| Artist: | Picasso, Pablo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Tragedy | |
| Date of Work: | 1903 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | The Turn of the Century | |
| Movement: | Pic: The Blue Period (1901-1904) | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: a gap, breach, or rupture that cannot be bridged; modern alienation as a tragic condition. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy; the blues. Body language turns inward, each figure in his or her own private zip code. The young boy gestures outwardly, but cannot close the gap; no eyes meet. Everything points inward rather than outward; the inscape. Minimal setting. The picture is not set in a particular place and time; it could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human condition, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. The figure grouping at the edge of the sea suggests society's outcasts, marginal figures who serve 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. 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 figures are 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. Painting things that cannot be put into words. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, finds an echo here. Picasso's favorite book at this time was Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy." | ||
