PICASSO; THE CUBIST DIAMOND AS A VARIANT OF

MODERNISM in

LES DEMOISELLE D’ AVIGNON

THE WEEPING WOMAN

GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR

Dissertation submitted to the University of Kerala

In partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

Name of Candidates with Candidates’ Code:

1. Nayana S Dev 13018806004

2. Vaishnavi Nair V S 13018806006
3. Ajmal A 13018806008
4. Malavika R 13018806028
5. Noora M Nizar 13018806025

Course Code: EN 1645

MAR THOMA COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AYUR

2020-2021
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

First and foremost, praises and thanks to the God, the Almighty, for his showers of

blessings throughout our project. We would like to express our deep and sincere

gratitude to Mrs. Bincy Skaria, supervising teacher of the project report. We are

grateful and timely encouragement in the preparation of this project report. We are

grateful to Mrs. Bincy Abraham, Head of the Department of English for the valuable

guidance and support rendered to us in the completion of this work. We are thankful

to Dr. Joseph Mathai, the Principal of the college and all the teachers of the

Department of English for their continuous support and excellent guidance from the

beginning till the end of the completion of our project successfully. We extended our

sincere thanks to all friends, classmates, parents and well-wishers for their help,

encouragement and good wishes in support of the study.

Nayana S Dev

Vaishnavi Nair V S

Ajmal A

Malavika R

Noora M Nizar
 CETIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled Picasso; The Cubist Diamond as a Varient

of Modernism in Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman and Girl

Before A Mirror is a record of studies carried out by Nayana S Dev, Vaishnavi Nair

V S, Ajmal A, Malavika R, Noora M Nizar, at the Department of English, Mar

Thoma College of Science and Technology, Ayur under my guidance and submitted

to the University of Kerala in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts,

First Degree Programme in English Language and Literature under CBCS System.

Mrs. Bincy Abraham Mrs. Bincy Skaria

Associate Professor Assistant Professor

Head, Department of English Supervising Teacher

MTCST, Ayur MTCST, Ayur

 DECLARATION

We, hereby, declare that the dissertation entitled Picasso; The Cubist Diamond as a

Variant of Modernism in Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, Girl Before A Mirror and

The Weeping Woman is a record of research work carried out by us at the

Department of English, Mar Thoma College of Science and Technology, Ayur,

under the guidance of Mrs. Bincy Skaria, and submitted to the University of Kerala

in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree Bachelor of Arts,

First Degree Programme in English Language and Literature under CBCS System.

1. Nayana S Dev 2. Vaishnavi Nair V S

3. Ajmal A 4. Malavika R

5. Noora M Nizar

Ayur Department of English

MTCST, Ayur
 CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter one: Introduction 1- 5

Chapter Two: Cubism in Picasso’s; 6- 20

Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon

Girl Before A Mirror

The Weeping Woman

Chapter Three: Conclusion 21- 25

Work cited
Preface
 1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Art and literature, made human to imagine the unimaginable, and to connect

with the past, present and future. Art is highly effective form in creating visual,

auditory or imaginative skill which are intended to be appreciated by the human mind.

Art include diverse spheres such as painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music

performance and cinema. The technique of cubism developed by Pablo Picasso is an

important branch of artistic beauty.

Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios

Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clilo Ruiz Picasso is popularly

known as Pablo Picasso. Picasso was awarded Lenin Peace Prize from Soviet Union

in 1950 and 1962. He was also awarded gold medal from Malaga Provincial

exhibition and honorable mention from Madrid exhibition of fine arts.

Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the first half of the

20th century. Associated most of all with pioneering Cubism, alongside Georges

Braque, he also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and

Surrealism.

Picasso is known for inventing a new style of painting called Cubism. Picasso

used simple geometric shapes and a small range of colors to paint objects, people and

landscapes. Picasso extended the boundaries and traditional means of the print making

techniques and often employed combined techniques in producing his original

graphics.
 2

Cubism involve two main types called analytical cubism and synthetic cubism.

The first stage of the Cubism movement was called Analytical Cubism. In this style,

artists would study the subject and break it up into different blocks. They would look

at the blocks from different angles. Then they would reconstruct the subject, painting

the blocks from various viewpoints. The second stage of Cubism introduced the idea

of adding in other materials in a collage. Artists would use colored paper, newspapers,

and other materials to represent the different blocks of the subject. This stage also

introduced brighter colors and a lighter mood to the art.

Picasso wanted to emphasize the difference between a painting and reality.

Cubism involves different ways of seeing, or perceiving, the world around us. Picasso

believed in the concept of relativity – he took into account both his observations and

his memories when creating a Cubist image.

Picasso was unique as an artist, as he had complete control of any Medium he

choose, but instead of bound by medium and usual styles. Picasso Proved to be a true

legend in his art form of painting developed using monochrome brownish and neutral

colors. Analytical cubism is the first type of cubism Picasso wanted to emphasize the

difference between a painting and reality. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque

developed the first cubist painting Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon.

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon was a ground breaking painting,

in terms of both its artistic and social impact. Painted in 1907, it is raw, primitive and

is deliberately meant to be shocking. It horrified many of those who first saw it, critics

and artist alike, but it eventually came to be regarded as a work of monumental

influence and value. It portrays five naked prostitutes in a brothel, and was indeed

originally entitled Le Bordel d’ Avignon. The leftmost one is shown in profile facing
 3

the other four with her face painted in a style reminiscent of Egyptian art. The two

figures in the center have Iberian features and are looking alluringly at the viewer,

placing him in the position of customer. The two figures on the right have contorted

bodies and faces that look much like primitive African masks. There is a distorted

still- life in the foreground of the painting that at once gives it a grounding in

traditional painting and emphasizes its extreme departure from tradition.

Le Demoiselles d’ Avignon, was painted in 1907 and is the most famous

example of cubism painting. He used distortion of female body and geometry focus in

an innovative way, which challenges the expectation that painting will offer idealized

representation of female beauty. It also shows the influence of African art in Picasso.

Le Demoiselles d’ Avignon, is a very large oil painting by Picasso that was painted in

1907 and it essentially just depicts five wide female prostitutes.

The conventional feminine figure of western art is not in this painting, and the

women who appear to be slightly threatening are rendered with angular and disjoined

body shapes. In this painting we can see the women on the far left has on the far left

his on Egyptian- style appearance, the two adjacent women are represented in the

Jheriam style of Spain, Picasso’s hometown, and the two women on the African

mask-like features. Picasso’s application of three primitivisms and abandonment of

perspective in the painting shows a radical departure from traditional European style.

This cubist work is regarded as an important piece in the early development of both

cubism and modern art. Primitive art was a never ending source of inspiration of

Picasso. In this exhibition salnon changed the title of the painting to its current title,

“Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon” instead of the original title by Picasso, Le Bordel d’

Avignon.
 4

The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso is a silent protest of the bombing of

Guernica. The painting, completed in 1937, is a colorful display of the pain felt in a

time of horror. The strategically placed tears, the blue chattering teeth and piercing

black eyes display an emotional woman. The woman’s face has jagged lines and a jaw

that seems to remove itself. The viewer is presented with a combination of bright

colors and dark hues that represent both the shock and the death, that surrounded this

woman.

This painting is regarded as a thematic continuation of the tragedy depicted in

Picasso’s epic painting Guernica. In focusing on the image of a woman crying, the

artist was no longer painting the effects of the Spanish Civil War directly, but rather

referring to a singular universal image of suffering. The Weeping Woman (1937)

came at the end of the series of paintings, prints and drawing that Picasso made in

protest. It has very personal, Spanish sources. The model for the painting was Dora

Haar, who was working a professional photographer. She was the only photographer

allowed to document the successive stages of Guernica while Picasso painted it in

1937.

The Girl Before a Mirror was painted in March 1932 by Picasso during the

cubism period. Picasso was an artist that was very bold with his art work. He includes

it within the painting to make it just as intense as the main focal point of the image.

Picasso was part of a movement that would became as Modernism, a name which

include a number of different artistic styles and aesthetic response. The young girl

was named Marie Therese Walter and was painted multiple times during the 1930’s

by Picasso. Picasso was very much fond of Therese and she was the prime motivator

to the artist for many years. This might have given Picasso an opportunity to observe
 5

her nature in complete. It can be observed that the woman before the mirror is fair

with a pink complexion of the skin. This pink color is observed from the viewer’s

vantage point, where as the other side is the one the woman thinks that her real self is.

The mirror shows a different woman than the actual appearance, who is dark and

morbid. There are tears, sagginess, hopelessness, vanity, despair, etc. shown through

the reflection; whereas the woman is shown with brightness, physical strength and her

face is full of knowledge and understanding. Therese Walter was a bright woman with

all the qualities one could expect from a wise individual. Picasso through his painting

justifies her nature by interpreting all the possible emotions and feelings of the young

woman.

The painting depicts a woman looking into a mirror, with a familiar yet contrasting

mirror image looking back at her. While the woman is painted with bright colors and

exhibits a more beautiful faces of both the woman and the reflection are bifureated

into different colorations, which suggests a duality of nature within both the girl and

her reflected image.

The painting features a very colorful palette, with bright pinks, yellow and

green, contrasting with vibrant reds and dark blacks. The skin and face of the girl is

delicately beautiful in contrast with the rest of the painting, and is unlike many of

Picasso’s other cubist faces of the time period.

The aim of the project is to analyse the technique of cubism developed by Pablo

Picasso. The work Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon created in 1907, The Weeping Women

in 1937, Girl Before a Mirror in 1932 showed the use of monochrome brownish and

neutral colors. The painting clearly shows a new way of seeing called cubism, the first

abstract style of modern art.

 6

CHAPTER TWO

Cubism in Picasso’s; Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, Girl Before A Mirror and The

Weeping Woman

Cubism is a 20th century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European

painting, and sculpturing, and inspired related movements in architecture, literature

and music. Its pioneers included Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne and Georges Braque.

Influenced by primitivism, Iberian and African art, and using natural forms such as

cylinders, spheres, and cones, the cubist breaks up, analyzes and re-configures an

object in abstract form, depicting it from a multiplicity of viewpoints. It is as if as

object had all its faces made visible at the same time on a single picture plane. Using

such universal forms as cylinders, spheres and cones, the painted surface intersects at

seemingly random angles to render it into multi faceted areas of paint to emphasize

this plural viewpoint. Characteristically of cubist paintings, the boundaries of the

singular objects are seemingly merged with its background, the planes of each

intermingling with the other to create an ambiguous sense of space. In cubism we

witness the multiplicity and differentiation of any given distinct object simultaneously

blended within its inclusive ubiquitous context.

The artists abandoned linear perspective, instead showing objects from varying

angles and viewpoints in a geometric, deconstructed style. One of their primary aims

was to represent reality as we experience it all around us, rather than as a static,

unmoving state. Artist Juan Gris said, ‘Truth is beyond any realism, and the

appearance of things should not be confused with their essence.’ In a 1908 review, art

critic Louis Vauxcelles said Braque, ‘despises form and reduces everything,
 7

landscapes and figures and houses, to geometric patterns, to cubes.’ Although initially

derogatory, the term Cubism soon took hold.

Cubism is now recognized in two stages, Analytic Cubism from 1910-12 and

Synthetic Cubism from 1912-14. Analytic Cubism was based on close observations of

portraiture or still life subjects as seen from a range of viewpoints, painted in muted,

earthy colors. Artist Juan Gris also began contributing to Cubism during this early

phase and by around 1910 a range of other artist also developed similar styles

including Fernand Leger, Francis Picabia and Andre Derain. By 1911 Cubism had

become the leading style in Paris and by 1912 its influence was felt worldwide,

promoted through the publication of De Cubism, 1912, by Gleizes and Metzinger and

Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Peintres Cubistes (The Cubist Painters) in 1913.

During the second, Synthetic phase of Cubism artists began introducing elements of

collage into their work, such as newspaper or chair caning, as seen in Picasso’s Still

Life with Chair Caning, 1912, as well as experimenting with constructed sculptures.

Picasso, Braque and Gris did not develop pure abstraction, although artists involved in

parallel movements did, including the Orphists, the Rayonists and the Vorticists.

Cubism was one of the most influential movements of the early twentieth century,

shifting traditional pictorial methods and spawning a new generation of styles,

including Constructivism, Futurism, Suprematism, De Stijl and Minimalism.

Between 1901 and 1904, Picasso began to achieve recognition for his Blue

Period paintings. In the main these were studies of poverty and desperation based on

scenes he had seen in Spain and Paris at the turn of the century. Subjects included

gaunt families, blind figures, and personal encounters; other paintings depicted his

friends, but most reflected and expressed a sense of blueness and despair. He followed

his success by developing into his Rose Period from 1904 to 1907, which introduced a
 8

strong element of sensuality and sexuality into his work. The Rose period depictions

of acrobats, circus performers and theatrical characters are rendered in warmer,

brighter colors and are far more hopeful and joyful in their depictions of the bohemian

life in the Parisian avant-garde and its environs. The Rose period produced two

important large masterpieces: Family of Saltimbanques (1905), which recalls the

work of Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) and Edouard Manet (1832–1883); and Boy

Leading a Horse (1905–06), which recalls Cézanne's Bather (1885–1887) and El

Greco's “Saint Martin and the Beggar” (1597–1599). From c. 1907-1917, Pablo

Picasso pioneered the Cubism movement, a revolutionary style of modern art that

Picasso formed in response to the rapidly changing modern world. In collaboration

with his friend and fellow artist Georges Braque.

Picasso challenged conventional, realistic forms of art through the establishment

of Cubism. He wanted to develop a new way of seeing that reflected the modern age,

and Cubism is how he achieved this goal. Picasso's immersion in Cubism also

eventually led him to the invention of collage, in which he abandoned the idea of the

picture as a window on objects in the world, and began to conceive of it merely as an

arrangement of signs that used different, sometimes metaphorical means, to refer to

those objects. This too would prove hugely influential for decades to come. Picasso

had a liberal attitude to style, and although, at any one time, his work was usually

characterized by a single dominant approach, he often moved interchangeably

between different forms - sometimes even in the same artwork. Picasso’s paintings

and drawings of the late teens often seem unexpectedly naturalistic in contrast to the

Cubist works that preceded or sometimes coincided with them a new spirit of

Mediterraneanism made itself felt in his work, especially in the use of classical forms
 9

and drawing techniques. By clarifying planes, forms, and color, the artist imparted to

his Cubist paintings a classical expression.

His encounter with Surrealism in the mid-1920s, although never transforming his

work entirely, encouraged a new expressionism that had been suppressed throughout

the years of experiment in Cubism and subsequently during the early 1920s when his

style was predominantly classical. This development enabled not only the soft forms

and tender eroticism of his portraits of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter but also the

starkly angular imagery of Guernica (1937), the century's most famous anti-war

painting.

Picasso did not feel that art should copy nature. He felt no obligation to remain tied

to the more traditional artistic techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening

and felt two-dimensional object. Picasso wanted to emphasize the difference between

a painting and reality. Cubism involves different ways of seeing, or perceiving, the

world around us. Picasso believed in the concept of relativity – he took into account

both his observations and his memories when creating a Cubist image. He felt that we

do not see an object from one angle or perspective, but rather from many angles

selected by sight and movement. African art and the modern, urban street life of Paris

greatly influenced Picasso’s conception of Cubism. In addition, Picasso became

fascinated with the process of construction and deconstruction, a fascination that is

evident in his Cubist works. When creating these Cubist pieces, Picasso would

simplify objects into geometric components and planes that may or may not add up to

the whole object as it would appear in the natural world. He would distort figures and

forms and simultaneously depict different points of view on one plane.

 10

Picasso actively created works of Cubist art for around ten years. Within this

time span, his Cubist style subtly evolved from Analytical Cubism (1907-1912) to

Synthetic Cubism (1913-1917). With Analytical Cubism, Picasso utilized a muted

color palette of monochromatic browns, grays, and blacks and chose to convey

relatively unemotional subject matters such as still lifes and landscapes. He placed an

emphasis on open figuration and abstraction, but did not yet incorporate elements of

texture and collage.

With Synthetic Cubism, Picasso incorporated texture, patterning, text, and

newspaper scraps into his Cubist works. While he still portrayed relatively neutral

subjects such as musical instruments, bottles, glasses, pitchers, newspapers, playing

cards, and human faces and figures, his technique had progressed to the point where

he was consistently including elements of collage, a technique that his is often

credited with inventing. With Synthetic Cubism, Picasso redefined the visual effect of

his original Cubist technique and incorporated new materials, paving the way for the

artistic avant-garde movement to ignite throughout Europe. Cubism is renowned as a

groundbreaking artistic movement in and of its own right, yet it also influenced

generations of artists to follow, shaping the very history of art. Picasso also

incorporated pochoir, or hand-applied watercolor, to the majority of his Cubist prints,

further contributing a sense of texture and color.

Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon is a large oil painting created in1907 by Pablo. The

work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays five

nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d' Avinyó, a street in Barcelona. Each

figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is

conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and are rendered with
 11

angular and disjointed body shapes. The figure on the left exhibits facial features and

dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. In this painting, Picasso abandoned all

known form and representation of traditional art. He used distortion of female's body

and geometric forms in an innovative way, which challenge the expectation that

paintings will offer idealized representations of female beauty.

This painting is a large work and took nine months to complete. It demonstrates the

true genius and novelty of Picasso's passion. He created hundreds of sketches and

studies to prepare for the final work. Some critics argue that the painting was a

reaction to Henri Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre and Blue Nude. The two adjacent

figures are shown in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the

right are shown with African mask-like features. The ethnic primitivism evoked in

these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic

style of compelling, even savage force." In this adaptation of primitivism and

abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso

makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. This proto-cubist work

is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both cubism and

modern art.

Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon was revolutionary and controversial and led to

widespread anger and disagreement, even amongst the painter's closest associates and

friends. Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke yet indirectly reacted to

it in his 1908 Bathers with a Turtle. Georges Braque too initially disliked the painting

yet perhaps more than anyone else, studied the work in great detail. His subsequent

friendship and collaboration with Picasso led to the cubist revolution. Its resemblance

to Cezanne's The Bathers, Paul Gauguin's statue Oviri and El Greco's Opening of the

Fifth Seal has been widely discussed by later critics.

 12

Pablo Picasso demonstrated the aesthetic beauty of avant- grade spirit in Les

Demoiselle d’ Avignon. Picasso employed the use of visual, images which proved

magnamous activating emotional perception in Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon. The pre-

classic and neo- classic experience of mankind was meditating on the effect of words

on the imagination by observing letters and hearing words as objective realities. The

usual images performed the common narrative function and suggestive function

which could produce metaphors in creating new perceptions beyond the normal view

point. During his work on Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon, Picasso had two Iberian stone

sculptures with which he “took counsel” in his experiments. Of course, there was

certainly Matisse’s Blue Nude and Derain’s Bathers, but essentially, Picasso was

always a solitary artist: “He was always free owing nothing to anyone but himself”.

From the distance of over four decades, here is how the artist himself explained the

reasons and essence of the creative breakthrough of 1907: “I saw that everything had

been done. One had to break, to make one’s revolution and to start at zero.”1That

break, however, that revolution, was neither instantaneously nor easily achieved. It

was carried out amid the conditions of a new spiritual and creative crisis one far more

profound and all-embracing than ever before, because it touched on the technical,

spiritual and pictorial possibilities open to the artist. It affected Picasso’s future as an

artist and, therefore, his existence as an individual. This was a solitary, internal

revolution, and perhaps nobody ever understood it as well as Apollinaire, who went

through the same kind of rupture and revolution one year later. In The Cubist Painters

(1913) Apollinaire summed up both his own and Picasso’s experience in a theory of

artistic creation based on a somewhat surprising criterion: weariness.

The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso is a silent protest of the bombing of

Guernica. The painting, completed in 1937, is a colorful display of the pain felt in a
 13

time of horror. The strategically placed tears, the blue chattering teeth and piercing

black eyes display an emotional woman. The woman’s face has jagged lines and a jaw

that seems to remove itself. The viewer is presented with a combination of bright

colors and dark hues that represent both the shock and the death that surrounds this

woman.

It is the final portrayal in a series of painful images. It was painted within a week

or two of the completion of his famous monumental picture of the brutal fascist

bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica, a picture to which the small canvas bears

an apparent relationship. The series of weeping women, which appear in about 60

drawings, prints and paintings throughout 1937, are an anomaly. They come from the

intersection of political events, represented by the Spanish Civil War, and of personal

relationships, in the artist's notoriously tangled romantic life, which together conspire

to give us these remarkable pictorial essays on human sorrow.

This striking painting of a woman holding a handkerchief to her tear-stained face

has rich personal and political associations. It is one of a series of weeping women

that Picasso created in 1937. He addressed this theme in a number of different

mediums, producing powerful paintings, drawings and etchings that were intended to

stand as mute visual witnesses to an unspeakable modern tragedy. Aspects of

Picasso’s turbulent private life have also been read into Weeping woman. In 1935 the

artist’s marriage to Olga Koklova had officially ended. Relations between the couple

had been strained since Koklova’s discovery in 1932 of the five-year affair Picasso

had been conducting with Marie-Therese Walter. By mid 1936, however, Picasso had

entered into yet another new romance, with Dora Maar, which was to see Walter

herself supplanted in his affections. Beyond such personal speculations, however,

 14

Weeping woman stands as a strong, iconic denouncement of the atrocities and

inhumanity of modern warfare. The painting’s strident palette of acid greens and hot

purples allows no rest or forgiveness for the eye – only protest and accusation.

The The Weeping Woman series is regarded as a continuation of the tragedy

depicted in Picasso's epic painting Guernica. In focusing on the image of a woman

crying, Picasso was no longer painting the effects of the Spanish Civil War directly,

but rather referring to the common image of suffering.

The destruction of Guernica was carried out by German aircraft, manned by

German pilots, at the request of the Spanish National Commander, Mola. Because the

Republican Government of Spain had granted autonomy to the Basques, Guernica

was the capital city of an independent city. Its razing was taken up by the world’s

press as an example of Fascist barbarity. Picasso’s insistence that we imagine

ourselves into the contorted face of this woman, into her dark eyes, was part of his

response to seeing newspaper photographs of the Luftwaffe's bombing of Guernica on

April 26, 1937.

The use of distorted images and an Expressionism vibe surround this painting.

Picasso’s model, Dora Maar, was the inspiration after she suffered a tremendous loss

during the war. The oil on canvas painting displays her loss through angles, lines and

color. Picasso painted Dora’s hair with a mix of blue and black. He also used the

shallow space to give depth while acidic green and shades of mauve create the

appearance of loss. The most obvious meaning of the The Weeping Woman, when

interpreted against the background of the ongoing civil war in Spain, is fairly

straightforward. Formally dressed, as though at a funeral or other place of mourning,

she represents the harrowing grief experienced by mothers, sisters and others,
 15

following the death of a loved one, especially during wartime. As in Guernica, the

focus is on the pain and suffering endured by innocent civilians. There is an additional

and more subtle interpretation: namely, that the work is a self-portrait, revealing the

artist's inner torment at the idea of his native country being torn apart by civil war.

Picasso was extremely upset by the conflict and vowed never to return to Spain while

Franco remained in power. As it was, Franco outlived him by two years.

The The Weeping Woman may also have a religious meaning. She may, for

instance, symbolize the pieta - the anguish of the Virgin Mary, as she mourns the

horrifying death of her son, Jesus Christ. The hand of the trampled corpse under the

horse in Guernica, contained signs of Christ's stigmata, indicating martyrdom, so

there may also be a religious dimension to this painting.

Pablo Picasso’s The Weeping Woman is the final portrayal in a series of painful

images. The rearranged shapes, array of colors and stark design of this painting

invoke the viewer in a variety of ways.

Girl Before Mirror was painted in March 1932. It was produced in the style

Picasso was using at the time and evoked an image of Vanity such as had been

utilized in art in earlier eras, though Picasso shifts the emphasis and creates a very

different view of the image. The work is considered in terms of the erotic in Picasso's

art, and critics in different periods have offered their assessments of the work to show

a wide range of reactions. The young girl was named Marie Therese Walter and was

painted multiple times during the 1930's by Picasso.

Girl Before a Mirror was painted during Picasso's cubism period. Picasso was

an artist that was very bold with his artwork. Even with backgrounds that are
 16

normally placed to be a backdrop and mainly there to assist the main subject. He

includes it within the painting to make it just as intense as the main focal point of the

image.

Everyone can agree that the reflection in a mirror when you look at yourself will

illustrate a sense of pride in your appearance and achievements. In 1932, Pablo

Picasso painted a picture titled Girl before a mirror with the subject being his French

mistress Marie-Therese Walter. Picasso used a cubism stylistic approach while he

created this painting. Furthermore, the idea of cubism is to take apart an object and

break it down into simple shapes. Then, recreate those shapes onto a canvas and it

will allow for multiple perspectives. In addition, the multiple perspectives draw in

audiences with different values and meanings of the painting. On a psychological

level this painting represents a reflection of the self. Moreover, how ones see’s

themselves and how others see them. This painting explains the duality of our nature.

Duality happens because one’s mind cannot directly experience the universe alone.

Therefore our mind separates understanding and meaning from the truths. The two

parts of our duality are called relatives and absolutes. Having these dualities helps

people see different perspectives. Experimenting with all the different perspectives

allows for realization that all perspectives are relative. In addition, there are no

worthless or meaningless perspectives. In this painting, I believe that Pablo Picasso

has achieved duality and has been accepting to all differing viewpoints.

Picasso proved his excellence in the new artistic movement of cubism; which is

clearly visible in Girl Before A Mirror, Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon and The Weeping

Woman. The three paintings satisfied the primary purpose of pleasure of the eye

along with that it could provide a numerous interpretations beyond to the normal
 17

vision. Each painting provide successful in depicting the historic background and

culture of people during that particular period. The dimension offered by cubist

paintings elevates the perceptional attitude of the audience by immensity of space

eternalized in every direction at a given moment.

Cubism changed the traditional way of painting to view an object only from one

perspective, but rather tried to view from diverse angles thereby extending the scope

of narrative creativity.

The art of cubism showed pure painting which showed the way of life. Parallel

and pure ideologies and visible in the three paintings Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The

Weeping Women and Girl Before A Mirror. Cubism is the manifestation of the

aspirations and disquietudes of a large number of young artists contemplating the

Egyptian and oceanic sculptures meditating on the works of science and developed in

to a sublime art. Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon crafted the first cubist work of Picasso in

creating a clear and rational lens without any aesthetic allusions. The painting seemed

like two mountain climbers hanging from a single rope. This showed the trace of

analytical cubism which is also visible in Picassos other works such as The Weeping

Woman and Girl Before A Mirror. The geometrical pattern visible in these paintings

received a great deal of appreciation from all over the world made Picasso in the

limelight.

Weeping Women is thematic continuation of Guernica which depicted the

screaming woman by the addition of cubist elements to represent display of pain felt

in a time of horror. Picasso used the element of impasto which is a type of thick paint

to magnify the elements of cubism. The oil on canvas painting displays her through

angles, lines and colors. The hair color of Dora in blue and black showed the

imaginative power of Picasso. The use of shallow space to give depth could be seen in
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three paintings of Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping women and Girl Before

A Mirror. The usage of geometric shapes, blending of colors and the background with

acidic green and shapes of mauve create the appearance of loss. Picasso used cubist

techniques to express universal emotions thereby activating the inner self of the

aesthetes. The ageing process shown in Girl Before A Mirror expressed by the

principles of organization by the adequate implementation of balance, rhythm, scale

and proportion. The angular and overlapping fragments of five female nudes in Les

Demoiselle d’ Avignon employed the usage of “animalistic masks” to shock and

challenge the viewer. The kaleidoscopic chaos and sense of pictorial anarchy

shadowed in the three paintings of Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman

and Girl Before A Mirror.

Picasso utilized a muted color pallet of monochromatic browns, grays, blacks

and chose to convey relatively unemotional subject matters such as still lifes and

landscapes. The emphases on open figuration and abstraction were evident in his

works. The paintings belonged to the period of cubism focused on giving a wider

opportunity to the viewers. Picasso said very little about the painting’s meaning,

leaving the interpretation to viewers, critiques and art historians.

Picasso is known for having extended the boundaries and traditional techniques

by combining different techniques in producing original graphics. This was clearly

seen in Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman and Girl Before A Mirror.

The different techniques involve engraving, dry point, etching and aquatint. Which

belonged to the intaglio forms of print making The cubist style emphasized the flat,

two dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of

perspective, for shortening, modeling, chiaroscuro and refuting time- honored theories

that art should imitate nature. Picasso expressed his perspective through the rendering
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of colors in his works Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman and Girl

Before A Mirror. The Advancing background was denoted by warm reddish brown

while the cool blues depicted the receding nature. Picasso combined representational

motifs with letters and also employed musical instruments, bottles, pitchers, glasses,

newspapers, human face and figure Picasso abandoned the renaissance illusion of

three- dimensionality and instead presenting a radically flattened picture plane that is

broke into geometrical shards. Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Women and

Girl Before A Mirror followed the radical simplification of form and use of

geometric shapes to define objects Picasso included painted word on the canvas and

focused on abstraction by reducing color and by increasing the illusion of low- relief

sculptures apart from the traditional styles. Picasso reintroduces color and goes into

further experimentation with multiple perspectives

Picasso placed an emphasis on open figuration and abstraction in his paintings.

The distortion of figures and forms into geometric components and planes imparted

multiple view points to the aesthetes. This was clearly evident in Les Demoiselle d’

Avignon, The Weeping Women and Girl Before A Mirror. The stunning prints,

etching, lithographs and linocuts enhanced the beauty of his works. Picasso

incorporated pochoir or hand applied water color to the majority of his cubist paints in

addition to the usual texture and color. The influence of African art ant the modern,

urban street life of Paris greatly influenced Picasso’s conception of cubism. Picasso

became fascinated with the process of construction and deconstruction which were

expressed in The Weeping Women, Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon and Girl Before A

Mirror. The trace of synthetic cubism along with patterning text and newspaper

scraps into his cubist works.

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Picasso had painted a shocking scene of a brothel called Le Bordel d’ Avignon the

Bordelle of Avignon. It was retiled as Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon for the sake of

decency. The stylistic cacophony of the images of brothel has an extra ordinary power

that really emanates from radical aesthetics. Cubism is an art form that is more about

experience rather than expression. The superimposition of diverse elements and the

dissolution and reconstitution of a three- dimensional form using simple geometric

shapes was used to express the less of woman in The Weeping Woman. Cubism

paved its own way apart from the western urban sophistication and social restrictions.

The portrait of lopsided breasts and fat belly as the reflection of a girl who is really

beautiful in the original sense. The contradictory themes of strength and weakness

where adequately blended by the perfect use of colors in Girls Before A Mirror.

Picasso employed the use of monochrome of grisaille palette to evoke pain and

suffering in “The Weeping Woman”. Grisaille technique focused on providing grey

background which could produce a special visual effect. The viewer is presented with

a combination of bright colors and dark hues that represent both the shock and death

that surrounds the woman. The idea of adding in other materials and the introduction

of new elements like newspaper clipping, fabric and sheet, music were employed in

painting like Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman and Girl Before A

Mirror. Cubism involved Simultaneous fragmentation and addition by the use of cool

blues and light brown background in portraying well defined facial features by

geometric lines. The elements of cubism were deep-rooted in the works of Picasso

including Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, The Weeping Woman and Girl Before A

Mirror.
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CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

The Cubist style dominated several decades of the 20th century due to the many

works by Braque, Picasso and Gris, and many other artists involved in the movement,

making it a very large contribution to the development of arts in the 20th century.

Picasso's Cubism is credited as the greatest break in art history after the Renaissance

revolution. Picasso defied the "rules" of art that people took for granted. His

Analytical Cubism changed paintings from a single perspective to multiple

perspectives and broke down objects into geometric shapes. His later Cubism,

Synthetic Cubism, pioneered constructing sculptures and collages by using everyday

objects and even trash. Picasso's Cubism is a turning point in history because it has

not only revolutionized art styles but also inspired new ways of seeing the world. It

became less about seeing the world and more about the play of form and color. The

invention of collage changed the way artists painted. The disjointed surfaces of

Synthetic Cubism inspired both abstract artists, for its emphasis on shape and color,

and surrealists, for its juxtapositions of disparate elements. Cubism is far from being

an art movement confined to art history; its legacy continues to inspire the work of

many contemporary artists. Cubist imagery is regularly used commercially but also a

significant number of contemporary artists keep drawing upon it stylistically and,

more importantly, theoretically.

Picasso's Cubism is credited as the greatest break in art history after the

Renaissance revolution. Picasso defied the "rules" of art that people took for granted.

His Analytical Cubism changed paintings from a single perspective to multiple

perspectives and broke down objects into geometric shapes. His later Cubism,
 22

Synthetic Cubism, pioneered constructing sculptures and collages by using everyday

objects and even trash. Picasso's Cubism is a turning point in history because it has

not only revolutionized art styles but also inspired new ways of seeing the world. To

this day, we can still see the lasting influence of Cubism in art, architecture, graphic

and fashion design, and photography.

The elegant works of Picasso showed his artistic intelligence of cubism Les

Demoiselle d’ Avignon treated as the onset of cubist movement. This exquisite

painting is considered to be seminal in the early development of both cubism and

modern art. The whole picture is in a two dimensional style, with an abandoned

perspective. Picasso was resolved to undo the continuous of farm and field which

western art had taken long granted. The famous stylistic rupture at right turned out to

be merely a consummation. Overnight, the contrived coherence of representational art

the feigned unities of time and place, the stylistic consistencies, all were considered to

be fictional. The Demoiselles confessed itself a picture conceived in duration and

delivered in spasms. Picasso discovered that the demands of discontinuity could be

met on multiple levels by cleaning depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and

abbreviations by slashing the web of connecting space by abrupt changes of vantage;

and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax. Picasso’s great revolutionary work

constitutes a conclusion to all that has gone before. The insistent staccato of the

presentation was found to intensify the pictures address and symbolic charge along

with its flagrant eroticism. Thus Picasso exhibited a new pictorial syntax trough Les

Demoiselle d’ Avignon.

The The Weeping Woman was painted by Pablo Picasso on the basis of the

newspaper photographs of Luftwaffe’s bombing of Guernica on behalf of Franco in

the Spanish civil war on April 26’ 1937. The The Weeping Woman came at the end
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of the series of paintings; prints and drawings that Picasso made in protest. The

painting portrayed the symbolic image of Mater Dolorosa, the weeping virgin, who is

considered as a traditional image in Spanish art, often represented in lurid baroque

sculptures with glass tears, like the very solid one that with glass tears, like the very

solid one that flows towards this woman’s right ear.

The skin tone of the women in the The Weeping Woman showed the color sense

of Picasso by adequately implementing white hot magenta, acidic green, icy blue and

even more. The value of above 100 million showed the impact of natural forms to

their geometrical equivalents, and the organization of the planes of a represented

object independent of representational requirements. The Weeping Woman signified

the fact that every picture tells a story. This painting focused on a silent protest of

bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in Spain, by Germany in the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso was an inventive artist, has didn’t want to make paintings in the usual way as

the others did intend of following tradition to depict things as they appeared to the

eyes from one angle, he portrayed things from multiple view points in one picture

Picasso using his unconventional style made a good impression of our daily

expressions such as “breakdown”, “burst to tears” and “go to pieces” when describing

someone despair.

Picasso’s artistic and creative intelligence is clearly observed in Girl Before A

Mirror. The image of young woman and her reflection is riotous in color and

chockablock with pattern. It is one of the last in a major series of canvases that

Picasso created between 1931 and 1932. Picasso preferred this painting to any of the

others Girl Before A Mirror is an example of dazzling usual: imagery and thematic

contemporary. Its primary subject is the time honored artistic theme of a woman

before her mirror, reinvented in strikingly modern terms. The girls smoothly painted
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profile in a delicately blushing pink lavender, abuts a heavily built up and garish

colored frontal view in yellow and red. Allusions of youth and old age, sun and moon,

light and shadow are compressed into a single multivalent space. The pictures

rigorous symmetrical organization creates a structure against which the curves of the

models head and body, as well as those of her reflection register all the more strongly.

The visual punning employed by Picasso in his paintings and sculptures also implied

in Girl Before A Mirror showed facial and bodily features double as male and female

genders.

Cubism which developed as a part of the modernist movement in which

traditional values and techniques were replaced by the themes of loss and exile. This

is evident from the three works of Picasso Les Demoiselle d’ Avignon, Girl Before A

Mirror, The Weeping Woman. The traces of cubism could be clearly seen in Les

Demoiselle d’ Avignon as it was treated as the onset of cubist art form. The in-depth

analysis of Girl Before A Mirror and The Weeping Woman lead to the revelation of

minute cubist techniques by Pablo Picasso. Picasso showed his brilliance as an artist

in following the new trends thus making the artist to impact their own ideas and

creativity. Cubism influenced many other styles of modern art including Orphism,

Futurism, Vorticism, Supermatism, Constructivism and Expressionism. It continues to

inspire the works of many contemporary artists, which still use to stylistical and

theoretical features of this style. The difference between a painting and reality was

clearly emphasized in the cubist works. Picasso believed in the concept of relativity

that he took into account both his observations and his memories when creating a

cubist image. The title signified the impact of cubism and the revolution it caused in

the European painting and its sculpture.

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The subjects which were used in the cubist art where chosen from daily life. The

impressionist landscapes were rarely used cubism brought the manners and

procedures of the painting that was occurred in renaissance and build the new ones as

a scientific construction in a systemic way. Cubism has been indeed the birth

certificate of 21st century. The concept of form which is basically equated with shape

is defined as outward appearance and characteristics principles. Cubism as an art

moment looks the first place that was especially interested and involved in the form

and the form qualities.

Picasso is considered as ‘the central artist of the 20th century’. The amount of

relevant and influential works he produced in painting and beyond is proving that.

Cubism paved the way for non-representational art by putting new emphasis on the

unity between a depicted scene and the surface of the canvas. Picasso's innovations

have expanded our minds and actually moved art. His work has provided many

advances and explorations not just the art world; Cubism influenced sculpture,

architecture, and music. The Cubist movement revolutionized many aspects of the

world. It inspired a whole new thought process which leads to new styles and depth in

meaning. It changed the way we see the world.

The cubist movement is still living but it shows that the conceptions are still in

use and valid. On the other hand cubism seemed to be the beginning point of cubism

for having the identity of 20th century in its own, are still common. Besides the

advantages of the method of “cubism” in analyzing arts and architecture, the main

result emphasizes the importance of concepts of any thought or any consciousness in

every movement for been constant and universal.

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Work Cited

Primary sources

Cubism, Guilla