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1 [Background info] [K-6: Looking] [K-6: Making] [7-12]
Still-life with cat and rooster 13 December 1953
oil on canvas 88.5 x 116 (cat. 1)
MNAM/CCI Centre Pompidou, Paris Gift of Louise and Michel Leiris 1984
© Succession Picasso, Paris, Viscopy Ltd, Sydney, 2002
SUPPLEMENTARY WORK:
Three figures 6 September 1971
oil on canvas 130 x 162 (cat. 84)
Kunstmuseum Bern
Georges F. Keller Bequest 1981
© Succession Picasso, Paris, Viscopy Ltd, Sydney, 2002
Distortion, discordancy, fragmentation, inconsistent and clashing pictorial codes were key aspects of Picasso's work. In its amazing diversity Picasso's art implies that all representation is a deformation of the reality we perceive, that there is no such thing as undistorted vision or undistorted representation.
Although his art leant towards abstraction, he was hostile to abstraction in its pure state. What irritated him was the fact that abstract art wasn't obliged to be a distortion of anything prior. He once grumbled 'The abstracts [i.e. the abstract painters] never "deform". One can't accuse them of that. They're too well brought up. However violent, however furious they may be, they're not able to be really violent.'
Is violence the crux of Picasso's artmaking as some have contended?
In 1988, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington wrote: 'Picasso's work reflects the deformities of his personality. He also reflects the darkness of an age that gave us Auschwitz and the Gulag Archipelago.' Was Picasso in any way complicit with these horrors? How is this brutality evoked in Picasso's work? The very blunt, black outlines, the bold contrasts of black and white, the spatial compression, the angularity, the brevity of expression, the stylistic inconsistencies which are attributed to different objects and the way things are broken apart and brought together again contribute overwhelmingly to a sense of conflict and opposition.
However, are these paintings merely acts of vandalism or hatred? Does it make a difference when we learn of the circumstances surrounding the time these works were made? We know that Picasso painted cats at times when he sensed violence afoot in the world, for example, in 1939 after the German invasion of France. Still-life with cat and rooster is dated December 1953, three months after his common-law wife left him taking their two children. Three figures is dated 1971, almost 20 years later, when Picasso was in his 90th year and close to his death, a time when he was facing a loss of control and his fears that his body would no longer respond to the directives of his will.
K-6
LOOKING IDEAS
Follow the cat into this painting and slowly stalk around its surface.
Look for the rooster, the bowl and the knife.
Describe what is happening.
Make the sounds of the cat and the rooster. Imagine being the cat. Role-play its pose and movements. Imagine being the rooster. Role-play its pose. Are these animals friends? Describe their relationship.
Find the clue that tells us that one of the animals here is trapped. How would you feel being in this position?
Focus on the strong lines Picasso has used to create this painting. Find examples of the following: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, zig-zagging, and repeated pattern lines.
Count the number of colours used to paint this picture.
MAKING IDEAS
Make some animal drawings of pets (from life if possible) at home or school and set aside.
Set up a still-life in your classroom and draw. Add one of the animals to your still-life drawing. Use this as a basis to create a painting using one colour with black and white.
Make a chart of different types of lines and use these in your painting.
LINKS TO KEY LEARNING AREAS
- Mathematics: Shape and pattern
- Science and Technology: Living things
7-12
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Frames: Subjective / Structural
Picasso said his art was like a diary. Examine Still-life with cat and roosterin the light of the circumstances of Picasso's life in 1953. How would his personal feelings have lead to this choice of imagery, the style of painting, the use of contrast and the elimination of certain pleasing qualities?
Consider the works in black and white in this exhibition in relation to each other. Are they always austere and fraught? Consider other paintings where Picasso limited himself to black and white, including: Guernica, the first version of the variations on Las Meñinas, The Charnel House [not in exhibition].
Narrative or story-telling is an essential way art can communicate information. However, when Picasso was a young man, many of the leading modern artists distrusted the story-telling function of paintings. Consider the differences of Picasso's graphic works where his flair for characterisation, his sense of humour and his vivid imagination are less constrained than he ever allows in his paintings.
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