Art History Research Paper: Pablo Picasso (Essay Sample)

Name
Instructor
Grade
Date
Art History Research Paper: Pablo Picasso
Pablo was a famous Spanish painter, sculptor, ceramicist, poet and playwright. He is best associated with the art movement referred to as Cubism. Picasso was born into a middle class Spanish family and baptized as a catholic. His father was a painter and trained him at a tender age to draw and paint with oil paints. He later rose to be a prominent professor and curator at a local museum. Picasso is known for the art movement which he started with Braque Georges which involved the dominant use of monochrome brownish and neutral colours. During the early 20th century, this art movement had taken shape and a lot of paintings and artists followed this form of art (Galenson 97). Analytical forms of cubism transformed gradually into the synthetic cubism in which paper fragment would be used to enhance the overall effect and resulting in the first collage arts. The choice to analyse Pablo Picasso is based on the fact that he gained very great admiration and acquired a considerable fortune through his art. He also stands out as a great talent, a great organizer and a fearless foe in his elaborate artistic apprentice. Generally, Picasso is depicted as a very talented artist from a tender age and contributed to a wide variety of great works of arts. Cubism as an art form attract very considerable appraisal and exude social rhetoric which fortunately embody the queer personality that Picasso was. Picasso therefore presents both the complexity and awe that only very highly skilled artists tend to capture.
Picasso never demonstrated any strong political convictions despite living during an era that saw high intensity political events and wars. However, he at one point showed inclination to the Communist Party. He became a world renowned artist for his revolutionary styles and managed to acquire immense fortunes from his works. Most of his works ideally stand out for the creativity and their style. For instance, the painting ‘Femme au Cafe or Absinthe Drinker’ depicts a woman taking a drink with a funny sneering face and elongated right hand resting on the left shoulder as if depressed and perplexed. The right hand of the middle age woman supports her chin in a pitiful manner. The painting was done between 1901 and 1902 with oil on canvas and measures 73 cm by 54 cm. The drink is lazily resting on the wine glass and a portion is served on a chalice. Such a painting depicts a bit of disillusionment with alcoholism which is the prominent emblem of our civilization.
During the Rose period, he made wonderful paintings of more cheery style and depicting circus people with pink and orange colours. This era was widely accepted and embraced. It is also depicted that the era was influenced by the lovely relationship he had with this Fernande Oliver whom he eventually took as his mistress. Oliver appears in much of his paintings at the time and ventured him even further into French painting. From around 1905, he made great sensation to American art collectors Leo and Gertrude. He painted many portraits of them and made a booming business across the Atlantic.
Pablo Picasso was a social critic of a sort because all of his paintings convey a social essence and a critical disapproval or approval of the social phenomenon he depicted. In particular, he exuded some disapproval of prostitution in his art and depicted prostitutes and nude women a bit negatively. However, there is a stark contradiction because the personality was a ladies’ man in his social escapades. He married not once and had several women in high society and attended lavish parties in the company of his ladies (Gardner 69). In the painting ‘La Vive’ done in 1903, there is a picture of a nude lady and man intercepted by a lady represented as well mannered and carrying a small baby. The essence was to juxtapose the two scenarios and to make the descent mother view the behaviour of the nude couple with disapproval. This picture depicts other layers with nude couples in the background as if a people viewed through a window.
Picasso addressed varied subjects and divided his career into distinct eras which magnified varied feelings and concerns that he cherished to address. While he lived between Barcelona and Paris between 1901 and 1904 he yielded a bold new style of cubism which he termed the blue period. Most of his paintings during the era showed prostitutes and beggars. These themes were depicted as a result of his extensive travels to the villages and towns of upcountry Spain and France (Cowling 58). It is during the period that one of his friends Carlos Casagemas committed suicide. It is during the same period when he painted ‘The Old Guitarist’ In the picture, perhaps the artists wanted to depict that many artists like musicians often occasionally fail to make a living through their art. The Old Guitarist seem in a pathetic state of poverty and material deprivation because he is poorly clothed by the standards of the era and clang to his instrument of trade but has visible pleasure in his bowed head.
Pablo made an astounding contri...