Actually, he was more likely to paint both eyes on one side of the head....
Painting was set an interesting challenge in the 19th century. With the development of the photographic camera, it had to justify itself. Although early photography had low resolution, was clumsy and required posing, and was devoid of color, it was clear enough that it was only a matter of time before photographs superceded painting in the portrayal of reality. Thus, there was an increasing interest in painting as design,rather than chronicle, which manifested itself in the infatuation with Japanese prints that led to Art Nouveau. Whistler expressed the mood early, calling for a formal art, in which the subject merely provided a excuse for a composition, and aspiring to a painting that was like music, only using line and color instead of melody and chords. By the time of Picasso, there was a fascination with primitive art, particularly pre-Columbian and early Iberian art, and African tribal art. There was also a desire to make art more reflective of the age in which it was born, and therefore to reflect the machine, the advertisement, the sense of experiment and uncertainty, in paint. These interests finally came together in cubism, which abstracted forms from the subject to create a composition, allowed for a primitive and passionate element of figurative distortion, and brought machine images and the incidentals of modern life into many compositions. Picasso broke the ice on this, with the collaboration of George Braques, and essentially began modern art........ |
