2/7/2013 0 Comments Long-Lost LoveIt's been nearly a year since I last posted something on this page. I glance at the title I had made up when I first created my MC website, and MAN do I have an artistic appetite right now! This sudden spike in my urge to consume something, anything art-related has to do with my past few weeks of doing nothing but studying accounting (I am taking other classes of course, including an art discussion class, but that art class is only two days/week as the accounting class requires much effort and time.) Although I have enjoyed learning what has been labeled as "the language of business," it's surely not the same as all the art history classes I had taken these past few years. So, I am taking the opportunity here on this "Artistic Appetite" page to write about my long-lost love, Art. I guess I can say that it's been a good thing that I my love's been taken away from me this quarter at UW, because without that I wouldn't have realized how much I love my art history major. Now I know for sure that art history is what I want my future career to center itself around. :) Anyway, this is a painting I have thought about from time to time these past few weeks: This is The Old Guitarist by the one and only Pablo Picasso, from 1903. A somber-toned piece from his Blue Period (which began after his friend's suicide), it is overtaken by a monochromatic blue that even penetrates the elderly man who we see here in an arching, enclosed pose. There is curvature in front of you, beginning with the contours of the man and continuing into the shape of the guitar. During this time, Picasso had just moved to Paris and was living in great poverty, so during this Blue Period he painted people he had identified with, such as prostitutes, beggars, and society outcasts.
Out of all these descriptions, I mostly love this painting because of how revolutionary it was at the time. Picasso was on the verge of Expressionism, one of many movements that counteracted the ancient tradition that demanded naturalism, reliance on shading to create volume, and allegorical images. But, Picasso and like-minded artists (Manet, Monet, Cezanne, etc.) pushed the boundaries of painting to make the viewer actively recognize the function of line versus color, in addition to the flatness and materiality of the canvas--notice how here in The Old Guitarist, the man looks completely flat and nearly pressed into the canvas. In other words, these Vanguard painters urged the viewer to concentrate and think deeply about the formal aspects of painting, the individual part that come together to become what people label "a painting." Instead of creating a new world that one is supposed to dive completely into, the viewer is meant to take in what's in front of him/her and realize how the painting relates to his/her own world. ...You can probably tell by now how much I have missed writing art history papers!
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