| Artist: | Picasso, Pablo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Family of Saltimbanques | |
| Date of Work: | 1905 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | The Turn of the Century | |
| Movement: | Pic: The Rose Period (1905-1906) | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: troup of saltimbanques (wandering circus performers) who serve as a metaphor for the rootlessness of the modern artist no longer working under the patronage of the king or the church; modernity as a condition of homelessness and alienation. Still, this group does start to function as a group or family unit. The figures are actually loosely based on Picasso and his friends: Picasso as Harlequin, wearing the patchwork suit of diamonds; Apollinaire, the poet and art critic (the first one to coin the term "surrealism"); poets Andre Salmon and Max Jacob as the two small boys. The female seated off to the side on the right is Fernande, Picasso's mistress, and the young girl holding the Harlequin figure's hand is an orphan child that Picasso and Fernande had adopted, and then returned. Initially, Picasso had planned to include a horse race in the upper right, but he omits it in the end, which makes the image much less a narrative and much more abstract. That empty space registers an absence that continues the theme of the Blue Period: loss, longing, and loneliness, or alienation in the void. Style: the figures are lighter, more delicate and tender than the painfully distorted figures of the Blue Period; actual portraits replace the earlier more universal archetypes of the Blue Period and figures now touch, but the spatial setting is still vacant and not particularized, which has the effect of keeping the figures marginalized. Though the palette has lightened up to warmer pinks and roses, the mood is still melancholy and bittersweet. Context: the theme of the saltimbanque has a long tradition in French art and often the clown or performer served as a metaphor for the artist (see Watteau and Daumier, for examples); the saltimbanques grew out of the Italian Commedia delle Arte, an improvisational theatre group featuring Pierrot (the sad clown), Columbine (the woman he loved), and Harlequin (the trickster). Picasso's Rose Period lasts only one year--1905--following after the Blue Period. The tone and mood lighten up a bit here as Picasso himself no longer feels so alienated in Paris--he now has a mistress and a family of sorts, since he is hanging out at the circus, making friends with the performers and other artists. | ||
