La Vie (1903) by Pablo Picasso
Meaning of Blue Period Expressionist
Painting of Casagemas
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La Vie (1903) by Pablo Picasso
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La Vie (Life) |
La Vie (Life) (1903)Contents • Description Name: La Vie (life) (1903)
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ART APPRECIATION
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Analysis of La Vie (Life) by PicassoThis sombre work was painted by Picasso in Barcelona during his Blue Period, four years before Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and his subsequent invention - with Georges Braque (1882-1963) - of Cubist painting, namely Analytical Cubism (1909-12) and Synthetic Cubism (1912-14). At the time he was 22-year old unknown artist who had yet to make his mark. An important example of expressionism, La Vie was Picasso's memorial tribute to his close friend Carlos Casagemas (1881-1901), a fellow Spanish art student who had accompanied him on his first trip to Paris (October 1900), where they established themselves temporarily in the Montmartre studio of Isidre Nonell (1872-1911), a friend from Barcelona. A moody individual with a taste for Nietzsche and a tendency to depression, Casagemas fell in love with an artist's model called Germaine Pichot (1880-1948). Germaine rejected his advances - either because she was already married, or because he was impotent. And so, on February 17th of the following year, when Picasso was in Spain, Casagemas went out to dinner with friends at the L'Hippodrome, and at about 9:00 p.m. stood up, gave a brief speech and then pulled out a pistol and shot Germaine in the head. Not realizing that the bullet had only grazed her temple, he then shot himself in the head. It was the death of his young friend that triggered Picasso's so-called 'Blue Period', and opened up a new chapter of Spanish Painting in Paris. La Vie was not Picasso's first tribute to Casagemas. His first commemorative painting was Death of Casagemas (190l, oil on wood, Musee Picasso, Paris). This was followed by his first 'blue' painting, The Burial of Casagemas (oil on wood, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), which was heavily influenced by the El Greco masterpiece The Burial of Count Orgaz (1586, oil on canvas) which Picasso had just seen in the Church of Sainto Tome, Toledo. After making numerous preparatory sketches and studies - see, for instance, his drawing Study for La Vie (1903, Indian ink on paper, Musee Picasso) - Picasso finally completed La Vie in late 1903. Its gloomy atmosphere fully reflected Picasso's preoccupation with life and death. Indeed, he seemed to be surrounded by signs of mortality: his younger sister had died of diphtheria in 1895; the painter Gauguin (1848-1903) had attempted suicide in 1897; two years later Hortensi Guell (1876-99) - another of his artist-friends - committed suicide; and in 1903, just as Picasso was starting La Vie, Gauguin died in poverty in the South Seas. A comparatively large work measuring roughly 6-feet high and 4-feet wide, La Vie is a blue and white figure painting which appears to be set in an artist's studio. It contains four main elements. To the left is a naked couple who stand facing a robed mother (right) holding an infant. The couple appears to be Casagemas and Germaine, and they seem perfectly content together. However, in a gesture - now known to derive from Noli me Tangere (1525, Prado Museum, Madrid) by Correggio (1494-1534) - Casagemas points rather timidly towards the infant, as if to emphasize what might have been. In the middle, on the wall behind the two sets of figures, there are two paintings arranged one above the other. The lower one appears to depict a single, nude, sorrowful woman - reminiscent of the pen and ink drawing by Van Gogh (1853-1890) entitled Sorrow (1882, New Art Gallery Walsall); the upper one shows a pair of nude lovers, possibly girls, who seem to be holding on to each other for comfort. La Vie - which, according to X-ray analysis, was repainted over one of Picasso's earlier works entitled Last Moments (1898), which he exhibited in Barcelona in 1899 - was well received and almost immediately purchased by Jean Saint Gaudens, a French art dealer. |
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Art critics and historians have had a field day with all the symbolism in this picture, much of which we can only guess at. In simple terms, the meaning of La Vie can be found on two levels: as the artist's commentary on Casagemas; and as the artist's autobiographical view of himself and his life. In the first interpretation, the couple (as stated above) represent Casagemas and Germaine. He is pointing to the family he will never have, while she embraces him - perhaps out of guilt (she became Picasso's lover when he returned to Paris) - while also avoiding eye-contact with the mother whom she cannot now be. The meaning of the two paintings is somewhat ambiguous. Clearly the bottom one symbolizes solitary misery, but who's? The top one suggests 'togetherness' but not necessarily happiness. Or is it Germaine trying to comfort Casagemas about their incompatibility as a couple?
As an autobiographical statement, the male figure represents the 'artist', that is to say Picasso; the girl is his lover Germaine. The mother and infant represents Picasso and his mother, when he was a baby. With his 'noli me tangere' gesture, the artist indicates the paintings on the wall, as if to say: "I have grown up and left home, and I am an artist. We now belong in two different worlds." In other words, Picasso contrasts the secure world of childhood, with the harsh uncertainties of adulthood, as pictorialized in the two canvases. The slightly timid pose of the man, as well as the picture's monochrome colour palette, indicates that Picasso was not entirely confident about his future, at least in the short term. Certainly he had no idea that he would become one of the best artists of all time, and the leading representative of modern art of the 20th century!
Explanation of Other Paintings by Picasso • Neoclassical
Figure Paintings by Picasso (1906-30) • Boy
with a Pipe (1905) • Portrait
of Gertrude Stein (1906) • Two
Nudes (1906) Museum of Modern Art, New York. • Seated
Woman (Picasso) (1920) Musee Picasso, Paris. • Large
Bather (1921) Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris. • Two
Women Running on the Beach (The Race) (1922) Musee Picasso, Paris. • Woman
in White (1923) • Guernica
(1937) oil on canvas, Reina Sofia Art Museum, Madrid. • Weeping
Woman (1937) oil on canvas, Tate Collection, London. |
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• For the meaning of other expressionist paintings from Picasso's 'Blue Period', see: Homepage.
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