Tuesday, August 11, 2015

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persons and objects, a metamorphosis, as if by magic into something else, often disturbing or unexpected. In discussing one of his paintings Picasso said that he was interested in making it more disturbing. This is connected to his fascination with the magic of metamorphosis or the changes of form, shape, structure or substance. It would have been quite natural for him to effect this transformation by adapting the works of the masters overlaying his images upon the formal elements of their compositions. In essence, taking one thing and turning it into another or finding the suggestion of an image hidden in masterpieces like the childhood game of finding faces suggested in the forms of clouds. An early example from 1903 is a landscape drawing done in Barcelona “Nude Lying with Figures” (164) in which Picasso creates imaginary faces and figures in the trees and clouds and a nude in the foreground landforms. This approach recalls Leonardo da Vinci's searching the cracks and patterns of his walls looking for imaginary subjects to inspire him. Concerning metamorphosis and its relation to his famous saddle and bicycle handlebars which Picasso joined to make a bull's head Picasso said “One day I take the saddle and the handle bars, I put them one on top of the other, and I make a bull's head. All well and good. But what I should have done straight after was to throw away the bull's head. Throw it into the gutter, anywhere, but throw it away. Then a workman comes along. He picks it up. He thinks that with this bull's head he could perhaps make a saddle and a set of bicycle handlebars and he does it...that would have been magnificent. It is the gift of metamorphosis” (Picasso qtd. in Parmelin 76-77) .

Brassai quoted Picasso as saying in 1943 “It seems strange to me that we ever arrived at the idea of making statues from marble. I understand how you can see something in the root of a tree, a crevice in a wall, a corroded bit of stone, or a pebble...But marble? It stands there like a block, suggesting no form or image. It doesn't inspire. How could Michelangelo have seen his "David" in a block of marble? If it occurred to man to create his own images, it's because he discovered them all around him, almost formed, already within his grasp. He saw them in a bone, in the irregular surfaces of cavern walls, in a piece of wood... One form might suggest a woman, another a bison, and still another the head of a demon” (Picasso qtd. in Brassai 66-67).

This transformation was consistent with the 20th century Surrealist
movement in art. John Golding summarized this “Breton pinpointed what was

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