ArtistPicasso, Pablo

Artist Years1881-1973

Artist NationalitySpanish, French

TitleThe Human Comedy – 32.1.54.VII

Year1954

MediumPrint > Color Lithography, Print > Lithograph

DimensionsImage: 9.5 X 12.7 inches
Sheet: 10.5 X 14 inches

Notes“The ‘Human Comedy’ series of drawings, which Picasso created in the winter of 1953/54 during a period of intense personal crisis, provides the basis for the ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man’… A thematic analysis of the series not only shows how central the subject of artist and model was within the ‘Human Comedy’ staged by Picasso, but also how Picasso was to link the theme specifically with a questioning of old age and his own late style concerns. The ‘Human Comedy’ reads like a parody of the 1933 Vollard Suite, in which the artist is cast as a classical sculptor at the height of his powers. Twenty years later, we find that the idealized artist-god has shrunken in stature and shows his age in all too human terms. This comical about-face is marked by a significant shift in tone, from the ideals of classicism to a mocking of the grotesque body, which ultimately proves renewing and life-affirming despite the satirical self-caricature. It is this adoption of parody in both his style and his personal point of view that marks the ‘Human Comedy’ as the true beginning of Picasso’s late period. Within these bittersweet drawings, Picasso self-consciously thematizes the issue of an artist’s late style and begins in the process to confront both his own myth and historical identity, though always in masked terms”
(Source: Karen L. Kleinfelder, "The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze: Picasso’s Pursuit of the Model", 1993).

Price $550.00

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