Picasso’s Guitar
10 observational details
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1. It looks slightly deconstructed even though it has few distinctive features to convey that it is a guitar
2.It must be extremely fragile since it’s made of delicate materials such as paper, card board, string
3. Picasso has made use of various distinctive shapes to make it look guitar like, such as a triangle, semi circle.
4. It almost slightly resembles his cubical work in his cubism art pieces
5. The base of the guitar is tilted in a rather unusual manner
6.The fact that he hasn’t painted over the guitar makes it all the more effective in my perspective
7. It is extremely simplistic, or atlases looks rather simplistic
8.It seems as though Picasso intentionally didn’t worry about the extra strings sticking out of the guitar in a rather messy way
9. He clearly likes using similar shapes in most of his works
10. It is very intentionally messy and not trying to reach perfection when it comes to showing an “exact” real life looking guitar, it seems even a little out of his imagination and slightly wonky
My initial impression of the sculpture was that it is very striking, as even though it isn’t exactly guitar looking. Picasso found some distinctive features of a guitar and incorporated those to catch the viewers eye. The use of shapes came across really simplistically but very effectively. The simplicity of the guitar, without any color on it , was something that made this sculpture very strong and captivating for me. It was different for it’s raw look, and it’s messy atmosphere; how even though it is so minimal, it is so effective.
From the curatorial statement, I learnt that Picasso used this unique look with the guitar to display the aspect of ‘negative space’; something that wasn’t seen in the usual “still life” during that time. He used extremely fragile materials to make a structural sculpture. Furthermore, giving the sculpture a cubical sort of look, like he did in his cubist paintings. In the perspective, even though the cutting and threading seems simplistic, the beauty of this piece lies in it’s simplicity.
