NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Three Musicians Within the conceptual framework of this research, we will elaborate on "Three Musicians" by Pablo Picasso. We will consider the visual vocabulary of the artist, the subject matter of the work, its relation to other work produced in the same period (not only paintings, but also literary works), and its patronage and reception. Picasso's brief biography will be provided at the beginning of the research, and the paper will be concluded by the analysis of Cubism based on Picasso's picture "Three Musicians" and Picasso as a painter and as a person. Pablo Picasso created thousands of artworks in media ranging from paintings and sculptures to etchings and ceramics.
He embraced a wide variety of subjects relating to the full range of human experience. He helped invent styles, including Cubism, and introduce processes, including collage, which have remained crucial to the art of our time. Born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso was the first child of Jose Ruiz Black and Maria Picasso Lopez. (Andreae, 1995) His father was a painter, art teacher, and curator at the Municipal Museum in Malaga. After his family moved to Barcelona in 1895, Picasso studied at the same art school where his father taught. In 1900, Picasso traveled to Paris, where he became a leader of the avant-garde and met other artists, including the writer Gertrude Stein and painter Henri Matisse.
During his first years in Paris, Picasso painted melancholic and mysterious groups of figures. Many of these paintings from his "Blue" and "Rose" Periods relate the experiences of traveling circus performers and social outcasts. Already at this time in Picasso's life, the harlequin began to assume its role as an alter ego for the artist. A major shift in his art coincided with his meeting the painter Georges Braque in 1907.
In fact, between 1907 and 1914, these two artists would work so closely that they would refer to themselves jokingly as Wilbur and Orville. (Plagens, 1992) Through their constant interaction, they developed the revolutionary style of painting known as Cubism. From 1955 until his death in 1973, Picasso spent much of his time living in the south of France. His art was seen internationally in large exhibitions, and on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, a selection of works were put on view in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. During the 1950 s, Picasso became very interested in painting his own interpretations of old master paintings, including Diego Velasquez's Las Meninas and Eugene Delacroix's Women of Algiers. (Danton, 1998) These works attest to Picasso's continuing fascination with artistic traditions of earlier times, as well as his devotion to the human figure as the most complex and resonant subject for the artist. Three Musicians is an example of Picasso's Cubist style. In Cubism, the subject of the artwork is transformed into a sequence of planes, lines, and arcs. (Andreae, 1995) Cubism has been described as an intellectual style because the artists analyzed the shapes of their subjects and reinvented them on the canvas.
The viewer must reconstruct the subject and space of the work by comparing the different shapes and forms to determine what each one represents. Through this process, the viewer participates with the artist in making the artwork make sense. There are several ways Picasso uses shapes and colors to reinforce the flatness of Three Musicians. The patterned green wallpaper and the brick-red floor are made up of shapes that interlock with the figures. Because they are not painted with highlights and shadows, they do not seem to recede behind the musicians. The table and music also look very flat, since the music is not shown in perspective but as if it were held flat against the canvas.
The table's diagonal sides move across the canvas in diverging directions, in conflict with traditional ways of representing the recession of a plane. (Plagens, 1992) The spatial complexity of the painting is also enhanced by Picasso's use of the same color for different forms. The blue shape defining the central figure's left arm is the same color as the area to the right of the robed figure, an "open" space, which looks curiously like a human profile. Even though the two shapes indicate different surfaces and locations, Picasso paints them the same color. Using these techniques, Picasso creates a composition in which colored forms are balanced across the canvas and united to reinforce the flatness of the work. While in Italy in 1917, Picasso saw performances of the Commedia dell " Arte in Naples. The Commedia dell " Arte was a popular form of comic theater beginning in the sixteenth century. (Flam, 1990) Masked actors performed improvised dialogues, satiric songs, and dances.
This enduring tradition of theater led to pantomime and its principal characters, Harlequin and Columbine. During these years, Picasso made many drawings and paintings of Harlequin and his associate Pierrot. In 1920, Picasso's work on Pulcinella drew him further into the world of the Commedia, just one year before he painted Three Musicians. The three figures in this painting can be related to the Commedia dell " Arte and Carnival by their costumes.
The figure with the triangle-patterned costume is the Harlequin. He is identifiable not only by his distinctive outfit but also by his curved hat. Originally a frightening, comic demon in medieval mystery plays, Harlequin's mischievous ways and sly humor seem to have made him a favorite of Picasso. The figure in white is Pierrot, a poetic character prone to falling in love, a figure by turns both happy and sad. The robed figure represents a monk, a character who appeared at Carnival time in Catholic countries including Italy and Picasso's own homeland, Spain. For many years, these characters were thought to relate only to Picasso's work for the theater, but in 1980, art historian Theodore Re wrote that the three figures related more directly to Picasso's personal life around 1920.
In 1918, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire died of influenza. Picasso and Apollinaire had become very close friends around 1910, when another poet named Max Jacob introduced them to each other. Jacob had been the leading writer in Picasso's circle of friends, though his work soon was eclipsed by Apollinaire's poetry. (Danton, 1998) Jacob's friendship with Picasso began to fail by 1920, when Picasso's greater celebrity separated the two. In 1921, Jacob entered a monastery, in essence severing his ties with the art world.
Jacob's decision may have reminded Picasso of his earlier days with both friends. Many scholars now agree that friendship and / or nostalgia is one of the themes of Picasso's Three Musicians. Picasso portrayed himself, characteristically, as a harlequin, dressed in the yellow and red colors of the Spanish flag. Jacob appears in the robes of the monk.
In the second version of Three Musicians (now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Jacob wears the particular robes of his religious order. Having painted Apollinaire before as the poetic Pierrot, Picasso employed this disguise again to symbolize his lost friend. It would be useful here to compare Rousseau and Picasso's works. In Three Musicians, Pablo Picasso depicts three figures wearing masks and costumes and playing musical instruments. Two of the figures, Harlequin holding a violin and bow, and Pierrot performing on his clarinet, are stock characters from the commedia dell " arte. The source of the third figure, the monk playing his violin, is uncertain. (Danton, 1998) The commedia dell " arte, or comedy of art, was a form of Italian theater that flourished throughout Europe from the 1500 s to the 1700 s.
The plots varied, but they usually involved a young couple's love being thwarted by their parents. Other stock characters added intrigue to the story line. Pierrot was a servant with an amiable and naive personality who wore white face make-up and a white costume. The female servant, Columbine, and the mail servant, Harlequin, usually dressed in a diamond-patterned suit and traditionally wore masks. Both Rousseau and Picasso follow the convention of painting Pierrot in a white costume with ruffled collar, although Picasso's Pierrot also wears a mask. The two artists's types, however, are quite different.
Despite the shallowness of the space, Rousseau uses shading and perspective to suggest the roundness and weight of the figures. Picasso constructs his figures from colorful two-dimensional geometric shapes, creating a scene that looks like a painted collage -- flat and abstract. Despite his apparently simple style, Picasso creates an unsettling and mysterious atmosphere in Three Musicians, similar to the disquieting mood of Carnival Evening. (Andreae, 1995) In Picasso's painting, the musicians' empty, staring masks, leering smiles and sharp geometric forms contrast with the work's bright and jazzy colors and patterns. The unusual combination of the two comic characters and a religious monk seems odd. Similarities between Picasso and Rousseau are not merely coincidental. As a friend of Rousseau, Picasso admired the elder artist's work and was influenced by it.
Scholars have noted that the flatness, use of overlapping planes and collage-like quality of Picasso's style in Three Musicians relate to Rousseau's works. Perhaps, as these writers suggest, Picasso's Pierrot with his "radiant French blue" costume actually represents Rousseau. Like Pierrot, Rousseau was French, played a musical instrument, and, according to stories, sometimes acted like a clown. During his long career as a painter Picasso has periodically concentrated his energies to produce a single canvas which sums up a whole period of his work.
The Three Musicians is such a picture. And not only is the Three Musicians one of Picasso climactic achievements, it is perhaps the culminating work of cubism, the most important movement in the art of the first quarter...
Free research essays on topics related to: stock characters, three musicians, commedia dell arte, three figures, pablo picasso
Research essay sample on Commedia Dell Arte Pablo Picasso
