PICASSO, PABLO. "MOTHER & CHILD."   Term Paper ID:26821 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes 1921 classical painting. Colors, style, subject, aesthetic influences.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analyzes 1921 classical painting. Colors, style, subject, aesthetic influences. Paper Introduction: Pablo Picasso's painting Mother and Child (1921) at the Art Institute of Chicago represents a woman seated on the seashore holding a baby in her lap. The naked child leans backward, reaching his hand up toward the mother and she gazes down and into his eyes. The woman is dressed in a simple white gown reminiscent of the clothing of the ancient Romans or Greeks. This work, which is oil on canvas and measures 143.6 x 162.6 cm, features soft colors with pinks, pale blues, and browns dominating. The colors of the mother and child are skin tones heightened with a great deal of pink. The composition is extremely simple, with the figures occupying the lower half of a diagonal line that runs from the lower left corner of the canvas to the upper right and is carried through by the line of the woman's arm. The space is extremely shallow even though a great 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. The space is extremely shallow even though a great deal ofspace in the background is implied by the lines separating shore, sea, andsky into distinct bands. The naked child leans backward, reaching his hand up toward themother and she gazes down and into his eyes. This art had shown him atradition centered on "conceptual art which was not based on immediatevisual reactions to a model" and Picasso, as he said, began to "'paintobjects as I think them, not as I see them'" (Penrose 13). Painting and Sculpture in Europe 188 -194 . Yet, despite the old-fashionedclassical inspiration and the biographical elements in choice of subjectand style, Picasso was, as he had done since at least 19 7, leading the waywith new ideas. London: Phaidon, 1991. The monumental, simplified, and emotionally accessibleMother and Child of 1921 is one of the best known examples of the paintingof this classical period in Picasso's development. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin 1982.Penrose, Roland. This work, which is oil on canvas and measures 143.6 x 162.6 cm,features soft colors with pinks, pale blues, and browns dominating. Picasso wasone of the leaders, along with George Braque, of the very important Cubistmovement. The years from 19 to 192 had been characterized byconstant innovation and each new movement in painting increased the rangeof modernism. Picasso had inaugurated a style based on the inspirationprovided by African art in the period 19 7-19 9. And in Zurich, New York, Berlin, and Paris artists inauguratedthe various branches of the Dada movement, "the most violent, disruptive,and controversial movement in twentieth-century art" with its"intentionally negative and anti-artistic attack" (Hamilton 365). The woman is dressed in asimple white gown reminiscent of the clothing of the ancient Romans orGreeks. Rev. ed. Works CitedHamilton, George Heard. In 19 , French painters such as Henri Matisse and Andrй Derain wereknown as the Fauves (wild beasts) because of the "dismay so many spectatorsfelt before their boldly coloured and distorted compositions" (Hamilton158). Artists in Russia, Germany, and theNetherlands gradually moved into completely non-objective modes ofpainting. Thiswork was "symptomatic of the international character of the so-calledSchool of Paris" that continued into the 192 s (Hamilton 425). Already in 1915 Picasso had, while continuing his experiments inCubism, begun again "to make drawings and some paintings in which he showedonce more his talent for conventional representation" (Penrose 15). Rev. ed. But in1917, during time spent in Italy preparing for Parade, Picasso visited themuseums of Rome and Naples where he saw the ancient marbles and frescoes"whose spacious dimensions and majestic rhythms revealed a world apart fromthe tensions" of the ongoing war (Hamilton 454). This type of painting, referred to as Picasso's "classicism," washighly unusual in comparison with art in Europe and New York at this time(Penrose 15). Overall the picture has an air of calm andintimacy that is unusual in context of painting in the years after WorldWar I. Thecolors of the mother and child are skin tones heightened with a great dealof pink. The composition is extremely simple, with the figures occupyingthe lower half of a diagonal line that runs from the lower left corner ofthe canvas to the upper right and is carried through by the line of thewoman's arm. In Cubistpainting Picasso and Braque tried to understand form by breaking it up,separating its elements, and becoming "conscious of that which cannot beseen because it is at the back of the object in question" (Penrose 13). As Picasso and others continued to break up form in various waysduring the period 191 -192 , artists in other parts of Europe were engagedin equally radical projects. Therewas, even among artists taking different approaches, a feeling ofexcitement over all these innovations that extended to the other arts aswell and sometimes produced collaborative works such as Sergei Diaghelev'sballet Parade (1917) for which Erik Satie provided the music, Jean Cocteauwrote the libretto, and Picasso designed the scenery and costumes. Picasso. Picasso himself had been one of the foremost innovatorsprior to 1921, and his latest innovation could be explained largely interms of biographical circumstances. Their style was "the first incontestably modern movement of thetwentieth century" and the next two decades provided few innovations thatdid not, at first, have a similar effect on their audiences. Over the next four years the growth of the childcan be traced "in a series of unusually tender portraits, and in 'classic'images of a woman and child" that were very different from the angry orhumorous works of the Dada artists, the abstract compositions of many otherpainters, or even the Cubist works that Picasso continued to produce(Hamilton 454-55). It stands apart fromthe art of the period but, if the viewer looks closely, it is possible tounderstand the relationship between the breaking-down approach of Cubismand the way the arms and legs of the figures in Mother and Child "aretreated as interdependent parts of a tightly integrated structure." Inaddition, his semi-abstract style of the 193 s benefited from this earlierinterest in the monumental and the power of sculptural outlines (Hamilton456). At the same time he metand married Olga Koklova, a dancer in Diaghelev's company, and in 1921their son Paolo was born. Pablo Picasso's painting Mother and Child (1921) at the Art Instituteof Chicago represents a woman seated on the seashore holding a baby in herlap. 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.