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| Picasso Landscape with Posters National Museum of Art. Osaka Image retrieved from https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/landscape-with-posters-1912 |
And especially not for anyone who isn’t willing to walk over to the Nickle Art Galleries when the weather is 20 below.
Of course, that person was me, though I waffled, thinking of the shortcuts I was probably going to take through the alley or around trees in the public spaces that would let me access the university quickly.
Still, I couldn’t help myself and away I went, taking care to double layer and put on my warmest boots.
Trevor Stark lectured from Chapter 2 of a book he is writing that isn’t to be published for a couple of years. He is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art, a recent graduate of Harvard. He said in the lecture that he would answer the questions “Why do certain artists use language ….? As you can see, I couldn’t write fast enough to get down the whole question which made me wonder if I would understand anything that came afterwards. I did listen intently for 45 minutes, watching slide after slide pass by, and hearing about Picasso’s work in the 1912’s, long before he became famous.
Perhaps the after-the-lecture questions were the most fascinating. One member of the audience asked that the lights be turned off so that we were in total darkness and able to observe the images of the slides more closely. Then questions peppered the professor, thoughtful questions, getting at the heart of the lecture.
In the image that was first presented to us is the word, Leon, referring to a hat manufacturer. The bottle represents absinthe, the popular recreational drug in those times, and the cube represents outside packaging of products. And that was only the beginning of the help I had to understand the year of cubism undertaking by Georges Braque and Picasso.
As you can tell, not a lecture for everyone. But one for me.
I did have some scraps of paper with me though I thought I wouldn’t use them. But I found myself wildly writing notes, using my knee as the hard surface that I needed to write on. If the speaker uses the phrase “the gap between the meaning of colour and the meaning of sign” I can make a leap to what some of these terms have meant in other courses. And when the artists in the audience talk about tonal value and hue as opposed to the pure red and blue that could be commercially produced in Ripolin, just for an instand, I could get what Picasso was doing.
Why is this the first time, in a lecgure, that I caught on to cubism? It is only a diagram of something that can be reassembled. How could I have missed something that simple.
I do get lost when the speaker tells me that colour is a dialectical force. That is not to say that in a few days the penny might drop for me.
What surprises me is that when I was thinking about what has happened to me today, I absolutely forgot about my lunch hour at the museum.
Hard to believe all of that brilliance can happen, and then fade as other events happen in the same day that seem equally interesting.
Arta
Charise often refers to cubism. It did not last long, the era but it was there.
ReplyDeleteIf I get to live more years than the ordinary person does, I am going to read more about art history. Really it is fascinating. I notice that there is a new special on Cezanne coming to the theatres. I know how lucky we are to have this art delivered to our door.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I have never painted. Well, I do know why. But putting that aside, I found today that I picked up a pencil and tried to sketch an object. I think I enjoyed it.