History Of Modern Art – H Harvard Arnason

Picasso’s early love of the characters from the Italian comedy and its descendant, the French circus, was re- newed; Pierrots, Harlequins, and musicians again became a central theme. The world of the theater and music took on for him a fresh aspect that resulted in a number of brilliant portraits (Stravinsky, fig. 523 ), and figure draw- ings, particularly compositions of nudes done in deli- cately economical outlines (Bathers, 1918, fig. 524). During the early post-war period Picasso experi- mented with different attitudes toward cubism and repre- sentation.

In the latter, the most purely classical style was manifested before in drawings that have the quality of white-ground Greek vase paintings of the fifth century B.C. Already by 1920 such drawings embodied a specifically Greek or Roman subject matter which he continued to explore thereafter. During the same year he also began to produce paintings, frequently on a large scale, in which his concept of classic is in a different and monumental vein.

This phase first manifested itself in 1919 in a small colored drawing of Sleeping Peasants (fig. 525), a tightly integrated composition of two massive figures in repose. He pursued this manner for the next three or four years in painting and continued it in sculp- ture in the early 1 930s.

It is as though the years of work- ing with flat, tilted cubist planes had built up a need to go to the extreme of sculptural mass. The faces are sim- plified in the heavy, coarse manner of Roman rather than Greek sculpture, and when Picasso placed the figures be- fore a landscape, he simplified the background to frontal- ized accents that tend to close rather than open the space.

Thus the effect of high sculptural relief is main- tained throughout. Normally the figures exhibit classic repose, but occasionally Picasso puts them into violent if lumbering activity that lends a quality of fantasy, as in The Race, (fig. 526). The colors of these paint- ings, in accordance with their classic origins, are light and bright—light blues and reds, with raw pink flesh tones.

We should recall that crude, massive figure com- positions were not new in Picasso’s career: during his pe- riod of primitive and proto-cubist works, 1906-08, he produced a number of comparable massive and primi- tively powerful paintings (see fig. 208). By the Greco-Roman phase was over. Picasso continued to paint for two or three more years in a clas- sic vein, but now with a lyrical classicism close to the spirit of Athens in the fifth century B.C.

One of the out- standing works of this phase is The Pipes of Pan, 1923 (fig. 527).

<>\ Congress Catalogue Curd Number: 6N-26X63 Revised and Enlarged 1977 I// rights reserved. No pan “I the contents oj this hunk ma) ,’)( reprodut ed without the written permission <>l the publishers, H \kk> N. Abrams. Incorporated. New York. 1 ‘ . ‘tin 1, production rights reserved by S.I’. A.D.E.M. and A.D.A.G.P.. Paris Printed and bound in Japan CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments page 9 part one: Painting in the Nineteenth Century 13 The Prehistory of Modern Painting 1 3 Impressionism 26 Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 43 part two: Transition to the Twentieth Century 55 Origins of Modern Architecture.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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