| Artist: | Picasso, Pablo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Old Guitarist | |
| Date of Work: | 1903 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | The Turn of the Century | |
| Movement: | Pic: The Blue Period (1901-1904) | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: vision turned inward; the guitarist's eye is closed as if in sleep or in a dream. Picasso plays on the theme of the blind poet here, suggesting the special insight that comes only when we close our outer eye. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy; the blues. The body is painfully distorted so we respond empathetically and kinaesthetically. Everything points inward rather than outward; the inscape. Minimal trappings. 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. The old guitarist 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 depth is one of mood more than space. The image flattens and the figure is distorted and elongated for emotional expression. Picasso wrenches the figure's shoulder blade almost out of its socket so we feel the pain; using the body as a metaphor for an otherworldly, out of body, spiritual or metaphysical dimension. El Greco's elongated, spiritual figures were Picasso's source of inspiration. 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. Picasso's favorite book at this time was Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy." | ||
