Picasso's Many Faces

The art historian who wrote this article is Patricia Leighton. In her article she is centered mainly upon the five most meaningful art pieces of Pablo Picasso that she sees in a museum. This museum is not a normal museum. It is the National Gallery of Canada and there is a whole exhibition named "Picasso: Masterworks from the Museum of Modern Art." Basically she goes through the art and talks about its cultural significance and what it means. Her main thesis is that Picasso had created the art of the century.

First she evaluates the art called “The Frugal Repast”. This etching is from Picasso’s early period in his career. It represented poverty and social isolation by the ragged clothes of the people and the small meal. The author states “Picasso, a participant in the turn-of-the-century anarchist movement in Barcelona and Paris, frequently evoked themes of poverty and depicted the ills of an unequal society, neglectful of the arts and spiritual life”.

The next art piece is entitled, “Head of a Sleeping Woman”. The author states that this is art relative to Picasso’s African period. She says that he uses this art to shock the audience by using expressions of an African woman with diagonal lines across her face. He also uses things like clear lines, three-dimensional space, shadows, and natural color. The author refers to this art as the “African mask”.

Next piece of art is called “Standing Nude”. This art etching is of a single standing woman in a style called analytical cubism. The figure can be obscured by the shifting planes and shadows placed in the etching by Picasso. The author states “instead of a naturalist or "objective" vision, we are offered the artist's unique and intuitive perception of reality, wherein he combines different viewpoints of the figure as well as suggesting different sorts of knowledge about her”. This entices the visual and philosophical traditions of the past and how women were viewed.

The fourth etching the author evaluates is called “Painter and Model Knitting”. This is a strange depiction of someone named Balzac and his tale of a 17^th century artist who labored over a decade over his masterpiece. The artist is looking at a woman knitting fully clothed but the artist is looking further than that. He is outlining her body and figures. This art piece relates to the time period of the surrealist movement. It emphasized the “transformative capacities of the artist- whose free play of imagination creates such organic”.

Lastly, she begins to talk about a more beautiful piece named “Face of Marie-Therese”. It is a portrait of his new lover. He gives her a beautiful portrait which was also used by one of his friends for his book. It is just an illustration of how he portrayed this beautiful woman. He gave her a smooth face with a straight nose and curvy forehead. “Despite the comforting signals of classicism and realism evident here, Picasso is still contemplating cubist-related issues of the individuality of perception and tactility”.

I think that Picasso’s art is a little strange and out of the box, but I like how he relates his art to the time periods in which it was created. This makes him more than an artist. It makes him a genius and after reading this article I wouldn’t mind learning more about him and his art.