| Artist: | Picasso, Pablo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Absinthe Drinker | |
| Date of Work: | 1902 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | The Turn of the Century | |
| Movement: | Pic: The Blue Period (1901-1904) | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: vision turned inward; the figure's eye is closed as if in sleep or in a dream. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy; the blues. The body is shrouded and curled up almost in a fetal position. Everything points inward rather than outward; the inscape. She sits in a cafe with minimal trappings, only a glass of absinthe in front of her. The picture is not a specific portrait set in a particular place and time; it could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human soul, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. She is one of society's outcasts, a marginal figure who serves as a metaphor for the modern artist no longer under the patronage of the king or the church; modernity as a condition of homelessness, rootlessness. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness; modern alienation. Style: predominantly blue palette; color no longer descriptive or naturalistic but chosen instead to set the mood. Blue is an otherworldly color, a cool color that retreats with a haunting, enigmatic sense of mysteries that are unfathomable. Picasso is no longer being faithful to optical reality; this is a "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch. An image of inner vision, pointing toward psychological depths rather than surface appearances. No longer interested in deep, perspectival space. The image flattens and the figure is distorted for emotional expression. The depth is one of mood more than space. Picasso suggests more than he spells out. Color, form, and figure type corresponding to an inner state of feeling. Highly subjective rather than objective. Context: Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, finds an echo here. | ||
