Picasso Art Article

2 SCHOLASTIC ART* 2009
A NEW ARTIST
FOR A NEW
CENTURY
"The world today doesn't make sense, so why should
I paint pictures that do?" —Pablo Picasso
This self-portrait marks one of Picasso's
early experiments with simplifying the
forms of the face.
Cover: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Self-Portrail. 1906. Oil on canvas
mounted on wood, 10 1/2 x 7 3/4 in. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,
1998 (1999.363.59). Photo: Malcolm Varon. The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Photo Credit: Image copyright © The Metropolitan
Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. © 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso /
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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W! page with the painting below
hen you compare the drawing
on the top of the opposite
it, it's hard to believe that they were created
by the same artist. Pablo Picasso
made the pastel drawing in 1896,
when he was 15. It is a highly
traditional, realistic portrait of his
mother seen in profile.
The painting below it, a head
study, barely registers as a human
face. It is simplified and abstracted,
with shifting viewpoints. Staring
eyes shown from a frontal view loom
over a nose, mouth, and chin shown
from the side and facing in opposite
directions. By 1971, when this work
was created, Pablo Picasso was the
most famous artist in the world, and
his work had revolutionized art.
A "Why should the Born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, Picasso grew up in a
artist persist in treating modern age full of new ideas and theories. In 1899, Sigmund
Freud, the father of psychology, began publishing
subjects that can be
established so clearly
with the lens of a camera?"
-Pablo Picasso mind. Six years later, Albert Einstein's scientific theo-
books that opened up the hidden world of the human
Photograph of Picasso with ^Aficionado. ries revolutionized our understanding of time and space.
Sorgues, 1912. DP 22; AP PH 2861. Photo:
Coursaget. Musee Picasso, Paris, France. Each man in his own way seemed to be saying that reality
looks different from different points of view.
Reunion des Musees Nationaux / Art Resource,
NY. © 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso
/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
At the same time, new technologies were making
painters question the point of realistic art. Why paint what you see when you
can reproduce it more easily with a photograph or
movie? What could painting offer that photography
could not?
While the art world was searching for answers
to these questions, Picasso was learning the techniques
of traditional drawing and painting. An un-
> "Who sees the human face
correctly: the photographer,
the mirror, or the painter?"
-Pablo Picasso
Head, Sunday, 1971 (October 3). Oil on canvas, 73 x 60
cm. Musee Picasso, Paris / The Bridgeman Art Library.
19 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York.