How do you make one understand a Picasso?

Question

I mean, whenever my friends see it, they'd claim their child can do better than that. How do you explain the meaning behind - say, La Guernica without putting them off?

Answer 1

I hate it when people make statements like ; my child could do better. Than if their child could do better why didn't they and made all those millions of dollars. The truth is that they can't. The work that Picasso do is difficult to do. It might be simple looking, but the knowledge of the midium, perspective and human anatomy has to be great to design and make work like that. Not counting the experience, knowledge and handling of the brushes and canvas. Picasso was great at what he did, he made about 30,000 works of art through out his life time. Jackson Pollack upon seeing his work said that Picasso doesn't miss a thing.
The work that he did were groundbreaking during his time and nobody has done things like that before. So I would study about his works and his life, and than approach your friends and ask them to try and come up with new ways to look at our world, and put it on canvas, and they will find out if they kid can do it. It is easy to copy others people ideas, a lot harder to come up with something new.

Answer 2

Tell your friends the following; Picasso (followed by many other artists) rejected the idea of traditional easel painting where the artist depicted Nature as realistically as possible, and focussed on light effects and a background show in perspective. Instead, he hit upon an alternative way of depicting an objects - be it a bull or a violin - viewing it from different angles, at the same time,. leaving out the parts of the body or object which he didnt feel were important (see the face of the bull, rather than the whole bull in Guernica),
In Guernica, his idea was not to depict the actual event that inspired this painting - the terrible destruction wreaked by the bombing in 1938 of Guernica, a little market town, by Nazi bombers encouraged by Franco's forces - but to make a composition made up of many images which would represent the great suffering caused on that day.
Explain to your friends what the different images mean: the bull was Picasso's symbol for evil, and maybe Fascism; the dying horse represented the people of Guernica. The woman holding a dead child in arms, as well as the "mourning" figure with arms raised - represent all mothers who mourn for their children lost through war and battle.And the little flower - on the ground - the only symbol of hope, represented an ancient and famous tree in the town of Guernica. Other images include the dead soldier with his broken sword, and the woman screaming in a burning house (to the right). Tell your friends, that even tho Picasso does not work in a style that they view as "real" painting, he nevertheless produced this work which so effectively expresses the horror and tragedy of war that it is considered the greatest anti-war image of the 20th century.

Answer 3

I say your friends are correct. I have a degree in Art, and I have read many histories of it. I bought my first one at age 15. Salvador Dali said Pablo Ruiz Picasso was destructive to Art. An apocryphal tale says Picasso told an interviewer that he was a "mountebank selling trash to fools." He knew that, Dali knew it and I know it. What is so great about "Guernica'? It is an anti-war work, but there have been much better ones, e.g. Dali's work subtitled "Premonitions of Civil War". Check some Goya paintings too.

Answer 4

I recently saw an original Picasso selling for thousands of US dollars which was a crayola drawing of a blue face with a yellow cowboy looking hat, the face was not proportionate and I felt at the time that it looked like a child's work. So I bought an original Peter Max instead. We all have our own preferences in art and you should buy what you like and not try to convince your friends that it is good or bad. It is up to them to appreciate the art for what it is. Incidentally, at the same gallery they also had some early Picasso designs for costumes which looked much like Erte works. A completely different look. Picasso had many different styles throughout his lifetime, and that was the secret to his success, he produce art that was appreciated by everyone at one time or another.

Answer 5

There are lots of his works that I don't like that much, but what makes him unbelievably fantastic and impressive is the scope of his work. I mean, he painted incredible realistic work in his late teens and was probably bored with it by his mid-twenties and conquered one creative mountain after another. Any book that covers his entire history is as large as a book that covers 100's of yrs of art history. Familiarize yourself with that and you can blow anyone's mind.

Answer 6

It's the old saying " Beauty is is the eye of the Beholder"

Answer 7

6 pints of strong lager should do it

Answer 8

they are not lying, my kid can make nicer looking poopy diapers