Pablo Picasso's fashionable theories in painting

By Amal HEWAVISSENTI

Well possessed by extremely dynamic feelings, Picasso personally preferred his ordinary life and art career marked with revolutionary trends. The impressively dramatic changes which came over his political life and married life are numerous and he was the subject of favourable appraisal and hostile criticism levelled from the modern world of art. In personal life he was married to a lady around forty years younger and was an ardent communist in 1944. Most critics of his paintings rate him the superlative painter in the modern world of art and perhaps in the history of art. On the other hand, some critics charge him with the crime of mishandling and misdirecting the field of art by creating nonsense paintings.

Whatever is said of him, Picasso provides a perfect example for promoting the art of painting. That is to say, an artist permanently damages the quality of art if he keeps strictly to the conventional ways and tradition. Picasso himself registered his protests against the non progressive trends for and adorations of traditions.

Totally against nature

Pablo Picasso, who was a pre-eminent painter, had several persons in his single body because he had mastered mutliple school of painting during his lifetime. Whatever superb painting he painted, whatever theory of art he put forward, he was comparable to a child who flatly ignores the graving of the world.

He was thus totally against naturalism. One critic aptly described him as the saviour to have salvaged art from the enterprise of copying the nature.

Picasso's tendency to despise naturalistic approach to art is totally clear. Once he stated, "What we express through the medium of art is our own alternatives for things that are natural. Ours is not a photocopy of nature....?

Pablo Picasso make us understand that art and nature are separate fields and any work of art should reflect things which exceed nature. No other controversial painter like Picasso is yet to be found in the world of modern art.

As mentioned earlier, he enjoyed a growing chorus of praise from some critics and tasted bitter sarcasm from some critics who enthusiastically believed in the naturalistic approach to art.

In whatever way, Picasso's excellence as a painter is readily recognised throughout the world of art because he broadened the dimensions of the field of art specially painting. It is really an open secret that many a painter virtually stand a chance to flourish as artist as Picasso's explorations of novel styles of painting have shed light on their path. Picasso embarked on the project of separating art from convention and tradition and offered the fellow artists an opportunity to create works of art independent of traditions of longstanding.

Perspective for rhythm

Picasso really achieved much as a painter and was the most accomplished painter who formulated fashionable theories for painting in the twentieth century. He was sometimes a figurative expressionist artist who used symbolic colours and layered perspective to create a sense of rhythm in the figures. The notions of art by Vangro, Zesan, Tulu Lotrek, Ingress, Elgreko, Raypiel were considerably inspirational for Picasso who exploited carving, moulding and drawing for his works of art.

It appears fair to say that Pablo Picasso never experimented with his works of art. "My penchant for arts is for art's sake and it has nothing to do with experimenting" he said. He argued that not everybody should endeavour to understand art and he sometimes satirised people who move heaven and earth to understand certain work of art and appreciate it. He often wondered why people make no effort to understand the simple, melodious notes sung by a bird.

His early life

This great painter who was born on 25 October in 1881 in the city of Malaga - Spain set about learning painting at the age of eight. It is interesting to note that he was imbued with the passion for painting when he observed the sketches drawn by his father who himself was a teacher of painting. As a well trained youth in painting, he launched his first exhibition of paintings on a door of a small shop in La Carunya.

Picasso settled in France at the age of eighteen to open up new horizons in his career as a painter. His professional engagement in arts while he was still a boy shows his own rehearsal for his emergence as an aspiring and inspirational artist in the modern world. The revolutionary changes he made in the art of painting are a stark reminder that he even relished the prospect of becoming a relaxed but dynamic painter.

Even as a child artist, Picasso's paintings had mystical themes that underpinned the theories that were soon to be produced by his works of art. In short he had the insight to recognise and channel his talents. When he came to France, he was extremely moneyless and had to live with a fellow writer in a dingy, small room which in no way facilitated a wholesome atmosphere for art.

His life in this room was so miserable that he and his friend took turns to sleep in the decayed bed - a bed used by Picasso by day and by his writer friend by night. However, he managed to obtain the equipment needed for painting and food through extreme hardships.

Opening up new possibilities

The mesmerising paintings by Tulu Lotrek directed Picasso's style on a different path. He began to portray scenes on streets and scenes of entertainment. Then he switched over to the 'Phase of blue' in which he created paintings with blue as the prominent, rather dominant colour. In this style, he portrayed prostitutes, malnourished mothers, beggars and street children as the outstanding themes of his paintings which were chiefly of blue colour.

His paintings drawn in the 'Phase of blue' from 1902 to 1905, featured stark suffering of the desperately poor and the paintings aptly had different shades of blue.

In 1905, he explored a different blend of colours (white-red). His famous painting "The boy riding a horse" is the absolute archetype of this genre and the paintings carried a surprising level of rhythm and applicability to life.

Again we see him exploring different dimensions in the art of painting when he comes across Spanish and Negro images which had a mysterious quality hidden in them. He was determined to portray in his paintings what he felt rather than what he saw in the world.

Women of Achio

Picasso's abstract art conveys aesthetic suggestions rather than presenting nature. Here he used geometric shapes and dived further into abstract art by completely rejecting nature. His paintings have symbols of the figures he portrays (eye, a breast, a nose, a bottle of wine or a smoking pipe) in different places. For instance the painting titled "The Women of Achio" represents five nude women assembled around a heap of fruits.

Here Picasso's primary goal is not to depict the rhythm and beauty of their bodies but to convey his own reaction towards them.

The figures of the women are deformed beyond recognition and are presented as strange pictures. He employed the technique of cubic art (cubism) in which the painting is presented in an unusual network of symbols signifying a mysterious quality.

The whole painting is set with cuneiform and cubic shapes. The famous painter George Braak joined Picasso in popularising the cubism throughout the world.

Pablo Picasso's life in Italy brought him into an extraordinary passion for the natural beauty of human body. From 1916, Picasso began to portray classical nudes. The year 1925 registered a new change in his life.

He was immensly taken up with the classic symbolism in surrealist art which involves expressing imaginary concepts through symbols.

The painting titled "Gurnica" is considered the masterpiece of surrealism which portrays the havoc wrought by Naatzi invaders on the city of Gurnica during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso's paintings were sometimes priced at thousands of pounds and he became a millionaire in the latter stage of his life. Yet this dynamic artist lived a simple life and had reached his ninety second birthday when he died on 8th April 1973.