Picasso at the Seattle Art Museum

Last night I went to the Seattle Art Museum exhibit of "Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris" with LJ and SOLJ, an exhibit of more than 150 works of art, from paintings and sculptures to prints, drawings, and photographs.

The painting above is called La Danse Villagoise and was painted in 1923. It's an oil with pastel. I like the sturdiness of the people. I also was particularly intrigued by how the color is applied. It looks like it's sitting on top of the painting instead of within the painting. I believe a lot of the highlight color was done with pastels. The blue, red, and white looks like it's been laid on top of the grey/black/white clothes. I think the people are farm people from the village who come into town to enjoy an evening of dancing. During the week, when working on their farm, they are black and white and working. But, on the weekend, they dance and color is added to their lives. That's why the color is laid on top of the black, grey, white. In my imagination anyway!

I enjoyed what I would call the architectural cubist paintings (though I don't have a good sample at this time).

I learned that the distorted images were Picasso's way of showing ALL views of an item at the same time - each angle of an item is presented as a joined unit. Profound way of breaking out of the box - in more ways than one.

Picasso himself picked out these pieces for inclusion in the Picasso Museum as a way to create his own artistic legacy. As a result, I think, the paintings are a depiction of what Picasso was experimenting with - the developing ideas and techniques. Although some of the paintings and drawings weren't finished, Picasso saw their value because it described his journey. I thought that was quite interesting.