Free Essays on Picasso

Picasso was arguably the most influential artist of the twentieth century. He had some degree of influence in all styles of painting which were used during his time, and was known and respected by almost every art enthusiast on the face of the planet. Pablo Picasso, born Pablo Ruiz y Blasco, came into the world on the 25th of October 1881 in the southern Spanish town of Malaga. Pablo was an artist from early in his life – he was a child prodigy. He began his career as a classical painter. He painted things such as portraits and landscapes. But this style didn’t satisfy Picasso, he was a free man and wanted to express himself and ultimately leave a lasting mark on art as we know it. Picasso turned his attention to cubes. He invented Cubism – a radical art form which used harsh lines and corners to display a picture instead of the usual soft curves (see enclosed picture no. 1). Picasso won a lot of fame for his Cubist paintings, but was criticized for it also. He designed and painted the drop curtain and some giant cubist figures for a ballet in 1917. When the audience saw the huge distorted images on stage, they were angry, they thought the ballet was a joke at their expense. Cubism lived on despite this. Other artists mimicked Picasso’s Cubism, and it took hold. Picasso had only just begun his one-man art revolution. In the late 1920s, Picasso fixed himself upon an even more revolutionary art form – Surrealism. Surrealism emphasized the role of the unconscious mind in creative activity. Surrealists aimed at creating art from dream, visions, and irrational impulses. Their paintings shocked the world – particularly Picasso’s – it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Picasso saw his newly found art form as a kind of â€Å"painted literature† or sign language. He took advantage of this fact and also the fact that he was extremely famous, to make a few political statements, statements that would go down in hist... Free Essays on Picasso Free Essays on Picasso Picasso was arguably the most influential artist of the twentieth century. He had some degree of influence in all styles of painting which were used during his time, and was known and respected by almost every art enthusiast on the face of the planet. Pablo Picasso, born Pablo Ruiz y Blasco, came into the world on the 25th of October 1881 in the southern Spanish town of Malaga. Pablo was an artist from early in his life – he was a child prodigy. He began his career as a classical painter. He painted things such as portraits and landscapes. But this style didn’t satisfy Picasso, he was a free man and wanted to express himself and ultimately leave a lasting mark on art as we know it. Picasso turned his attention to cubes. He invented Cubism – a radical art form which used harsh lines and corners to display a picture instead of the usual soft curves (see enclosed picture no. 1). Picasso won a lot of fame for his Cubist paintings, but was criticized for it also. He designed and painted the drop curtain and some giant cubist figures for a ballet in 1917. When the audience saw the huge distorted images on stage, they were angry, they thought the ballet was a joke at their expense. Cubism lived on despite this. Other artists mimicked Picasso’s Cubism, and it took hold. Picasso had only just begun his one-man art revolution. In the late 1920s, Picasso fixed himself upon an even more revolutionary art form – Surrealism. Surrealism emphasized the role of the unconscious mind in creative activity. Surrealists aimed at creating art from dream, visions, and irrational impulses. Their paintings shocked the world – particularly Picasso’s – it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Picasso saw his newly found art form as a kind of â€Å"painted literature† or sign language. He took advantage of this fact and also the fact that he was extremely famous, to make a few political statements, statements that would go down in hist... Free Essays on Picasso Picasso Pablo Picasso was one of the most interesting artists of his times, and by far was one of the most influential people in art history. Picasso was a man of many different abilities and attributes, which he contributed to the art community in numerous ways. First, Picasso was an extraordinary man for his sheer ability and length of his career as an artist. Also, early in Picasso’s life he was deemed a prodigy with the potential to be one of the greatest ever (Richardson 28). Pablo was born October twenty-fifth, 1881, and lived to be ninety-one years of age. Pablo was born in the small town of Malaga, Spain, where he only spent a fraction of his life and much smaller amount of time painting. The fact that he was able to live such a long life is an accomplishment in it self. Life expectancy in today’s society is only seventy some years of age, and he was born in a day and age where men were not expected to live for nearly half of that. Picasso was able to contribute to the art community all the up until his death in 1973. Along with that, Picasso also lived through two world wars, an American depression, and the rise and fall of two nazi regimes, which consequently lead to one of his greatest works (Stien 30). Not only did he have to survive life in general; he had to survive the struggles and hardships of war and famine. Picasso’s ability to survive makes him a special person, without even seeing a piece of his art. In correlation with Picas so’s li! fe span, his origin is also just as extraordinary. When born in 1881, he did not take his father’s name as every normal person does. Instead of taking the name of Ruiz, his father, he chose to take his mother’s maiden name, Picasso (Martin) Pablo’s reasoning behind this was that his father’s name was too common, and for a boy of his ability he needed a more exotic name, like Picasso. He believed that to be a painter you could not have a common name, you m... Free Essays on Picasso Perhaps the most radical painting of the twentieth-century, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, hangs unobtrusively at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This large canvas, measuring 96" x 92", was to revolutionize modern painting by charting a new way of depicting reality. In 1907 its painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all of the rules that the "artistically correct" learned at the art academies: he disposed of three-dimensional perspective, abandoned harmonious proportion, used distortion, and borrowed from the art of primitive cultures. In fact, the painting was such a revolutionary statement that when the painting was first viewed by some French critics, the painter Derain even suggested to Picasso that he would one day commit suicide for the shame that he had brought on the art establishment. Originally Les Demoiselles was going to be an allegory of venereal disease, entitled "The Wages of Sin." In the study for the painting, Picasso sketched a sailor carousing in a brothel amongst prostitutes and a young medical student holding a skull, a symbol for mortality. But the subsequent painting is quite different from the original sketch: only the women appear. And these women are not the traditional nudes that viewers had become so accustomed to in the 1880's when Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec had begun to capture them in the moment of the "parade," whereby prostitutes announced their wares and services to their clients. Nor are these women feminine and beautiful as Ingres’ Venus Anadyomene. Then who are these women in this brothel in Barcelona's Avignon Street and why do they appear the way they do? Perhaps the answers to this question lies in Picasso's fear of women in general. Their flesh is not depicted as being soft and inviting but sharp and knifelike. In fact, their flesh suggests castration and fear of women. As Robert Hughes implies, "No painter put his anxiety about impotence and castration more plainly than Picasso did in Les Demoi... Free Essays on Picasso Perhaps the most radical painting of the twentieth-century, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, hangs unobtrusively at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This large canvas, measuring 96" x 92", was to revolutionize modern painting by charting a new way of depicting reality. In 1907 its painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all of the rules that the "artistically correct" learned at the art academies: he disposed of three-dimensional perspective, abandoned harmonious proportion, used distortion, and borrowed from the art of primitive cultures. In fact, the painting was such a revolutionary statement that when the painting was first viewed by some French critics, the painter Derain even suggested to Picasso that he would one day commit suicide for the shame that he had brought on the art establishment. Originally Les Demoiselles was going to be an allegory of venereal disease, entitled "The Wages of Sin." In the study for the painting, Picasso sketched a sailor carousing in a brothel amongst prostitutes and a young medical student holding a skull, a symbol for mortality. But the subsequent painting is quite different from the original sketch: only the women appear. And these women are not the traditional nudes that viewers had become so accustomed to in the 1880's when Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec had begun to capture them in the moment of the "parade," whereby prostitutes announced their wares and services to their clients. Nor are these women feminine and beautiful as Ingres’ Venus Anadyomene. Then who are these women in this brothel in Barcelona's Avignon Street and why do they appear the way they do? Perhaps the answers to this question lies in Picasso's fear of women in general. Their flesh is not depicted as being soft and inviting but sharp and knifelike. In fact, their flesh suggests castration and fear of women. As Robert Hughes implies, "No painter put his anxiety about impotence and castration more plainly than Picasso did in Les Demoi...