The painting from the MoMA that I decided to analyze is “Landscape” (Alternatively titled “La Rue des Bois”) due to the fact that it reminded me of our class discussion on the sublime. The painting itself features a dark, shaded building on the left side and an even darker forest on the right. This creates a sort of mystical environment filled with both curiosity and wonder. The fragmented segments of this piece create a boundary between the village building and forest.

After conducting further research, I was able to determine that in the summer of 1908, Picasso had taken a vacation to “La Rue des Bois”, a small village on the outskirts of Pairs, to escape the city and have time to decompress. While his original intent was to stay within the town itself, he soon discovered the forest and became immersed with its mystery. This is the culmination of what the sublime stands for as, in a sense, it takes the known and unknown and molds them into two.

Finally, there was an attached quote from Picasso that stated, “Landscapes must be painted with the eyes and not with the prejudices that are in our heads”. This stuck me as significant in many ways. Picasso often challenged the common belief of what art should be and created new and revolutionary pieces. His ideals on landscape art were no exception. Typically, when imagining a landscape painting, one pictures a perfect area where things are bright, spacious, and serene. However, Picasso’s painting defies this idea to a great extent. It combined dark and fragmented elements that create a sense of intrigue rather than calm. Just as the ideas of the sublime challenged the ideas of the previous periods, I feel that this piece followed suit and was both imaginative and innovative for its time.