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Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition)
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Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition)

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 15518

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Enrique Mallen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
World Languages & Cultures, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341, USA
Interests: Picasso studies; cognitive studies (art and psychology); semiotics of art; linguistics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Pablo Ruiz Picasso died in Mougins, France, on April 8, 1973, and in 2023, we will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death. In what has been called a “Picasso Celebration,” major cultural institutions will be organizing approximately 50 exhibitions, conferences and events in cities around Europe and North America which will take place throughout the year. There will not be any shortage of material. In a career spanning nearly eight decades, Picasso is said to have created over 50,000 works of art ranging from paintings, drawings and sculptures to ceramics, engravings and lithographs in an incredible range of styles that have established him as, arguably, the most influential and celebrated artist of the past 150 years. The Picasso Celebration program will trace a historiographical approach to his incredible and revolutionary artistic output. Planned shows include “Cubism and the Trompe L’Oeil Tradition” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (20 October–22 January 2023); “Picasso 1969-1972: the End of the Beginning” at the Musée Picasso in Antibes (8 April 2023–25 June); “Young Picasso in Paris” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (12 May 2023–7 August) and “Picasso vs Velázquez at the Casa de Velázquez” in Madrid (September 2023–November), among many others. That there are still things to cover in Picasso’s career should not surprise us. As Anne Umland, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has pointed out, "any time you go back to Picasso you always discover something new.” It is not only the enormous quantity and quality of his output that continue to astound the world, but also its currency in art today. Among the many significant symposia hosted in 2023, the one held at UNESCO in Paris will examine “Picasso in the 21st century; historical and cultural issues.” What type of influence can an artist who died fifty years ago have on the present? Nadia Arroyo, Director of Culture for the MAPFRE Foundation in Madrid, has explained: “Picasso is so influential because we can find different artists in only one artist.” This Special Issue is part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death and will focus on the varied and contemporary nature of his artistic production. Therefore, it is open to any contributions dealing with a contrastive analysis of his different styles, media and influences and their impact on art today.

Prof. Dr. Enrique Mallen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Picasso
  • celebration
  • styles
  • media
  • influences
  • contrast

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

32 pages, 34153 KiB  
Article
From Primal Matter to Surrogate Veneer: Wood and Faux Bois in Picasso’s Cubism
by Christine Poggi
Arts 2024, 13(3), 105; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030105 - 6 Jun 2024
Viewed by 1089
Abstract
In the spring and summer of 1906, while visiting the rural village of Gósol in the Spanish Pyrenees, Picasso executed his first woodcut, made two sculptures out of boxwood, and began to focus on the topoi of wood and the forest as avatars [...] Read more.
In the spring and summer of 1906, while visiting the rural village of Gósol in the Spanish Pyrenees, Picasso executed his first woodcut, made two sculptures out of boxwood, and began to focus on the topoi of wood and the forest as avatars of primal matter and of that which lies beyond civilization. In a subsequent series of paintings, he used wooden supports for images that depict male and female heads that look as if they had been chiseled out of wood. Others represent nude figures in forest settings, with explicitly sexual gestures and poses connoting a range of attitudes. These little studied works provide an optic into Picasso’s early exploration of the emergence of sexual identity as an inner psychic state, but one whose signs can be read through the body. Later, responding to the proliferation of cheap, industrially produced materials, including trompe l’oeil woodgrain wallpaper, Picasso began to treat woodgrain as a mere surrogate, one that marks its distance from actual wood through a variety of painterly and mechanical effects. No longer associated with “primitive” authenticity and the primordial forces of the forest, woodgrain now appears as a false sign open to conceptual play and metamorphosis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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14 pages, 3249 KiB  
Article
“[…] Un Tout Petit Peu de Dufayel”—Picasso, 1910–1914
by Laurence Madeline
Arts 2024, 13(2), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13020058 - 21 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1481
Abstract
Picasso twice quoted the name of Dufayel, once in relation with the name of the Louvre and once for the same period of his career, between 1910 and 1914. This essay explores the universe created by the businessman Georges Dufayel in order to [...] Read more.
Picasso twice quoted the name of Dufayel, once in relation with the name of the Louvre and once for the same period of his career, between 1910 and 1914. This essay explores the universe created by the businessman Georges Dufayel in order to understand the role it played in Picasso’s evolving cubism from that of analytic to synthetic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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8 pages, 2657 KiB  
Communication
Kubism™: Picasso, Trademarks and Bouillon Cube
by Noam M. Elcott
Arts 2024, 13(1), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13010030 - 7 Feb 2024
Viewed by 2055
Abstract
Pablo Picasso’s Landscape with Billboards (1912) evinces a deep and complex relationship with emergent trademark and related intellectual property law in France. Among the three trademarked logos featured prominently in the work is that for Bouillon Kub. Critics, caricaturists, and the Cubists themselves [...] Read more.
Pablo Picasso’s Landscape with Billboards (1912) evinces a deep and complex relationship with emergent trademark and related intellectual property law in France. Among the three trademarked logos featured prominently in the work is that for Bouillon Kub. Critics, caricaturists, and the Cubists themselves toyed with the visual and textual rhymes between Cubism and Bouillon Kub. But only Picasso in his Landscape with Billboards engaged deeply with the nascent trademark and design protection laws exploited more forcefully by Bouillon Kub than nearly any other brand. This essay is a small part of a larger chapter on Picasso, Cubism, and the semiotics of trademark, which, in turn, is a part of the book project Art™: A History of Modern Art, Authenticity, and Trademarks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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11 pages, 2749 KiB  
Article
Reflecting Picasso in Glass
by Sandrine Welte
Arts 2024, 13(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13010026 - 4 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1754
Abstract
Whereas Picasso’s work in ceramics, wood and bronze is rather well known, the body of his sculptures in glass remains an object of little research. In fact, as a thorough analysis reveals, they rarely find mention in publications or catalogues on Picasso and [...] Read more.
Whereas Picasso’s work in ceramics, wood and bronze is rather well known, the body of his sculptures in glass remains an object of little research. In fact, as a thorough analysis reveals, they rarely find mention in publications or catalogues on Picasso and seldom are included in exhibitions or retrospectives on the great Spanish artist. This may on the one hand be attributed to a still prevailing perception of glass as a medium for industrial, functional or everyday purposes—hence discounting the material in terms of artistic output—while on the other to controversies of authorship, related to the question of ideation versus creation. Unlike ceramics or bronze, the realisation of blown glass sculpture hinges on the involvement of the maestro vetraio as the mediator between thought and form—thus resulting in a distancing between artwork and artist conditioned by the nature of the medium. Against this background, the paper aims at a better understanding of Picasso’s vision of sculpture through an examination of his creations in the vitreous medium. On these grounds, a closer look at Picasso’s works in glass is meant to highlight his unique ‘hand’ in terms of idiom, line and form. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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19 pages, 3542 KiB  
Article
Sign and Symbol in Picasso
by Pepe Karmel
Arts 2023, 12(5), 200; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050200 - 14 Sep 2023
Viewed by 3081
Abstract
Writers on the semiology of Cubism have often cited Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s 1946–48 descriptions of Cubism as a form of writing. They seem, however, to have overlooked Pablo Picasso’s 1945–48 statements about art as a sign language. The first section of this essay argues [...] Read more.
Writers on the semiology of Cubism have often cited Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s 1946–48 descriptions of Cubism as a form of writing. They seem, however, to have overlooked Pablo Picasso’s 1945–48 statements about art as a sign language. The first section of this essay argues that Kahnweiler was in fact inspired by Picasso’s statements. The second section retraces the origins of semiology in nineteenth-century philology, its revival by Claude Levi-Strauss, his influence on critical theory, the rise of a semiological interpretation of Cubism, and the problems with this interpretation. The third section links Picasso’s 1945–48 statements about art as a sign language to his contemporary visual work; specifically, to his illustrations for Pierre Reverdy’s book of poems Le Chant des morts. The idea of art as a sign language is traced to Picasso’s 1924 drawings of “star charts” or “constellations”. However, Picasso’s 1945–48 designs using a similar vocabulary are analyzed as signifiers without signifieds—that is, as symbols, rather than signs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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36 pages, 538 KiB  
Article
The Picassos in the 1901 Vollard Exhibition and Their History
by Enrique Mallen
Arts 2023, 12(2), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020078 - 11 Apr 2023
Viewed by 3782
Abstract
This article describes Picasso’s first visit to the French capital in 1900, and the events that led to his first major exhibition at the acclaimed Galerie Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1901. The first section provides a narrative of his early experiences abroad [...] Read more.
This article describes Picasso’s first visit to the French capital in 1900, and the events that led to his first major exhibition at the acclaimed Galerie Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1901. The first section provides a narrative of his early experiences abroad as a young unknown artist, his influences, and the contacts he established with friends, artists and dealers during this important period of his career; the second section traces the histories of the sixty-five artworks that were exhibited, identifying the collections those items went through after they were exhibited, their current locations, as well as the exhibitions in which they have been featured since Vollard first displayed them in his gallery. The last section elaborates on some of the immediate repercussions of the exhibition. The reported findings are the result of extensive research on hundreds of books and catalogs published on Pablo Picasso from 1901 to the present. The new facts we have uncovered are published here for the first time. Readers of the article will learn that the works included in Picasso’s first exhibition in France have been part of the most prestigious art collections, such as those of Justin K. Thannhauser, Gertrude Stein, Chester Dale, Paul Guillaume, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Paul Mellon, Helena Rubinstein, Alfred Flechtheim, Walter C. Arensberg, among others. The works have also been featured in such important overviews of his career as “Picasso, 75th Anniversary” 1957–1958, and “Picasso: An American Tribute”, 1962. Thus, while Vollard claimed that the exhibition at his gallery had no major impact, the facts show that it not only played an important role in Picasso’s acceptance as a groundbreaking newcomer, but also left a significant mark on the rest of his career, as evidenced by the works’ inclusion in the retrospectives held in Paris and Zürich in 1932, and New York in 1980. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Picasso Studies (50th Anniversary Edition))
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