{"id":2953,"date":"2025-01-13T08:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T13:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/?p=2953"},"modified":"2025-02-14T09:15:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T14:15:51","slug":"picasso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/picasso\/","title":{"rendered":"Pablo Picasso"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<style>.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2{max-width:100%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;}.wp-block-kadence-column.kb-section-dir-horizontal:not(.kb-section-md-dir-vertical)>.kt-inside-inner-col>.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2{-webkit-flex:0 1 100%;flex:0 1 100%;max-width:unset;margin-left:unset;margin-right:unset;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(--global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2{position:relative;}@media all and (min-width: 1025px){.wp-block-kadence-column.kb-section-dir-horizontal>.kt-inside-inner-col>.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2{-webkit-flex:0 1 100%;flex:0 1 100%;max-width:unset;margin-left:unset;margin-right:unset;}}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;justify-content:center;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.wp-block-kadence-column.kb-section-sm-dir-vertical:not(.kb-section-sm-dir-horizontal):not(.kb-section-sm-dir-specificity)>.kt-inside-inner-col>.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2{max-width:100%;-webkit-flex:1;flex:1;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;}.kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;justify-content:center;}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column2918_efb75e-f2 mobile-section\"><div class=\"kt-inside-inner-col\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"774\" height=\"114\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/lynch-logo.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2922\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/lynch-logo.png 774w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/lynch-logo-300x44.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/lynch-logo-768x113.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 774px) 100vw, 774px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<style>.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_e59949-62 .kt-block-spacer{height:60px;}.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_e59949-62 .kt-divider{border-top-width:1px;height:1px;border-top-color:#f1f1f1;width:100%;border-top-style:solid;}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_e59949-62 .kt-divider{width:100%!important;}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-2918_e59949-62\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\"\/><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pablo Picasso (1881\u20131973)<br><em>L\u2019homme barbu (Bearded Man)<\/em>, n.d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pencil and white pigment on paper<br>McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch Collection, 2022.59<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/picasso-image.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2931\" style=\"width:1202px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/picasso-image.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/picasso-image-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/picasso-image-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/picasso-image-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-not-stacked-on-mobile has-background is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#f1f1f1\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><strong>Kevin Lotery<\/strong><br>Assistant Professor, Art History<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Kevin-Lotery.jpg\" alt=\"Kevin Lotery\" class=\"wp-image-2939\" style=\"width:78px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Kevin-Lotery.jpg 200w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Kevin-Lotery-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Not much is known about Pablo Picasso\u2019s undated little pencil drawing. It ostensibly depicts a bearded, wild-eyed man in harsh frontal view, his gaze locked on us, his spectators. Lacking any modeling, the face is flattened against the sheet, its beard delineated by a looping and arching contour line that also bounds the great hat above. Lightly highlighted with white pigment of some kind, this absurd headdress may represent a chef\u2019s toque, though its morphology\u2014and its ambiguous relation to the mesmeric face below\u2014remains open to the viewer\u2019s interpretation. The comical, even grotesque caricature possesses no neck that might connect it to a body outside of the frame; it is, instead, a being wholly a product of the page itself, which tightly bounds both head and hat a single, autonomous unit. The physiognomy is constructed by a carefully choreographed collection of calligraphic spirals and decorative arabesques, which unfold like handwriting across the sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, the artist not-so-subtly disguises his signature amongst these so that it operates both as the authorial mark of the master and as a mere ornamental detail. Denied pride of place, it is endowed with no more or less privilege than any of the other glyph-like fragments surrounding it. Like individual phonemes in the artist\u2019s visual language, they are all allowed to exist both as individual calligraphic units, but also as elements within the larger whole of the head and hat. We see, in other words, how a spiral might come to signify \u201ceye\u201d only by virtue of its relationship to neighboring curlicues (\u201ceyebrows\u201d) or the central&nbsp;<em>U<\/em>-shape (\u201cnose\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, these individual units are free, in part, to perform other anatomical formations, erotically sliding between individual bodily fragments and complete face. While we might search for a specific subject here (whether man, minotaur, or mad hatter), we would be better served by locking our eyes on the hypnotic gaze, letting our vision be caught in the endlessly spiraling madness of signification itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-not-stacked-on-mobile has-background is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#f1f1f1\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><strong>Eileen Sweeney<\/strong><br>Professor, Philosophy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Eileen-Sweeney.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2948\" style=\"width:78px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Eileen-Sweeney.jpg 200w, https:\/\/sites.bc.edu\/museum\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/249\/2025\/01\/Eileen-Sweeney-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Pablo Picasso\u2019s&nbsp;<em>L\u2019homme barbu<\/em>&nbsp;forces the viewer to smile both at the humor of its exaggerated headpiece (a chef\u2019s toque?), hair, and beard, but also at the virtuosity of the simple drawing. Many lines are long and unbroken; others are short squiggles that magically convey so much\u2014not just shape but also mood and feeling. Single lines create the beard, hair, eyes, eyebrows, and hat, versus the mismatched squiggles on the hat and around the eyes and nose. Here Picasso displays his autonomy as artist, his engagement in pure play in his creation of a character out of whole cloth. Here less is emphatically more, illustrating the power of abstraction to make something more real, leaving out all but the barest line. This Picasso drawing, unlike his cubist paintings and collages, does not convey multiple sides and dimensions on a flat surface. Rather, with only a few lines, Picasso suggests a chef with lion-like beard and hair, palpable and alive even though transparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cModern\u201d art and modernism put an emphasis on the autonomy of art and the artist\u2019s freedom from tradition and cultural norms. The modern artist rejects traditional artistic conventions, like realism and perspective, as well as cultural, especially bourgeois, expectations around, for example, class and sexuality as well as beauty. The motto of modern art, \u201cart for art\u2019s sake\u201d asserts that art does not serve religion or morality; it aims to replace and displace both; art is only about itself and the artist is answerable only to himself. If we think about Kant\u2019s view of the tremendous power of the mind to effectively \u201cconstruct\u201d reality, to synthesize and organize the blooming buzzing onslaught of sense data, we can see in&nbsp;<em>the<\/em>&nbsp;artist the figure to&nbsp;<em>de-<\/em>construct and create a new reality\u2014Picasso once described his pictures as \u201ca sum of destructions.\u201d Thus, perhaps no other artist embodies that power more paradigmatically than Picasso, exhibiting endless creativity, breaking multiple times even with his own style, playing with reality in new ways. For the German philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759\u20131805), following Kant, \u201cplay\u201d or the play drive, is our most human activity; play mediates between the mind which transcends time and space, and the empirical, sensible self, immersed in matter. Picasso\u2019s freedom to create transcends the material world and even his own art, but his sensuality places him firmly in the realm of flesh and blood.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<style>.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_49c71d-ea .kt-block-spacer{height:60px;}.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_49c71d-ea .kt-divider{border-top-width:1px;height:1px;border-top-color:#f1f1f1;width:100%;border-top-style:solid;}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.wp-block-kadence-spacer.kt-block-spacer-2918_49c71d-ea .kt-divider{width:100%!important;}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-2918_49c71d-ea\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\"\/><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"383\" 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Man)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121740,"featured_media":2962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"disabled","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"disabled","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"disabled","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"disabled","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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