Pablo Picasso was born on 1881 in Spain. Over the course of his lifetime, he created more than 20,000 individual sculptures, paintings, drawings, and ceramics. He is regarded as one of the most influential and celebrated modernistic artists of the twenty first century. He is responsible for the Cubism movement founded alongside with Georges Braque.
Woman with Pears(Summer 1909) was a portrait of Picasso’s companion, Fernande Olivier during the summer of 1909. In this portrait, she is depicted with a large elongated neck and is holding up a pear, which is circular in shape. Her neck and head are comprised of geometric shapes, such as triangles, rectangles, and odd shapes with a mixture of sharp and round edges. This portrait, although done with 2-dimentional shapes, gives a sense of depth and 3-dimentional qualities.
Woman with Pearsreflects aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism because Picasso’s particular style with Cubism use the appeal of geometric shapes to define his paintings instead of the orthodox style of painting. His portrait of a woman is drastically different from what a normal person would be painted at the turn of the century. Pablo’s idea of painting supersedes the societal standards when it comes to painting. I can see how some people at the time period may criticize him for painting “childish” shapes, but we can see now that the success of his Cubism movement proved him to be more forward thinking than those of his time.
The fourth floor of the MoMA had the exact specifications for the time period, and so I went with my classmate to explore the options. In the main exhibit, there was a painting of the Starry Night by Van Gogh, to the right was an exhibit by Pablo Picasso. Because I was familiar with this artist because the sound of his name was very familiar to my ear, I wanted to see what I can learn from his paintings. This was a portrait straight across the entrance to an adjacent room.
This painting was mind-boggling because geometric shapes made a portrait of a woman. The positioning of rectangles and triangles made it seem impossible, but my brain processed it so that I only see a woman. In addition, if I squint my eyes, the portrait seems to be even more detailed to me; I can see a woman more clearly and I can see a pear in the palm of her hands.
https://www.pablopicasso.org/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80394
Stanley,
The painting you’ve chosen is such a great example of Picasso’s cubism. I like the way you describe what happens when you look at the painting. On the one hand, when we look at Picasso’s portraits, the figures sometimes appear fragmented. On the other hand, when we get used to this style of representation and spend time with his images, the three-dimensional figure appears to be perfectly intact. Remember, among other things. Picasso is thinking about how the eye processes information – and what we see when we look at the human figure.
Nice job!
JS