Picasso was terribly effected by his friend Casagmas' death. Casagmas was a Catalan artist and constant companion of Picasso in Paris. Casagmas committed suicide over a love affair gone awry. For Picasso it was the loss of a great personal friend at a young age.
Pablo Picasso Death of Casagmas from google image
"Picasso continually attempted to exorcise the pain and guilt he experienced as a result of the death of Carles Casagemas; this struggle with mortality, human suffering, and pain was a constant theme throughout the continuing decades of Picasso's art. Many of his Blue Period works deal both directly and allegorically with these conflicts. Throughout his life, Picasso sought redemption from the issues of human mortality by creating a vast world of sexuality, strength, and virility. The specter of death, and his need for redemption and survival, haunted Picasso into his 90s." from Neurosurgery News
Pablo Picasso La Mort de Casagmas from google image
Picasso went into a deep depression after the death of his friend. It was then he started painting with green and blue paint and his subject matter depicted mans struggle with mortality and suffering and pain.
Picasso's Blue Period
A time depicting suffering
human suffering and depravity
La Vie Pablo Picasso from google image
Looking at death, suffering and pain in our lives is not easy. Losing people when you are young and the promise of life is taken away so cruelly seems terribly unfair. We cannot always reconcile these feelings within ourselves. When a life is lost to suicide there is almost always a feeling that if I could have done something, if I could have reached out more, then I could have saved my friend. Losing a loved one to violence leaves us often with a deep feeling of anger and bitterness. How could anyone have done such a thing, how can people be so cruel and unfeeling? Death and suffering are never easy for any of us and yet we will all experience it at some point in our lives. Picasso takes his grief over his friends death and develops a language of symbols he uses over and over again the rest of his life. The depression over his friends death also builds a deep compassion for suffering he sees in the human condition around him. Picasso could have become bitter and angry, he could have remained in a severe depression, but instead he used the lesson of personal suffering into that of exploration of suffering for all humans.
Artists incorporate the human feelings into their art work.
Whether it is joy, sorrow, sadness, horror or our own inhumanity towards each other, the artist is a sensitive who takes in the myriad of feelings, images, sounds and sensations that have no words to explain them. Then we interpret them into paintings, sculpture, poems, songs and plays. In this way we help explain the human condition so others can make sense of their world and emotions. There is great beauty in this world, there is great sadness, and there is inexplicable horror and violence. It is the stuff life is made of. It is what took Picasso into his Blue Period(click) and why he created the masterpiece Guernica.
Sadness, Anguish, Grief
Loss, Death, Pain
Michelangelo's Pieta from google image
Pain, Horror, Madness
Munch's The Scream from google image
Michelangelo's Pieta captures a tender sadness of a Mother's loss of her son, Munch's Scream incapsulates the absolute feeling of horror, pain and terror, and Hiroshige's Wave shows the power of nature over man.
Violence/Death/Mans Inhumanity to Man
Detail from Picasso's Guernica from google image
I thought we would touch on these themes and look at how artists capture these themes for us.
These past two weeks I have been in New Orleans, as you might have noted in my previous posts. I am here to help my partner with her Father who is dying of cancer that moved into the bones. He is in the last stages of cancer and the decline has been rather rapid. It is so difficult to see someone you love so ill and watch their body begin its final transition. Seeing the emotions of friends and family grapple with their emotions and watching him cope with pain and sadness is so wrenching. It brought to mind master art work that best depict such sadness and pain. Also in the time I have been here in New Orleans there has been an unprecedented rash of senseless violence and murders in a city mired in poverty and recovery from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Again as I was horrified by the senselessness of the murder of the young and impoverished. One such murder was that of a 5 year old girl at a birthday party and a 33 year old Mother of 3 driving three blocks away. Boys playing men shooting at each other over rivalries in broad day light. A city in turmoil with senseless murders and violence. It is not only New Orleans, but much of the United States and other countries are resorting to solving problems with guns and force. The world seems more violent these days and violence more senseless. More Mothers grieve the loss of their children than should. Boys that can never become men, and little girls that will never see their first dance. How do we cope with such loss, sadness, pain, and terror. Lets take a closer look at artists who have done so.
