Man with Mandolin (left)Pablo Picasso
1911
Musée Picasso, Paris
Man with Guitar
Pablo Picasso
1911
Private Collection, Paris
In contrast, Picasso’s music paintings from his first summer in Céret reflect the qualities of the village’s music, and music becomes the primary source for the painting’s attributes and the main subject. This time period was the beginning of Picasso’s prolific creation of musical-themed paintings. In 1911, Picasso’s interest in musical subjects was suddenly rejuvenated, and he produced more than twice the number of musical paintings compared to the previous two years (Buettner 107). As Barcelona was a center of Spanish culture and the capital of Catalonia, we question why Céret and not Barcelona sparked this sudden musical explosion (see Picasso’s Musical Background). A twofold answer seems to lie in the difference in music culture present at these locations. Barcelona was a city, in contrast to the much smaller village of Céret. The result was a greater emphasis on classical or ‘serious’ music in Barcelona, and Picasso’s favor for popular music is well known (Buettner 104, 102). In Céret, Picasso was surrounded by folk culture and able to partake in the musical richness of the village. It was the more personal and intimate connections that Picasso was able to make with the Céret music and its musicians that influenced his art.
Specifically, the effect of Céret’s music, especially the sardana’s rhythmical elements, on Picasso is noticeable in both Man with Mandolin (1911) and Man with Guitar (1911), created after Picasso’s first Céret summer in 1911. As Buettner and Kachur detailed in depth, the Catalan influence on Picasso is first evident through his choice of instruments that were associated with the Catalan folk culture, including the sardana’s cobla orchestra. For example, Picasso painted The Accordionist (1911) and The Clarinet (1911) (see The Tenora). However, while Buettner and Kachur focused their attention on subject matter, we can go further by exploring the music’s influence on the technical style of painting. By doing this, we can see that the characteristic qualities of the sardana become incorporated into Picasso’s representations. Though the subject of Man with Mandolin and Man with Guitar is the same as his 1903 The Old Guitarist – a man with a guitar – the similarities end there. In The Old Guitarist, the music is not the motivation for the painting nor does it inspire Picasso’s style. Rather, the guitar is simply an appropriate prop for a painting of the humble existence of a street beggar. However, in Picasso’s subsequent guitar paintings, the instruments and music becomes the focus and main contributor to the painting. Also striking about the subsequent guitar paintings, as this time period marks the beginning of Cubism, is the heavy use of geometric shapes – lines, blocks, triangles, semicircles, etc. – to render the image. Rather than the clear portrayal and delineation of the objects in The Old Guitarist, a slanted rectangle is the neck, a horizontal rectangle the mouth, and two semicircles the eyes in Man with Guitar. Similarly, in Man with Mandolin, a circle intersected by a long rectangle is assumed to be the man’s arm cradling the body of the guitar. Such geometric elements and configurations have become associated with Cubism. Horton Presley assessed this defining aspect of Cubism in his Principles of Music and Visual Arts: “The Cubists saw nature…as a series of planes interacting with one another in very complex ways� (Presley 133). Rather than illustrating the object realistically, Picasso now saw the subject as an interaction between geometrical shapes and used geometry to create the impression of the subject. These structured aspects of the paintings correspond to the calculated and rhythmical characteristics of the sardana. Addressing this rhythm, Josep Pérez, in his study “The Sardana as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenon in Contemporary Catalonia,� explained, “The dance is always based upon a duple rhythm, usually with meters of 2/4, 4/4 or 6/8. Each sardana consists of two musical sections which repeat themselves according to a definite pattern� (Pérez 39). The sardana’s structure, based on this rhythm and the exact repetition of the two separate musical phrases, corresponds to Picasso’s choice of repetitious geometrical shapes and patterns. The rhythm provided a firm foundation for the music, and Picasso replicated this through his use of geometry to provide the backbone for his painting.
This mathematical influence is combined with the seemingly paradoxical improvisatory aspect of the sardana music to inspire freedom and abstract components in Picasso’s works. Contrary to The Old Guitarist, in which the music of the guitar seems to be somewhat responsible for the restricted ‘blue’ mood of the scene, these paintings are free and lack boundaries for the objects. This style may be Picasso’s desire to imitate the creativeness of the sardana dance. Pérez wrote, “The sardana is a collective dance in which an unlimited number of dancers hold hands with adjacent dancers… The dancers count the measures and convert them into steps� (Pérez 39). The dance can be described as complex improvisation, as the connected dancers are constantly interacting and innovating within the rules – made possible by the strong rhythmical foundation that keeps the dance together. Picasso transferred this improvisation style to the canvas by rejecting the accepted practices of traditional art – particularly the dismissal of portraying distinct objects separated by clear lines. In these two paintings, as in his Ma Jolie (Woman with a Zither or Guitar) (1911-1912), the boundaries of the humans and the guitars are unclear, and the objects blend into each other. Shapes overlap and intersect each other, cascading down the painting. However, the paintings are held together by the geometric repetitions – a puzzle of shapes mimicking the inspirational freedom of the sardana within the rules of the traditional rhythm.
Ma Jolie Pablo Picasso
1911-1912
Museum of Modern Art, NY