PICASSO. "GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR."   Term Paper ID:23339 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical analysis of 1932 painting in context of artist's development & as example of balancing of erotic & psychological elements.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Critical analysis of 1932 painting in context of artist's development & as example of balancing of erotic & psychological elements. Paper Introduction: "Girl Before a Mirror" is a Picasso work that is one of a series utilizing the model Marie-Thйrиse. A showing of the painting offered an assessment of the work in the catalog: Achieves metamorphosis of traditional Vanity image, in which a woman looking in the mirror sees herself as a death's head; here, figure with double head is reflected as somber-faced but voluptuous image. The painting is from March 1932. It was produced in the style Picasso was using at the time and evoked an image of Vanity such as had been utilized in art in earlier eras, though Picasso shifts the emphasis and creates a very different view of the image. The work is considered in terms of the erotic in Picasso's art, and critics in different periods have offered Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. [9]Ibid., 138, 14 . "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism." In Studies in Erotic Art, Theodore Bowie and Cornelia V. Some of his work before the age of14 reveals the qualities of a master. He first visited Paris in 19 . Thus, the lavender profile view of the girl, enclosed by a white veil-halo, suggests an overt innocence that opposes the more covert golden face; moreover, the ripening forms of breasts, womb, and buttocks are temporarily constrained by the rectilinear armature of the corseted, skeletal form which holds the figure taut from behind and by the angular frontal silhouette which suppresses the organs of generation that swell toward fulfillment.[12] Carl Jung in 1932 examined this picture and others by Picasso andconsiders the meaning of non-objective art, finding that such work has adual nature itself in that its meaning is at least for a time hidden: It is, accordingly, altogether impossible to determine anything with any degree of certainty in a single, isolated instance. The possibility of understanding comes only from a comparative study of many such pictures.[13]The work has indeed been compared to the many others of a similar naturepainted by Picasso. [2]Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 199 ), 14 . It isbelieved that the catalyst for this picture was not the processes ofpainting as much as it was Picasso's love for the sensual model, Marie-Thйrиse Walter, whose image had first appeared in paintings from theprevious year and who now served as the model for Girl Before a Mirror: None of Picasso's earlier relationships had provoked such sustained lyric power, such a sense of psychological awareness and erotic completeness--nor such a flood of images.[5] Picasso's personality dominated the development of painting in thefirst half of this century, and he was noted for his versatility, technicalbrilliance, and imaginative depth. He proceeds in thework from his intense feeling for the model and paints her in a rousing andmysterious fashion. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972.Rubin, W. From the late 192 s, his work became more marked by a newand mounting emotional tenseness, a mood of foreboding mixed with anguishand despair.[7] Girl Before a Mirror is from this latter period. Thegreen circle was painted over the arm as a later addition and is a token ofbiological superfluity: The sense of the Girl as a sexual cornucopia is given a different dimension buy the arm, which may itself be read "in conjunction with the testicular pair of breasts" directly below it as "an ithyphallic form whose sprouting fingers in turn metamorphose it into an image of generation, a kind of Aaron's rod."[1 ] The double head paintings have been considered by some critics interms of what the double image means. One does not know what is actually meant or what is being represented. Rubin, Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (New York: Museum of ModernArt, 198 ), 2. It has a child's eye for emphatic colors, for figures fixed in suspension, protected in medallions, the head secure in the gold circle of a halo.[11] Robert Rosenblum points to Girl Before a Mirror as a work with denseand metamorphic imagery, so dense that it is difficult to be comprehensivein discussing its meaning: However, it can at least be said that this work synthesizes many of the sexual themes that preoccupied Picasso at this time. One only has the feeling of strangeness and of a confusing, incomprehensible jumble. Frederick Wright considers thematter in terms of psychological elements and finds that these paintingswere produced in the early 193 s in a time of increased tension andexcitement. "Picasso." In Collected Works, Carl Jung. "Girl Before a Mirror" is a Picasso work that is one of a seriesutilizing the model Marie-Thйrиse. In painting it was seen in the abstractions of artists as widelyvaried as Duchamps, Picasso, Klee, and many others. For one, female sexual impulses are conveyed in a series of transformations that evoke these welling biological forces and that contrast virginity and consummation. This young girl's act of self- contemplation may well have been banal. This painting is seen as the pictorial andiconographic culmination of the series, started the year before with StillLife on a Table, a work infused by an insistent anthropomorphism, "as ifthe components of the human body had been redistributed and transformedinto fruit and objects."[14] Among the other paintings of import inanalyzing Girl Before a Mirror are Nude on a Black Couch and The Mirror,both of which were inspired by Marie-Thйrиse: In the former the leaves of a large plant seem almost to spout from her body in a simple metaphor of fertility. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.Rosenblum, Robert. The use of the mirror in these dual-image paintings is anobvious symbolic device reflecting a different aspect of the primary image. The work is considered in terms of theerotic in Picasso's art, and critics in different periods have offeredtheir assessments of the work to show a wide range of reactions. [7]Ibid., 434-435. Science was discovering the uncertainties of existence. If so, the very commonplaceness of the experience contributed to the universality of the insight which Picasso's genius distilled from it.[8] The head of the girl is a variation of the "double head," whichPicasso had been exploring in his work since 1925. [5]Ibid., 138. The ambiguities and uncertainties that this newknowledge created was expressed in different ways by artists in differentfields. [11]Frederick Wright, "Picasso and the Unconscious," PsychoanalyticQuarterly (April 1944), 214. His subjects were drawn mainly frompoverty and social outcasts, and the mood was largely one ofsentimentalized melancholy. The painting is one of a series of works exploring the doubleimage. In Paris in the late twenties, Picasso continued to paint pictures in anobviously Cubist manner, and his works were shown in Surrealistexhibitions. New York: Basic Books, 197 . Thedisjointed time sense, the flight from the conventions of realism, and theadoption of complex new forms and styles in the modernist period wereundertaken to provide new meaning, to illuminate the world in a differentway, and to show different relationships within the observed world.Modernism rejected traditions that existed in the nineteenth century andsought to stretch the boundaries, striking out in new directions and withnew techniques. More was demanded of the reader of literature or theviewer of art. The painting was then described as a modernrecreation of the traditional Vanity image and was said to offer multilevelpoetic allusions and to be marked by its color and design: The balance and reciprocity of the expressive and the decorative here set a standard for all Picasso's subsequent painting--indeed, for twentieth-century art as a whole.[4]In earlier works by Picasso, this equilibrium had been difficult toachieve. Andre Breton statedthat Picasso was an heir to Surrealism.[3] The Museum of Modern Art exhibited the painting along with otherPicasso works in 1972. 136- 141.Osborne, Harold. The profile in suchpictures usually receives the light, and a darker, shadowed area completesthe full face. She would remain in Picasso's life for another fouryears before she was replaced by Dora Maar, and here the artist transformsher into a quasi-mythical being (in keeping with Picasso's interest inmythical references, such as his paintings in the late 192 s of theminotaur): Picasso has a remarkable ability to empathically displace the egos of his models, male or female. Picasso was part of a movement that would become known as Modernism,a name which included a number of different artistic styles and aestheticresponses. He also produced his fist sculptures during these years. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. In theseworks, the psyche is free to represent the outside world as a glaring andviolent place: Byzantine art has influenced this phase and, like classic art, symbolizes an early period. In Paris, one of his primaryinfluences was the drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec. [16]Ibid., 141.----------------------- 1 Both sections in this picture have about the same lightvalue, but the yellow and orange-red front face dominates the smoothlylavender profile. New York: 1966. [12]Robert Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism," inStudies in Erotic Art, Theodore Bowie and Cornelia V. Answers were not presented directly to issues raised, butinstead the artist demanded the participation of the audience more directlyin elucidating meaning and in seeing the relationship between technique andmeaning.[2] In part, this was a response to the discovery and dissemination ofideas from psychology showing the complexities of human experience in a newlight. Rubin, Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NewYork: Museum of Modern Art, 1972), 138. In 19 4 Picasso became the center of an avant-garde group in Paris, and from 19 5 until about 19 8 his works are known ashis Rose Period as the predominant blues of his earlier work give way topinks and grays. [6]Osborne, 434. It was produced in the style Picasso wasusing at the time and evoked an image of Vanity such as had been utilizedin art in earlier eras, though Picasso shifts the emphasis and creates avery different view of the image. The vertical division ofthe head continues down through the girl's body, and here the dichotomy ofthe public and the private is made through a contrast of the clothed andthe nude. [14]Rubin, Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, 14 . The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art. From191 to 1916 Picasso worked with Braque and others on the development ofCubism, a movement Picasso would continue to explore throughout his career. Christenson (eds.). [3]Harold Osborne, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1981), 424. Christenson (eds.)(New York: Basic Books, 197 ), 349. BibliographyBaldick, Chris. The division in the Picasso, however, is usedprimarily to distinguish between the clothed and the nude.[9] The mirror image moves us from a world of shapes that are clearlyreferential to one in which the forms are more symbolic in nature. He provided the incentive for most ofthe revolutionary changes in the first half of this century: While he was supreme master of the classical tradition, his most important influence during his lifetime has been to strengthen the conception of art as an emotional medium and to swing the emphasis of taste towards dynamic power and vitality rather than formal or abstract perfection.[6]Picasso began painting in 1891 at Corunna and then moved to Barcelona until19 4. [8]Rubin, Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, 138. New York: Oxford University Press, 199 .Jung, Carl. Rubin speculates that the vertical division of the body may havebeen influenced by memories of an unusual Vanity Picasso had almostcertainly seen in the collection of his friend the poet Ramon Gomez de laSerna. In other works, there may be two entities in the same envelope. [15]Ibid., 14 -141. [13]Carl Jung, "Picasso," in Collected Works, Carl Jung (New York:1966), 136. In the latter, a swiveling mirror reflects shapes that might logically be the shoulder and arm of the sleeping girl, or perhaps her buttocks, but are sufficiently ambiguous to provoke less literal associations--to the world of the organic and embryonic.[15]For The Mirror, there is a pattern on the wallpaper showing a lozenge witha circle in the middle, and this also forms the background for Girl Beforea Mirror. The atomicworld showed that the reality we perceive through the sense is not the onlyreality. Psychology was showing that behavior was more complex thanpreviously imagined and that there was an entire world of relationships andforces that was hidden. Picasso's works wereinvolved with a new way of depicting perceptions, seeking the essence of asubject rather than a strict recreation of reality. Pure decorative virtuosity had becomean end in itself in pictures such as Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit from 1931.These divergent tendencies were resolved in Girl Before a Mirror. [1 ]Ibid., 14 . The front face can be likened to the sun and the coolprofile to the moon, and then the head can be conceived as balancing in asingle metaphor the overt innocence of the girl. Like classic art, it too maintains its innocence, in this case through monasticism. Picasso's work from 19 1to 19 4 is known as his Blue Period. "Picasso and the Unconscious." Psychoanalytic Quarterly (April 1944), 2 8-216.----------------------- [1]W. The mood also becomes less austere, and his favoritesubjects now are acrobats and dancers and especially the figure of theharlequin. Modernism is a term applied retroactively to certain literaryand artistic trends at the beginning of the twentieth century. 337-35 .Rubin, W. [4]W. A showing of the painting offered anassessment of the work in the catalog: Achieves metamorphosis of traditional Vanity image, in which a woman looking in the mirror sees herself as a death's head; here, figure with double head is reflected as somber-faced but voluptuous image.[1]The painting is from March 1932. Erotic and psychological expression had been evident in theBathers of the late twenties, but it had been achieved at some cost inpictorial richness and complexity. In The Mirror, the pattern is consistent in its coloringthroughout, while in Girl Before a Mirror, the pattern changes hue fromarea to area and so serves as a more flexible foil for the shifting andformal poetic contexts of the imagery.[16] Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror carries through themes that hedeveloped in the 192 s and presages images that he would paint in lateryears. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 198 .Wright, Frederick. In this image, the woman looks in the mirror and is herself dividedvertically from the head down so that while her right side is naturalistic,her left side is bare bones. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.