Западноевропейское искусство от Хогарта до Сальвадора Дали

Picasso's post-Cubist works are characterised by the lightning changes of styles. Sometimes incompatible styles appear side by side in the same painting. During the 1930s Picasso took an active part in the Surrealist movement. His best work of this decade, and the greatest of all social protest pictures is Guernica. Picasso executed this enormous painting to fulfil a commission for the pavilion of the Spanish republican government at the Paris Exposition of 1937, while the civil war was still going in Spain. Intended as a protest against the destruction of the little Basque town of Guernica in April 1937, by the Nazi bombers in the service of the Spanish Fascists, the picture has become in retrospect a memorial to all crimes against humanity in the twentieth century. As he worked, Picasso combined images drawn from Christian iconography with motives from Spanish folk culture, especially the bullfight, and from his own past. Actual destruction is reduced to fragmentary glimpses of walls and tiled roofs, and flames shooting from a burning house at the right. A bereft mother rushes screaming from the building, her arms thrown wide. Agonised heads and arms emerge from the wreckage. At the left a mother holding her dead child looks upward, shrieking. The merciless bull above her, is surely related to the dread Minotaur, adopted by the Surrealists, as an embodiment of the irrational in man. If the bull signifies the forces of Fascism, the dying horse suggests the torment of the Spanish people, and the oil lamp held above is the resistance of humanity against the mechanised eye, whose iris is a electric bulb. The spiritual message of combined terror and resistance is borne, unexpectedly, by the Cubist aesthetic means. An explosion of shattered planes of black, white, and grey reshapes itself as one watches into a giant pyramid, as if triumphant even in the destruction.

Picasso never again reached this height, and though he continued painting with great energy for 36 years, much of his work is a recapitulation of motives he had invented.

Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:

Picasso; Cubism; wreckage, Toulouse-Lautrec; synthetic; abstract; Pierrot; Harlequin; Franciscan; Minotaur; Dadaism; Basque; Spanish; France; absinthe; monk; Guernica; melancholy

Notes

Absinthe Drinker – «Любительница абсента»

Salimbanques – «Комедианты»

Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon – «Авиньонские девушки»

Seated Woman – «Сидящая женщина»

The Bottle ofSuze – «Бутылка «Сьюз»

Three Musicians – «Три музыканта»

Three Women at the Spring – «Три женщины у источника»

Guernica – «Герника»

Tasks

I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.

1. Picasso created one of the most important movements of the nineteenth century.

2. In Paris Picasso was influenced by Van Gogh's works of art.

3. During the Rose Period Picasso was concerned with the charm of circus performers.

4. Picasso invented Dadaism.

5. In 1917 Picasso was greatly impressed by the grandeur of the Italian past, especially Roman sculpture and the mural paintings of Giotto.

6. During the 1930s Picasso took an active part in the Neo-impressionist movement.

II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?

1. What did Picasso paint in 1902? How is the figure depicted? What colour dominates in this painting? What does this colour mean?

2. What is one of the loveliest pictures of the twentieth century?

3. What heralds the beginning of Cubism? How are the figures depicted in this painting? In what way did Cezanne influence the development of Cubism? What forms dominate in the SeatedWoman? What phases are distinguished within Cubism? What are their peculiarities? How long did Cubism exist?

4. What is an epitome to the Synthetic phase of Cubism? What is a typical Synthetic Cubist picture? How are the figures depicted in this painting? How do the planes proceed? What style prevailed in Picasso's work during the years immediately after World War I?

5. What impressed Picasso when he was in Italy? What style did Picasso develop in 1921? What were the results of Picasso's experiments with the Classical style? How did Picasso make the figures? How long did this Classical style coexist with late Cubism in Picasso's production?

6. What artistic movement attracted Picasso during the 1930s? What is Picasso's best painting of this decade? What images did Picasso combine in this picture? How is the actual destruction pictured? What is depicted at the left? Where is the bull pictured? What symbols dominate in this painting? What do they mean? What is borne by the Cubist aesthetic means? How can Picasso's latest works be characterised?

III. i. Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases: