Picasso challenge

[mdeli]

A good early example of No Skill Realism is Picasso’s "Portrait of
Gertrude Stein" (1906). I have seen it in the museum many times and
always wondered why it should hang there.

I challenge anyone here to deny that that if this painting was
hanging among others in some university hallway among the usual
portraits and signed R. Mutt it would be judged as the worst and would
never get a second look. No street corner portraitist would get paid
for such a hack work.

Perhaps someone here will provide a more complimentary version of my
critique.

Picasso is said to have worked extremely hard on the Gertrude Stein
portrait taking many sittings and then revising it without the model a
year later.

Here we have a very conventional portrait. The placement and
composition are utterly conventional. The face and hands are solid
although the rest is far less finished.

The eyes and part of the mouth are like decals that have been
transferred to a solid head which looks like it was sculpted in rough,
carelessly tinted plaster. The wig looks like a mud flap that is
beginning to slide down the face and along the side of a flat pancake
ear. Unable to realistically separate the background and the cheek,
Picasso drew a brown line around it.

In order to get the best overview of the rest of this painting, cover
the face with a scrap of paper torn to fit over it and look at the
remainder of the picture. Note the "brown sauce" effect which is a
term accusingly used to point out a characteristic of academic
monotony. The solidity of the head and hands give way to a body which
is little more than an amorphous brown blob. Under a little scrutiny
the background deteriorates into a lot of dry brown crudely blended
schmier. Even the color is terrible and doesn’t display Picasso’s
colorist’s skill.

Mani DeLi
…no skill no art

[John Pacer]

hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote:

Did Picasso like Gertrude Stein? He's notorious for painting ugly
looking portraits of people he did not like.

"Cogito Ergo Sum"

[ainigma]

Maybe he was drunk. He did like his booze. He also liked his women. He maybe disliked
this woman. In any case, I like your critique on Gertrude. It makes me think. Since
this painting is "A PICASSO" it makes me think as to why it is lacking in skill in the
areas you have mentioned. Who knows what lurks in the mind of a great artist when
producing...and possibly under the influence.

[Erik Johnson]

On Thu, 28 Aug 1997 03:49:34 GMT, hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote:

>A good early example of No Skill Realism is Picasso’s "Portrait of
>Gertrude Stein" (1906). I have seen it in the museum many times and
>always wondered why it should hang there.

>> sniiiiip <<

I feel like I'm suffering from deja vu. Haven't I seen this post
before? Looks like you hooked more fish this time around.

-Erik Johnson
er...@phidias.colorado.edu
http://phidias.colorado.edu/vgallery.html

[Bob Cantor]

Erik Johnson wrote:
> =

> On Thu, 28 Aug 1997 03:49:34 GMT, hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote:

> =

> >A good early example of No Skill Realism is Picasso=92s "Portrait of

> >Gertrude Stein" (1906). I have seen it in the museum many times and
> >always wondered why it should hang there.

> =

> >> sniiiiip <<
> =

> I feel like I'm suffering from deja vu. Haven't I seen this post
> before? Looks like you hooked more fish this time around.

> =

> -Erik Johnson
> er...@phidias.colorado.edu
> http://phidias.colorado.edu/vgallery.html

These criticisms of Picasso make me feel like I'm listening to someone
criticizing a picture of a dog for not looking like a cat. There are
certainly many valid criticisms a person *could* make about a painting
of a dog, but droning on endlessly about the ways in which it doesn't
look like a cat doesn't seem to me to be a particularly productive use
of bandwidth.

[nedd]

On 3 Sep 1997, Norman Strand~ wrote:

> when Picasso was still an unknown. I think she wanted the painting to
> go the the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of the Museum of Modern
> Art. Gertrude Stien wrote a portrait of Picasso describing him as a
> great artist.

Yes, Stein's poem appeared in Alfred Stieglitz's _Camera Work_ in
1912. It starts like this:

One who, some were certainly following was one who was completely
charming. One whom some were certainly following was one who was
charming. One whom some were following was one who was certainly
completely charming. etc...

It goes on ad on like this, and gets rather tiresome. Besides commenting
on Picasso's "greatness," the interesting thing about the poem is that it
attempts to recreate the Cubist idea of simultaniety, or multiple
view-points, in text. The many "ones" are the textual equivalents of the
many angels one experiences in a Cubist portrait.
As for the "quality" of Picasso's portrait, I think this is a
pointless debate. But it is worth noting that the emotions that the work
provokes says something about it impact on the viewer, good or bad. I
think that it is the first sign of a crisis that was brewing in Picasso's
thinking, the moment when Picasso, in the words of R. Krauss, "watched
depth and touch--the carnal dimensions--disappear quite literally from
sight."

AN

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