through
a microscope. The head of Van Gogh's self-portrait stretches from
floor to ceiling. And even though it is the Van Gogh pictures which
suffer most from reproduction, Picasso says that all the same, on the
wall as everywhere else, it is he who is the greatest of all”
(Parmelin 49).
Slide
projection gave Picasso the opportunity of using more than one
projector at a time with multiple images. He could have used these
multiple projections to compare his work with that of others; to
notice relationships between the works and even to selectively
enlarge sections, alter perception by projecting the slides out of
focus, reversing the slides, even overlapping two or more slides in
the same space frame. It is not inconceivable to imagine Picasso
working with the aid of projected slides in this manner. Indeed, it
would be very natural for him. He had the many projectors, slides,
the great white wall, the darkness of the night when he preferred to
work, and the need throughout his career, as we have seen, to combine
and alter images.
Another
way Picasso used photography was to work from photographs that he he
took or to make copies of photographs and picture- postcards that he
obtained. Penrose reported “A
postcard of a young couple in Tyrolian national costume was
transformed into a large and splendid pencil drawing which is no
slavish copy, but rather a noble and inspired study, drawn with such
vitality and freshness that the original photo would look a travesty
of reality beside it. There is similarly a well-known drawing of
Diaghilev and Selisbourg taken from a photograph for which they had
dressed themselves with the greatest care. In this case the
photograph still exists. In comparison with the direct simplicity of
the drawing, in which all superfluous detail is eliminated and only a
pure unhesitating line remains to describe their features, the
photograph is a poor, insufficient likeness of the two men. Just as
Picasso had delighted in showing even as a child that he could rival
the masters, here it gave him great satisfaction to show that he
could beat the camera” (Penrose
217).
Blunt
commented on Picasso's uniqueness “Basically,
however, Picasso is an eclectic in the best and most traditional
sense of the word. Like all the great artists of the past - though
with an avidity perhaps rare with them - he has studied every form of
art which came before his eyes and, with modern museums and art
galleries, and twentieth-century methods of photography and book
production, the quantity and variety of art accessible to him are of
a quite different order from what would have been known to an
166
166
No comments:
Post a Comment