Inside out..
Woman with Sculpture - painting by Picasso
Here is the painting that Picasso did in 1925:
How do you like this work?
What do you find most interesting about this work - the woman? the use of space / placement of objects? the art style / use of minimal lines?
What do think this painting could represent?
The painting has just has three colors - white, black and some grey. Every object is drawn using minimal lines. The lines are just enough to show that there is a woman, that her hand is touching a sculpted head, and that she is sitting next to a balcony railing.
The woman has two faces. The dark one (with the large black nose) and the white one which is inside the dark one.
The white face looks a little bit similar to the sculpted head.
For me, this painting represents the fundamental creative process that all artists go through. It represents the need of artists to dig deep inside themselves, identify a powerful emotion / feeling / belief and then express it all out to the world by creating an artwork.
But the things inside a person are never obvious. They are complex, hard to understand even for the person himself, and even harder to communicate to the world outside. Picasso has masterfully represented this aspect through the eyes of the white face. The white face is symbolic of the inner world. And on the white face, with just a few lines Picasso crafted the eyes and the mouth to express something which is not exactly anger, not exactly sadness, surely not happiness, but a strange expression that is hard to exactly decipher.
The sculpted head on the left, though it looks similar in size to the white face, has a different expression. The act of touching the sculpture by the woman’s hand represents that connection that permanently exists between what the artist has created for the world and what lies inside of him.
But that’s just me. What do you identify this painting with?
I would love to hear your views about this work. It is very fascinating to hear different perspectives and meanings about artworks that you like. Do let me know in comments or email me at Raghav.Nyati20@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading :)