How Picasso Effects My Art

Since I began drawing and other forms of art when I was a child, I always excelled further in cartooning than other aspects of drawing. When you’re a child, the way you portray things on paper usually looks nothing like the actual 3 dimensional figures you use as your subject, and usually this has to do with lack of skill at such an early age. What I noticed about Picasso is that although he mastered art in the classical sense of the word, he almost took a step backwards in the way he portrayed his subjects.

In my experience I’ve found that I can portray my subjects in a realistic fashion, and draw them with as much 3D detail as possible, but that isn’t the way I enjoy portraying them. Instead I’d rather be abstract in my drawings, and instead use the story itself to make the drawings interesting to the viewer. Obviously the difference between Picasso and me is that Picasso didn’t have a series of pictures and a written story with which to guide his viewers through what he was getting at. So when we look at paintings such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, we can’t be sure as viewers what Picasso was trying to portray through his use of cubism, but what I believe is obvious is that we aren’t supposed to be noticing the feminine body, because otherwise he would’ve just done a nude of a beautiful woman simple and plain. This painting with its abstract design forces the viewer to look at other aspects than just the people, it makes us notice the colors used, the African tribal masks on two of their faces, the Iberian styled faces of the other three, and even the colorless fruit in the middle.

It is my belief that abstract art whether it be as abstract as Picasso’s cubism, or a modern cartoon theme, can be just as effective, and maybe even more effective in some cases than Classical art. By allowing a viewer to look past the normal everyday forms they are used to, they may also begin to recognize other aspects of the things they are looking at, and this can be a very insightful way to look at things.

~Michael Someck