{"id":793,"date":"2017-06-15T15:54:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T22:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/?p=793"},"modified":"2017-06-17T13:03:32","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T20:03:32","slug":"picasso-haters-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/15\/picasso-haters-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Picasso Haters! – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Les
“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” Pablo Picasso<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The purpose of this second installment in my discussion of Picasso<\/em> is to explain WHAT it is about his work that makes it so important and , yes, why it IS art, in fact, likely\u00a0the most important contribution to art in the 20th Century.<\/p>\n

\"Japanese
“Evening Shower at Atake and the Great Bridge,”Japanese Print by Hiroshige<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In my last post, Picasso Haters!<\/a><\/em>, I mapped out the representational art environment\/history that led up to Picasso’s appearance on stage.\u00a0You can catch up by visiting that post HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, one last huge development that changed Western painting, before Picasso makes his appearance. Japan ended it isolationist policy in the middle of the 19th Century and \u00a0began exporting to the outside world. Japanese Prints<\/em> were so plentiful in Europe, that you could even find them wrapped around exported pottery, to protect the objects from breakage. Contemporary artists at the time, among them,<\/p>\n

\"Van
Painted copy of the Japanese Print by Vincent Van Gogh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VanGogh<\/em>, Gauguin<\/em>, Degas\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Lautrec<\/em> saw this\u00a0stunning artwork for the first time, with its\u00a0strong use of outline, flat color and its lack of shadows. The effect caused\u00a0a seachange and Post Impressionism<\/em> was born.<\/p>\n

This is the world Pablo Picasso entered in 1900, when he arrived in Paris. His first efforts were highly influenced by the work of the Post Impressionists, but he still managed to contribute something brand new here: monochromatic painting. Before Picasso’s Blue and Rose Periods<\/em> no artist had thought to limit their palettes to a single hue.<\/p>\n

\"Blue
Painting from PIcasso’s “Blue Period.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But an even bigger invention was presented around\u00a01910. \u00a0Inspired by the later works of Paul C\u00e9zanne<\/em>, Picasso\u00a0and Georges Braque<\/em> blew apart painting and reassembled it. Frustrated by the fact that, unlike sculpture, painting had been limited to describing subject matter from a single point of view, Braque and Picasso sought a more honest way to represent a 3 dimensional world on a 2 dimensional surface. The result was the multiple view point perspective<\/em> approach, Cubism<\/em> (Analytical Cubism) to be more precise.<\/p>\n

To better understand Picasso, it’s important that<\/p>\n

\"Analytical
“Portrait of Ambroise Vollard,” Picasso, analytical cubism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

you understand how Fine Art<\/em> changed direction here. With cubism, fine art was no longer just about a beautiful esthetic, as it had been up to this point in history. Cubism\u00a0raised concept<\/em> to the top of the list, above beauty. So now we have art divided into 3 general categories: commercial art (illustration), gallery art (a search for a beautiful esthetic) and museum or fine art (intellectual pursuits). Picasso was the king of conceptual art and would remain so his entire life.<\/p>\n

Others before him, had already separated painting from its marriage to the realistic\u00a0representational image, Picasso\u00a0realized he was now presented with the\u00a0ball and given the opportunity to run with it as far as he could.<\/p>\n

He broke painting\u00a0into 6 graphic means, means for arriving at an end: line, form, value, color, texture and pattern.\u00a0This enabled him to think of them as independent entities,\u00a0to be used all alone, if desired, as well as\u00a0used together in combination. This led to uncovering various systems of abstraction (ways to abstract): reductive abstraction, geometric abstraction, organic abstraction and the use of multiple viewpoint perspective in abstraction.<\/p>\n

\"Guernica
“Guernica,” Pablo Picasso, synthetic cubism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through his exploration, in addition to cubism and monochromatic painting, he invented collage, assemblage\u00a0and\u00a0found object construction. Before he was done, he’d produced 200,000 pieces of art and\u00a0covered every form of abstraction that could be created from subject matter. Since Picasso, any time an artist, abstracting from subject matter, believes they’re on a new course,<\/p>\n

\"The
“The Artist’s Mother,” Pablo Picasso, realism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

they round a\u00a0corner and run right, smack into Picasso. In fear of taking on Picasso, after world World War II, painters in New York avoided subject matter altogether and Abstract Expressionism<\/em> was the result. Even here you could make the argument that Abstract Expressionism was heavily influenced by some of Picasso’s brushwork.<\/p>\n

Many believe Picasso did what he did, because he lacked traditional skills. They’d be wrong. Picasso could draw and paint like an angel and did consistently, alongside his abstractions, throughout his career.<\/p>\n

\"Three
“Three Musicians,” Pablo Picasso, geometric abstraction.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So when you stand before\u00a0a Picasso, realize what you’re looking at is an intellectual pursuit, that values concept over pleasing esthetic, created by a genius who invented many of the forms of art in use today, that this artist almost single handedly brought us\u00a0Modern Art<\/em>, taking art from the Post Impressionist to the Abstract Expressionists. It’s not important that it be\u00a0pretty, just that it’s brilliant!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The purpose of this second installment in my discussion of Picasso is to explain WHAT it is about his work that makes it so important and , yes, why it IS art, in fact, likely\u00a0the most important contribution to art in the 20th Century. In my last post, Picasso Haters!, I mapped out the representational … Continue reading “Picasso Haters! – Part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[18,4,67,66,8,65],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}