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Post by commandax on Mar 9, 2009 22:22:57 GMT -8
Food for thought from the Financial Times: "No one understood better than Picasso that slang was the inevitable language of modern art. "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction," he said. To invent the fractured planes and disrupted viewpoints of cubism, he smashed rules of representation and perspective enshrined since the Renaissance. Such an act of iconoclasm determined the raw, broken visual vocabulary of the 20th century. It also located Picasso in the past, as he endlessly competed against and cannibalised the art of unity and harmony to which cubism had dealt a death blow. "Bad artists copy, good artists steal," he explained. In 1907 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", gateway to cubism, owed its compressed composition, radical treatment of space and awkward not-quite-square format to El Greco's "Apocalyptic Vision". Half a century later Picasso devoted vast series to reworking Cranach, Velázquez, Delacroix, Manet, Degas, attesting both to his concern with his place in history and a desperation to possess the past creatively. [...] Picasso's long career follows a pattern thrillingly diverse yet ravishingly unified by mastery of line, composition, pictorial beauty, and as a chain of experiments testing, to the limits, the representational value of form. Never tempted by abstraction, he was beleaguered when it became the international style of the 1950s. That lends the paraphrases of this period poignancy and piquancy, as Picasso turned his process of deformation and transformation to 15 versions of Delacroix's "Women of Algiers", 27 paintings based on Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe", 50 variations on "Las Meninas". [...] He needed the art of his own times as much as the Old Masters: it was in challenging both that he became at once the great revolutionary artist of the 20th century and the great custodian of the figurative tradition." Diego Velázquez "Las Meninas" Pablo Picasso "Las Meninas" Édouard Manet "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" Pablo Picasso "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe"
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Post by thecreep on Mar 9, 2009 23:44:39 GMT -8
I like how those works Picasso chose, as they are the two most commonly copied/stolen/inspired by works.
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Post by oldfartatplay on Mar 10, 2009 6:40:16 GMT -8
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Post by travislouie on Mar 10, 2009 7:33:53 GMT -8
Do you like Picasso because someone taught you how to admire Picasso, . . . like in an art appreciation class . . .or because you came across his work and thought to yourself "wow!, what a genius!!" For me, it is a chicken or the egg thing, . . .we are taught to appreciate Picasso because his work is in art history books and museum collections, . . . Guernica sticks out in my mind, because it has the flavor of those paintings David made during the French Revolution, not so much in technique of course, but in it's political and social significance, . . .and boy did he paint it big!! Apart from that, . . .most of what he did was just interesting, . . .and not really as inspiring for me as a painter. If I remember right, . . .he was admired more for his audacity, . . .not for his skill as a painter he was talented as a young man, . . .but there have been many talented artists before him, . . .talent isn't enough, . . .you have to say something that brings'em in! He was a good showman. I remember a conversation I had with some of my brother-in-law's friends about art and culture, . . .they seem to imply that their wealth entitled them to a higher vision of artifice and antiquity, . . . and their ability to afford the finer things put them in a higher class, . . . one of them went as far as reciting his love for Picasso as if he were reading from the pages of a Jansen Art History book. To be fair, . . .I don't know the background of the writer of that article, but his proclamation of Picasso being a "the great custodian of the figurative tradition of the 20th century" is suspect. Who is he to say that? I would say good or bad, . . . Picasso and Duchamp are the custodians of "audacity" in the art world, . . .
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Post by sebreg on Mar 10, 2009 8:23:56 GMT -8
Do you like Picasso because someone taught you how to admire Picasso, . . . like in an art appreciation class . . .or because you came across his work and thought to yourself "wow!, what a genius!!" For me, it is a chicken or the egg thing, . . .we are taught to appreciate Picasso because his work is in art history books and museum collections, . . . Guernica sticks out in my mind, because it has the flavor of those paintings David made during the French Revolution, not so much in technique of course, but in it's political and social significance, . . .and boy did he paint it big!! Apart from that, . . .most of what he did was just interesting, . . .and not really as inspiring for me as a painter. If I remember right, . . .he was admired more for his audacity, . . .not for his skill as a painter he was talented as a young man, . . .but there have been many talented artists before him, . . .talent isn't enough, . . .you have to say something that brings'em in! He was a good showman. I remember a conversation I had with some of my brother-in-law's friends about art and culture, . . .they seem to imply that their wealth entitled them to a higher vision of artifice and antiquity, . . . and their ability to afford the finer things put them in a higher class, . . . one of them went as far as reciting his love for Picasso as if he were reading from the pages of a Jansen Art History book. To be fair, . . .I don't know the background of the writer of that article, but his proclamation of Picasso being a "the great custodian of the figurative tradition of the 20th century" is suspect. Who is he to say that? I would say good or bad, . . . Picasso and Duchamp are the custodians of "audacity" in the art world, . . . Couldn't agree with you more! Guernica is the painting of Picasso's that truly moves me, otherwise, I'm not a huge fan of his work. Just because he could do a nice figure study at the age of 14 doesn't mean he had the skill of the old masters, as some people ridiculously point out! But the things I do admire about him are his energy and passion, can't take that away from him, he lived and breathed art. But his work lacked nuance and subtlety, which are things I usually highly value.
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Post by commandax on Mar 10, 2009 9:21:21 GMT -8
Can't say that I like Picasso's work at all, actually. What I admire about him is his drive to innovate and transform, and how he challenged himself and his contemporaries to push past the formal boundaries that defined art at the time. He also made some pithy remarks (like "Art is a lie that leads us closer to the truth" and "I do not paint things as I see them, I paint how I think of them") which can still inform our perception of art today. He was an interesting person.
I actually started this thread hoping for some discussion of the leading quotation, "Bad artists copy, good artists steal." Seems this is a topic that becomes more and more relevant of late.
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Post by sebreg on Mar 10, 2009 10:00:23 GMT -8
Sorry I went off topic here, I like your threads exploring art and its influences Commandax. It seems that all art created today is built off of what happened before, even outsider art and such. Picasso definitely tried to 'own' the past, and he also 'stole' from contemporaries like Braque, but he generally stole and made it his own. I think copying straight up, without that being the intent, which a lot of times it isn't, then that usually leads to artwork that I view as boring. A lot of it has to do with the artist's original intent. Sometimes copying can be very interesting depending on the artist's conceptual thought behind it. Hmmm, this is a tricky subject, I'm probably going around in loops like a dog chasing its tail...
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Post by lovethelump on Mar 17, 2009 21:24:29 GMT -8
Great thread idea, Picasso was the man in his own time. Damian Hurst please step forward...just sign this napkin, it will cover your bill. We all need to remember that like Roy Rogers, Marlin Monroe and James Dean, Picasso was a celebrity and fawned over left and right. Near the end.
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