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Paper Abstract: Examines the artist's sculptures. His production of sculptural works in a wide range of media. Representative of the wide range of artistic exploration and experimentation that characterized Picasso's long career. Five distinct periods of his sculptural work. Examples of his sculpture including the 1902 "Seated Woman," and the bronze "Mask of a Picador with a Broken Nose." Paper Introduction: This paper examines Pablo Picasso's sculptures, a little-known body of work by an artist usually thought of as being one of the greatest painters of all time. Yet, Picasso (1881-1973) produced around 800 sculptural works in a wide range of media over his prolific career, and these works reinforce his undeniable place in modern art. They also provide additional glimpses of the wide range of artistic exploration that characterized his entire career while echoing many of the themes and subjects that permeated his two-dimensional canvases. Initially influenced as a sculptor by Rodin, Picasso experimented with a diverse range of materials, mastering many to produce works that remain startling original and influential. Werner Spies, who helped bring to light to depth and breadth of Picasso's sculptural work, argues that this work encompasses at le 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. He cast bronze pieces and structures out offound objects, huge constructs in concrete and sheet metal, and complexcollages with pieces pinned into place to allow the air to blow them gentlyand the artist to rearrange them as part of the continuing process ofcreation. Finally, his planar sculptures of sheet metal round outhis most significant sculptural explorations. Spies writes, "Notuntil 1928-1929, and then again in the years when he began to model inplaster in Boisgeloup, did there begin of the grandest and most fruitfulsculptural phases in Picasso's work and indeed in twentieth-centurysculpture in general" (113). Spies writes,"Picasso created his own >storehouse of forms' in an experimental methodthat would become an essential prerequisite for Cubism" (5 ). Initially influenced as a sculptor by Rodin,Picasso experimented with a diverse range of materials, mastering many toproduce works that remain startling original and influential. The fact that this tremendous body of sculptural work took solong to be seen publicly and analyzed by art critics and historians ispartly due to the enormous body of other work Picasso produced in hislifetime and the influence of so much of what he created on canvas. FitzGerald writes,"Yet many would say that the designs were appropriate, depending on how oneremembered Apollinaire and what one thought of Pere Lacahise [the cemeteryin which the poet was buried]" (173-174). Picasso's experiments with sculpture helped him achieve this in the radical language of Cubism, a kind of visual shorthand representing multiple points of view simultaneously. Therefore, following a single line of artisticdevelopment, in thinking or in the developing mastery of technique, isusually impossible in Picasso's work when the focus remains just on onemedium. [but] I painted on curved surfaces, I painted on spheres. Thesculptures reveal themselves slowly; the powerful forms grow and recede,superimposing themselves on each other and opening up a large number oftactile impressions" (192). The artist's earliest surviving sculpture is a modest figure entitledSeated Woman. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth Century Art. This phase began on paper, including in sketches exploring possibleapproaches to a monument for the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Pablo Picasso. D.A.P.: Hatje/Cantz, 2 . New York: Abrams, 1982.McClemont, Doug. The third,perhaps the best-known of Picasso's sculptural works, were his collages ofthe 194 s. In these and in the subsequent explorations in clay, plaster, and castmetal, Picasso continued to return to animal figures and female heads andbodies. Starting in 1946, he focused considerable attention on work inclay, creating a series of ceramic pieces where his interest was more onthe decoration of the piece than on the overall form on which thatdecoration was applied. Some of the larger figures allowed the artist to experiment withvaried perspectives. Next came a period concentrating in ceramic works, beginningwith the artist's discovery of pottery in 1946 and resulting in substantivepieces in 1948. As for the absinthe, Spies observes, "The glass and thebottle were favorite motifs of Cubism: with their transparency and inherentoptical refraction, they provided the impetus for analytic formaldissolutions and expansions" (84). C. He said, "But Sabarteskept telling me: >Plaster is perishable. New York: Hudson Hills P., 1982.FitzGerald, Michael C. Works CitedFairweather, Sally. Picasso's work with ceramics starting in 1946 was more anexperimentation with painting on a different surface than trying to createnew fired-clay forms. In 196 , Picasso returned to working in sheet metal. The designs included apolymorphous figure in clay and several different sketches and small modelsfor a larger wire construction; while Picasso and the Society never didagree on a work which would capture the poet's spirit and pay appropriatetribute, the resulting sculptural explorations represented dramatic andsignificant advancement to the artist's sculptural oeuvre. Picasso's exploration of Cubism that had already entered his paintingsnow began to be displayed in his sculptural work, as well. Indeed,sculpture offered him another medium for this restless, prolific genius toexpress himself. He prepared paper patterns and sketches whichwere then executed by technicians in the metal shop. "Pablo Picasso: The Sculptures." Library Journal 125.2 (2 , December): 114.Spies, Werner, ed. Picasso's entire artistic career was marked by continuingexperimentation, and this is reflected vividly in his sculptural work,including in his constant work with different materials, varying scales,and diverse subjects. . An article in The Economist contends, "For much of his lengthy career,Pablo Picasso was a kind of closet sculptor. Yet, Picasso (1881-1973) produced around 8 sculptural worksin a wide range of media over his prolific career, and these worksreinforce his undeniable place in modern art. Other artists were alreadyrecognizing his incredible virtuosity and the value of his artisticexplorations, and drawing on his ideas to expand their own works. Hans L. Bronzeis for the ages'" (Spies 193). Again, hecollaborated with a technical master in order to realize his works in adifficult technical medium. They also provide additionalglimpses of the wide range of artistic exploration that characterized hisentire career while echoing many of the themes and subjects that permeatedhis two-dimensional canvases. This was a collaborative processthat he continued throughout his sculptural career, enlisting the help ofthose who had mastered a particular medium in order to help him realize hisvision while employing and exploring new materials. Depth, the greatest possible space. Dated 19 2, a similar figure is found in many of hissketches, drawings, and paintings from around the same time. Jaffe writes, "His enormous virtuosity, his ability to dowhatever he wants to, contributes to the bewilderment of viewers: they seeno connection, no coherence, between works as remote from one another asare the faithful and lovingly naturalistic portraits on the one hand, andthe fantastic monsters on the other" (44). . His sculptural record leaves gaps, filled in by his sketches, hispaintings, and by understanding the leaps of thought that frequentlycarried him across artistic chasms. The second focusedon iron and modeled work during the late 192 s and early 193 s. . Doug McClemont observes, "Picasso's sculptural body of work, like hispainterly innovations, remains extraordinarily influential" (114). Spies writes, "Again and again,Picasso abruptly paused and changed direction, a phenomenon particularlynoticeable in the area of sculpture . Many of these workswere created in several versions and variations, as the artist explored theexecutions of his sketches in large form. Michael C. Picasso next turned to work in bronze, inspired by Auguste Rodin'ssculptures more than any others. He drew frommuch around him, a diverse range of influences that included Gauguin,primitive art, Far Eastern temple carvings, and all the art that was beingcreated around him to explore Cubism's possibilities for reproducingmovement and multiple viewpoints in a static art form. Inthe case of these pieces, Picasso was more aware than usual of the impactof material on the overall artistic effect he was striving to achieve. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995."His Other Art." The Economist 33 .7851 (1994, February 19): 1 -1 1.Jaffe, Hans L. . The article in TheEconomist summarizes this aspect of Picasso's sculpture: The great challenge of painting, of course, is to represent three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. Spies quotes Francois Pinault, who writes, "Throughout his career,Picasso continued to transform sculpture into a privileged realm forexperimenting with new forms" (6). Calculating the full range of Picasso's sculptural explorationsremains difficult because of the artist's uncharacteristic secretivenessabout this aspect of his work. C. The assemblages Picasso had experimented with earlier led him to hisnext phase of sculptural creation, using string, buttons, sack cloth,nails, and other bits and pieces to create three-dimensional collages.Spies observes, "These works might be described at material studies. The artist told a colleague what appealed to himabout the approach: What is one actually trying to achieve in a painting? To execute his ideas for the large metal sculptures he was designingat this time, Picasso enlisted the help of sculptor and metalsmith JulioGonzalez. . . In Picasso's work, the bowed, suffering headof Rodin's sculpture undergoes a heroizing transformation" (22). Many of Picasso's early sculptures concentrated on single humanfigures and sometimes just on the head or bust. Sally Fairweather argues forincluding a sixth important collection of works, a series of monumentalstructures in concrete, created between 1957 and the end of the artist'slife. Spies contends,"Consideration of Picasso's sculpture suggests a fundamental, decisiveprecondition for all the important phases of his work: the capacity for amaterialization as immediate and rapid as possible . Yet, Picasso himself arguedthat artistic coherence was antithetical to what he ought to be seeking.Spies quotes him as saying, "Everyone's still clinging to outdated ideas,obscure definitions, as if the artist's role was not precisely to offer newones" (14). You need something solid. While somemight suggest that it provided a three-dimensional model from which Picassocould then create two-dimensional representations, the figure is really tooprimitive to suggest its use as a model. For Picasso, sculpture was often the means for exploration in hisoverall body of work. The designs at which he arrived were deemed too radical and evenin some cases too obscene by the committee. The curved figure of theguitar and violin echoed the curved figure of a woman, and Picassocontinued to explore both the musical instruments and the human form in hisworks on canvas. . Longrecognized as one of the world's most important painters, Picasso'simportance as a sculptor is less recognized but no less critical. At the same time, his Cubist paintings generated a new kind of sculptural language, in which objects were not modeled from a solid block but built up out of separate planes (His Other Art 1 ). Spies writes, "Picasso was dependent on technical assistance fortwo reasons: first of all because he lacked the experience of themetalworker, and second because he could not afford to engage in the time-consuming process of realization" (133). Spies writes, "Manual restlessness and pleasure inexperimentation characterized Picasso's approach to the things andmaterials that came into his hands; many sculptures originated in this way"(17). Yet cast metal changes the surface of theworks and consequently affects the way the piece affects the viewer. Picasso began to experiment with collages using bits and pieces ofcardboard, wood, metal, and wire. Now, he began to move awayfrom this, exploring objects, such as guitars and a glass and bottle ofabsinthe, that would also recur in his paintings. Picasso wascommissioned in 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the poet's death, by theSociety of the Friends of Apollinaire to submit a proposed design for amonument. This explains whyhis sculptural world seems richer in contrast than that of his painting ordrawing" (14). In sculpture, one must attempt to make it seem flat to the viewer from every angle . Picasso: The Sculptures. Picasso was doing much of his work at this time in plaster but waspersuaded to cast some of the pieces in bronze. . That is something extraordinary: you paint a bottle - it steals away from you and revolves around the sphere (Spies 243). Spies writes, "Their size prevents the individualimages from following one another too quickly as we walk around it. Many of his sculptures were not displayedpublicly until the 196 s, and few were sold, the artist preferring to keepthem in his possession. Werner Spies, who helped bring to light to depth and breadth ofPicasso's sculptural work, argues that this work encompasses at least fivedistinct periods. He worked for awhile in wood, hacking out huge figures as well astiny, totem-like statuettes. Picasso's Concrete Sculptures. Instead, it appears to represent just one more way for the artist toexplore a subject and a pose that interested him at the time. Though untrained in themedium, he made his first piece when he was 2 and thereafter continued toproduce work in a variety of materials from cardboard to bronze" (His OtherArt 1 ). Spies quotes Jean-Jacques Aillagon: "If Picasso'ssculpture remains the part of his oeuvre most likely to amaze and move ustoday, it is probably because it is its most secret facet" (7). Picasso's sculptural explorations went through phases, and, at somepoints, were eclipsed by his work on canvas and paper. The first was a three-dimensional exploration of Cubistthemes and approaches, primarily using metal and wood. This paper examines Pablo Picasso's sculptures, a little-known body ofwork by an artist usually thought of as being one of the greatest paintersof all time. Picasso was notinterested in becoming a metalsmith himself, but, because the materialsinterested him at the time and were matched to the artistic conception onwhich he was then concentrating, he sought the help of an individualproficient in the use of that material and learned what he needed to aboutits particular limits and construction demands. Just as isolated drawings andsketches exist only in a few cases, so too the sculptures must be viewedwithin the context of his work as a whole" (55). Spies observes, "Picasso's Mask of aPicador with a Broken Nose [19 3] is a response to Rodin's Man with aBroken Nose of 1863-1863 . Thisinterest in humble materials, in the overlooked, rejected, and discarded,was extraordinary for its time" (145). The piecedisplays Picasso's ongoing (and especially Spanish) fascination withphysical deformities and imperfections and the way in which suchirregularities gave greater interest and humanity to the human form. Spies writes, "Picasso's assemblages -even if they were almost never shown to the public at larger - quicklybecame a gold mine for sculptors" (82). Some of his familiar themes andobjects recur in these works, especially guitars and human figures. 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.