The Success and Failure of Picasso by Berger John

Author:Berger, John [Berger, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307794246
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

55 Picasso. Bull, Horse, and Female Matador. 1934

56 Picasso. Sitting Girl and Sleeping Minotaur. 1933

The Minotaur represents the animal in the captivity of an almost human form; it also represents (like the fable of Beauty and the Beast) the suffering which is caused by aspiration and sensibility being rejected because they exist in an unattractive, that is to say untamed, uncivilized body. Either way, the Minotaur suggests a criticism of civilization, which inhibits him in the first case, and dismisses him in the second. Yet, unlike the Beast, the Minotaur is not a pathetic creature. He is a king. He has his own power – which is the result of his physical strength and the fact that he is familiar with his instincts and has no fear of them. His triumph is in sexual love, to which even the civilized ‘Beauty’ eagerly responds.

The emphasis of Picasso’s work did not change again until the end of the Second World War. Naturally, between 1930 and 1944 he painted many different subjects and employed different styles. But all the great works of this period – and in my view it is the period when, the Cubist years excepted, he produced his best paintings and sculpture – share the same preoccupation: a preoccupation with physical sensations so strong and deep that they destroy all objectivity and reassemble reality as a complement to pain or pleasure. Put like that, it may sound as though these works are Expressionist. They are not. Expressionism, as in Egon Schiele’s Self-Portrait, is concerned with distortions which reflect violent emotions – Angst, awe, pity, hatred, etc. Expressionism is produced by frustration.

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