Picasso: Modernism, Primitivism, and Colonialism

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso: Modernism, Primitivism, and Colonialism

Since I know nothing about art, I thought it would be a really rewarding experience to write about it. My hope was that after researching modern art for hours, I would really understand it and then be able to take an interest in other art periods and forms. However, the first book I went to told me this: “It must be remembered that no book on modern art can claim to be a ‘definitive guide’, since art historians can’t even agree on who was the first ‘modern’ artist” (Kerrigan 10). Perfect. I realized if experts cannot come to a conclusion, then I could just describe modern art in terms of Modernity, as we discussed it in class. I ended my search on describing modern art right there. After regrouping and regaining my courage, I decided to refocus my idea. Rather than focus on the entirety of modern art, I’d like to concentrate on Pablo Picasso and his influence on modernism as it relates to Bloomsbury Rooms.

If I am going to focus a blog (a word, by the way, that I had to add to my Microsoft Word dictionary) on the works and influence of a single modernist artist, I should get to know him a little. I feel bad for this guy if he really had that many names, but we all know that Wikipedia is renowned for its accuracy. I headed to www.picasso.com where I was disappointed to find his birth and death dates attached to his career as an artist. Once I dug a little deeper, I realized nothing about his personal life is really relevant to my blog other than the fact he was Spanish and worked in France, which, as we know, were countries that colonized Africa in the early twentieth century. Perhaps this is where Picasso got his inspiration of African masks in his art? I will get to that…

If even I know Picasso had a “Blue Period” during his career, I am assuming I don’t need to discuss these details. However, for my own sake, I need to clarify that some of the quotes obtained from Bloomsbury Rooms mention or quote Henri Matisse, a French Fauvist artist, and Roger Fry, member of the Bloomsbury Group and art critic (yes, I really do need to treat this like Modern Art 101). Both artists believed strongly in the simplicity of art, which is demonstrated in Picasso’s works in “primitive” forms. Christopher Reed, author of Bloomsbury Rooms, discusses the influence of Picasso on the Omega showrooms.

Christopher Reed mentions Picasso’s work as influential to the Bloomsbury Rooms throughout the text. More specifically, he states, “Especially influential in [Bloomsbury designs] were Picasso’s ‘assemblages’: three-dimensional combinations of various materials” (116). This image is presented to us on page 120:




Assemblage with Guitar Player, 1913

Picasso’s assemblages represent Fry’s ideal of the “rejection of craftsmanship in favor of an ideal of spontaneous expressiveness,” which “define[s] ‘the ideal world of art’ as ‘the outcome of a free spiritual activity,’ in contrast to…‘the craftsman’s pride in his skill” (Reed 121). The skill required to create the work is less important than the will of the artist to express creativity. Indeed, Assemblage with Guitar Player represents this quality, as it expresses an idea without skill. Reed also states, “In the essay, [‘Notes of a Painter’], Matisse mocks the idea that artists could learn ‘rules’ of art, insisting instead on ‘expressions’ that are ‘honest’ because ‘purely instinctive’” (121). Using a guitar as a three-dimensional representation of a guitar? Now that is instinctive.

Picasso’s use of materials also expresses Fry’s notion of art as “spontaneous expressiveness.” In Assemblage with Guitar Player, the materials used do not at all look like they were prepared in advance for this creation. To me, the work suggests Picasso used materials he could find in almost any living space, not just that of an artist. Aside from the large canvas, my apartment includes all the materials I would need to create something similar, and I am by no means a professional artist. I could be described as “starving” like some of them since all of my money goes toward textbooks.

Anyway, even though Reed claims such assemblages were highly influential to the designs of the Bloomsbury Rooms, I feel other works of Picasso’s better represent the themes and motifs of the rooms represented in the “A Modern Eden” section of Bloomsbury Rooms:
What Bloomsbury found in Paris around 1910 was the now familiar modernist concept of the ‘primitive,’ a single category of a collective and anonymous aesthetic that lumped together European folk art with indigenous crafts of Africa, the South Seas, Asia, and the Americas, the appreciation and application of which marked certain educated European men as modern. Picasso, for instance, concurrently with his discovery of African art, championed the work of the untrained Parisian painter whose nickname, ‘Le Douanier’ [the customs agent] Rousseau, signaled his working-class status. (Reed 125)
The use of African masks in artwork especially represented this “anonymous aesthetic” quite literally. This simplified representation of the face allows artists such as Picasso to focus on shape rather than emotion, exemplifying the simplicity desired by Modernists. Additionally, Picasso’s interest in the working-class artist represents the “purely instinctive” aspect of art that Matisse argues is “honest.” To Picasso, Rousseau is the personification of art as “the outcome of free spirituality,” as described by Fry. Rousseau and other working-class artists made a living in another profession, yet still created artwork to express the aforementioned spirituality.

The Omega showrooms, which featured images of plants, landscapes, and imagery of Biblical stories, show the effort of the Bloomsbury group to “confine [themselves] to the simplest forms, banishing for the time being the too long misused vegetable kingdom, or if we used plant forms choosing those of the simplest and most abstract kind…” (Reed 147). The Omega showrooms exhibited a curtain with the image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is most certainly the most primitive subject available to our modern world and can be argued as abstract if we consider the Bible a collection of fictitious stories representing moral qualities. Incorporating Adam and Eve into the Omega showrooms combines primitive subjects with the primitive forms discussed by Reed.

Picasso features the primitive and abstract by incorporating the strong and simple shape of the African mask into his artwork:



http://wizeonesgiftshop.com/images/KE088~African-Masks-Posters.jpg

Example African Masks







http://www.sfmoma.org/images/artwork/large/91.178_01_d02.jpg

Tête de trois quarts, 1907

Tête de trois quarts demonstrates the simple shape of the African mask combined with unfinished lines and basic shading. Much of Picasso’s artwork exhibits these same qualities, taking inspiration from African crafts and combining them with bold strokes that could make a home on a cave wall.

The primitivism and abstraction described by Fry and Matisse is presented as an opposing view to societal standards prior to the Modernist movement. Fry clearly discusses the desire of the Bloomsbury group to stray from the art standards of the past, and Matisse denies that art should be rule-governed. However, Patricia Leighton, author of “The White Peril and L’Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism,” believes that by incorporating African crafts into European art, Modernist artists were incorporating social commentary into their works. She states, “An awareness on the part of Picasso and his circle of the colonial exploitation that brought African art into the domain of French culture suggests additional levels of meaning in modernist uses of primitivism” (609). Leighton’s view of Picasso’s use of African art creates a contrast to the view of Fry and Matisse by implying the art is a representation of the European view of the Africans as barbarians.

Leighton notes, “[Modern artists] embraced a deeply romanticized view of African culture (conflating many cultures into one), and considered Africa the embodiment of humankind in a precivilized state…” (610). While works of Picasso do suggest a merging of different cultures by combining mediums of European art with the forms of African art, the art does not blatantly express African civilization as precivilization. The term precivilization seems to suggest that a collective people is undeveloped, uneducated, and the subject of domination. However, Modernist artists would argue that African cultures are more enlightened than those of Europe because they express themselves in the simplest of forms. To the modern artist, African art exemplifies their ultimate goal: an art form uninfluenced by the ornate and over-the-top decorations of the Victorian era.

It may be legitimate to argue that Picasso took an interest in African masks as a result of French and Spanish colonialization, but it is unsound to place him in the category with colonizers. Leighton does suggest, “…the modernists did not extend… social criticism to a radical critique of the reductive view of Africans that was promoted for colonial justification” (610). However, by stating that the modernists did not extend this notion, she is still suggesting that modernists agreed with this said “reductive view.” Picasso’s work clearly shows an appreciation and not contempt or disdain. In fact, quite the opposite: if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Picasso is expressing a respect and admiration of the art and cultures of Africa.

Leighton fails to incorporate the Modernist views we discussed in class about the simplification of forms. The modern artist’s goal was to attain a clarity previously lost in the ornate forms of the Victorian period. Picasso, Fry, and Matisse would argue that modern visual art is the representation of this clarity, for it breaks down previous conventions by incorporating the primitivism or untouched nature, biblical allusion, and African culture. Additionally, these artists emphasize the instinctive aspects of art, in which the artist is not bound by arbitrary rules and can be inspired by raw materials and the things mostly untouched by humankind.

The Omega showrooms gather inspiration from Picasso’s notion of primitivism in its use of the ultimately primitive subject: the creation of man. Adam and Eve, as first man and first woman, represent the ideal of the modern artist: a mind untainted and unbounded by the standards of one society or culture. Adam and Eve also represent abstraction, which Reed states as an important aspect of the Bloomsbury Rooms’ designs. Picasso’s influence on the Bloomsbury group is apparent in these crucial ideals of the Modernist movement.


"When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children."--Pablo Picasso

For your own entertainment and enjoyment: www.mrpicassohead.com
To answer your question, yes I did make a million of these while writing this blog! Oh, procrastination…


Works Cited:
Kerrigan, Michael. Modern Art. London: Star Fire, 2005. Print.

Leighton, Patricia. “The White Peril and L’Art negre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism.” The Art Bulletin. Vol. 72, No. 4. College Art Association: Dec. 1990. Pp. 609-630. 2 Dec. 2009.

Reed, Christopher. Bloomsbury Rooms. London: Yale U.P., 2004. Print.

The Bad Narrator by Kasena C. Kasena

John Dowell’s confusing narration is so frustrating. I would surely need to read The Good Soldier five more times before comprehending at least half of this novel, which resulted in my habitual silence in class discussions. However, I don’t have time to read it five times over because I have an appointment with the probate court to legally change my name to Kasena C. Kasena. So, I will attempt to enlighten myself with my own writing and you fine folks at the other end of the computer screen can (and should) let me know where I need a little guidance.

John gives me a sense of unease because he is as insane, if not more so, than the other characters in the book. However, we have no outside opinion of this because he is the voice of the novel. Ford shows John’s deterioration as the novel progresses, because at first he seems fairly normal and a little cynical. As John continues his narration, his cynicism gets worse (as it should considering Florence’s bad behavior), but his emotions dissipate. I don’t know about everyone else, but if I found out my spouse lied to me about a heart condition so he didn’t have to sleep with me, I might end up with the same vocabulary as Nancy at the end of the novel, minus the “shuttle.” Where is John’s anger? He claims to hate Florence, yet there are no concrete signs of his frustrations, emotional or physical. John Dowell should be a priest.

John’s lack of chronology really attests to his overall confusion about the entire nine years that have passed with Florence. He writes in a stupor, completely blinded by his past views of the world, even though they have been proven false by the actions of Florence, Edward, and Leonora. His focus seems to be on finding some kind of truth, but he lacks any ability whatsoever to understand that people are not always directly honest. He takes every backwards remark made by another character as some kind of accidental word vomit, as if these people could not possibly be intentionally trying to hurt him or anyone else. In that case, I must have met a lot of people in my day that had ipecac with their alphabet soup.

I do pity poor John. He seems too trusting and naïve to be a product of the same generation as Edward, Florence, and Leonora. Did his mother shelter him from the realities of the world? Or is John really so dense that he is completely impervious to the words and actions of his friends and wife? I really think it’s the latter. Seeing as John’s mother is a woman, she probably had some indication of the subtleties of language. No offense men, but I do study speech pathology as a second major and women are more attentive to paralinguistic and nonlinguistic features. Therefore, I am placing no blame on John’s mother and all blame on John. He provides readers with several examples of his inability to interpret human intent based on body language, facial expressions, pragmatics, or any other number of indications of emotion that the characters generously provide to him, and mommy can’t be there to interpret every sentence for him!

Any time someone expresses distress in the novel, John misreads or ignores it. When Leonora hints to John about the affair between Edward and Florence, John asks Florence to “accept the situation” to which she replies, “Oh, I accept the situation, if you can” (78-9). Only after John is aware of the affair does he realize she repeats the phrase with a “gravity too intense” (80). Is there really a whole lot more John wants Leonora to do to point out the affair besides coming out and saying it? Should she rent a billboard or something? In fact, the only way he did finally realize the affair is when Leonora directly said, “…isn’t it odd to think that if your wife hadn’t been my husband’s mistress, you would probably never have been here at all?” John then wrote, “That was how I got the news—full in the face, like that” (124). Here, he pretty much tells us what a dense moron he is.

Just pages later, Leonora addresses that Florence committed suicide, which had “never entered [his] head” prior to that time (126). Seriously? He saw his wife just moments before she took the plunge! I’d like to think a normal reaction, if her supposed heart condition were causing some kind of attack and she wanted to LIVE, would have been asking for a doctor. Also, after several years of marriage, I assume this is the first time John would have seen Florence this upset unless she is a dramatic actress. Before entering her room, maybe John should’ve called for a doctor. Where is the doctor in this scene!?

Between these two instances of John’s idiocy, which I could have found by randomly flipping to a page and pointing to a paragraph, I get a real sense of John Dowell’s inability to be a reliable narrator simply because he doesn’t have the capability to understand language beyond it’s most literal meaning when looking straight at a peculiar circumstance. Given that this entire novel is about a peculiar circumstance of love, I can’t tell whether to continue to be frustrated with John’s naïveté, or laugh at his proclamation that this is the saddest story he’s every heard (7). I choose to laugh, because John foolishly blames the women at the end of the novel, whereas I just think he’s deluded.

I found that lovely image of a shuttlecock here: http://www.utne.com/blogs/blog.aspx?blogid=32&tag=Arts

Joyce

I have to admit that I am still learning the basic concept of Modernism because I’m a very Post-Modern thinker. But I do find myself learning new ways of interpreting the material every time our class meets because you all have so many different ideas to bring to the discussion. The most appealing discussion we had in class covered the thought of high value replacing religion. As a child, I was encouraged to explore different religious outlooks, but found the burdens of religion to outweigh the moral lessons taught. When I write burdens, I guess I mean guilt trips. I don’t want religion to tell me how to live my life, just give me basic guidelines to follow. If I want to live with my boyfriend even though we aren’t married, why shouldn’t I?

When I was younger, I remember thinking I could still be a good person and make good moral decisions without the weight of strict scheduling and constant practicing of verse. I guess it just felt like a lot of work to me. I don’t want to get deep into my views on God, because this assignment is supposed to be about the Joyce novel, but I will preface my entry with this: Some days I believe there is a God, others I’m not sure, and still even other times I feel we live, we love, we die, and that’s all. So I guess I just wanted you all to know that I’m confused on the subject so don’t take anything I write as a personal attack on you or your beliefs!

Stephen Dedalus’s struggle with his religion appeals to me. I’ve always believed in making decisions based on the universal human values we discussed in class. Yes, I’d like to do some nasty things to my roommate occasionally, but I don’t because it’s not the right thing to do. In the end, will it make me feel any better, or will I have peroxide in my shampoo, too? Just because I think about these things, doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me a person… period. We discussed self-awareness. We should understand that we can’t block out ALL pride, greed, lust, wrath, sloth, envy, gluttony, and all those other things religion tells you to not feel or do. In fact, everyone should experience the deadly sins in order to understand his or her emotions and thus reactions toward different situations! I wouldn’t want to anger someone who has never been angry before in his life. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t end well.

Anyway, Stephen struggles the most throughout the novel with his sexuality. It's so sad to me that he has to repress his human desires for Godly beliefs. Yes, as Art mentioned to me in class, we all repress our sexual desires to a degree, but to have to eliminate his sexual impulses altogether because God said so seems… well, cruel. He is just becoming aware of the possibilities of his sexuality and is afraid to explore them. I feel like this is just setting him up for a disappointing and frustrating sexual life later. Because he has to repress this desire now, it could result in one of two obvious outcomes (if you think of others, please comment): He will either have an explosion of his frustration and take it out on someone in the form of rape or murder… or some other terrible crime, OR he will overcome these frustrations in his married life, making his wife a very happy woman. Okay, maybe these are extremes, but I’m upset that Stephen is trying to be a good person and feels he isn’t because he is attracted to women. Big deal, there are greater problems in the world.

I have something to ponder about Stephen’s dilemma. Stephen claims, “The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205). We discussed that this is a declaration of Stephen’s need for freedom from the English language because it is a result of colonization. If this is true and Stephen wants to walk away from this socially shared code, why would he have any qualms about leaving the church? Isn’t the church a representation of something socially shared too? Perhaps his hesitance is a result of his upbringing, but it is an interesting conflict to address. If Stephen doesn’t need English to define arbitrary symbols, then surely he doesn’t need the church to define his morality. I feel Joyce is making a statement with this other than Stephen’s rebellion against English. Joyce wants the reader to know that Stephen is, in some aspects, choosing internal conflict as a result of religion. Stephen’s inspiration for creation comes from this conflict, and as we mentioned in class, the artist is paralleled to God for his ability to create.

When reading Stephen’s poem, we understand this conflict with religion as his inspiration because the speaker is presented as the victim. Stephen never embraces sexuality as a typical human desire, but rather as a crime against the will of God. By integrating this concept into his art, he clearly demonstrates his use of religion in his creative process. It seems as though Stephen is using religion to make art! What would God think? Is art an acceptable reason for questioning His ways? I guess my opinion would be OF COURSE! If God didn’t want art, it wouldn’t be here, right? In the Bible, God says his ways are not our ways. Does this mean that God’s “way” of art was the creation of earth, man, woman, animal, plant, etc.? I really think Joyce wants us to raise these questions when reading Portrait. By questioning God’s word, we create conflict between heavens and earth, which is far greater than any single worldly conflict.

Hello!

Hi everyone! Welcome to my modernism blog. Sorry about my terrible username, I made my blogger account when I was about 16 and apparently thought "Kitten Kasena" was super cool. Yikes!