This drawing exemplifies many aspects of the style known as Analytic Cubism, pioneered by Picasso with his friend Georges Braque. Here, the artist reinterprets the female nude as a series of lines and semicircles. Areas of shading provide only hints of three-dimensional form; however, essential parts of a human body—head, neck, shoulders, arms, torso, breasts, legs, and kneecaps—appear nonetheless. Picasso, who received traditional art training early in life (his father was a professor of fine arts), piques the viewer’s desire to fill in, or “complete,” the figure according to academic standards of finish.

The met.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      5 days ago

      Well, it isn’t like seeing it is something that matters. It’s largely a semi intentional pareidolia. So not seeing the purported intended sub image is like not seeing a rabbit in a cloud.

      That being said, a lot of this kind of art works best with a kind of soft focus. Let your eyes drift out of the plane of the image to either a little behind or in front. Sometimes, that’ll trigger off the pareidolia and you’ll see something, though it may or may not be what the artist thought people would see.

      It’s kinda the trap of doing structured abstract stuff. If an artist is wanting to portray something, there’s always a tipping point of abstraction where they lose the ability to ensure the viewer sees what they see.

      That can be a very good thing, but it’s what makes all the various branches of cubism in particular a difficult thing to enjoy on a critical level. Yeah, it’s easy to decide if we like a given piece, but trying to analyze or interpret borders on mental masturbation. If you have to know what the goal was to “see” the original concept, then I think it fails as anything other than decoration. Picasso is usually good about that line being juuuust on the side of representative. This one teeters back and forth on that line for a lot of people.

      Again, tbh, it mostly fails my personal test of a piece being successful/interesting (however one would wish to think of it) because it treads too hard on that line. However, it also makes it a great example of the genre