Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso

Empire of Light ii by Rene Magritte

The 20^th century art cannot be defined. This is because we live in a world that is constantly changing. Since art usually reflects society, we can expect that art is ever changing as well.  Pablo Picasso and Rene Magritte, two amazing artists from this time period, differ greatly in their styles, even though their respective artwork is only 30 years apart.

The Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous paintings of the 20^th century. Completed in 1921, this painting embodies the Cubist style, specifically the Synthetic Cubist style. Cubism is an art movement that was created by Picasso himself and Georges Braque. In this type of art, artists break down the subjects they are painting into a number of facets, showing several different aspects of one object simultaneously. Synthetic Cubism, the late phase of the Cubism movement, is the use of more decorative geometric shapes, stenciling, collage and brighter colors. Instead of breaking down the subjects, artists created new structures. In Three Musicians, Picasso paints three figures, the Harlequin strumming the guitar, the Pierrot playing the clarinet, and the monk that holds the sheet music, in a box-like room. These three figures are made up of flat, abstract shapes. Even though this work is painted with oil on canvas, the sharp corners of the shapes suggest that Picasso cut out material and pasted it on the canvas, just like a collage. This work is overwhelmingly two-dimensional. Furthermore, Picasso dominantly uses warm colors but uses dark and bright colors to describe the figures. This painting is asymmetrical in balance; the brown floor extends much farther toward the left than the right. This suggests that the room is lopsided, but the figures in the painting are all-leveled and balance. In addition, it is hard to distinguish the musicians’ bodies, since they all seem to overlap one another. This also gives the impression of a cut-and-paste collage. Picasso utilizes shadowing when painting the dog, creating the dog with his head in the shadow. Overall, this painting gives out an energetic feeling with its use of abstract geometric shapes and distinct lines.

Contrasting with Picasso’s Three Musicians, Rene Magritte’s Empire of Light II, completed in 1950, is a painting that looks more ‘real’. It is an example of Magritte’s surrealistic style. This painting is focused on a street. Being the main source of light in the painting, the lamppost located in front of the buildings emits a bright light. There is also light illuminating from the windows of the buildings. Instead of using flat geometric shapes like Picasso, Magritte paints the scene in a three-dimensional world. When viewed in the museum, the painting looks like a photograph enlarged. However, upon taking a closer look at the painting, one can notice that the house is painted in an unusual situation. While the bottom half of the painting shows the street in the night, the top half of the painting is of a bright sky in broad daylight. This striking juxtaposition gives the painting a mysterious feeling. Like Picasso, Magritte contrasted with his colors; he used warm colors for the buildings on the street and then contrasts that with the bright blue sky.  However, both parts of the painting are painted realistically. Even though there are no humans or animals in the painting, movement is evident; the floating clouds in the sky evoke motion.

All artwork on a canvas utilizes at least one of the three main elements of color, light and form in a variety of ways. Color gives inanimate objects life. Color is the true quintessence of a painting as rhythm is to music. Considering its subjective nature, color can be used to convey a wide range of emotions and perspectives. Different hues convey their own aspect of liveliness. Green is natural as yellow is to happiness and sunshine. When you take into account the intensity, the strength and vividness, of a color you can convey different moods.  For example, the dark colors of a night scene can convey mystery as soft light colors are to femininity.

Painters use light as a bandage for relating figures in an image. For example, if a painting consists of a group of figures around a campsite fire, since all of the characters are experiencing the same thing, they should each be lit from the side in which they face the campfire. The experience binds them together, so the way in which light is used, is to realistically depict such a reality.

Form is simply the element in art, which refers to shape. Are there three dimensional shapes and figures or are there two-dimensional shapes and figures. It is form that allows the viewers of works of art to analyze and understand the given.

In the painting Beach Girl, the artist Morris Hirshfield utilizes a very simplistic form of color and lighting. The background consists of only three shades of blue. As the image opens up, the shades begin to darken. This element of contrast between a single color, allows the beach girl to pop off of the painting and really draw the viewer’s attention.  The use of blue mellows out the image giving it a very calm, soothing feeling as if one were looking at water, which is also blue.

Likewise, Hirschfield use of lighting immediately draws one’s attention to the girl because she is of a brighter shade and a more defined color of blue, tan and white. He paints an image that is concrete and the viewer is immediately able to identify that the beach girl is the main attraction in the painting. Everything around her is just supplemental detail in order to give the painting more depth. The anatomy of the girl is drawn to the scale of a realistic girl in everyday life.

An antithesis to the painting by Morris Hirshfield is a painting called Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun And Moon by Robert Delaunay. In the painting, Robert Delaunay paints an abstract image. Thus, the viewer can interpret the image in a number of different ways. There isn’t one right answer to what is present in an abstract image.

In order to portray such an abstract image and contrary to Hirsfield, Delaunay manipulates the depth and movement of the painting through various interactions of color. Yet, without directly referencing a concrete image, the viewer of his artwork can imagine his inclination to the natural world. The circular framework can be symbolic of the universe with the brighter colors representing life during the day while the dark blue side being symbolic of nightlife when the moon is up. Delaunay seems to have broken up the form by light in order to create color planes, thus creating the nature of the painting. The use of two-dimensional shapes simply allows figures to be pieced together into what the viewer can interpret as something concrete. Some shapes are actual orientation of the human anatomy as an oval can be seen as symbolically used to represent the child’s head in the upper right hand corner of the image. Then, in the lower left hand corner a conglomerate of shapes are used to piece together a potential figure’s face.

For example, when I initially saw the painting, I immediately visualized a family in the bottom right hand corner who were bunched together early in the morning due to the prominent use of yellow, the color of the sun. When I looked up at the top left hand corner, I immediately visualized a mother tucking her child into bed because the prominence of blue was reminiscent of the night sky as the moon is set to appear.

In each respective painting, the artists manipulated the color, light and forms to ultimately portray different images although they used the same basic artistic elements. This allowed for a uniform interpretation in Hirshfield’s painting compared to a more infinite interpretation in Delaunay’s painting. Hirschfield creating a concrete image while Delaunay created an abstract image.