Picasso’s Adventure with Cubism and Las Meninas

In order to compare two things, they need to have a common element, a control, which takes away any room for error. While comparing the effectiveness two different styles of art is nearly impossible because rarely do artists paint the same thing, Las Meninas by Pablo Picasso and Diego Velasquez allows for this comparison. Velasquez’s original is a portrait from the Baroque Period of a young princess, and the relaxed court scene around her. Picasso copied this scene in 58 separate paintings, using the avant-garde style he created, Cubism. The two styles could not be more different in that Velasquez’s painting focused on the subjects if the image, while Picasso used his technique to convey his message through the emotions the painting provoked. Through these works, an old master and a new were drawn together through their innovation and connection over a single piece of art. By using Cubism, Picasso was able to convey an entirely new message by copying and old painting, Las Meninas, in a new style.

The Baroque Period

In order to understand the differences in style, one must first understand the styles. Baroque art began in the 16^th century during the Counter Reformation: a movement by the Catholic Church to reeducate the people on their faith in response to Luther’s Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century. The style started as a religious form of painting in a way that sought to glorify God and awe the public with dramatic and theatrical, but real, scenes. This new style was revolutionary in that the subjects were not idealized; they were shown in their true form. Before this movement, many figures in paintings, especially the religious, were embellished. Prior to the reformation, the Church was looked upon as greedy and power hungry. To ensure that the number of followers, and its power, remained strong, the Church used art, along with other means, to idealize biblical scenes. After the scandal of Luther’s movement, the Church needed to overcome this migration of followers; it turned inwards and looked to connect more with the people. The art was supposed to be “visually and emotionally appealing so that it could influence the largest possible audience” (Baroque: 1600-1750). The Baroque style allowed for just that: still dramatic and glorious, the subjects of the art were more real, making it easier for the common people to equate their sufferings and lives to those in the paintings.

The luxury of the Baroque period spread to royalty as monarchs rose to power over the Catholic Church throughout Europe; the richness of the paintings showed the world the opulent lifestyle of the royals, that they could and would spare no expense. In his article, “The Baroque Era in the Arts,” Guisepi describes the style of the time as a means to display “massiveness, power, and dramatic intensity” (Guisepi). The baroque style uses selective lighting along with well-placed shadows to draw attention to certain subjects in the painting. The shadows also help to give the paintings a three-dimensional feel. All these characteristics point towards the goal of Baroque art: to seem real and lifelike in order to connect with a large number of people, thereby transmitting the artist’s message, whatever that may be, more decisively.

Throughout his article “The Emergence of Baroque Mentality and Its Cultural Impact on Western Europe after 1550,” Miroslav Hanak explains his views on the effects of Baroque art. He describes it as a natural segue from the Renaissance era into one of new enlightenment (Hanak 316). Gone were the idealized images of happy, golden cherubs. In their place came a darker, shadowy depiction of life as it is, not as it is hoped to be. Hanak calls to mind the contradictions of the style, “life oscillating between reality and appearance…birth coalescing with death and immortality, light fusing with darkness, the illusion of the stage becoming inseparable from everyday reality… (Hanak 317). In here lies the essence of Baroque art: the delicate use of paradox to remind audiences of the fragility of life and the basis of human nature. Extreme cruelty is shown next to extreme love in depictions of the crucifixion, greed and hubris exist in coalition with the pure innocence of a young child in Velasquez’s “Meninas.” It is through these comparisons that the style is able to impact viewers in such a way that they do not readily forget the picture nor the message.

Cubism

Throughout much of the history of art, artists worked for someone else. They were employed to paint and told how and what to do. As art grew up, artists began to have more freedom; they could work for themselves and create how they saw fit. This marks the beginning of a new era, which bred styles such as cubism. Cubism, as Ladislas Segy describes it, recognizes reality for the artists. They draw not what they see with their eyes, but how they feel though their heart and how they think with their brain. The new technique strips art of the formality of designated objects and immobile potraits. Instead, a new genre is opened, one that gives people a chance to enter into the mindset of the artist and truly feel how he or she feels. In cubism, that artist matters more than the art.

Cubism is a relatively new style of art, developed by Picasso and Braque in the early 20^th century. The technique releases any hold on the conventional idea of beauty and focuses instead on a “geometric… approach to form and color” (Cubism: 1908). The movement shook the art world because of its revolutionary attempt to recreate an object in the way that a human brain, not a human eye, does (Cubism: 1908). Again the geometric nature comes into play as the angular shapes and lines seek to break down an object through different perspectives simultaneously, allowing viewers to see a work in many different ways. Because of this, some believe that the cubist style is more realistic because it tries to mimic what a brain does, skipping over the sense of sight, which can be misleading. Cubism is realistic in that it sends a message, not a picture. It requires contemplation and thought rather that simple sight. This is one of the main reasons that Cubism is effective in communicating an artist’s argument.

In their article “Cubism as a Catalyst in Design,” Roger Rothem and Ian Verstegen describe the essence of Cubism saying, “what distinguishes Cubism…is not it’s abandonment of iconic representation, but its unique commitment to exposing the iconic for what it really is- a structural condition in which “to represent” means “to correspond,” not “to copy”…” (Rothem and Verstegen 291). In here lies the idea that cubism does not seek to directly reproduce an image, but rather capture the artists’ thoughts and ideas about that object. As Plunkett describes it, “cubism is the result of the desire to create or describe visual reality without resorting to illusionistic painting” (Plunkett).

Las Meninas

When Diego Velasquez painted “Las Meninas” in 1656, he had no idea the impact it would have on another young artist, over three hundred years later. The original painting depicts a young girl being fitted for a dress in the home of the Spanish ruling family. The painting is considered to be an image of what the artist saw in the mirror; he included himself in the painting as a man holding a paintbrush standing on the left. Velasquez was commissioned to paint this work by King Phillip IV who was the ruling monarch at the time. Two centuries later, Picasso became fascinated with the painting and produced over 50 copies, each slightly different.

There are a number of explanations as to why Picasso, already a successful artist at the time, would do such a thing. For example, author Robert Miles sees Picasso’s copying of Las Meninas as a means of personal survival (Miles 177). I agree with Miles in this assessment. At the time of his rendition, Picasso was becoming elderly. Seeing the work of an old master that is still studied today made Picasso feel insignificant. Connecting his work to one of such value and magnitude was a means for Picasso to ensure that his art remained relevant. In his article, Miles also comments on the dissimilarities between Las Meninas and Guernica: Guernica was painted for the survival of the world, while Meninas was painted for the survival of a man (Miles 177). Picasso was painting this for no one but himself, unlike Velasquez who was employed to produce the portrait. The idea of this personal connection between artist and painting goes along with the Cubist style Picasso used. By freeing himself of the boundaries Baroque art places on the artist, Picasso was able to infuse this painting with how he saw and understood Velasquez’s original.

Another idea for Picasso’s motivation is found in Osherow’s “Variation on Variation (Picasso’s Las Meninas).” She speaks about Picasso’s rendition of the work as reverent, not hubristic; Osherow’s argument is that Picasso sees Valasquez’s work as one a Spain’s masterpieces and his copy was simply a restoration of something old and faded rather than a complete redo (Osherow 432). Evidence of this, she suggests, is the fact that Picasso completed over fifty paintings to Velasquez’s one; Picasso showed how he so revered the artist that not one of his paintings could equal one of Velasquez’s. Picasso redid the painting not detail by detail, but rather in his own style, cubism, because he admired it so much he wanted to bring it into the future with him.

Justin Erenkrantz also notes the importance of number of Picasso’s copies. Instead of claiming piety as the source, Erenkrantz cites Picasso’s portrayal of innocence through the infant in the white dress. He believes that by choosing to focus his work on such a broad subject, there was no way Picasso could cover all the meanings and implication of the idea in one painting. Erenkrantz also suggests that as the series progresses, Picasso’s use of different aspects of cubism is reminding the viewers that “it is futile to believe that this innocence can last” (Erenkrantz The Book of Secrets). As children grow, the purity that exists in them is lost. Picasso gave life and reality to his paintings by allowing the infant to grow, not physically, but in a sense that she is growing away from the virtuousness of a child. I agree with Erenkrantz in this assumption. Both aspects of his argument remind the audience of Picasso’s message: that life is fleeting and nothing lasts forever. While I can understand Osherow’s view on the matter, her analysis doesn’t fit with the state of min Picasso was in when he painted the works. While he was extremely reverent as a child when he first saw the painting, fifty years later when he put a brush to the canvas, Picasso was more concerned with the preservation of his legacy, his style and himself the acclamation of another artist’s work.

Moving away from that aspect, in his article, “Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), James Harris chooses to focus on why Picasso reverted to painting copies after a life of original work. His main conclusion is that Picasso is fascinated with the young girl in the painting (Harris). When he first saw the painting with his father, Picasso’s young sister had just died of diphtheria (Harris). The connection between the infant the in painting, immortalized forever by Velasquez, and his sister, struck a chord with the mourning Picasso. Harris goes on to remark that while Picasso first viewed the painting early on in his childhood, it wasn’t until the mid 20^th century, not long after his father died, that Picasso began working on the copies (Harris). This connection Picasso makes between life, death, and immortality is fascinating, and here lies the connection between Harris, Osherow, Miles’s arguments. All agree that Picasso copied the painting in an effort to preserve something, whether that be a life or a legacy. He seeks this preservation through the use of Cubism, which takes away from the humanity of the subjects in the painting. Mortality and death are an inevitable part of humanity; by removing this aspect, Picasso renders his paintings immortal, frozen in time.

Not all critics agree that Picasso’s work on Las Meninas was a success. Erenkrantz, for example, argues that Picasso’s Cubist style accompanies a loss in detail that distances audiences from the painting. “[Audiences] can no longer relate to the infanta with all of the maids of honor surrounding her” (Erenkrantz The Mask and the Mirror). What Erenkrantz fails to account for is the other elements to Picasso’s painting, such as color scheme and the relationship between the figures, which can have just as profound an effect on the viewer as what is shown in the scene. Many times when people look at paintings they focus on the picture, the figures central to the image. However, their brains are aware of all the little pieces of the art, for example, the colors used or the way the light draws attention to a particular area of the work. Cubism grabs hold of this idea and inflates it until the focus of people’s scrutiny becomes less about the individual images and more about the painting as a whole. In Picasso’s Las Meninas, Picasso chooses a grey scale color palate that is so bleak and boring it forces viewers to contemplate other aspects of the painting, most specifically the painter, himself, situated on the left. Of all the figures in the work, the one that replaced Velazquez’s self portrait is the largest and the most chaotic. It is cry from the artist for recognition, a little piece of himself infused an unoriginal piece of art in order to try to make it his own.

Conclusion

Picasso’s work on Las Meninas opened up a channel for criticism of his work. The questions of why and to what end sprang into the minds of many art historians who studied Velasquez and his original. Picasso must have known the agitation in the art world it would cause and this added to his goal of building a legacy. The connection between his copies and the original draws together two artistic masters in a way that was nearly as revolutionary as the style used to create both paintings.

With the introduction of cubism into the art scene during the early twentieth century, modern art was revolutionized. The effect of authorities, such as Picasso, on the art world cannot be understated. He brought about a new style that is seen to be “the very definition of modern art, providing the contemporary artist with an entire range of available approaches” (The Case of  “Las Meninas” 1957). None of Picasso’s other works are truer to this statement than Las Meninas. The many different ways he painted the same painting showed the world how the message and feel of a work of art can be changed and enhanced by stepping away from reality and working with other elements of art.