Picasso's Painting A Disheveled Woman - Essay Example

Picassos Painting: A Disheveled Woman Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’ was a painting created in 1901, just at the turn of the 20th century. The painting displays a woman who is certainly not neat, with shaggy hair and a dress that hangs loosely from the woman’s bosom. The painting does not show the woman in full, but rather from her head all the way to the region slightly above the knees. Red, orange and brown background colors are mixed in the paintings background such that it is not possible to discern the color of the dress worn by the woman. Therefore, lines become the fundamental artistic elements that are applied to produce this figure of a woman against the background of mixed colors. The painting has applied black lines that are drawn unevenly bold from the woman’s hair and head, but starts to thin out from the arm regions and approaching the dress frills, which are marked by thinner lines compared to the ones used to draw the body frame of the woman. The painting does not apply straight lines to mark the body frame of the disheveled woman, but rather uses crooked and rugged ones. Additionally, the lines marking the dress and its frills are also warped, curved and discontinued at certain points. Further, the lines drawn to show the woman’s hair are also rough, irregular and clumped together towards the back neck and around the shoulders, while loosened on the woman’s front regions of the head. According to the Visual Grounded Theory, a comprehensive analysis of a visual object must encompass its context of creation, to the product, its contents, and also its stylistic structures, in order to be able to discern the comprehensive message communicated by the visual image1. Thus, the visual context of the creation of Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, is in the context of changing times from the traditional art periods to the modernity, which was characterized by the onset of the 20th century. The painting was created in 1901, which was the immediate period of turning into the 20th century. This is an artistic period of modernity that introduced defying the traditional artistic modes of conservativeness, and welcoming the artistic freedom of experimentation with new visual expression techniques. Therefore, the application of curved, rough, rugged and clumped lines that are unevenly bold and thinned out at some regions of the woman’s body frame and dress simply portrays a new era of freedom of feminist expression. Women came into modernity with the freedom of expression that would entail shaggy hair, loosely held bosoms and evidently slim dress, as a way of creating new meaning of feminine modern freedom and illuminate another world of women that was not known to the traditional artistic periods2. Further, according to the Visual Communication Theory, the non-verbal language that consists of pictorial, action and object language is very essential in determining the actual process by which visual meaning is received and transmitted (VCT). The turning into the 20th century transformed the artistic periods from the traditional reserved culture of women decency, into a more-entrenched feminine expression that stretched the boundaries of women clothing, hair makeup, dressing styles and even physical expressions3. The expression of the freedom that came with the turning into the 20th century has largely been documented in books and also in other visual and audio forms, such as in different films. Nevertheless, it is the visual art field that took up the major role of expressing the transformation into modernity that came with the concept of modernity associated with the beginning of the 20th century4. It is this new freedom of expression that has been captured so well in Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, whose application of extensive lines as the major composition of the painting have served to produce an expression of care-free attitude of the woman in the painting. The woman is clearly shaggy, un-neat and evidently less self-conscious. Additionally, the Visual Communications Theory provides that visual analysis is comprehensively a symbolic language, where different symbols applied in a piece of work of art are enjoined together to form the holistic message communicated by the work of art5. Thus, according to this theory, the overall understanding of the message communicated by a visual work comes with the holistic observation of the art symbols applied by the artist, both apparent and unapparent. In Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, lines are the major symbols that the artist has applied to communicate the visual image. The lines forming the woman’s hair in the painting are made in visibly all directions, with some hair facing the forehead, while some is facing the back, but most of it painted facing downwards towards the neck and clumped together just slightly above the back shoulders. The traditional culture has held a woman’s hair as the most important element of the woman’s beauty. Nevertheless, in the Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, the element of beauty that comes with a woman’s hair has been completely disregarded, with the woman instead being portrayed with shaggy and unkempt hair, which is a characteristic of a new era of woman expression, mainly associated with the turn into the 20th century6. Therefore, the use of the unevenly bold and thinned lines to mark the frame of the woman’s body and hair simply allows the woman portrayed in the painting to be judged by the outsiders as reckless, less self-conscious and care-free. On the other hand, the application of the uneven, rugged and clumped lines allows the woman to judge herself freer and enjoying liberty that comes with being less conscious of one’s beauty makeup. In this respect, Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, is a piece of artwork that contrasts the world view, from the feminine view of the 20th century, where the world viewed women as increasingly becoming careless with their bodies and dressing, while on the other hand, the women saw it as a new era of fundamental freedoms of feminine expression. Therefore, contrast of the feminine view of the freedom brought by modernity to that of the rest of the world’s view has been brought out through the use of lines as the basic art symbols, in the Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’. The Visual Communication Theory further offers that a piece of artwork such a painting, sculpture or drawing is not simply a still object, but rather a live literature element that communicates strong messages, even though inaudibly7. Thus, the Visual Communication Theory offers that the physiology of an art object is the basis of creating psychology of perception, through speaking the emotions of the artist or the context in which the artwork was produced8. The physiology elements that have been applied in the Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, have clearly managed to create a psychological perception of the artist on the state of freedom that came with the turn into the 20th century. The texture of the painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, is visibly rough, most especially as related to the use of unevenly bold and thinning lines to define the frame of the body of the woman in the painting, as well as the dress worn by the woman. The rough texture is felt from the lines that have created curved, rough and rugged symbols that have been clumped together to form the eyes, the eye lashes and the eye blows, as well as the irregular lines that have been bundled together to form the mouth of the woman in the painting. All these roughness combines together the physiological components that then create the psychological perception of un-consciousness, care-free and indifferent emotions of the woman in the painting. Through the use of the physiological element of roughness in the painting, the artist has been able to display the psychological state of oblivion of the feminine movement of the early 20th century, to the external worldview of moral degradation that was associated with the feminist movements. The Visual Grounded Theory further offers that the growing influence of visual communication has put images at par with words in the construction of narratives defining our contemporary cultures, and communicates our social identities9. The application of line and rough texture in Picassos Painting, ‘A Disheveled Woman’, has been instrumental in constructing and communicating the feminist contemporary culture and social identities associated with the 20th century woman. The image of the woman is painted with the face in a side profile, but the body has been given a full frontal view, enabling the painting to expose more of the woman’s bosom, while the lower body is increasingly narrowed and slim. This overemphasis of the face in-differentness of the face and the evidently exposure of the bosom is an artistic technique of communicating the 20th century contemporary culture and social identity of feminism, which made women more proud in their natural creation, as opposed to makeup10. The same emphasis can be seen in other Picasso’s painting, for example ‘Girl Before A Mirror’, where lack of makeup in the woman in mirror in the painting has also been intended to differentiate the way the woman interprets her identity, from the way the world interprets it. Bibliography 1. T. KONECKI, ‘Visual Grounded Theory: A Methodological Outline and Examples from Empirical Work’, Sociological Review vol. 41, no. 2, 2011: 131–160. 2. Brassaï. Conversations with Picasso. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. pp.121-147. 3. Fahmy, Shahira, Mary Angela Bock, and Wayne Wanta. Visual Communication Theory and Research: A Mass Communication Perspective. 2014. pp.1-52. 4. Baldwin, Jonathan, and Lucienne Roberts. Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice. [Lausanne, Suisse]: AVA Pub. SA, 2006. pp. 1-61. Read More