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On the Cover
On the Cover
Woman with Child (Helpless) 1903 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Spain Ó 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY The Blue Period (1900-1904) is the first appearance of a personal style of painting in the life of Pablo Picasso. Till then his paintings reflected the influence of the various artists he admired. During the Blue Period, Picasso was trying un-successfully to establish himself as a painter and lived at times in
Barcelona, others in Paris. He later explained that he chose to paint in blue hues after the death of his best friend Carlos Casagema, who shot himself in public after being rejected by the woman he pursued. The subjects of his Blue Period are the downtrodden of society, the beggars, whores, drunkards, the sick and the blind. But he was not alone in depicting pain or the dreariness of existence. Portraying human misery and anguish was a common thread in the art and literature (Rimbaud, Baudelaire) of his contemporaries at the beginning of the XX century. The Woman with Child depicts a worried, fearful woman with her protective left hand (like a shield in the forefront of the painting) wrapped around the shoulder of her sick child anxiously interrogating, but not expecting much, from the viewer. The entire painting consists of shades of blue or blue-green that convey to the viewer the sadness of its subject and the empathy of the painter for it. At the time of this painting, 22 years old and eking a living in Paris, Picasso visited frequently the St. Lazare prison for women (which the State had staffed with nuns as guardians) to make sketches of the inmates. The woman in this painting is likely one of them. In The Success and Failure of Picasso, a biography and critique of the painter, the brilliant writer and critic John Berger opens up the description of the Blue Period with a typically mordant assertion that ‘‘because it deals pathetically with the poor, has always been the favorite among the rich’’ R. Berguer
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Woman with Child (Helpless) 1903 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Spain Ó 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY The Blue Period (1900-1904) is the first appearance of a personal style of painting in the life of Pablo Picasso. Till then his paintings reflected the influence of the various artists he admired. During the Blue Period, Picasso was trying un-successfully to establish himself as a painter and lived at times in
Barcelona, others in Paris. He later explained that he chose to paint in blue hues after the death of his best friend Carlos Casagema, who shot himself in public after being rejected by the woman he pursued. The subjects of his Blue Period are the downtrodden of society, the beggars, whores, drunkards, the sick and the blind. But he was not alone in depicting pain or the dreariness of existence. Portraying human misery and anguish was a common thread in the art and literature (Rimbaud, Baudelaire) of his contemporaries at the beginning of the XX century. The Woman with Child depicts a worried, fearful woman with her protective left hand (like a shield in the forefront of the painting) wrapped around the shoulder of her sick child anxiously interrogating, but not expecting much, from the viewer. The entire painting consists of shades of blue or blue-green that convey to the viewer the sadness of its subject and the empathy of the painter for it. At the time of this painting, 22 years old and eking a living in Paris, Picasso visited frequently the St. Lazare prison for women (which the State had staffed with nuns as guardians) to make sketches of the inmates. The woman in this painting is likely one of them. In The Success and Failure of Picasso, a biography and critique of the painter, the brilliant writer and critic John Berger opens up the description of the Blue Period with a typically mordant assertion that ‘‘because it deals pathetically with the poor, has always been the favorite among the rich’’ R. Berguer
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