Reclining Woman on the Beach - Essay Example

The painting “Reclining Woman on the Beach” is one of Pablo Picasso’s earliest works, and contains many elements that are both similar and different from the cubism that would make him famous in years to come. It is an oil painting on canvas. This is a two dimensional painting without heavy use of stucco or any other elements that would give it added depth, and obviously vaguely represents the female form using a heavily stylized abstracted style that is reminiscent in some way’s of Picasso’s later cubism. This painting has two distinct and strongly contrasting elements, the first being the woman and the beach she is lying on, and the second being the mountains and sky that serve as a background to the image. The woman and the beach she is lying on both use thick lines and broad, sweeping curves to define their shapes, while the mountain tops in the background are jagged geometric affairs like triangular teeth cutting into the sky, which creates offset parallel strucutures between the sky and the mountains – that is, if you mirrored the sky over a horizontal plane of the painting, it would make the shape of the mountains, and the mountains would make the shape of the sky. The coloration in the two main elements are also vastly different – the woman is predominantly pale or pearly, but has many dashes of different colors throughout her body, that fade in and out gradually – green in some places, purple in others and so on. The mountains and sky, on the other hand, are broad swaths of a single color, with the mountains having distinct blotches of white on them. The jagged mountain tops serve as a geometrical counterpoint to the curve of the woman, emphasizing her curviness and underscoring the fundamental importance of curves to a woman’s beauty or form. Furthermore, the softy changing colors on the woman’s body could indicate aging, and imply mutability, which combined with her soft curves contrast with the broad expanses of unchanging colors on the mountains and the sky, reminding the viewer about the corruptibility of beauty and the frailty of life, especially when compared with the age old mountains that go on essentially unchanged. With all this contrast, Picasso ties together the two elements by treating them with broadly the same light and texture to create a unified work out of all of these disparate parts. There are many elements of design present that touch on similar topics to the elements of form. The scale of the woman, who takes up the vast majority of the space on the canvas, both implies the woman is in the foreground (obviously) but also puts her in a relative position of power over the mountains, which are made subordinate by their less imposing size. She even casts a shadow on the mountains, making it appear that they are in fact close behind her and she is simply massive, further reinforcing her importance. The mountains are essentially the same shape, repeated again and again, which serves to emphasize their regularity and eternal nature, which calls the viewer’s attention to how unique the woman reclining on the beach is, that she is one-of-a kind, and that every person, while sharing forma similarities to other people, is completely unique. This composition is notably lacking in white space, with the closest things being the sky in the background and the orange shape that takes up a portion of the right side of the screen. This both makes the woman seem to be the negative space, but also gives a crowded compositional element to contrast to the woman’s apparent ease. The content of this work appears to be an analysis of the woman’s form, a kind of toying with it that over-emphasizes some shapes while under-emphasizing others. The ratio of the woman’s head to the rest of her body may be a telling indication of the focus of the piece, which could be set to objectify the woman who is at its heart. It also touches on themes of beauty, of the unique visual nature of each individual human, and of the soft, changing mutability of human nature in contrast to the things in the word around us. This piece accomplishes its goals well, generally, and generally fulfills its goals of discussing the nature of human form, especially its mutability and relative weakness compared to the word around it. But it also contrasts this mutability and weakness with the primary importance of the human being, by showing it as dominating the natural world. Finally, it plays with the nature of beauty and of proportion in an interesting way, creating a series of curves that should be idealized in a woman but somehow fail to make her beautiful. The next piece I will discuss is also a work by Pablo Picasso. It is entitled “Agressive” Crouching Woman,” and, as one would perhaps expect, depicts an aggressive looking crouching woman. It is a painting with no elements that give it any third dimension, it is a purely two dimensional painting. It is oil painting on canvas, and was composed in the early 1950’s, in the heart of Picasso’s cubist period, and is a representative of some of his most important works. Though representing a woman, this is a highly abstract painting that heavily toys with each individual element of the woman, and uses inhuman shapes, textures, patterns and so on to represent the human form. One of the first thing that strikes you when viewing this painting is its color. Everything on the canvas is some shade of grey, with perhaps only the faintest hints of other colors in some small parts of the composition. Grey both colors the woman’s form, but also serves as a background, making the line that create the outline of the woman the only thing that separate her from her surroundings. These lines also separate the distinct elements of the woman from each other, for instance, one breast from the other and one side of the face from the other, creating the impression that any division between the self and the world that surrounds the self is something of an abstraction, and mirrored in the internal divisions within the self. These lines vary from being bolt, thick brush strokes to thin delicate ones, and also vary widely in shape – some have an unnatural straightness to them while others are highly curved, but all of them appear somehow geometric (that is, the curved parts seem to be part of circles while the straight ones form angles that make other shapes). In terms of elements of design, the most obvious and interesting thing this painting does is play with symmetry. Symmetrical features have long been held as a sign of beauty, and this painting works to analyze that by creating an incredible amount of asymmetry while implying symmetrical form. The asymmetry is formed in a number of ways, from incredibly asymmetrical ones such as having the mouth on one half of the face but the nose on the other, to more subtle features such as having vastly different sized breasts and eyes. These asymmetrical forms are especially jarring because so much of this work implies symmetry – there is a strong vertical line formed by the cleft of the woman’s vagina, that continues to the division between her breasts and finally concludes with the line that separates the halves of the face. The asymmetry is then further emphasized by the fact that there are in fact some symmetrical elements, for instance two triangles textured with horizontal lines that mirror each other almost perfectly, and the triangle created by the woman’s vulva that extends up the rest of the work, which is a perfectly symmetrical triangle despite the fact that everything contained within it is asymmetrical. This conscious juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry both serves to play with the classic elements of beauty and to create a very defined juxtaposition between the two halves of the “Agressive” Crouching Woman” who Pablo Picasso is portraying in this oil painting. The content of this work also relates to its symmetry. The fact that the woman is divided essentially into two distinct parts makes it appear at first blush that there are actually two women being portrayed, and that they are looking at each other. This illusion is especially prominent in the face, while becoming less so the further one moves down the body (with the breasts only being slightly different and the legs basically not at all). This recalls to the reader the idea that the “self” might be something of a construction, and that everyone actually has many competing ideas and personalities awash within themselves, and that is not neccissarily any one pure self. This fact is further emphasized by the lack of division between the form of the woman and the area that surrounds her, which are both colored in exactly the same scheme. This indicates that not only might the idea of a single self be something of an artifice, but the arbitrary delineation between the self and the surrounding is also somewhat artificial. This painting does what it sets out to do incredibly effectively, and fully lives up to its potential. It shows an absolute mastery of geometrical form, and requires such a mastery to be able to imply symmetry so heavily while at the same time completely deconstructing it and making an asymmetrical figure. It makes the viewer think about forms of beauty, about the essence of the self, the divisions within the self, and the artificial division between the self and the outside world. Read More