Pablo Picasso - Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle Orientation The picture is predominantly made up of pale greys, browns and creams with patches of brighter violet, red and blue in the area around the fruit bowl. On the right hand side, where the bottle is, there is an area heavily populated by small blue marks. Black lines have been painted over the coloured shapes. Some of the lines form simple passages of drawing, some follow outline of the coloured patches, while others seem to randomly overlap or dissect them. Picasso created this work in 1914. It is a good example of a phase of Cubism that is as much about mental processes as it is about the visual experience. Initially, Cubist paintings had been created with direct reference to real objects. It was an act of observation and analysis, which is why the term Analytical Cubism is often used to describe it. The picture would appear fractured and discontinuous, rather like the surface of a crystal, because it comprised of careful observations from many different viewpoints. But with the introduction of collage to Cubism, the creative process began to run in the opposite direction. While previously Cubism had broken objects down by analysis, Cubist collage, or papier collé, built objects up. As such, there was no need to refer to them directly. Rather than an actual violin on the artist's table, the starting point would be a less specific notion of a violin that the artist carried with him in his mind.
From this conceptual understanding of the object, the Cubist artist
would improvise a violin from a mishmash of styles, materials, textures
and techniques - like an inventor fashioning useful objects from
a jumble of spare parts. Cubism had already rejected the rule that
a painting should remain consistent in appearance and point of view,
so there was no single standard to which these spare parts should
comply. Consequently, Picasso and Braque had created for themselves
a unique creative freedom, with the option to combine elements from
any number of sources to construct their Cubist objects.
They would lift snippets both from the real world and from the world
of painting and drawing, and loved to confuse the boundaries between
the two. In a picture containing, say, a newspaper and a bottle,
they could easily represent the newspaper with a scrap of the real
thing. Next to it, they might make a careful sketch of the bottle
in charcoal, or perhaps paint a crude outline of its shape. But
to really stir things up, they might well have decided to cut the
newspaper into the shape of a bottle, and to imitate the newspaper
in thick and muddy oil paint. Such games would force the viewer
to question the very nature of representation and art.
This painting shows Picasso translating his collage techniques back
into the master medium of oil paint. Like a Cubist collage, it is
made up of elements of different shapes, colours and textures. The
blocks of colour look like paper cut-outs scattered across the surface
of the canvas. It is a colourful, decorative kind of Cubism.
The colours are roughly related to the objects represented in the
picture; we might link red and purple for example, to the grapes
in the bowl. But in their shape and position, these areas of colour
only vaguely relate to the objects with which they are associated. There are black lines painted over the coloured patches, and these are more suggestive. For instance, we can identify parts of a violin and the shapes of fruit. But even these float free from any definitive picture of the objects in question. Picasso provides a collection of visual hints. Since they vary in style, viewpoint, texture and so on, we cannot imagine gathering them together and joining them like a jigsaw to create a coherent picture. But as we explore the painting, a coherent understanding begins to form in the mind. These dislocated fragments contribute to a conceptual awareness of the objects, a richer, rounder and more human impression than a single viewpoint image could provide.
Raised Image 1 This bit-by-bit accumulation is, after all, much more like the way we become aware of the things around us. If we stand in a room full of people we tend to absorb pieces of information from a number of them, and we eventually get a deeper and more vivid understanding of events than had we only focussed on one person. Similarly our notion of, say, a bunch of grapes is not limited to one unchanging snapshot. It is made up of different kinds of information from different sources. This is how Picasso has tried to portray the grapes in this painting.
Raised Image 2 At the top, in the centre is a solid lumpy block. This is the bunch of grapes in profile. Continuing vertically, below are the grapes in cross section, then a horizontal line and then the grapes as arc shapes. Back at the top, to the left of the profile is a small squiggle, this is the pear's leaf. Below it is a curvaceous shape like one side of the number 8. This is the pear. Immediately to the left of this line, the shape is repeated. This is the rim of the bowl. It is repeated again, immediately below as bowl itself. Below this, in the bottom left of the drawing is a large shallow arc, almost on the horizontal. This is an enlarged rim of the foot. Return to the top of the drawing. To the right of the grapes in profile is a horizontal line. It curves down to join a vertical line that sharply turns into the left before continuing down to a sideways V-shape. The curve is the rim of the bowl. The bowl itself has been transformed from a curved to a geometric shape, so the vertical lines are the bowl and the stem and the V-shape is the foot. To the right of this line, on the far right of the page, the shape of the bowl is repeated again but differently. The horizontal line at the top is the rim seen in profile. Joining the right end of this line is a curve, this is a simplified version of the bowl and this joins a single vertical line for the stem. There is no foot. Within the body of the drawing are various vertical lines, some are straight, some are curvaceous. These are all variations on the profile of the bowl, the bulge in its stem, the stem itself and the circular foot. Finally, in the centre of the drawing, to the left of the grapes is the sideways T bar of their stalk. End of Raised Image Description The bunch of grapes has been portrayed three times in three different ways. At the top, it appears in partial silhouette, as a white bumpy shape, with a strong black outline on a claret-red background. Below this, ten circles with a black dot inside them stare out at us like cartoon eyeballs. We can assume Picasso is showing us a version of the grapes in cross-section, the dot representing the seeds inside. Finally, a little further down, the grapes are shown as a series of small, simple arcs in black outline on a purple background and again in grey outline on a dark grey background. Raised Image 3 We may already know the distinguishing features of a violin. It has curved wooden body, rounded at the top and bottom but pinching in at the middle like a female torso. At the centre of the instrument, the bridge holds the strings taught and away from the body as they run up to the top of the neck. The bridge itself is a thin, scallop-shaped wedge and on either side of it two S-shaped holes are cut into the wood to enable the sound to resonate. And at the top, the neck ends in an ornate carved scroll. These basic assumptions, rather than direct observation of an actual violin, would provide Picasso with the building blocks for the painting. The illustration on the left however, was created in a more traditional way. The artist has portrayed the violin as observed from a specific viewpoint and ensured that every mark made and line drawn corresponds to that single point of reference. The result of this systematic approach is a static, one-sided view with a consistency and continuity that Picasso's violin lacks. But Picasso was happy to sacrifice this kind of continuity for a more dynamic representation. While the traditional artist would adhere to an overall system, Picasso was thinking in pieces. It looks as if someone has taken a sledgehammer to the violin and smashed it into pieces that have landed in disarray. Black lines, painted over dislocated patches of pale brown, define shapes and motifs that are recognisably violin-like. But they each have their own rules of representation, an independence that allows them to be seen in their most characteristic and essential aspect. Picasso portrays the strings of the violin from two viewpoints so that we understand both how they travel up the neck and how they cut across the bridge. He also makes sure to provide us with the full spiral of the violin's elaborate scroll, and simplifies the sound holes to their S-shaped essence. And we get the benefit of the violin's curved edges, not just those visible from a given viewpoint but on every side of the instrument. So although the image is fragmented, those fragments are distinctive, and as such Picasso encourages a more complete conceptual understanding of the violin. The representation of the fruit bowl at the top of the canvas is perhaps even more complex, but the same principles apply. We have already discussed how Picasso has portrayed the grapes in the bowl in three different ways. It is almost impossible to keep track of how often Picasso has varied the form of the bowl itself. A cluster of different descriptions combines to build our sense of the bowl. It is presented as a simple, red cup-like shape, a dark, textured area, a curvaceous blue profile and as a flat block of mauve. The stem and base are represented both as a green, angular shape and in a series of more rounded lines. And as we follow the rim of the bowl, it appears as two straight diagonal lines, followed by a single straight line and finally a curved line. The bottle seems to be both solid and transparent. An angular patch of dark green seems to suggest the bottle's glass exterior. Yet the rest of the bottle is composed of blue dots, as if we've seen through the glass to the liquid inside. The way Picasso has painted this is another demonstration of his willingness to mix techniques. This speckled method might even be seen as a reference to the Impressionist artists of the previous generation, who used small touches of paint to build up their work. |