systematic analysis of art
The title of this brilliant composition is "Girl Before a Mirror" by Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a Spanish painter from Malaga, Spain, but spent the majority of his life in France, where he produced this portrait of his beautiful mistress Marie Therese Walter in 1932. Girl Before a Mirror was painted with Oil on canvas, 64 x 51 1/4", and is now property of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The piece was a gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim.During the year of 1932, Picasso's productivity increased dramatically, a direct result of Picasso's pleasure with his newest love, Marie Therese Walter. Captivated by Walter, Picasso commenced a luxuriant series featuring her face and profile, which progressively became more harmonious and lyrical. In the case of the girl before the mirror, Picasso is telling a story of their love. Walter is portrayed in two forms: herself as Picasso sees her, and her reflection. Her eyes are properly on opposite sides of her nose; however, as we look at her face, it changes like an animated cartoon, from a beautiful, evocative face seen full on, shining like a full moon, to a calm pensive profile, to subtle differences in whether she's seen as looking right at the painter or half looking toward the mirro
Here, as so often before in his work, the diamond harlequin pattern, now of the wallpaper, can become a coded symbol of the artist's own presence, a symbol that proclaims his territory along with the abundant use of the national colors of Spain, red and yellow. In this context of astronomical rhythms, it is not surprising that the theme of the girl before a mirror has even been described as a girl before her mirror image counting the days when her period is due to find out whether or not she could be pregnant, thus becoming connected with the moon and the sun and concerned with giving life and facing death. It took a lot of courage for this fifty-year-old man to speak so forth-rightly and eloquently of his great sexual happiness (and self discovery) with his 22-year-old mistress. The profile view of the head extends to an enclosing contour of alabaster luminousness that whitens the stripe pattern to a celestial paleness, and suggests the chastity of both halo and veil. A significant development of this phase is the formalized experiment with color. This has a deep resonance in the iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, who joins in her body the same two heavenly radiances. Picasso's use of complementary colors creates an exciting painting. Such a duality, of course, echoes in numerous other directions, including the evocative imagery of the sun and moon's cycles around the earth. Moreover, the promise of sexual union and procreation revealed in Picasso's familiar genital puns (such as the visual rhyming of upright arm and breasts with erect phallus and testicles) is fulfilled in the mirror, where one breast, part fruit and part ovum, seems fertilized by a black spot.
Common topics in this essay:
Immaculate Conception,
Marie Therese,
Therese Walter,
Walter Picasso,
Simon Guggenheim,
Girl Mirror,
Malaga Spain,
Space Picasso's,
girl mirror,
John Berger,
,
marie therese,
therese walter,
marie therese walter,
mirror image,
picasso telling,
negative space,
patterns designs,
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Acceptance Essays
