My very smart brother, Scott Hamilton of Jackfish Hammy’s guide service, posted this comment on my last blog;

Lindsay, I’m no artist or do I profess to know much about anything but I often think, (my own humble opinion here), that Picasso was a abject artist when he painted people. The paintings where beautiful but the more you look at them they are grotesque. See his acrobat paintings. They are pictures of supposed atheletes that do amazing things yet the more you look at them the subjects are thin, pale, under nurished, almost corps like. Their arms and leg are in unnatural positions and are out of proportion like the prisoners in a concentration camp. The colors he uses are bright and unnatural, blood reds and bile greens, veiny purples. (I guess those are natural colors but there is so much of it, like murder). Just a thought. Period blood is groady like ball sweat.

I though it would make for an interesting exploration into the infamous Picasso’s work.

Early Work;

Vida (The Life) is a painting from Picasso’s “blue period”. He has created a melancholy tone through his work with a cool blue palette. A naked couple looks upon a dressed mother holding her baby, while in the vague background. Picasso has placed simplified figures of a couple and a lonely being in the mid ground mimicking the three in the foreground. He captures a certain loneliness and isolation, congruent to most of the paintings of his “blue period” which last from 1901-1904)

Being no stranger to death, Picasso began this period after a suicide of a dear friend. I argue that it is abject response to his loss which spurned the “blue period”. Also the use of a cool palette embodies the appearance of corpse like representation in Vida. Are these people close to death or are they the walking dead?

Family of Acrobats was a departure from the “blue period” adding warmer colours to the representation. Picasso suggests a landscape behind the subjects with blue skies and “happy little” clouds. Yet, the subjects are still somber and a bit unhealthy looking. (the bile greens and yellow jaundice flesh tones)  My brother suggested to look at Picasso’s paintings of acrobats to see an example of “abject”.  I argue that Picasso used the abject throughout all his work.

These lovely ladies are a great example of Picasso’s understanding of the abject. He took a few steps away from his “realistic” portrayal of his subjects into his cubist era. Here we also see his affinity for African Art (or “Primitive Art”) represented in the African style mask worn by the 2 ladies on the right. A mask is a form of abject art because it can be worn to create a character or subject and when off it is an object. A mask is an objectified face (like a prosthetic limb) which can be bought, own and sold. It reminds me of celebrities who become pop icons. His or her face is no longer their own,  but is owned by the public’s to deface, slander, appropriate and do what it will. His or her persona becomes commodified and objectified.

Often are the marginalized found in the abject space. Historically women, ‘othered’ peoples, children, animals  and the gay and lesbian community has been legally designated as property, objects of the powers that be, not subjects of a civilized society. Speculation of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon has lead some Art Historians to believe these ladies are prostitutes, which is suggested with the yellow flesh tones symptomatic of the epidemic syphilis which ailed the sex industry of Picasso’s time. Prostitutes are abject, they are concealed as a dirty little secret, violently removed from proper society, yet the oldest business in the world. They sell their bodies as if they were merchandise, objectifying sex. Many prostitutes, when asked how they can fuck strangers, say they think about something else and have out of body experiences, metaphorically leaving their bodies behind to let their client do their will. Poetically fucking a lifeless body? Detaching their spirits from their bodies? Sounds damn abject to me.

Instead of rendering his subjects realistically, Picasso embraced cubism, abstracting the forms of the body into shapes. This is a form of abject simultaneously exploring different forms of representation of the subject while objectifying  body parts into mere shapes and basic colours. For example, we see legs the white “legs” of the oboe/clarinet (?) player on the left, but those “legs” are also an upside down U shape. When cubism is used to represent people, it creates a space of abject.

Here is another example from Picasso’s master class in Abstraction. It transforms the realistic form of a bull into an abstracted shape of a bull.I love these images because we can see the transformation from realism to abstraction. It gives a glimpse into Picasso’s artistic process and how he broke down form.

The most famous of Picasso’s paintings is Guernica. The piece commemorates the German bombing of Guerinca during the Spanish Civil War. In the picture we find a mother holding a dead infant in her arms (left) dead soldiers upon the ground, people fleeing, limbs and heads in the air, which is abject. Corpses, amputated limbs, and beheading transform living things into dead objects.  The natural reactions to dead things are repulsions, shock and horror. I think Picasso uses this to the effect of the viewer in expressing the devastation of war.

Thanks Scott for your comment! Look at all the thinkin’ it inspired!

Are you interested in making your own Picasso? Try this neat site at mrpicassohead.com

AND as I seem to always add funny videos at the end of these long winded blog postings, here is artist Pricasso, as you may guess, paints with his prick. ENJOY!

Tags: abject, mr.picassohead, mypicassohead, paintings, picasso, pricasso

Jan 29th, 2010 by lindsayjoy