/lit/ - Literature

What's a Picasso?

>>11358660
trash

>>11358575

Joyce, arguably. Him more than anyone else.

Its actually Joyce but the mediums are different enough for it to be that different
>>11358662
If you cant appreciate what Picasso was doing you have a ways to go

My impression of James Joyce is he's very front-brain, like a logician--My first guess would have been Faulkner.

I've just returned from my journey to Barcelona.
Can someone explain me the alleged genius of Picasso?

>>11358766
>can paint realist boring shit that was made obsolete by photography
>decide to fuck shit up
>get famous because of it

>>11358766
Ahh--if you learn now, you're gonna be kicking yourself for not visiting his works over there!

The long and short of it is he had the naturalistic touch of a master artist by the time his balls dropped. At which point--you've maxed out depicting reality--do you just quit and do law school? Picasso kept pushing.

He was 15 when he made this. This is housed in BARCELONA at the Museu Picasso, along with many of his early masterpieces which bridge the gap from realism to his countless personal styles. Museu Picasso is the perfect place to start. Book another flight!

>>11358766
Ahh--if you learn now, you're gonna be kicking yourself for not visiting his works over there!

The long and short of it is he had the naturalistic touch of a master artist by the time his balls dropped. At which point--you've maxed out depicting reality--do you just quit and do law school? Picasso kept pushing.

He was 15 when he made this. This is housed in BARCELONA at the Museu Picasso, along with many of his early masterpieces which bridge the gap from realism to his countless personal styles. Museu Picasso is the perfect place to start. Book another flight!

>>11358792
I actually did visit his museum there and really enjoyet his pre-cubism and pre-surrealism period of work, especially "the blue period" evoked my admiration. I just can't grasp the sense of genious in his later work.

Its Gertrude Stein oh my God

Joyce... Not even a little bit, please take an English course

>>11358766
Never studied art history and I don't look at art on here or instragram, etc but I can tell you seeing a Picasso irl is just wonderful

>>11358809
Ah, you're so lucky then.

As for his later work, you'll want to start with his neoclassical stuff from the 20's; in which he describes and renders forms as the eye sees while still taking liberties for a more pleasing composition.

From there, it's only a small jump to discover even his most "flat" works serve incredible arguments of 3D form! With his more challenging late works that aren't neoclassical: try to think of his flat colors representing 3D form the way a mathematician would use more efficient notation/abbreviation. There simply didn't exist enough time in his day to render every single plane. Examine the subject as though it's a sculpture sitting in front of you.

>>11358896
I said 20's, but late 10's and early 20's would be more accurate for his neoclassical work.

>>11358823
No lie, for every Picasso in a museum, I set a timer for up to 30 minutes dedicated solely to stand in front of it.

In a grander sense, we've come to expect things on computer screens to be flat, so Picasso's innovation necessarily cannot translate on-screen. Truly to witness the interplay between flatness and depth works only in person.

I just wish I could forget the part of me that knows about the flatness of TV screens and phone screens, then walk up to that image in the OP (now at MoMA) for the first time. We take it for granted now, but flatness was rare back then.

It's Wallace Stevens

>>11358575
Burroughs tbqh

I think Pound has been compared to Picasso before, as their ‘style’ is their multiplicity of styles. And Stein, of course

no one cares that you know the first thing about art

Thanks for the suggestions; I have a lot of reading to do. Poets especially are an excellent choice I hadn't considered.
>>11358813
>>11359512
I only know Gertrude Stein the art collector; I'll have to check out her writing as well.

>>11359585
Wisdom is good with an inheritance. Besides, art isn't about knowing, friend, it's about seeing.

>>11358575
I'd say Kafka, but only aesthetically. Kafka doesn't display the emotional range of Picasso.

>>11360559
This

>>11358792
Wow, that’s amazing for a 15 year old. The faces are a bit crude and most show that he’s still a 15 year old, but it seems ridiculous to say that when it’s many times better than anything most could paint as a 15 year old, including myself. Picasso basically seems like someone who got so good at his craft while so young he decided, “Eh, fuck it, might as well fuck around since perfection seems boring.”

I just love that literature didn't fall from grace like the visual arts. Even Joyce couldn't meme the medium into the ground, and boy did he try to do it.

>11361130
Boomers never fail to bring the cringe.

>>11361147
I just love how you call contemporary art a meme when exclusively uneducated laymen such as yourselves tend only to reject it as a valid cultural unit.

>>11361280
it's bullshit and your mind is memed and youre a faggot

>>11361291
Okay, I'll humor you. The attached image will serve my so-called "reaction image" to your comment.

Hey, it kind of works! You're right after all!

>>11358575

>cuts up things everyone did
>stitch back together in different order
>art

Yes we do

>>11358663
>>11358665
Although Joyce's writing was totally innovative, he had a total mastery of writing that was beautiful and intricate even when he was writing in a traditional style and his work was never crude. The equivalent could not be said of Picasso.

>>11361280
>>11361280
Why is it, then, that great works of art from 700 + years ago can still inspire a sense of awe in any person of any level of education, regardless of whether the viewer has any particular knowledge/ context to give the work significance, while most contemporary art couldn't even muster any emotion in those who claim to like it? What works of contemporary art do you think will be admired hundreds of years down the line? Could you imagine someone looking at a piece of contemporary art and being amazed that a human could create something that complex and beautiful?

>>11361497
I bet you unironically think that “avant-garde art” and “contemporary art” are interchangeable terms.

>>11361419
do you mean to say picasso's later work was crude? im not disagreeing with crude as a value netural descriptor, but it should not be disputed that picasso had mastery. he drew this when he was 11.

>>11361513
Could you answer my question?

>>11361531
>implying that proves he "mastered" anything

painted this when he was 16

>>11361553
and this when he was 16. he clearly could paint and draw things realistically and accurately from a very young age

>>11361497
For once we might have had a peaceful thread with modern art but noooo, we have to stare at Pieta for the millionth time. Are you going to post Mona Lisa next? This is what Warhol was criticizing, you're taking away meaning from classical art, to you it's just a symbol.
>while most contemporary art couldn't even muster any emotion in those who claim to like it?
1. The purpose of art isn't to cause an emotional reaction.
2. When it is made to cause an emotional reaction, contemporary art generally does affect me.
>great works of art from 700 + years ago can still inspire a sense of awe in any person of any level of education
They don't, lel, people are at best impressed by muh realism, blatant tearjerker scenes such as Repin's and CHIAROSCURO in those works, not by the emotional depth, the composition, usage of colours, lighting, symbolism. Will an average, dull person that doesn't want to think be touched by the simple, honest beauty of pic related? Nah.

>>11358813
Obviously this.

>>11361673
average dumb people do find that older traditional art beautiful, youre just a dick

>>11361497
I see your problem. You're missing crucial links in the chain. Read up on Romanticism up to the Salon artists versus the post-Impressionists. I'm talking mid to late 19th century. This should allow you to realize that "art," specifically Western art, has been an utterly fluid process with no single non-differentiable moment that "broke" it.

Or maybe you can keep sitting in your little close-minded view that the past 250 years of transcending realism were 100% frivolous, and people should have up and dropped it as soon as the camera was invented. The choice is yours.

>>11361694
It is perfectly valid to view impressionism as the beginning of a degeneration of artistic forms that culminated with shit like abstract expressionism and basically just left a gaping hole where tradition should be.

>>11361691
They just pretend they to, just like most soi-disant traditionalists on this imageboard.

>>11361710
do you view plebs as being subhuman or something? youve never talked to a 100iq type person about art and see that they genuinely do like it?

>>11361700
Impressionism and abstract expressionism are both parts of Western art tradition

>>11361716
yeah my point was you can view them as the deterioration of western forms. Im aware that you don't but plenty of people do

>>11361673
Please leave the condescending jabs about my taste/ knowledge of art aside because I am not in the mood to watch some conceited cunt on the internet masturbate their ego. You've still chosen to ignore the core of what I said.

let me make it clear. Classical art can inspire a sense of awe because of its complexity (both in terms of its depth of meaning and the skill of the artist) and its beauty, not only because of its life-like accuracy. They are works of great imagination, meaning and skill. This is clear to anyone, and the value of it is obvious, it is inherent to it, regardless of the context. The value of modern art is entirely in its context, strip it of its context (being learned in contemporary art, understanding what the artist is 'getting at' etc.) and there is very little to admire.

Nick Land

>>11361673
I bet you're as noxiously fucking dull in real life as you are smug and pretentious online.

>>11361419
if you think Joyce never wrote anything crude then you should read more Joyce

>>11358575
j k rowling

>>11361817
Based

>>11361753
This but unironically

>>11361714
>youve never talked to a 100iq type person about art and see that they genuinely do like it?
Have you? I see many "average" people being equally interested in contemporary art.

>>11361753
>Please leave the condescending jabs about my taste/ knowledge of art
I didn't really intend to insult your taste altogether, just sarcastically pointed out how you're constantly reusing the same stale meme-tier works as exemplary, and that it is reducing their value. Pieta is a masterpiece, not a symbol that you aggressively fire at people. Just post some other work for a change.
>This is clear to anyone, and the value of it is obvious, it is inherent to it, regardless of the context
Are you sure? Because I don't think all non-european cultures would see it the same way. This supposedly universal art and value is a product of one small continent's six centuries worth of culture, founded on christianity. Would an ancient egyptian, for example, comprehend at all a painting that uses perspective? How would he understand the weight of Jesus' suffering on the cross, wearing his crown of thorns? What the egyptian culture demanded from art for thousands of years was something completely different from us. Skill as such, imagination, complexity were irrelevant concepts to them, they are just one of the many people who don't have the same context and lens towards art as we do. They'd certainly have to learn and adapt to appreciate stuff like baroque art (which was criticized in its own time for being too unclear and confusing, instead of being adored universally).
>The value of modern art is entirely in its context, strip it of its context (being learned in contemporary art, understanding what the artist is 'getting at' etc.) and there is very little to admire
I'm really not that "learned" in art. I have read one book on the history of art and that's it, pretty much. Yet, I don't have problems enjoying modern art. Picasso can be touching, disturbing or simply fascinating to look at, Matisse and Rothko are generally soothing and meditative etc etc. You don't need any hidden knowledge, just sensitivity and willingness to reflect upon what you see.

>>11361753
I think the problem with contemporary visual arts is that it tried so hard to be deep while being all about style over substance. Surrealism and modernism, with roots on the same basis, still managed to separate itself from classical art, without losing it's essence.
Meanwhile music and literature, become extremely commercial in the early and late 20th century respectively. Not saying that books weren't always for making cash, but at least they were less blatant about it.

>>11361929
You're either a woman or redditor.

>>11361947
Great argument

>>11361947
found the /r/engineeringstudents user
>>11361929
good post

>>11361929
>I'm really not that "learned" in art. I have read one book on the history of art and that's it, pretty much.
welcome to /lit/

>>11358575
Holy shit, I was literally just reading about that painting.

Too be fair it takes a fairly high IQ to understand abstraction

>>11361419
ah yes, because saying BEKEKEKEEKKEKE is not crude

>>11361419
>never crude
>lobster and mayonnaise

>>11358575
Gertrude Stein, Hemingway's BFF who tried to create literary cubism in pic related. She begins every poem with a word, then attempts to describe the word in as many ways as possible without giving a literal description of it.

Excerpt:

A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

>>11358575
Your mom

>>11361929
Any open mind frequenting this board is worth acknowledgement, so thanks for taking over while I left for dinner.

salvador dali and pablo picasso are literally the same person

>>11362407
This image says all you need to know about the difference between Picasso and Dali.

The fact Dali won out in the eyes of the general populace is a bitter source of scorn I have for our culture. Dali to me represents those action blockbusters which gross $300 million.

Dali is going to give you something spectacular rendered in the way your eyes would see it--He strips the mythological.

Picasso will contrarily render something you see everyday with such magnificence--He so uplifts the ordinary.

/lit/ is pro-Picasso and anti-Dali.

>>11362493
I can’t read this post without doing a snooty accent

Holy shit, I have not slept in 30 hours and this is my fourth attempt posting without error.
>>11362407
/lit/ is pro-Picasso and anti-Dali.

This image says all you need to know about the difference between Picasso and Dali. The fact Dali won out in the eyes of the general populace is a bitter source of scorn I have for our culture. Dali to me represents those action blockbusters which gross $300 million.

Dali is going to give you something spectacular rendered in the way your eyes would see it--He debases the transcendent.

Picasso will contrarily render something you see everyday in a matter you would never believe possible--He uplifts the ordinary.

>>11362502
Sorry about that, I get especially up on my high horse when I'm sleep deprived. I'm generally chill with art of all kind, it's just Dali and his comparison to Picasso specifically hearken back to especially acerbic conversations I've had with a Dali-fanatic buddy of mine.

>>11358660
Nothin, whatsapicasso with you?!
Eh eh eh eh

>>11362505
Fuck yourself with a hedge-trimmer :3

>>11362505
Whose is whose

>>11362516
The conversations I have with my buddy never end in ad hominem. He does however get pissed and stop talking to me for a few weeks, and I've had that problem my whole life, heh.

>>11362520
Picasso's on the left, Dali's on the right! It's at the Art Institute of Chicago, which showcases many a two of them side by side.

>>11362509
Ah, no worries my man personally I am a sucker for surrealist art myself mostly because it makes me think more bizarrely which is always needed but my tastes run more bleak. I can understand though your praise of Picasso but I fucking love a good spectacle.

>>11362531
I do admit there exist a time and feeling for both. I would be less bitter if Picasso could have his own slice of today's entertainment industry to call his own!

>>11362505

>anti-Dali

I'm happy that someone is raising this rhetorical point as Dali literally out-surrealled his boring leftist coterie, both because he understood marketing and also because he actually is the better artist. I would be happy to correct any /lit/ user who would speak ill of Avida Dollars, if any should dare to reply.

>>11362540
I don’t think most people give a shit about art or literature anyway.

>>11361714
I have talked to a 100 iq person about art and they told me they get the same reaction of awe from Michelangelo and Kinkade. I really don't know why should I take that person as a litmus test of anything.

/lit/ in a goodreads comments thread
>fucking pleb normalfags, how dare they not to like [insert /lit/core]
/lit/ in this thread
>yeah but what does the average retard think of it? gotcha!

>>11362935
Thanks so much for introducing me to Euan Uglow. I saw the thumbnail and I seriously thought it was a neoclassical Picasso I hadn't yet seen. For some reason I thought the artist was a woman, though, once I clicked on the full thing.

God, the sheer scale and power, yet also ease and elegance supposed by her body language. She's like a roosting dragon. Do you have any other favorites by him?

>>11362029
“Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek!” is a reference to Aristophanes’ “The Frogs”.