The Old Guitarist
Encyclopedia
The Old Guitarist is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso
created in 1903. It depicts an old, blind, haggard man with threadbare clothing weakly hunched over his guitar, playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is currently on display in the Art Institute of Chicago
.
At the time of The Old Guitarist’s creation, Modernism
, Impressionism
, Post-Impressionism
, and Symbolism
had merged and created an overall movement called Expressionism
, which greatly influenced Picasso’s style. Furthermore, El Greco
, Picasso’s poor standard of living, and the suicide of a dear friend influenced Picasso’s style at the time, which came to be known as his Blue Period
. Several x-rays, infrared images, and examinations by curators revealed three different figures hidden behind the old guitarist.
, Darwinism
, and Marxism
ran rampant. Every single one of these forces accentuated the world’s impermanence and the fleeting nature of the present. These forces affected art and created an artistic period called Modernism, which strove to capture reality in its elusive and impermanent nature.
Many styles developed under this period, but Post-Impressionist artists and Symbolist artists influenced Picasso’s style the most. One of the Post-Impressionist artists Picasso followed was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
. Toulouse-Lautrec’s oblique and asymmetrical compositions, spatial diagonals, strong line patterns, and exaggerations of each element that created new tones can be easily seen in Picasso’s The Old Guitarist.
In addition, ideals held by Symbolist artists influenced Picasso’s rendition of The Old Guitarist. Symbolist artists rejected realism and naturalism, preferring ambiguous, subjective, and imaginative subjects. These subjects were almost always derived from emotions, dreams, and spiritual psyche. Indeed, blind men with powers of inner vision were common symbols during this movement. Therefore, the subject of The Old Guitarist, a blind, bedraggled, poor, and miserable old man, is easily derived and influenced by this movement.
In the twentieth century, all of these styles and general rejections of the classical, academic, and traditional led to the creation of Expressionism, the ultimate and most influential force in Picasso’s style. Expressionism refers to art that is directly related to the artist’s individual inner or personal vision, which is often charged with an emotional and provocative undercurrent. One of the many styles of the movement was Fauvism
, which simplified the design and used pure colors to obtain a stronger reaction from viewers. In Fauvism, color became the principal element responsible for the painting’s coherence and meaning. Clearly, Picasso’s use of different blue tones in The Old Guitarist follow the principles expressed in Expressionism and Fauvism. Lastly, The Old Guitarist recalls the style of El Greco, a sixteenth century Spanish artist known and recognized for his paintings’ elongated limbs, cramped, angular positions, and distorted portrayals of figures.
These events and circumstances led to the creation of Picasso’s Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904. The Blue Period is identified by the flat expanses of blues, greys, and blacks, melancholy figures lost in contemplation, and a deep and significant tragedy. However, some rumors say that Picasso was so poor he could only afford a canvas and tubes of blue paint. Either way, The Old Guitarist is a painting produced during Picasso’s Blue Period.
Furthermore, the guitarist shows no sign of life and appears to be close to death, implying little comfort in the world and accentuating the misery of his situation. Details are eliminated and scale is manipulated to create elongated, scrawny, and elegant proportions and to intensify the silent contemplation of the guitarist and a sense of spirituality. Despite the guitarist’s blindness, viewers feel the guitarist holds an inner vision and psyche. Moreover, the large, brown guitar is the only shift in color found in the painting. The guitar fills up the space around the guitarist physically and symbolically. In its dull brown, the guitar becomes so prominent against the blue background that it is the center and focus of the guitarist and the viewer. The guitar comes to represent the guitarist’s world and only hope for survival.
This blind and poor artist depends on his guitar and the small fare he can create from his music for survival. Plus, a guitar, as a musical instrument, is a natural mean for expressing emotions. This allows the guitarist to share and increase his loneliness. Some art historians believe this painting expresses the solitary life of an artist and the natural struggles that come with the career. Therefore, music, or art, becomes a burden and a separating force, isolating artists from the rest of the world. Art in general becomes a symbol of rejection and isolation. And yet, despite the isolation, the guitarist (artist) depends on the rest of society for survival. All of these latter feelings and emotions reflect Picasso’s predicament at the time, which could easily lead to the conclusion that Picasso was criticizing the state of society. The Old Guitarist becomes an allegory of human existence.
Recent x-rays and examinations from curators found three figures peering behind the old guitarist’s body. The three figures are an old woman with her head bent forward, a young mother with a small child kneeling by her side, and an animal on the right side of the canvas. Despite unclear imagery in crucial areas of the canvas, experts determined that at least two different paintings are found beneath The Old Guitarist.
In 1998, researchers used an infrared
camera to penetrate the uppermost layer of paint (the composition of The Old Guitarist) and clearly saw the second-most composition. By using this camera, researchers were able to determine a young mother seated in the center of the composition, reaching out with her left arm to her kneeling child at her right, and a calf or sheep on the mother’s left side. Clearly defined, the young woman has long, flowing dark hair and a thoughtful expression.
The Art Institute of Chicago shared its infrared images with the Cleveland Museum of Art
and the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C. Curator, William Robinson, identified a sketch of Picasso sent to his friend Max in a letter. It revealed the same composition of mother and child, but it had a cow licking the head of a small calf. In a letter to his friend Jacob, Picasso reveals he was painting this composition a few months before he began The Old Guitarist. Despite all of these discoveries, no one knows why Picasso did not complete the composition of the mother and child or what the composition of the older woman looks like and its significance.
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
created in 1903. It depicts an old, blind, haggard man with threadbare clothing weakly hunched over his guitar, playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is currently on display in the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
.
At the time of The Old Guitarist’s creation, Modernism
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
, Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
, and Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
had merged and created an overall movement called Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, which greatly influenced Picasso’s style. Furthermore, El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, Picasso’s poor standard of living, and the suicide of a dear friend influenced Picasso’s style at the time, which came to be known as his Blue Period
Blue Period
The Blue Period is a term used to define to the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors...
. Several x-rays, infrared images, and examinations by curators revealed three different figures hidden behind the old guitarist.
Context and influences
Pablo Picasso was born in 1881, an extremely chaotic, ever-changing, and unstable era where the Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
, and Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
ran rampant. Every single one of these forces accentuated the world’s impermanence and the fleeting nature of the present. These forces affected art and created an artistic period called Modernism, which strove to capture reality in its elusive and impermanent nature.
Many styles developed under this period, but Post-Impressionist artists and Symbolist artists influenced Picasso’s style the most. One of the Post-Impressionist artists Picasso followed was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
. Toulouse-Lautrec’s oblique and asymmetrical compositions, spatial diagonals, strong line patterns, and exaggerations of each element that created new tones can be easily seen in Picasso’s The Old Guitarist.
In addition, ideals held by Symbolist artists influenced Picasso’s rendition of The Old Guitarist. Symbolist artists rejected realism and naturalism, preferring ambiguous, subjective, and imaginative subjects. These subjects were almost always derived from emotions, dreams, and spiritual psyche. Indeed, blind men with powers of inner vision were common symbols during this movement. Therefore, the subject of The Old Guitarist, a blind, bedraggled, poor, and miserable old man, is easily derived and influenced by this movement.
In the twentieth century, all of these styles and general rejections of the classical, academic, and traditional led to the creation of Expressionism, the ultimate and most influential force in Picasso’s style. Expressionism refers to art that is directly related to the artist’s individual inner or personal vision, which is often charged with an emotional and provocative undercurrent. One of the many styles of the movement was Fauvism
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
, which simplified the design and used pure colors to obtain a stronger reaction from viewers. In Fauvism, color became the principal element responsible for the painting’s coherence and meaning. Clearly, Picasso’s use of different blue tones in The Old Guitarist follow the principles expressed in Expressionism and Fauvism. Lastly, The Old Guitarist recalls the style of El Greco, a sixteenth century Spanish artist known and recognized for his paintings’ elongated limbs, cramped, angular positions, and distorted portrayals of figures.
Blue Period
At the time, having renounced his classical and traditional education and searching for fame, Picasso and his friend, Carles Casagemas moved to Paris. Unfortunately, just a year later, Casagemas became hopelessly miserable from a failed love affair and committed suicide. Picasso was greatly afflicted by this horrible event and was soon depressed and desolate. In addition, Picasso was very poor. His absolute poverty made him identify and relate to beggars, prostitutes, and other downtrodden outcasts in society. In fact, The Old Guitarist is modeled after a blind artist in Madrid.These events and circumstances led to the creation of Picasso’s Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904. The Blue Period is identified by the flat expanses of blues, greys, and blacks, melancholy figures lost in contemplation, and a deep and significant tragedy. However, some rumors say that Picasso was so poor he could only afford a canvas and tubes of blue paint. Either way, The Old Guitarist is a painting produced during Picasso’s Blue Period.
Analysis
Every single element in The Old Guitarist was carefully chosen to render a stronger reaction in the audience. For example, the monochromatic color scheme eliminates the joy of changing colors and light and creates flat, two-dimensional forms that dissociate the guitarist from time and place. In addition, the overall muted blue palette creates a general tone of melancholy and accentuates a tragic and sorrowful theme. Also, the sole use of oil on panel causes a darker and more theatrical mood. Oil tends to blend the colors together without losing the colors’ brightness, creating an even more cohesive dramatic composition.Furthermore, the guitarist shows no sign of life and appears to be close to death, implying little comfort in the world and accentuating the misery of his situation. Details are eliminated and scale is manipulated to create elongated, scrawny, and elegant proportions and to intensify the silent contemplation of the guitarist and a sense of spirituality. Despite the guitarist’s blindness, viewers feel the guitarist holds an inner vision and psyche. Moreover, the large, brown guitar is the only shift in color found in the painting. The guitar fills up the space around the guitarist physically and symbolically. In its dull brown, the guitar becomes so prominent against the blue background that it is the center and focus of the guitarist and the viewer. The guitar comes to represent the guitarist’s world and only hope for survival.
This blind and poor artist depends on his guitar and the small fare he can create from his music for survival. Plus, a guitar, as a musical instrument, is a natural mean for expressing emotions. This allows the guitarist to share and increase his loneliness. Some art historians believe this painting expresses the solitary life of an artist and the natural struggles that come with the career. Therefore, music, or art, becomes a burden and a separating force, isolating artists from the rest of the world. Art in general becomes a symbol of rejection and isolation. And yet, despite the isolation, the guitarist (artist) depends on the rest of society for survival. All of these latter feelings and emotions reflect Picasso’s predicament at the time, which could easily lead to the conclusion that Picasso was criticizing the state of society. The Old Guitarist becomes an allegory of human existence.
Infrared discoveries
Recent x-rays and examinations from curators found three figures peering behind the old guitarist’s body. The three figures are an old woman with her head bent forward, a young mother with a small child kneeling by her side, and an animal on the right side of the canvas. Despite unclear imagery in crucial areas of the canvas, experts determined that at least two different paintings are found beneath The Old Guitarist.
In 1998, researchers used an infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
camera to penetrate the uppermost layer of paint (the composition of The Old Guitarist) and clearly saw the second-most composition. By using this camera, researchers were able to determine a young mother seated in the center of the composition, reaching out with her left arm to her kneeling child at her right, and a calf or sheep on the mother’s left side. Clearly defined, the young woman has long, flowing dark hair and a thoughtful expression.
The Art Institute of Chicago shared its infrared images with the Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...
and the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, D.C. Curator, William Robinson, identified a sketch of Picasso sent to his friend Max in a letter. It revealed the same composition of mother and child, but it had a cow licking the head of a small calf. In a letter to his friend Jacob, Picasso reveals he was painting this composition a few months before he began The Old Guitarist. Despite all of these discoveries, no one knows why Picasso did not complete the composition of the mother and child or what the composition of the older woman looks like and its significance.