PICASSO

i like the blue period stuff best -- there's something very raw and unfiltered and even slightly scary about those paintings. i've always found his cubist stuff hard to love, for some reason. when i finally saw les demoiselles in person i was disappointed by how little it affected me.

The Las meninas series are some of the only Picasso's I've seen irl and I find them hilarious

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1996.403.4/

I find this painting reallt funny. A lot of his later works seem—if not a parody—then like a sly piss take on the idea of Cubist portraiture

those blocky legs, like podiums, are somehow just deeply hilarious

how does the neo-classical period not follow the rose period? i mean, logically. anyway, for me its rose for the win.

I used to have a print of "The Old Guitarist" over my bed because I was sentimental in my youth about the treatment of artists in a Cold Society.

I'm not a big Picasso fan (of any era really) but wouldn't go controppy enough to deny that he was an absolute creative force, but perhaps that he had the subtlety and sensitivity of operation barbarossa at times is part of what troubles me about him.

I know very little and feel almost no kind of way about Picasso. Could’ve been funnier.

The song > the artist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl8sWnUZVL4

jim i saw those too, two summers ago and i agree! i the little dog, always gettin squashed!!

i love the gallery of bird paintings he did, just off to the side of those rooms, as a kind of palate cleanser between his endless meninas variations. of course they too end up being meninas variations themselves, compositionally

that whole museum is great. i had never seen all his wonderfully, intricately (often pornographically) bonkers ink sketches before, for instance. and all his silly drawings of his agent.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/03/ac/e9/03ace9844ed7c1165ca57e82378cb818.jpg

something about these blue and rose paintings are entrancing

https://interiorizarte.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/periodo-rosa-picasso.jpg

i see cezanne here in his handling of color. something about the texture, a brittleness. that's the only hint at where he would go next -- cubism -- which grew from cezanne's deconstruction of the picture plane

https://www.pablopicasso.org/images/paintings/family-of-acrobats-with-monkey.jpg

the harlequins are such a strange, specific motif

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Boy_Leading_a_Horse.jpg

saw this in a museum and the docent pointed out something i hadn't noticed -- the boy ins't holding a bridle

harlequin is a pretty common motif in southern european art from 17c on, no?

hm, i think so. i don't know another painter who took it as his or her major theme for a while.

cezanne has a great one.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Cezanne_Harlequin.JPG/800px-Cezanne_Harlequin.JPG

it seems an interesting topic to learn more about, like how they factored into painting. picasso's harlequins (sometimes he calls them "acrobats" it seems) always seem really vulnerable

i see cezanne here in his handling of color. something about the texture, a brittleness.

yes -- also the density of form

for sure. and the must discussed move toward "flatness."

i really love painting. i should try to take some lessons

Cezanne is the fulcrum upon which painting turns.

so what do y'all think about Berger's book? I read it about fifteen years ago and it had insights.

the success and failure of picasso? i also read it a while ago -- 9 years ago -- and thought it was captivating at the time. i remember his discussion of cubism, and also the proto-cubist experiments of cezanne esp wrt the "bathers" at the philly museum, blew my mind

his ultimate argument, iirc, is that over time picasso became too in love with his own whims and came to a position where he was only interested in the artistic process, not any specific resulting work. he took seriously the idea that he was a genius but he saw his "genius" separately from himself, as a thing he could channel but not wield

Yeah, Berger relied on his Marxism to come to that conclusion.

yeah and i think he said that it was connected to the absurd market for his work, where even random, tossed off things he did in an afternoon would go for millions at auction. almost like he was midas.

i liked that berger could provide a frank analysis like that but also admire cubism. i didn't "get" cubism--and i definitely didn't get cezanne--until i read this book. berger's fantastic.

have you read his last collection, "portraits"?

No. I read most of his books, novels excluded in the early '00s. They're in my closet. I've wanted to revisit Success and Failure though.

i recommend it. the first chapter is about the fayum mummy portraits--really fascinating and insightful

Cezanne was obviously a massive influence on 20th c movements like cubism/the fauves/and probs some others I can't remember. His sculptural approach to painting is something Picasso is almost like a tribute band to in his early work.

I went to that Tate "1936" show last year and the degree of invention and variation convinced me that that was his "best" period. Completing wildly different colour schemes and designs like within a single week, or even day sometimes, totally superhuman.

i wish i went to that glumdalclitch! i read about it. seemed incredible

i want some more discussion here folks. participation is part of your grade

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https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/1901/picassos-sausage-dog

Stolen painting valued at 16.5 million euros recovered in Greece & then just put on a ledge where it drops to the floor

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/picasso-painting-stolen-recovered-greek-police-drop-113717779.html

The backlash is in full effect:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/arts/design/hannah-gadsby-brooklyn-museum-picasso.html

Saw JBRL posting about this elsewhere.

I love the famous "Weeping Woman" and hoped to paint-by-numbers recreate it on wood, varnish it, and hang it in a surprising spot in the back garden