Posted on 02/28/2007 6:55:38 AM PST by Aquinasfan
We are past the post-modernism that you are describing.
Picasso was a man of a diseased mind. This showed up in both his works and in his personal life. He was a dyslexic. He was married twice, had innumerable mistresses, had 4 children by 3 different women, had his long term mistress Mme. Walter become a suicide, and broke up the marriage of another mistress Mme. Roque by lies and subterfuge.
Picasso was a constant opponent of General Franco, and a member of the Communist Party throughout his life.
There is nothing here to be admired by anyone with any pretense of being a Conservative.
He is a "Great Mind of the West" only in the sense that the internal enemies of Christendom, like Occam, Hobbes, Voltaire, de Sade, Marx, Freud, and others are reputed as "great" intellectuals, despite their lifelong service to Evil and charlatanism.
art n. 1. ... imitative or imaginative skill applied to design, as in paintings ...
Art need not be imitative as the definition you provided clearly indicates.
I missed nothing of the sort. Imaginative art would be a depiction of an imaginary event or scene in a realistic way. Like Jesus and the Apostles dressed as Renaissance Gentlemen in a painting using the scenery and architecture of Flanders, because the artist had never had the opportunity to go the Holy Land to see what Jerusalem actually looked like, and the clothes its people actually wore. Or an imaginary beautiful landscape. Or the image of a sunset if the Earth had two Suns, or a moonrise of the Earth had three Moons. That is imagination.
What Picasso did was not imagination, but distortion, since his deranged pictures do not require skill, and do not follow design or reality. At best they are caricatures of art and reality.
But, wait, it gets better ... now we have the art litmus test of conservatism. "One cannot be simultaneously a Conservative and a Dadaist."
Dadaism sought to reject reality, offend sensibility, and strive for meaninglessness. How can a Conservative subscribe to such a philosophy? Picasso and his Cubism fit neatly into this catch-all phrase, along with a number of other ideologies and supposed "art" types, arising at the same time to reject Western Civilization and Christendom.
"Picasso's prolific output extended into every medium and idiom, from the prehistoric to the Dadaist." (http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/artist?id=163)
Picasso is simply the foremost examplar of the phenomena of the artist who rejects his role of service as a conservator of his native culture and nation, and instead rises up to reject culture, nations, reality, aesthetics, and tradition.
In other words, he hated God, and hated the world. That leaves little to love except that firey red guy with cloven hooves.
Picasso's cubist paintings, to me, seem a perfect expression of humanity being tortured by Satan and his minions in Hell.
Sorry, artists are just men like everyone else. They don't have better than average brains or more imagination than your average mechanic or plumber or businessman. They have better than average spatial perception and hand-eye coordination, and a greater willingness to live in poverty.
Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.
I'm so far behind! I want to check that out. I guess his father was a painter who got pushed to the sidelines by modern "art."
I Googled his early work, and you're right, he really could paint. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there.
Should we laugh or cry?
My personal favorite was a group of white paintings (paintings of white?) at some museum. I'm not kidding. They were just white canvases. I don't know why my kitchen wall wasn't on exhibit.
I just Googled his early work, and yes, he had great natural talent. But he wasted it.
What era are we into now, canned poop? Sculptures made from the "artist's" body fat?
That comment is so off base. Picasso was a genius on so many levels. I recently had occasion to see many of his paintings at The National Gallery in DC. They are breathtaking, exquisite, emotionally engaging and profound.
8-) I can vouch for that.
OK, this sounds like the typical hand-waving that I get from supporters of modern "art." Tell me why.
His art was constantly evolving. As I am sure you know his art went through many "periods" and each is unique, different, almost as if a different artist created them. Most painters paint in one style throughout their careers, but Picasso was innovative. Always however, I find his work very emotional and evocative of abiding human truths. They hit me in my gut, plus one can see, when one sees the paintings in person, the incredible skill required. But you cannot pigeonhole Picasso because each "period" of his career was so different in style and tone.
One painting I saw at the National Gallery that I was very moved by was "The Tragedy".
Believe me, when you see this enormous, sad painting, in the most vibrant shades of blue, you "get" Picasso. Everything that can be said about feelings of sadness, isolation, humans stripped to their bare essence, yet somehow regal, unbroken, and a family most of all, comes at you when you see this one painting. And in fact this was Picasso's fate when he painted these "blue" paintings. He was poor, isolated, working without recognition.
Really, there is much to appreciate about Picasso's work if you take the time to really look at it and read about it.
No we are in an era when certain people work with poop, and others work with realism, and both ways are acceptable in the "circles". This has never happened before, and its a good thing.
I personally like to paint in a medieaeval style. But I'll still defend the validity of modernism.
I just Googled his early work,
___________
This is the part that is truly astonishing to me. You've written quite a few words on the subject of Picasso's art in this thread, only to hear your confession that you really know very little about his art, but have been commenting based on your obvious bias against "modern art", and what you believe to be its attendant politics.
It's so obvious that Picasso mastered realism to such an extend that his imagination had to bloom with new strange flowers. Is this worth arguing?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.