Art Appreciation: Picasso's Blue Period

I have always liked to appreciate the paintings of famous teachers, and I want to share them with you to get a deeper understanding of what they painted, why they painted this and what they wanted to express.

Let me tell you something about Picasso in this issue, starting with the blue period when he was young (190 1 ~ 1904).

Why is it called blue period? At that time, he experienced the suicide of a friend, which always cast a shadow over his heart. In addition, his first exhibition in Paris was not effective. He traveled back and forth between Barcelona and Paris for a long time, which made his financial situation extremely tense. He often made a living by painting advertisements or designing for others, which forced him to live a poor life. At the same time, influenced by painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, he also used strong colors, and his themes were mostly still life. At that time, he often dealt with the lower classes and personally realized the hardships and helplessness of their lives.

At that time, his living conditions were extremely poor. In the days of earning a living in Paris, he will share the bed with his cohabiting friends, and they will sleep in turn. In the face of cold weather, because he has no money to buy fuel for heating, he sometimes burns his works for heating, or even has no money to buy a plane ticket back to Barcelona. Although life is extremely difficult, he still insists on painting, and his works reflect his mood and state at that time.

Let's take a look at his masterpiece The Clown and His Companion.

I admit that this is definitely not a good-looking work at first glance, and even I think its lines are a bit rough, and their images are a bit puzzling. But one thing is certain, the tone of the whole painting makes people feel very depressed and gloomy. Combined with its background, the author's intention naturally comes out.

In the picture, two clowns, a man and a woman, sit together, but each has his own perspective, silent, with his chin in his hands, as if worried about something. Among them, the female's line of sight directly passes through the picture and directly reaches the viewer's line of sight. Look at his eyes carefully, slightly ambiguous and extremely empty. Men's eyes are more blurred, looking at the distance. Their faces are expressionless, even a little cold. The whole picture is very dark, giving people a feeling of anxiety.

In fact, this painting truly depicts the poor life of the Montmartre people in Paris. Those artists and clowns are pursuing this endless dream. They are lonely, sad and haggard, but they yearn for a seemingly wonderful life.

Another example is this old man who plays guitar.

Similarly, the tone of the whole color is dark, showing us a gloomy and tragic mysterious world. The old man just wants to bend his head, curl up and play the guitar with a drooping face. The deep eye socket tells us that he may be blind, and the whole world is dark, just like his dark dream. It seems that life has nothing for him, and he doesn't expect to see the road ahead. The only thing he can do is to stick to it.

At that time, he also drew a self-portrait of himself, and the color was also blue.

In this dark and desperate world, the miserable life he experienced made him unable to make any expression, and he could only hide himself in a winter coat, but the picture still revealed a chill and showed us the dark side of life.

Every work is a combination of what Picasso saw and heard and what he thought, and then it is expressed in his own way. In many cases, the true reducibility of painting is not important, what matters is the feelings conveyed inside, and the full feelings require the painter's superb painting skills.

In the next issue, I will continue to tell you how Picasso expressed his feelings at another time. I hope it will help your art appreciation. Thank you.