupted to depict the human figure with nonhuman characteristics. The employment of surrealism and cubism worked perfectly well. Through cubism, Picasso was able to change reality. Picasso mainly used the cubism style to draw the head of the girl. The girl is depicted to have two heads. The image can be viewed in different viewpoints. The girl seems to be seated in two different seats. Even though the body below the neck is presented as a single body, the figure has two heads. Furthermore, the body below the neck is presented to fit the two heads. In one side, one head seems to be joining the body below but when another viewpoint is used, the other heads seem to join to the body below. Picasso was thus successful in his use of cubism. As pointed earlier, the image is a figure of a girl, which is corrupted to express an imaginative girl. The girl has misshapen hands. In one section, the hands are thin but they become thick from the wrists. Again, the right hand seems connected to the chest other than the shoulder. In the same manner, the eyes and mouth are depicted in an unnatural manner. Picasso disfigured the eyes and the mouth of the girl. Eyes are big while the mouth is misshaped into two. It is hard to figure out Picasso’s idea behind the Girl in Chair (1952) as the painting portrays Picasso’s psychological resonances. The work goes beyond what is real. However, because it is a corruption of normal figures, the painting portrays Picasso’s inner idea in connection to the real world. In the painting, Picassos seems to want people to have a wide view of women or girls. Mostly, people in many societies view women and girls in a particular viewpoint. For instance, in most societies, women and girls are presented as weak people with no equal capacities to men. Due to this common perception, women and girls are usually mistreated. They are mistreated through work or by being used as sexual objects. Picasso seems to advice against this single view of women and girls. He points to the wider world of women, and thus everyone should have multiple viewpoints when examining them. Through this way, women and girls would not be ascribed particular characteristics, as through multiple perceptions of them, uniqueness would be discovered in every girl and woman. In addition, the multiple viewpoints can be applied to the general human population. Through multiple perspectives of the human race, uniqueness can be discovered. Conclusion Picasso went through different stages. When he was young, he painted real figures. However, due to influence from other people he adopted expressionism. He later adopted cubism and surrealism after certain influences from situations or other people. The changes in Picasso paintings depict the instability of human perceptions. Situations create and change perceptions. Picasso was able to adopt four different perceptions. The different perceptions are depicted by the differences in his paintings. References Apollinaire, G., Eimert, D., & Podoksik, A. (2010). Cubism. New York: Parkstone International. Bassie, A. (2008). Expressionism. New York: Parkstone International. Caws, M. A. (2004). Surrealism. London: Phaidon. Charles, V. (2011). Picasso. New York: Parkstone International. Calosse, J. A. (2011). Picasso. New York: Parkstone International. Faerna, J. M. (2007). Picasso. Barcelona: Polı́grafa. Hatje Cantz. Gimenez, C. (2012). Picasso: Black and White. München: Prestel. Picasso, P., Spies, W., Baselitz, G., Graphische Sammlung Albertina., & Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany). (2007). Picasso: Painting against time. Ostfildern: Pofahl, J. (2003). Artworks. Cheltenham, Vic: Hawker Brownlow Education. Richardson, J., Picasso, P., Gilot, F., Lake, C., Gilot, F., Sabartés, J., & Gagosian Gallery. (2012). Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953. New York: Gagosian Gallery. 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