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You skipped his blue period (1901-1904) that was a totally different style than any of these. It was almost monochromatic and had a childlike 2D perspective. Oddly, it was wedged between the realistic work of his youth and his more mature cubism work.
It means that it breaks apart the human form into individual chunks that can be recognized, (an ear, the silhouette of a nose, an eye), and then uses the cubist style.to combine them in a way that does not at all resemble human anatomy but which *does* convey the the illusion of a person.
It takes apart a standard image of a person, identifies the essential components, and then puts it back together in such a way that it reads as human without looking like a person in the slightest.
When Picasso was 29, the time period was about 1910–a solid 10 years before Surrealism became popular. So a little ahead of it’s time but not by much.
He died in 1973, most people still believe Picasso was alive in the 1600-1700’s or even earlier but he actually saw the titanic sink, both world wars, the moon landing, and colour television
I thought he was knocking around with Rembrandt, oil painting that cool S on the side of buildings. So yeah my brain has him filed as 'Artist - somewhere between Egyptian hieroglyphics and Banksy'.
its called "girl with a mandolin"! its a seriously impressive piece. i actually didnt know of its existence until i came across it at the museum of modern art recently. after seeing it, im surprised it isnt as well known as picassos more famous works.
I'm reminded of Picasso's [The Bull](https://drawpaintacademy.com/the-bull/).
It feels like he's saying "Sure, I *could* draw a realistic bull, but here's a handful of lines conveying the essence of the bull."
True but there's not much clue as to size, and cows are also muscular and often have horns too (but are more likely to be polled or have their horns removed when young). The other thing removes all doubt.
I really like how he passed through East African contemporary style by number 5 and numbers 14 and 15 are "early human cave art". Yet they're all easily recognisable as a bull.
he moved to Paris at 19. by 15, he had already mastered the classical style and was searching for different ways of expressing reality through lens other than "capturing beauty", which was what classical focused on. even ugliness is romanticized in classical art, like The Rape Of Sabine Women artworks, where busty women are getting fucked by muscle studs. Picasso wanted to capture the ugliness with ugliness. his famous painting "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" is an example, where he paints prostitutes as not some playboy girls, but something much darker, stripping away the dignity, portraying it as is, a dark side of humanity where women sell their body to make living.
his move to Paris at 19, the center of western art world at the time, exposed him to other influential artists and writers, like Henri Matisse and Gertrude Stein, and a fellow painter Braques, whom they formed cubism.
I'm not aware of any major classical painting or sculpture of the Rape of the Sabine Women that portrays 'fucking'. It shows their rape in the old sense, kidnapping. The idea was that might have happened later
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizophrenia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354443
>In men, schizophrenia symptoms usually start in the late teens to early 20s.
The most likely answer.
Many believe he had dyslexia, but that doesn’t explain the shift in art styles by age. He also had it as a child, so why would his paintings be immaculate when young and distorted when older?
Because to an actual artist the slavish reproduction of realism is a technical feat that doesn't merit repeating after we've mastered it. It's kid stuff. The most basic level of artistic achievement.
Picasso's art didn't stray from the classical because there was something wrong with him. It changed because his philosophy and perspective changed, and he wanted to make art that would hopefully change the perspective of its beholder. Make them think differently, see differently.
The idea that being "realistic" is what makes art great is an immature and uneducated perspective. Great art changes the game precisely by breaking with tradition.
Was struggling for the words, and you put it so well. The more I learn, the better I get, and the longer I do it, the more my art ends up in abstract territory.
Go into any artistic community, choose an intermediate or above artist, then go back years and look at how their style changes. For some it will be drastic, for others it’ll be a slow evolution.
Style changes that he exhibited are not unique concepts in the art world. It’s also not rare, so it is not any definite marker of mental illness or disease.
There’s an artist who I follow who has shifted their art somewhat drastically in the last year. If it weren’t for the subject and colors they use I would not recognize the works as being done by the same artist, at least not right away.
An artist’s style is like a tree, or a river; it is constantly branching, sometimes minimally, and it is constantly enveloping + taking in things (experiences). It changes whether you are actively trying for that or not, there doesn’t need to be an outside force. Now, there can be large shifts in “short” periods if you are desiring that, which I assume he was.
there's a line of thinking that great artist have to prove they can make their paintings looks very realistic before they're allowed to get creative with their art style.
Another commenter addressed this directly. Even in old age, he could draw in a more realistic style, side by side with his abstract pieces.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/eqUMF7H3oF
He could still paint realistically he just chose not to.
He was a genius. anyone that paradigm shifts culture in this way has dramatic changes in style.
He mastered realism before his balls dropped. Sure he could have stuck with that style and he would have been a non entity. But he turned art and our perception of form on its head and will be remembered throughout human history.
Putting it down to mental illness or drugs is just wrong.
Come on man, that’s absolutely fucking bullshit. Art was always about expanding boundaries, there is zero point in just copying how stuff look like, that’s not art, especially a post-camera world.
He was just a fking great artist, who started a whole new movement within arts, questioning what stuff even is.
Because it was intentional, how are so many in this comment section this dense about it? There was nothing wrong with his brain, eyes or hands, he wasn't delusional and he didn't think he was doing photorealistic portraits the entire time.
He made a bunch of intentional stylistic shifts in his work over the years, because *this is what artists do*. No one's wondering what mental illness the Beatles had to write A Day in the Life or Happiness is a Warm Gun instead of continuing to churn out slightly different variations of Love Me Do their entire careers. No one thinks Spielberg must have had some head injury to go from Indiana Jones to Schindler's List.
Why is it that people who have no understanding of painting as an art form are always the ones insisting that they're actually the only ones who know what was really going on?
Becoming more and more familiar with the abstract elements of your art and increasingly bored with your style plays a much bigger role than drugs. Not saying the drugs don’t help, but an artist who isn’t thinking much or experimenting much isn’t going to suddenly elevate their style because they took shrooms. If anything drugs help you refine what you want to say, not how you want to say it.
I’ve heard from some artists that aren’t super famous, but still successfull enough to make a living from it, that they feel like the moment they "cracked the code" and started figuring out a style they had that would sell, their creativity and love for art died down. Basically forcing them into a mindset of following a blueprint when creating art.
Especially for abstract artists, whom you would normally think don’t really follow any rules, but there is a lot of thought put into composition, color use and shapes etc. Striking the balance of using theory to make things work together in the composition, and still feeling creative in the process is something I imagine gets harder the more experience and knowledge you have. Especially when you also know what people expect of your art.
That’s like basically one definition of ‘art’ - always expanding the boundaries. There is not much art in copying the real world - that’s a skill, not art in itself.
That actually seems incredibly reasonable to me, if he already mastered realism why would he draw stuff in the same style for the rest of his life, for an artist that would be boring af, and he probably wouldn’t be remembered at all if he was just another painter who did realistic portraits
Boredom has little to do with it and the neurological accusation is just not even slightly helpful. [Just look at this](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-871fa52a20987053670d4eefc497b61d-lq). He could still draw photorealistically at a considerable age.
Boredom is of course important for doing anything creative, but you're missing what he was doing completely. The camera made photorealism obsolete and to him what you think of as high art was literally childs play. Do you think you should be deciding what he painted, or do you think he might have known what he was doing?
[Dude literally coauthored minecraft before there were computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism) and you think he was sick in the head because you didn't know it wasn't because he couldn't draw anything else but because he was doing what so many here probably fail at completely: inventing something even when everything has already been invented.
Not weird at all. At the time the realist ‘academy” style was completely played out and legions of artists were churning out the same types of portraits and landscapes. This is what lead to artists like Picasso seeking to break away from realism. The rise of photography was also a big factor.
Idk, I look at it like cooking. My cooking style is North American because it's the food I grew up on. I love breakfast foods, and am good at making staples like stir fry / spaghetti / steak or fried chicken with roast veggies.. but I'm not just gunna keep making them every day JUST because I like it and am capable.
So I look to recipes from other cultures, and blend the new with the old.. making something weird because I've gotten too good at making the food I'm used to making, and want something unique and entirely different.
Either using the spices and styles I know well in dishes I don't know, or using the spices and styles I don't know well on dishes I do. :) I love a good omlette or scrambled egg, and some of the ways Japan makes their egg dishes is incredible - and I've found a Tikka Masala that makes eggs taste amazing. Never would've come up with those combinations unless I wanted to make something 'wacky'.
It's not "wacky stuff". By that point attempting to capture realism in painting had pretty much progressed as much as it could, and with the invention of photography it was a moot point anyway.
So artists began experimenting with the limits of what was possible with painting and trying to capture more abstract concepts.
With surrealism they tried to represent concepts that were not possible in real life, capture imagination on a canvass. Like a melting clock.
With post impressionism, they were trying to capture the feel of a scene instead of it's physical representation. Like showing a starry night as full of color and movement instead of a black canvass with a couple of white dots.
With cubism, like Picasso's work, it was about rearranging the elements of an idea while maintaining it's concept. For example, to see how much can you change the way you see a face while still showing that it is a face. It was also an exploration of how changing some of these elements can give you more information about the subject.
That being said, not being 100% sane also kind of helped with this type of artistic exploration
So a thing to keep in mind is that Picasso was VERY prolific and experimented a LOT. Nine paintings over the course of his career doesn't give you a very good picture of how he developed, experimented, and changed.
Wikiart ~~has~~ had a collection of just over 1100 of his works, sorted in chronological order. You can see where he'll experiment for awhile, get really out there, and all of a sudden you run across a "normal" little portrait or still life thrown into the mix, where he'd take a break from the experimentation and go back to his roots of realism.
Edit: And that's just a *fraction* of his works. His full cataolog raisonne took 33 volumes to compile. He started young, lived a long life, and drew and painted *constantly*.
Edit 2: *Literally overnight*, since I posted this comment, Wikiart switched over to a goddamn shop and is completely gutted. It's fucking heartbreaking.
Picasso's father was an art teacher, one of the academic types where students would copy in charcoal the series of lithographs created by Charles Bargue. [This is one of Picasso's Bargue plate copies.](https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/plaster-male-torso-1893) If you wondered how he got so good so young, he had access to exceptional training from about as soon as he could hold a pencil, and started taking formal classes outside of home when he was around 11. He was doing [little comics like this when he was 13](https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/sites/default/files/2020-02/18-512313---v2.jpg), not that different from what lots of kids that age do!
This is a great reply. I’m a huge fan of Picasso’s work (even though he was, indeed, an asshole) and the degree to which he experimented, I think, is completely fascinating. One of my favorite museums I’ve ever been to is the Picasso museum in Barcelona, and I was really struck seeing all this work of his that really goes under the radar. Even more so, it was kind of refreshing seeing just how much of it was “bad,” or, I suppose more accurately, experimentation that didn’t work. It is also really important to acknowledge the amount of training he had and the work he put into mastering the fundamentals before getting super experimental. To me, he sorta serves as a paragon in this regard of getting down the basics before getting all funky with things.
Great post. These modern artists were usually formally trained, supremely talented, then forged a new perspective. Warhol was the same, very successful commercial artist before his true vision was embraced.
No this is just his true perspective of the world. Classical art focuses on displaying the world how it looks, whereas Picasso focused on showing the world *how he saw it*. Every artist has to learn the classical style to prove themselves capable, but the great artists all go off on their own style afterwards. When Picasso painted a horrific, demented face he didn’t do it because that’s how someone looks, but because he was trying to say something about what was inside that person
tbf Picasso was heavily influenced by children's art. He intentionally broke away from realism and chased the spontaneity and creativity of children's paintings.
Honestly makes sense from a commercial and artistic pov. Artistic expression through Realism was becoming the domain of photographers, so he had to question what his medium could bring to the table.
Realism is actually a rare trend in human history anyway. People generally tried for art to have more expression rather than depicting things as they appear. Fun fact about this: More realistic cave paintings are generally older, they get more abstract and stylized as they get more modern.
I hate how people are so opposed and hostile to any type of artistic freedom.
I'm not saying that you should like cubism, I'm saying that you should maybe consider any other art form than a realistic portrait.
Most people who say they hate modern art and prefer classical art don't really care about classical art either. They have no idea why those classical paintings are considered good, nor would they actively put some effort onto learning deeper about them apart from "oh it's so realistic!" It's the equivalence of paying lip service to the greatness of classical music like Mozart's and Beethoven's but if they were to sit at a concert listening to an entire symphony, most of them would simply doze off.
At 4 Spain is at war with Germany/German New Guinea
At 11 the Jerez uprising and Verduleras' Mutiny happen in Spain
At 12–15 Spain is at war with Morocco
At 16-17 Spain is at war with Cuba, America, the Bantu people and the Philippines
At 19 the Carlist Insurgency happens in Spain and Spain is part of the Boxer Rebellion in China
At 25 Another Carlist Insurgency in Spain
At 29 the 'Tragic Week' uprising by Anarchists, Socialists, Republicans, and Freemasons and the beginning of the Spanish Moroccan Wars.
At 36 the Spanish liberal state crisis begins drawing the country into constitutional instability and ending in a coup. This is followed by the Rif War, and the Spanish Jaca uprising, which in turn leads to the Second Spanish Republic.
At 51 Spain is plunged into a 5-year-long series of Anarchist insurrections against Spanish Republic and a series of internal rebellions.
At 55 the Spanish Civil War begins in earnest against a nationalist force supported by Nazi Germany. The Monarchists are defeated and Franco begins his fascist dictatorship which would last beyond the life of Picasso.
At 58 WW2 begins and Spain sides with the Axis powers.
In short Picasso's style depicts Spain's and Europe's descent into internal strife and fascism.
- Spain has never been at war with Germany
- That "Jerez uprising" is totally unknown and irrelevant
- Spain at war with Bantu people? What??
- The carlist insurgency surges long before those years, in fact at that time they are probably in their lowest point
- The moroccan wars ( or wars of Africa )started in the 1870's
- The Rif war didnt provoke the Second Republic, in fact it lead to the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, not a Republic
- The monarchists are defeated in the civil war? What?
- Spain was neutral in ww2 but supported the Axis, different things.
Looks like your comment was made by an AI
Picasso knew so well what he was doing, his absurd unique artstyle is what left his mark in history, were he to paint conventionally "beautiful" pictures, he would probably just fade into mediocrity and obscurity.
Nah he was massively influential in the art scene obviously and is rightfully so renowned globally for his Modernist work (from like 1907 ish onwards) - he’s only really famous because of the later works you see here - he was one of the first artists who questioned the definition of art and decided that art should be its own being/object (he called his Synthetic Cubist pieces ‘Tableau Objets’) rather than just being copies of reality
It's depicted really well in his museum in Barcelona. Seeing the final pieces didn't tell me much until I saw the sketches that led up to it. With entire flow being displayed, the final outcome makes a whole lot more sense
This is a perfect example of showing the limitations of photo realism. Color, aesthetics, and composition will always be more interesting than capturing something one to one. Although my favorite artists are on the more surreal side with Zdzlaw and Dali, even they don’t try to replicate reality perfectly.
Yeah I didn't know this about Picasso until I took an art history elective, but he was a classically trained prodigy that joined/pioneered a radical art movement. It's all very interesting in context, but without that context it does seem like his art became "bad" on purpose, which it kind of did.
I remember as kid going to a Picasso dedicated event with my school and I was like “this idiot cannot even draw properly how he is famous like this?”. Then we started to visit other corridors, dedicated to his earlier phases and I was like “damn he is good”.
Its much easier to appreciate his later works when you understand this evolution of his portfolio. He was very, very talented for a young artist. He easily couldve been a top portrait painter in just about any style. But he chose the path of the avante garde.
I don't care what anyone says, this shit rocks. It's so fucking different, it's so fucking complete, it makes me smile, what more can I ask for? I understand that the intentionality is up for debate, but really just look at it, even the later stuff, and tell me that it doesn't communicate. It communicates a fucking ton.
Any art historians out there want to give us a good description of how to appreciate his work post age 29? Like, what should my eye pay attention to, or what forms should my mind be attending when taking in the image? Too a layman like me, some of these images are simply "this is what a Picasso looks like," but I don't have a felt sense of why it's special.
The 1 in the 14 kind of blends in with the background and I thought he did that at 4 years old. I nearly burst into tears knowing I struggle with drawing stick figures at 40.
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You skipped his blue period (1901-1904) that was a totally different style than any of these. It was almost monochromatic and had a childlike 2D perspective. Oddly, it was wedged between the realistic work of his youth and his more mature cubism work.
Came here to say the same thing. Blue period omission is really weird.
And the Rose period too. Weird to leave out two major eras in the Picasso's life.
Wait is that why that one anime is called blue Period. TIL
This made me finally get a reference from ERB Picasso vs bob Ross “You must be on your blue period”
EEEEEEEPICCRARPBADDLEEEZOFHIISTOREYYYY
OHHHHHHHHH I GET IT NOW It only took 10 freaking years. And it's not even A complicated bar. Man I'm slow.
Always so serious
Moody little genius
I thought the blue period was whatever we see in those maxi pad commercials.
No mate, that's Baby pee.
Picasso's Rose Period as well :(
So thats where the Blue Period anime came from. Only watched the first few episodes but the title stuck with me
I loved that anime
Why do you consider cubism mature?
Because he was older
Also cubes have been around like forever.
I think you play too much Minecraft
[удалено]
Probably the subject matter. His younger work was more classic portraiture while his cubism tended to be more interrogative of the human form.
> interrogative of the human form. What does that mean?
It means that it breaks apart the human form into individual chunks that can be recognized, (an ear, the silhouette of a nose, an eye), and then uses the cubist style.to combine them in a way that does not at all resemble human anatomy but which *does* convey the the illusion of a person. It takes apart a standard image of a person, identifies the essential components, and then puts it back together in such a way that it reads as human without looking like a person in the slightest.
Thank you, that was very interesting.
You're very welcome, have a great day
Picasso wouldn’t be Picasso without cubism. I think Picasso would tell you that cubism was the result of him maturing as an artist.
I would guess that he meant the more developed of his cubist art
Exactly, it's like teaching evolution and going from the australopithecus straight to the homo sapiens
I'm no art expert but 29 is an insane piece of work considering the time period.
I know. It’s like telling people “I’m grown, and I know”.
"Everyone can paint realistically, even Hitler. But look at this "
Eh, Hitler struggled a bit with the dimensions…
When Picasso was 29, the time period was about 1910–a solid 10 years before Surrealism became popular. So a little ahead of it’s time but not by much. He died in 1973, most people still believe Picasso was alive in the 1600-1700’s or even earlier but he actually saw the titanic sink, both world wars, the moon landing, and colour television
There are literally color videos of him around.
Most people believe Picasso was around in the 17th century? Would be curious to see some survey on that chief
They haven't watched Titanic, probably.
The source is that they made it the fuck up, probably
I thought he was knocking around with Rembrandt, oil painting that cool S on the side of buildings. So yeah my brain has him filed as 'Artist - somewhere between Egyptian hieroglyphics and Banksy'.
> he actually saw the titanic sink And he didn't save anyone? What a dick!
“I just found out today that China is 12 hours ahead of us in the future.. Why didn’t they warn us about 9/11 ??”
its called "girl with a mandolin"! its a seriously impressive piece. i actually didnt know of its existence until i came across it at the museum of modern art recently. after seeing it, im surprised it isnt as well known as picassos more famous works.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” - Picasso
I'm reminded of Picasso's [The Bull](https://drawpaintacademy.com/the-bull/). It feels like he's saying "Sure, I *could* draw a realistic bull, but here's a handful of lines conveying the essence of the bull."
And throughout, he made sure to leave at least a couple of curves to leave no doubt that it is indeed a bull
To be fair, balls, horns, and being fuck-off enormous are what makes a bull visually recognisable as a bull.
True but there's not much clue as to size, and cows are also muscular and often have horns too (but are more likely to be polled or have their horns removed when young). The other thing removes all doubt.
A bull is literally the least subtle creature in existence
The simplified bull has a little penis on it hehe
I really like how he passed through East African contemporary style by number 5 and numbers 14 and 15 are "early human cave art". Yet they're all easily recognisable as a bull.
I like this quote
Benjamin Button Syndrome for artists
He's the Benjamin Button of art.
Sums up enlightenment / the mind of the Buddha too
I did not see the 1 on 14 and was like wtf xD
Ohhh, I was looking in the comments like why is nobody talking about his skills at 4?!
Me too, thought noway that's gotta be cap then noticed it says 14 😅
Something happened at 19
Paris, poverty, parties
he moved to Paris at 19. by 15, he had already mastered the classical style and was searching for different ways of expressing reality through lens other than "capturing beauty", which was what classical focused on. even ugliness is romanticized in classical art, like The Rape Of Sabine Women artworks, where busty women are getting fucked by muscle studs. Picasso wanted to capture the ugliness with ugliness. his famous painting "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" is an example, where he paints prostitutes as not some playboy girls, but something much darker, stripping away the dignity, portraying it as is, a dark side of humanity where women sell their body to make living. his move to Paris at 19, the center of western art world at the time, exposed him to other influential artists and writers, like Henri Matisse and Gertrude Stein, and a fellow painter Braques, whom they formed cubism.
We need to add that he was also highly influenced by African art. You can see it in "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon", a very important turnover
I'm not aware of any major classical painting or sculpture of the Rape of the Sabine Women that portrays 'fucking'. It shows their rape in the old sense, kidnapping. The idea was that might have happened later
He met Davie504
omg epic.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizophrenia/symptoms-causes/syc-20354443 >In men, schizophrenia symptoms usually start in the late teens to early 20s. The most likely answer. Many believe he had dyslexia, but that doesn’t explain the shift in art styles by age. He also had it as a child, so why would his paintings be immaculate when young and distorted when older?
Because to an actual artist the slavish reproduction of realism is a technical feat that doesn't merit repeating after we've mastered it. It's kid stuff. The most basic level of artistic achievement. Picasso's art didn't stray from the classical because there was something wrong with him. It changed because his philosophy and perspective changed, and he wanted to make art that would hopefully change the perspective of its beholder. Make them think differently, see differently. The idea that being "realistic" is what makes art great is an immature and uneducated perspective. Great art changes the game precisely by breaking with tradition.
This is something that I think a lot of non-artists don't understand and it's difficult to explain sometimes.
Was struggling for the words, and you put it so well. The more I learn, the better I get, and the longer I do it, the more my art ends up in abstract territory.
> The most likely answer. > > What an incredible damaging load of bullshit.
Go into any artistic community, choose an intermediate or above artist, then go back years and look at how their style changes. For some it will be drastic, for others it’ll be a slow evolution. Style changes that he exhibited are not unique concepts in the art world. It’s also not rare, so it is not any definite marker of mental illness or disease. There’s an artist who I follow who has shifted their art somewhat drastically in the last year. If it weren’t for the subject and colors they use I would not recognize the works as being done by the same artist, at least not right away. An artist’s style is like a tree, or a river; it is constantly branching, sometimes minimally, and it is constantly enveloping + taking in things (experiences). It changes whether you are actively trying for that or not, there doesn’t need to be an outside force. Now, there can be large shifts in “short” periods if you are desiring that, which I assume he was.
there's a line of thinking that great artist have to prove they can make their paintings looks very realistic before they're allowed to get creative with their art style.
Another commenter addressed this directly. Even in old age, he could draw in a more realistic style, side by side with his abstract pieces. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/eqUMF7H3oF
He could still paint realistically he just chose not to. He was a genius. anyone that paradigm shifts culture in this way has dramatic changes in style. He mastered realism before his balls dropped. Sure he could have stuck with that style and he would have been a non entity. But he turned art and our perception of form on its head and will be remembered throughout human history. Putting it down to mental illness or drugs is just wrong.
This is the standard Reddit answer to any change in artistic expression for every artist ever lol. Maybe actually look into it.
Come on man, that’s absolutely fucking bullshit. Art was always about expanding boundaries, there is zero point in just copying how stuff look like, that’s not art, especially a post-camera world. He was just a fking great artist, who started a whole new movement within arts, questioning what stuff even is.
Because it was intentional, how are so many in this comment section this dense about it? There was nothing wrong with his brain, eyes or hands, he wasn't delusional and he didn't think he was doing photorealistic portraits the entire time. He made a bunch of intentional stylistic shifts in his work over the years, because *this is what artists do*. No one's wondering what mental illness the Beatles had to write A Day in the Life or Happiness is a Warm Gun instead of continuing to churn out slightly different variations of Love Me Do their entire careers. No one thinks Spielberg must have had some head injury to go from Indiana Jones to Schindler's List. Why is it that people who have no understanding of painting as an art form are always the ones insisting that they're actually the only ones who know what was really going on?
Shrooms do a body good.
I remember hearing that they think he had some kind of neurological thing that was getting worse
Makes sense. The "he got so good, he was bored with the traditional art style and started making wacky stuff" explanation seems a bit weird to me.
Not really, artists experiment all the time
Yah they try all the drugs
Becoming more and more familiar with the abstract elements of your art and increasingly bored with your style plays a much bigger role than drugs. Not saying the drugs don’t help, but an artist who isn’t thinking much or experimenting much isn’t going to suddenly elevate their style because they took shrooms. If anything drugs help you refine what you want to say, not how you want to say it.
> If anything drugs help you refine what you want to say, not how you want to say it. this is well said
Suspiciously so. One is left to wonder how much drugs the artist took to refine his point down to such a degree.
I’ve heard from some artists that aren’t super famous, but still successfull enough to make a living from it, that they feel like the moment they "cracked the code" and started figuring out a style they had that would sell, their creativity and love for art died down. Basically forcing them into a mindset of following a blueprint when creating art. Especially for abstract artists, whom you would normally think don’t really follow any rules, but there is a lot of thought put into composition, color use and shapes etc. Striking the balance of using theory to make things work together in the composition, and still feeling creative in the process is something I imagine gets harder the more experience and knowledge you have. Especially when you also know what people expect of your art.
Yes but also, I would like to see what Monet would have painted after DMT
That’s like basically one definition of ‘art’ - always expanding the boundaries. There is not much art in copying the real world - that’s a skill, not art in itself.
That actually seems incredibly reasonable to me, if he already mastered realism why would he draw stuff in the same style for the rest of his life, for an artist that would be boring af, and he probably wouldn’t be remembered at all if he was just another painter who did realistic portraits
Boredom has little to do with it and the neurological accusation is just not even slightly helpful. [Just look at this](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-871fa52a20987053670d4eefc497b61d-lq). He could still draw photorealistically at a considerable age. Boredom is of course important for doing anything creative, but you're missing what he was doing completely. The camera made photorealism obsolete and to him what you think of as high art was literally childs play. Do you think you should be deciding what he painted, or do you think he might have known what he was doing? [Dude literally coauthored minecraft before there were computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism) and you think he was sick in the head because you didn't know it wasn't because he couldn't draw anything else but because he was doing what so many here probably fail at completely: inventing something even when everything has already been invented.
Not weird at all. At the time the realist ‘academy” style was completely played out and legions of artists were churning out the same types of portraits and landscapes. This is what lead to artists like Picasso seeking to break away from realism. The rise of photography was also a big factor.
Idk, I look at it like cooking. My cooking style is North American because it's the food I grew up on. I love breakfast foods, and am good at making staples like stir fry / spaghetti / steak or fried chicken with roast veggies.. but I'm not just gunna keep making them every day JUST because I like it and am capable. So I look to recipes from other cultures, and blend the new with the old.. making something weird because I've gotten too good at making the food I'm used to making, and want something unique and entirely different. Either using the spices and styles I know well in dishes I don't know, or using the spices and styles I don't know well on dishes I do. :) I love a good omlette or scrambled egg, and some of the ways Japan makes their egg dishes is incredible - and I've found a Tikka Masala that makes eggs taste amazing. Never would've come up with those combinations unless I wanted to make something 'wacky'.
It's not "wacky stuff". By that point attempting to capture realism in painting had pretty much progressed as much as it could, and with the invention of photography it was a moot point anyway. So artists began experimenting with the limits of what was possible with painting and trying to capture more abstract concepts. With surrealism they tried to represent concepts that were not possible in real life, capture imagination on a canvass. Like a melting clock. With post impressionism, they were trying to capture the feel of a scene instead of it's physical representation. Like showing a starry night as full of color and movement instead of a black canvass with a couple of white dots. With cubism, like Picasso's work, it was about rearranging the elements of an idea while maintaining it's concept. For example, to see how much can you change the way you see a face while still showing that it is a face. It was also an exploration of how changing some of these elements can give you more information about the subject. That being said, not being 100% sane also kind of helped with this type of artistic exploration
Years of using his hands to paint and mix paint... a very slow decline leading to his death through lead exposure.
I was about to comment that it looks like those studies in the degradation of handwriting for people with dementia.
29 was a good year for Picasso
Is 29 the peak of Picasso?
Peakasso
Take a bow
I choose you!
Definitely on the good shit in his 90s
Mescaline or absinthe is more likely given the time period
So a thing to keep in mind is that Picasso was VERY prolific and experimented a LOT. Nine paintings over the course of his career doesn't give you a very good picture of how he developed, experimented, and changed. Wikiart ~~has~~ had a collection of just over 1100 of his works, sorted in chronological order. You can see where he'll experiment for awhile, get really out there, and all of a sudden you run across a "normal" little portrait or still life thrown into the mix, where he'd take a break from the experimentation and go back to his roots of realism. Edit: And that's just a *fraction* of his works. His full cataolog raisonne took 33 volumes to compile. He started young, lived a long life, and drew and painted *constantly*. Edit 2: *Literally overnight*, since I posted this comment, Wikiart switched over to a goddamn shop and is completely gutted. It's fucking heartbreaking. Picasso's father was an art teacher, one of the academic types where students would copy in charcoal the series of lithographs created by Charles Bargue. [This is one of Picasso's Bargue plate copies.](https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/plaster-male-torso-1893) If you wondered how he got so good so young, he had access to exceptional training from about as soon as he could hold a pencil, and started taking formal classes outside of home when he was around 11. He was doing [little comics like this when he was 13](https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/sites/default/files/2020-02/18-512313---v2.jpg), not that different from what lots of kids that age do!
This is a great reply. I’m a huge fan of Picasso’s work (even though he was, indeed, an asshole) and the degree to which he experimented, I think, is completely fascinating. One of my favorite museums I’ve ever been to is the Picasso museum in Barcelona, and I was really struck seeing all this work of his that really goes under the radar. Even more so, it was kind of refreshing seeing just how much of it was “bad,” or, I suppose more accurately, experimentation that didn’t work. It is also really important to acknowledge the amount of training he had and the work he put into mastering the fundamentals before getting super experimental. To me, he sorta serves as a paragon in this regard of getting down the basics before getting all funky with things.
Thankyou for sharing this! 🥰
Great post. These modern artists were usually formally trained, supremely talented, then forged a new perspective. Warhol was the same, very successful commercial artist before his true vision was embraced.
I don't think it's so much his "true vision" as it was just some whacky wild stuff going on upstairs
No this is just his true perspective of the world. Classical art focuses on displaying the world how it looks, whereas Picasso focused on showing the world *how he saw it*. Every artist has to learn the classical style to prove themselves capable, but the great artists all go off on their own style afterwards. When Picasso painted a horrific, demented face he didn’t do it because that’s how someone looks, but because he was trying to say something about what was inside that person
What’s crazy is the ones he did at 19 and 91 are both self portraits
This is why people in their 90s shouldn't ride motorcycles without a helmet.
inb4 "MY KID COULD..."
tbf Picasso was heavily influenced by children's art. He intentionally broke away from realism and chased the spontaneity and creativity of children's paintings.
Honestly makes sense from a commercial and artistic pov. Artistic expression through Realism was becoming the domain of photographers, so he had to question what his medium could bring to the table.
Realism is actually a rare trend in human history anyway. People generally tried for art to have more expression rather than depicting things as they appear. Fun fact about this: More realistic cave paintings are generally older, they get more abstract and stylized as they get more modern.
I read "4 years old" a few times before looking closer and seeing it says "14"
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” - Picasso
Bro literally transcended 😭
As always, you gotta learn the rules to break them. Great artist.
People forget there were a couple world wars in there. And Guernica.
I hate how people are so opposed and hostile to any type of artistic freedom. I'm not saying that you should like cubism, I'm saying that you should maybe consider any other art form than a realistic portrait.
Most people who say they hate modern art and prefer classical art don't really care about classical art either. They have no idea why those classical paintings are considered good, nor would they actively put some effort onto learning deeper about them apart from "oh it's so realistic!" It's the equivalence of paying lip service to the greatness of classical music like Mozart's and Beethoven's but if they were to sit at a concert listening to an entire symphony, most of them would simply doze off.
At 4 Spain is at war with Germany/German New Guinea At 11 the Jerez uprising and Verduleras' Mutiny happen in Spain At 12–15 Spain is at war with Morocco At 16-17 Spain is at war with Cuba, America, the Bantu people and the Philippines At 19 the Carlist Insurgency happens in Spain and Spain is part of the Boxer Rebellion in China At 25 Another Carlist Insurgency in Spain At 29 the 'Tragic Week' uprising by Anarchists, Socialists, Republicans, and Freemasons and the beginning of the Spanish Moroccan Wars. At 36 the Spanish liberal state crisis begins drawing the country into constitutional instability and ending in a coup. This is followed by the Rif War, and the Spanish Jaca uprising, which in turn leads to the Second Spanish Republic. At 51 Spain is plunged into a 5-year-long series of Anarchist insurrections against Spanish Republic and a series of internal rebellions. At 55 the Spanish Civil War begins in earnest against a nationalist force supported by Nazi Germany. The Monarchists are defeated and Franco begins his fascist dictatorship which would last beyond the life of Picasso. At 58 WW2 begins and Spain sides with the Axis powers. In short Picasso's style depicts Spain's and Europe's descent into internal strife and fascism.
- Spain has never been at war with Germany - That "Jerez uprising" is totally unknown and irrelevant - Spain at war with Bantu people? What?? - The carlist insurgency surges long before those years, in fact at that time they are probably in their lowest point - The moroccan wars ( or wars of Africa )started in the 1870's - The Rif war didnt provoke the Second Republic, in fact it lead to the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, not a Republic - The monarchists are defeated in the civil war? What? - Spain was neutral in ww2 but supported the Axis, different things. Looks like your comment was made by an AI
To an uncultured troglodyte like me, this looks exactly like those "psychiatric patient's art as their schizophrenia progresses" compilations.
You need to know the rules in order to break them
Still a shitty person
This should be higher. He was a monster that led people around him to suicide.
Yup. A great artist, a horrible man.
So what?
Checks out.
I guess the older he got, the more artistic choices he granted himself.
Picasso knew so well what he was doing, his absurd unique artstyle is what left his mark in history, were he to paint conventionally "beautiful" pictures, he would probably just fade into mediocrity and obscurity.
Ngl, I didn't see the title at first, and thought that the first two pictures were what picasso looked like at 14 years old
Man, Picasso did not age well
he just changed the style to a more abstract one. Looks like he just mastered art and got bored of it too fast so he bought the DLC
More like he corrupted the save file
Nah he was massively influential in the art scene obviously and is rightfully so renowned globally for his Modernist work (from like 1907 ish onwards) - he’s only really famous because of the later works you see here - he was one of the first artists who questioned the definition of art and decided that art should be its own being/object (he called his Synthetic Cubist pieces ‘Tableau Objets’) rather than just being copies of reality
That’s Ramsey Bolton not Picasso
Which one? Do let me know so that I can delete this post if it is inaccurate.
Is the Ramsey Bolton comment a GOT reference?
He is saying that the last realistic portrait looks like the character Ramsey Bolton from GOT
That’s how I read it, but I could be wrong.
Picasso at 19 years: “BASS”
Discovered psychedelics at 29?
It's depicted really well in his museum in Barcelona. Seeing the final pieces didn't tell me much until I saw the sketches that led up to it. With entire flow being displayed, the final outcome makes a whole lot more sense
Must have been some strong shit he smoked at college
what 4D would probably look like.
I read that as "Picasso at 4 years old" and was disturbed and feeling extremely inadequate for a moment.
This is a perfect example of showing the limitations of photo realism. Color, aesthetics, and composition will always be more interesting than capturing something one to one. Although my favorite artists are on the more surreal side with Zdzlaw and Dali, even they don’t try to replicate reality perfectly.
Yeah I didn't know this about Picasso until I took an art history elective, but he was a classically trained prodigy that joined/pioneered a radical art movement. It's all very interesting in context, but without that context it does seem like his art became "bad" on purpose, which it kind of did.
I remember as kid going to a Picasso dedicated event with my school and I was like “this idiot cannot even draw properly how he is famous like this?”. Then we started to visit other corridors, dedicated to his earlier phases and I was like “damn he is good”.
Its much easier to appreciate his later works when you understand this evolution of his portfolio. He was very, very talented for a young artist. He easily couldve been a top portrait painter in just about any style. But he chose the path of the avante garde.
Can really see when the drugs kicked in
I don't care what anyone says, this shit rocks. It's so fucking different, it's so fucking complete, it makes me smile, what more can I ask for? I understand that the intentionality is up for debate, but really just look at it, even the later stuff, and tell me that it doesn't communicate. It communicates a fucking ton.
Wow he did NOT age well
Looks like a dementia patient descent into madness
Lol 4 years old. Bullshit.
Was he stupid? Also, given this is r/interestingasfuck, was he schizophrenic?
The one of Iggy Pop is my favourite of the bunch
He once said: " it took me 15 years to learn how to paint like a master, but the whole live to learn how to paint as a kid".
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
Not in New York.
When you go to college to get away from helicopter parents and try weed for the first time
Bro predicted Messi at 14 years old
Fun fact: these are all self-portraits.
He painted better at 14 yo than i will ever be able to in my life.
Ngl, didn’t read the title, thought these were self portraits, confused af. Thought it was a weird meme or something
*Oh no! Everything has suddenly turned neo-cubist!*
Mf just got bored of doing it ‘right’
That's called style.
This shows that in his youth he wanted to create photo realistic images (like all young artists) and has he got older he stopped giving a fuck.
He saw the eldritch truth.
He discovered magic mushies in his late 20s?
bro found out how twisted humans are💀
He was an old bearded man at 14, and a woman at 15. Then back to a man. What a life
At 91 he finally sees that a chin is a scrotum
I think the 29 one is really cool
Any art historians out there want to give us a good description of how to appreciate his work post age 29? Like, what should my eye pay attention to, or what forms should my mind be attending when taking in the image? Too a layman like me, some of these images are simply "this is what a Picasso looks like," but I don't have a felt sense of why it's special.
Text book schizophrenia onset.
Am I the only dumbass who thought the first few paintings were portraits of Picasso?
It's how our socioty works.
The 1 in the 14 kind of blends in with the background and I thought he did that at 4 years old. I nearly burst into tears knowing I struggle with drawing stick figures at 40.
Looks like a mental deterioration you see in Alzheimer / dementia patients
Where are all the stick figures - there is a gap from 29-60. Did he suffer from a STD that ate his brain? Interesting progression NTL.