| Artist: | Picasso, Pablo |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Ma Jolie ("My Pretty One") Woman with a Guitar | |
| Date of Work: | 1911-1912 | |
| Nationality: | Spanish | |
| Context: | Pre-WWI | |
| Movement: | Picasso: Analytic/Synthetic Cubism (transitional work) | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: when Analytical Cubism becomes almost impossible to "read" in terms of subject matter at the later hermetic stage (1910-11), Picasso adds in references to external reality that keep the image from going completely abstract: he adds in words ("Ma Jolie," my pretty woman, a reference to a popular cafe song) and a treble clef (to signify music); he provides us with clues, thus, for "reading" the work in terms of a representational frame of reference. The image thus becomes about mutually shifting frames of reference in a new way: shifting between highly abstract cubist passages to representational words or even highly illusionistic trompe-l'oeil moments. This picture of a woman (his mistress of the moment, Eva) playing a mandolin is very difficult to "read" as such, but the words are not difficult to "read" and the treble clef is clear and intact. Cubism stops short of going completely abstract, thus, because Picasso refuses to choose sides--abstraction over representation. He refuses to privilege the one over the other, and chooses instead to work both, following the forking paths of Cubism in accordance with the logic of multiple perspectives, which leads him to the principle of multiple styles. Thus, the figurative and the abstract co-exist on the same flat canvas surface! Picasso here is synthesizing--or bringing together--diverging codes and styles of art as he creates a new pictorial reality that is truly pluralistic rather than strictly adhering to only one dimension (whether it be the mimetic or the abstract). The addition of words, and then of collage elements (actual bits of external reality) move us from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism at this crucial turning point of 1911-12. Style: Picasso combines "passage" and the contradictory, allover flicker of light and shadow, plus the grid, with readable words and an intact treble clef that anchor us back to external reality through these representational reference points. He not only shatters one-point perspective into multiple, shifting frames of reference, but he shatters the unity of style into mutliple, shifting codes--from the abstract to the representational. He, thus, keeps us "reading" passages between reality and abstraction rather than pushing Cubism all the way in one direction to non-objectivity. Context: this is the transitional shift between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism (1911-12) in which subject matter is re-introduced through representational clues, such as text and trompe-l'oeil moments. The next step is to actually introduce bits of external reality into the picture by turning to "collage." | ||
