State of Research: Pablo Picaso's Guitars

Katherine Carlotto 0 of 37

State ofResearch:

Picasso’s GuitarsKatherine Carlotto

Katherine Carlotto

Methods 781

State of Research Paper

Professor Craig Harbison

December 13th 2013

Picasso’s Guitars

Introduction

The symbol of the guitar within Picasso’s work remained

consistent from its presentation in his Blue period to his

later works after the Second World War. Since Picasso’s

style has changed so drastically in the span of his career,

from roughly 1890 to 1973, it is important to study in what

ways the image of the guitar is continuously presented in

his works and explained by later critiques. This state of

the research paper explores the chronology of emerging

discourse of Picasso’s guitars by 20 and 21st century

scholars. It is important to understand, that this paper

does not explore one type of artwork in particular, but

instead analyzes the way in which critiques have understood


Picasso’s fascination with the guitar and the integration of

it within different periods of his artwork.

The scholarship explained will be somewhat

chronologically linked to the emergence and popularity of

each specific methodology up until present day. Whereas

different methodologies may overlap, oppose or co-exist

during certain periods, this essay’s aim is to explain each

methodology and its later representations within its

respective chronology. This is stressed in order to not

confuse the reader or deceive them of some perfected

progression of methodologies. Trends of certain discourse,

the rejection of others and unexplored methodologies will

also be touched upon. For the sole purpose of clarity, this

paper will present some of the most important examples of

discourse.

In order, the methodologies that will be discussed

include formalism and style (part I) iconography and

iconology, biography, socio-political methodologies,

feminism and formalism (part II). Before delving into the

scholarly findings within each discourse, a brief


explanation of each methodology is presented in order to

clarify and better understand the foundations of each

respective study.

Style

The first example of discourse that I have included in

my research is the discussion of Picasso’s style. The

earliest instances of such discourse are written during

Picasso’s career in the 1940’s, when cubism and abstraction

were still emerging as topics within mainstream art

discussions. As modern criticism was still taking shape in

the midst of traditionally formal art critiques and critics

were not yet interested in the underlying reasons behind

Picasso’s personal life and his trajectories in subject

matter, understanding Picasso’s works was expressed as a

formal examination of his style.

Helen Mackenzie’s 1940 article in the Bulletin of the Art

Institute of Chicago entitled “Picasso: A Study of His Styles and

His Developments” explains the newness of Picasso’s style

and its uncertain place within scholarly discourse.


Mackenzie is concerned with the visual qualities and the

uniqueness of Picasso’s fluid transitions in style, focusing

on a formal examination of his work. She elaborates that “a

kaleidoscopic artist of Picasso's caliber, especially an

artist much of whose work is too new to have settled into

any clearly defined categories, cannot be neatly and finally

summed up. Picasso tells us he cannot be explained. We can,

however select, isolate, and make suggestions toward the

understanding of a progressive series of his conspicuous and

already famous works”(2). She therefore aims to analyze the

guitars as a formalistic device to compare Picasso’s diverse

personal styles.

Mackenzie examines Picasso’s guitars, by using them as

a point of interest to identify his change in style but his

continuation of certain motifs. “The styles or manners of

Picasso are so distinct and often so contradictory that such

isolation is simple… themes [the guitars], ... tend to

reappear … with the result that we find it impossible to

pigeonhole him”(1). She emphasizes the transformation of

Picasso’s style above his originality and ingenuity in order


to connect him to the canon of art history. It seems as

though artists must first be prized in relation to earlier

maters before establishing individual existence within the

canon. Mackenzie specifically compares Old Man With a Guitar to

earlier Romanesque and Christian paintings like the Pieta by

Morales and Spanish Romanesque crucifixion paintings.

Instead of singling out the guitar for its presence in his

work, she expresses it as a device helping to connect styles

and bridge new techniques with older tradition. In her

analysis, the Guitar acts as a factor connecting Picasso’s

specific styles to earlier, traditional painterly

techniques.

Four years after Mackenzie’s article, Alfred Barr

explored the progression of Picasso and his paintings in his

book entitled Picasso: 50 years of His Art (1946). Barr explains

that his analysis of Picasso’s pictures and their relation

to certain styles is less important than the paintings

themselves. He states, “Picasso has sometimes spoken of his

belief that art does not change in any fundamental sense.

The recurrence of the forms and motifs years after they


appear might [in his work] offer superficial confirmation of

Picasso’s sense of immutability” (11). In other words, Barr

explores Picasso’s paintings as a recurrence of form- the

Guitar being one of many identifiable objects that repeat

throughout Picasso’s stylistic periods.

Bar introduces the guitar in Picasso’s Blue Period The

Old Guitarist (1903) as an stylistic expression and reference to

16th century mannerist painting with its’ “elongations [and]

insistent pathos”(29). Whereas earlier implications of the

guitar are linked to enhance emotive expression, Barr later

expresses the guitar as a formal motif within in Picasso’s

analytic, synthetic and constructionist cubism styles. In

this sense, the guitar acts a tool to explore the four

dimensionalities of space and form in the cubist picture

plane. Lastly, he mentions Picasso’s later still-life

paintings - Still Life with a Cake and The Red Tablecloth (1924) in

relation to earlier depictions of the guitar: “Still life

with a cake comes early in the series. Its subtle,

restrained color and curvilinear forms relate it to the

musical instruments of the previous year. The Red


Tablecloth, most famous of the series, is sumptuous in color

but without the over-richness of some of the paintings of

the following year”(135). This is an example opposed to

using the guitar as an objective, perspectival tool and

instead emphasizes its dynamic ability on the canvas to

produce differing effects such as the warm tones of color

within The Red Tablecloth, differing from earlier

representations. To Barr, the guitar has no intrinsic

meaning, but it is instead used as a formal device to

express stylistic differences in form and style through

Picasso’s career.

Meyer Scaphiro’s lecture from 1967 that was later

published by George Braziller, reemphasizes Barr’s

conclusions that the guitar was a visual form of continuity

within Picasso’s styles. However, Shapiro adds the

additional perspectival layer to the study of style,

analyzing the importance of an audience’s reaction to the

value and quality of the choices made by Picasso within his

fluctuating styles. Schapiro states, “I believe that these

works…have the unity of a work of art- but I shall ask you…


does the course or career of the successive styles…

introduce an element of enrichment, of value, or do these

fail to emerge from that succession?”(9). In such a

statement, Schapiro not only accepts the importance of style

as a form of discourse and examination, but also allows the

reception and understandability of the audience to affect

the quality and richness of the certain styles.

His explanation of the guitar in Picasso’s cubist works

as both a stylistic and emotive expressions of form.

Shapiro explains that they “are constructed from straight

and curved lines. They are means for producing music through

separate, discrete notes, and posses a great charm that is

not easily analyzable and that we respond to as a whole and

not only in terms of isolated parts”. In this explanation,

Schapiro deems the guitar one of many important musical

instruments that Picasso saw useful for uniting visual and

oral forms of expression that could be abstracted yet

harmoniously unify into one piece- in relation to musical

scores. Later in his discussion, Sharpiro analyses the form

of the guitar within The Red Tablecloth (1924), similar to Alfred


Barr, as a symbol neo-classical luxuriousness, fullness and

serenity (31). Like Barr, Schapiro explains the guitar to

be tool used in Picasso’s paintings, collages and sculptures

to further enhance and connect different stylistic periods,

however, in his analysis style is not purely an objective

piece to understanding the importance of the Guitars, but is

measurable in its in ability to affect and relay a message

to the audience.

Iconography and Iconology

Two such phrases are bound to intertwine and become

misinterpreted within the context of Picasso’s guitars.

However, in using such terms to express the discourse of the

guitar, it is best to explain each in relation to this

specific study. Iconography, in Panofsky’s words is

concerned with “conventional subject matter”(17), that is,

the identification of images with symbolic content of

meaning. In relation to the discourse in biography, the

iconography of Picasso’s guitars focuses less on the


personal life of the artist, emphasizing the importance and

the lineage of the symbol of the guitar in relation to its

past reception and relation to other symbolisms.

Iconology is as equally important, yet slightly

different in terms of studying the guitar as a formal

object. Iconograhpic studies are highly specialized,

requiring the knowledge of mythology, philosophy and

history, and in reference to modern artists, this discourse

is very loosely used in addition to iconography. At most,

such a study is used to relate the guitar to the lure and

sexual attraction to the guitar as mimicking the form of a

female body. Therefore, although iconography is used less

specifically to iconography within

In 1977, Pierre Cabanne specifically discusses in his

book Pablo Picasso: The Life and Times, the iconography of

African and Polynesian influences presented in Picasso’s

cubist guitar constructions. He directly relates Picasso’s

sculptures as having been inspired by and retaining a visual

correlation to oceanic masks. He describes the cubist

guitars in his writing:


The cubist constructions of 1913-1914 were not far removed from [Picasso’s] collages, but painted sheet iron and wood had greater strength and solidarity. Morethan that: he imparted a magical power to it. With simple debris found anywhere, thrown away objects, mere“things,” he made barbaric-looking totems ... As African and Polynesian sculptors did, he turned the rawest bareness into the sacred. (25).

Through such comparison, he explains that Picasso’s cubist

Guitar constructions and their use of “barbaric”

inspirations, added a dimensionality to cubism. Cabanne

emphasizes the constructed guitars as having both visual and

intrinsic qualities relating to traveling oceanic and tribal

masks and sculptures created during the same period Picasso

was producing his cubist works.

Whereas Cabanne hints at the power invested in these

constructions in relation to the visual and ritualistic

qualities in oceanic art, his iconographical comparison does

not openly compare Picasso’s work to specific references of

older objects. However, in the 1984 MOMA exhibition of some

of Picasso’s cubist guitars entitled, “Primitivism” in the 20th

century art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, The curator William


Rubin openly compares and links Picasso’s works to oceanic

tribal masks and cultural objects.

One year after the exhibit, Hal Foster’s published an

iconographical critique in the MIT press entitled “The

“Primitive” Unconscious of Modern Art”, disputing Rubin’s

juxtaposition of Picasso’s cubist constructions beside

tribal artworks. Foster specifically disagrees with Rubin’s

iconographical comparison of Picasso’s constructed guitar

with a Grebco mask from Liberia. She sees this form of

iconography as limiting the symbolism of each culture and

artist’s form where “objects… could only be “affined””(48).

She understands that although Picasso was influenced by the

primitive art inspiring the expressionists and cubists of

the early 20th century, she does not believe in the

finiteness of Rubin’s strict comparison.

Whereas Rubin’s iconology of Picasso’s guitars relates

specifically to the popularity of oceanic art, Foster

expresses that this iconological framing is too narrow.

“Significantly, the show dismissed the primitivist

misreading par excellence: that tribal art is intrinsically


expressionistic or even psychologically expressive, when it

is in fact ritualistic, apotrophiac, therapeutic, and so

forth”(50). Foster’s analysis therefore does not dismiss the

influence of oceanic art on Picasso’s constructed guitars,

but leaves the iconographical roots his pieces room to

breathe-in other words, open to more than one kind of

iconographical interpretation.

Fry expresses Picasso’s guitars as an iconological

device referencing classical techniques of form and space.

However, he does not come to a solid conclusion as to why

Picasso integrates the guitar into cubist paintings, but

instead understand the relationship as a point of departure

from older ways of seeing into a more modern expression of

form. Fry states “The evidence to the respect of Cubism is

ambivalent. To the degree that, as claimed here, Cubism

bears a reflexive, critical relationship to the classical

tradition… but to the degree that it is also a critical

examination of the epistemology and hermeneutics of that

tradition”(303).


In terms of loose classical iconology, Fry sees the

guitars as retaining a foreground and a background (298)

Within the picture plane there is always clearly the guitar

and a background or some separation of space. The guitar as

a recognizable form and the title’s textual reference to its

subject also correlates to past painterly traditions.

Furthermore, Fry interprets Picasso’s use of a guitar

as a classical painterly interest in women and reclining

nudes. He in fact states that the guitar at times acted as

an alter ego for Picasso’s women (297). Fry notes that after

Picasso’s completion of Demoiselles D’Avignon- “by 1911-

1912, the anti-idealist theme of desire resurfaces in

Picasso, not in any order or manifest way but obliquely, as

verbal superscripts or as newspaper clippings or even as sly

visual puns about bottles, playing cards, and other implied

references to sexual play”(297). The guitar’s curvature in

relation to a women’s body is one of many visual puns

accepted as a representation of Picasso’s attention to the

female form within iconographical discourse.


Biography

The biographical studies of Picasso’s guitar express

the purpose of his guitars in terms of his personal

relations and past experiences. More specifically, most

biographical scholarship relates to Picasso’s guitars as a

psychoanalytical reference to his past or present life

circumstances. The guitar in a sense disappears behind the

importance of Picasso’s personal life, instead used in

scholarship as a form of subjective expression of his

subconscious.

Within the preface of his book entitled Picasso,

published in 1975, Timothy Hilton emphasizes Picasso’s

ingenuity as being of sole importance in the production of

his work. He describes Picasso as having a direct impact on

the entirety of modern art, as “he is so important to the

art of our century that making decisions about him involves

descriptions about modern art as a whole… I believe that we

trivialize Picasso if we do not think of him in this way,

and yet I am very well aware that the writers about art


should feel modest beside the great paintings of their own

time”(7). Hilton refuses to make personal assumptions about

Picasso and his work, instead merely highlighting Picasso’s

guitars as one of his many ingenious tools used to create

new forms of modern vision and perception.

Very similar to the formalists before him, Hilton

examines the guitars as a chosen object used to present the

change in pictoral space, not as a favored or cherished

object used as a form of expression by Picasso. Later in his

book, he speaks highly of the guitars as “the first

sculpture that was definitely a still-life, and it was the

first occasion when sculpture had been putting parts

together as opposed to the inductive or reductive methods of

modeling and carving…

While the piece is very near to a guitar, the obdurate nature of its material so inappropriate to the subject and so unlike previous sculptural media, pull it right away from the status of a model. It is in fact a breakthrough, a single radical step that at one stroke changed the nature of sculpture forever(106).

Hilton’s examination of Picasso’s Guitar is an appraisal of

the artist over the subject matter. He does not question


Picasso’s use of the guitar but accepts its presentation as

a representation of artistic genius. It is important to note

such examples of criticism that address the guitar but do

not highlight its form or its presence, as this reflects the

object or painting as being subservient to Picasso’s

artistic genius.

Similarly to Hilton, Gilot and Lake’s biography of

Picasso “Life with Picasso”(1965), dedicated specifically to

Pablo Picasso, also represses the importance of the guitar

under the shadow of the painter. They explain Picasso’s

inspiration to create such constructed cubist works of the

guitars as a form of artistic ingenuity. Gilot and Lake

quote Picasso’s own opinions on these types of objects

within cubism, again, not questioning the presence of the

guitar whatsoever. “We didn’t any longer want to fool the

eye, we wanted to fool the mind. The sheet of paper was

never used in order to make a newspaper. It was used to

become a bottle or something like that. It was never used

literally but always as an element displaced from its

natural meaning into another meaning to produce a shock


between the usual definition at the point of departure and

its new definition at the point of arrival”(77).

Gilot and Lake speak little of any objects represented

within Picasso’s artworks. For Gilot and Lake, what Picasso

says is law, and therefore the guitar truly does not

represent a guitar at all, but a combination of other

materials to produce a new way of seeing. The emphasis on

the guitar was therefore diminished by their acceptance of

Picasso’s own personal beliefs.

Socio Political

Scholarship discussing Picasso’s Guitar’s within a this

context, understands the guitars as a symbol expressing

Picasso’s relation and reaction to his social and political

environment. Whereas Mary Matthews Gedo approaches Picasso’s

guitars as a product of his relationship with his partner

Braque and his relationship with Eva, Robert Rosenblum

understands the guitars as an expression of Picasso’s ties

to his Spanish heritage in the midst of the upheaval in

Spain. Whereas this area of discourse can vary and either


relying more heavily on either social or political contexts,

it is important to understand that the guitars are expressed

as significant from both sides of this methodology.

In Mary Matthew Gedo’s book entitled “Picasso: art as

Autobiography” (1980), she explains Picasso’s use of guitars

as a reliance on external partnerships and influences. Her

understanding of the guitars can be explained by a point

made early on in his preface: “one central fact emerged from

this research: Picasso’s art, like his life, depended on

partnerships”(4). She sees the expression of the guitar as

an impersonal expression, relying not on a personal artistic

ingenuity, but as a result of his interdependence with

society.

Gedo explains Picasso’s guitars within his cubist

collages as an inspiration brought on by his romantic

relationships with Eva and his partner in the studio,

Braque. Gedo describes Eva’s presence in Picasso’s life as

provoking a rush of artistic production within his studio.

Gedo explains Eva as an artistic inspiration, provoking him

to produce many of his cubist guitars in such a rapid


succession (97). Furthermore, his partnership with Braque

during their time together between 1912-1914 influenced the

frequent use of the guitar. She relates the musical

instruments such as the violin and the guitar depicted in

Braque’s paintings to have inspired Picasso’s later guitar

constructions (98). Furthermore, Gedo also relates the

techniques used within the guitars as an expression and

further reliance on Braque’s own techniques.

[Picasso] utilized his own inventions, the collage and the cubist construction, in a number of new ways; but he made equally daring use of Braque’s discoveries, therelief painting (sand, sawdust, and the like added to pigments to provide textural and surface variations) (98).

Gede states that the two artists expressed cubism as a joint

effort, which neither could have undertaken single handedly

(99). Her emphasis on Picasso’s artistic production of the

guitar was against the notion of artistic independence,

determining that the inspiration and the ideas that

ultimately created the guitars could not have been produced

without the inspiration and partnership of both Eva and

Braque.


Another avenue of sociological methodology is presented

by Robert Rosenblum’s essay The Spanish-ness of Picasso’s Still Lifes

(1996). He examines Picasso’s guitars as a continuation of

18th century Spanish culture. Picasso grew up and continued

to have a complicated relationship with his Spanish

homeland, yet, in Rosenblum’s analysis, despite his

residency in France, Picasso’s Spanish roots were expressed

through the guitars in his paintings.

Unlike scholars before Rosenblum who have subjected the

guitar to the cubist phase of Picasso’s career- Rosenblum

understands the guitar as “ the king of cubist musical

instruments, as well as being a ubiquitous presence in both

his pre and post cubist work”(78). Specifically thought his

article, he examines the relationship between Picasso’s

papier colle from 1912-1913 in relation to the Spanish still

life tradition exemplifies by Pedro de Acosta’s Trompe L’oiel

in 1755 (79). Rosenblum compares the flatness of both works

of art as both using “open musical scores fixed to flat

walls and string instruments hanging upright” (79).

Picasso’s ties to both Spanish subject matter and the


tradition of Spanish painting help Rosenblum express the

guitar as an example of Picasso’s nationalism and his

appreciation of his Spanish heritage.

Furthermore Rosenblum examines Picasso’s guitars as

representing Spanish culture by its suggestion of the guitar

as a representation of the female figure. He explains that:

“In Spanish popular culture, playing a guitar is often

equated with Spanish love making”(81). Whereas Rosenblum’s

analysis is open to interpretation, using the subject matter

of the guitar to relate to both formal and social qualities

of Spanish cultures, it most certainly ties the guitar to

Picasso’s Spanish nationalism.

Feminism

Feminist criticism is mostly focused on two specific

topics, how women are portrayed and whether women create and

see art differently from men. Picasso’s guitars have

received less in depth feminist criticism than many of his

other paintings and sculptures, however critiques have


focused on Picasso’s guitars as a masculine expression of

sexual desire and rage.

I included Vogel’s work into the discussion, not only

because of her outstanding work on feminism within many of

Picasso’s paintings, but also because she completely side

steps Picasso’s guitars as being one of the sexual objects

and voyeuristic gazes she discusses within her scholarship.

Whereas as Vogel explains Picasso’s fetishism of the

corset, which mimics the shape of the guitar and the control

Picasso expressed over his canvas as a stand in for the

women in his life, she focuses on literal examples of women

painted, refusing an exploration of metaphorical images of

the women’s body, such as the Spanish guitar. As stated by

Rosenblum, the guitar in Spanish culture was a symbol of

love making- Picasso was well aware of this popular

metaphor, and its continuous use within his life’s work must

have expressed some type of Freudian repression of

sexuality. Again, I have included this example as an essay

that refuses such metaphoric interpretation within the realm

of feminism. I hope that future feminist scholarship of


Picasso’s guitars as an image for sexuality and voyeurism

will be further researched.

However, there are a select handful of scholars that

delve right into Picasso’s use of guitars within his cubist

works as an expression of his rage, fears and anxieties. In

Arianna Huffington’s book entitled Picasso: Creator and Destroyer

(1988), her methodology centers on Picasso’s guitars as both

a personal physical expression of his emotions towards women

and a metaphor for the male experience of the twentieth

century. Picasso was “in a very real sense, the 20th

century’s own autobiography. And it was by mirroring,

reflecting and epitomizing our century and all its torments

both in his like and in his art that he became a cultural

hero”(56). She sees Picasso as “creator and destroyer”,

understandings his artwork as a dark, sexual addiction for

himself as well as the women who were apart of his life.

For Huffington, the guitar symbolized a piece of a

greater metaphor- signifying death, hatred and destruction

in reaction to his life, especially that of specific women.

In the midst of his lover Eva’s dwindling health condition


due to bronchitis, Huffington describes the creation of his

guitar collages and sculptures as an expressive rage and a

yearning for immortality amongst the fragility of human

life:

Soon the new studio was crammed with finished and unfinished canvases, pieces of wire, cardboard and woodthat he used for his collages, and a stockpile of paints that he wanted to make sure would last him forever… and because there were times he could not bearto look at a blank surface, he painted on cigar boxes, on the walls, even on a broken stool for no apparent reason other than it has somehow found its way there (129).

Huffington explains Picasso’s creations not as a type of

ingenuity, but as a creative yet also destructive reaction

to life. This is further explained in her description one

one of Picasso’s constructed guitars:

His revolution against everything he hated around him and in him was expressed in an explosion of violence inhis work. The guitar, which he created [in 1925] out ofa ragged floor-cloth, strong, paint and pasted paper, was studded with seventeen two inch nails, driven through the canvas and confronting the spectator. His original intention was a lot bloodier: he has wanted tocement razor blades on the canvas so that whoever touched it would actually bleed (185)


This act of wanting his guitar to not only visible but

physically affect the viewer of the piece was in correlation

to Picasso’s inability to accept Eva’s fatal condition.

Instead of expressing sympathy and sadness in his paintings,

Huffington portrays Picasso as having a strong and masculine

rage towards his self and towards the world. Her conclusion

of course demystifies Picasso as being purely a brilliant

artist, but simultaneously offers a view of him as a

metaphor to the effects of war and trauma in the 20th

century.

Formalism Part II

In the late 20th century into the early 21st century,

discourse surrounding the explanation of Picasso’s Guitars

became less important to explaining the important qualities

of his artwork. Formal scholarship avoided the personal life

of the artist and even questioned the reception of a guitar

as being an important feature in Picasso’s work. A return to

form, formalism and the emphasis on the visual qualities of

the picture frame became evident. However, taken to the


extreme, the guitar was no longer found to be a guitar, but

instead an irrelevant feature picked out by earlier

critiques that had robbed many of Picasso’s paintings of its

purely pictoral qualities.

In Rosiland Krauss’ essay published in Art in America

entitled “Pr-Presenting Picasso” (1980), she critically

examines the guitars presented in Picasso’s painting as

being completely disconnected from the context of the

artwork. She focuses on the guitar collages between 1912 and

1913, expressing them in formalist and conceptual terms as a

radical break from cubism. Krauss understands his collages

of the Guitar as having two opposing forces: one being

modernism’s attention to the picture plane as a means of

self-preservation, the other being the masking of the ground

of the painting (its pallet, canvas and paint) by the use

of paper collage.

For Krauss, the guitar is not a guitar at all, but a

use of different shapes and semiotics. Furthermore, she

understands Picasso’s papier colle as a transgression from


modern art, deeming it oppositional and confusing with its

use of non-painterly materials.

In 1984, Altieri’s essay expresses a direct response to

Krauss’s strictly objective approach the Picasso’s Guitars

between 1912-1913, honoring her for “treating visual

materials in essentially metaphorical terms”(9) however,

also reducing them to “an ironic vision, attributing to

values which [Picasso]… tried very hard to overcome”(10).

Altieri disagrees with the rigidity of Krauss’ argument,

instead arguing that there is more to Picasso’s cubist

collages and constructions than a debate within cubism.

Seeing Krauss’s analysis as being too critical as it

reduces the guitar to nothing but a vision adapted by

viewers and not being a guitar within the eye of the artist,

Altieri means to honor the formal qualities of his cubist

painting rather than critically attack them of their

differences. He states that

…by engaging in her readings of the painting I hope to show how line in Picasso becomes a form of desire, how rhythms of light and shade generate complex reflections


on the nature of substance, and how structuring activity within the work embodies concrete testimony tovalues one can state discursively(10).

Altieri understand the colleges, as an expressive use of

form, and less of an art limited to problems between

modernism and purity of form. Whereas Altieri’s analysis

still honors Picasso’s guitars for their artistic expression

of form, he understands the guitars through an objective

eye, explaining them as a visual feature of the canvas.

Lastly, Pepe Karmel’s represents an example of a later

formalist who recognizes the work of earlier social

historians of Picasso’s works, but recognizes their common

opposition to include formalism within their analysis. In

the introduction to his analysis he explains “Semiologists

have argued that Cubism functions like a language, evoking

the real world without having to represent it

illionistically, while social historians have explored the

messages conveyed by this language. Today, it is Cubism’s

formal development that is unduly connected”(vii).


Karmel argues that the guitars within Picasso’s cubist

series between 1912-1913 act as a perspectival tool, not

objects with any specific meaning. “Some idea of their

sequential character… can be gained by looking at the motif

of an upright guitar… the interest of these works does not

lie simply in the individual pictures but in the evolution

of the composition from one picture to another”(24). In

other words, the guitar acts as an anchor in a series that

favors a visual translation of signs within a repetitive

motif of the guitar.

Observations

Throughout the history of this state of discourse,

there have been important transitions made in the ways in

which Picasso’s guitars have been analyzed. The emphasis on

scholarship versus the importance of the artwork, the

emphasis on the guitar as having a subjective or objective

identity and the importance of the artwork versus the role

of the artists have been continuously pursued and

challenged.


The battle between the importance of scholarly writing

over the actual artwork lies specifically within early and

late instances of formalism. Whereas early formalism focused

specifically on the power of the image and the guitar as an

icon depicting a transformation in style, later formalism,

such as the commentary made by Rosiland Krauss, relies on

the critiques opinion over the actual picture. It seems that

through the passage of time, the innate value of the guitars

is lost within a battle to produce more relevant and unique

discourses regarding the subject. The identity of the guitar

has not so much been preserved for its own authenticity, but

instead reused as a tool to express differences of opinion

in scholarship.

Picasso’s guitars have also undergone a silent debate

between scholars whether the object is a form of subjective

expression or, as Picasso was a modern artist, if the guitar

was used objectively, not for any personal or symbolic

qualities, but to express changes in the picture plane. The

current stance suggests a move away from determining the

guitar to retain symbolic meaning, and instead emphasizes


the formal and stylistic qualities of the artwork as a

whole.

Finally, The importance of the artists has also gone

through a transformation throughout 20th and early 21st

century. Whereas the artwork of Picasso was important to

early formalist and iconographic scholars, Picasso as an

artist became more important to the scholarship regarding

the guitars as biographical, socio-political and feminist

discourses. In relation to scholars debating the guitar as a

subjective or objective tool, the status of Picasso remains

constant in importance, suggesting Picasso’s status in the

canon as being solidified as early as the 1960’s. Whereas

the discourse of the guitars may fluctuate in opinion,

Picasso’s status as a famous artist has become standardized

by scholarship.

However, what conclusion can be made about the

discourse surrounding these guitars. Can we decide if they

reflect the expression of the artist or create a new way of

seeing? Are they windows into Picasso’s life or do they

merely reflect the physicality of the canvas? These poles of


thought seem to peak at certain periods- whereas scholarship

today tends to disregard the subjectivity of the guitars,

focusing more so on their materiality, perhaps in a few

decades scholarship will again be populated by more

subjective theories of the guitars within Picasso’s works.

Conclusions

I believe that many of these named scholars have

touched upon the importance of the continual motif of the

guitar within Picasso’s works. However, for the most part,

the analysis of the guitar has been limited to the period

between 1912-1914 during Picasso’s transition from analytic

to synthetic cubism. Scholars have at times addressed

artwork from before or after this period, but have treated

the cubist period as the main point of observation. I would

hope that future scholarship would treat examples outside

this period with equal importance.

I would also like to see more scholarly research done

within a psychoanalytical context that helps explain the

recurrence of guitars throughout Picasso’s career. As


subject matter would be less relevant to trace in classical,

naturalistic works of art, most of Picasso’s work is

surrounded by the experimentation of technique, perspective

and materials used. The fact the object of a guitar remains

so fluid within his work has yet to be singularly analyzed.

Finding no interview or scholarship asking Picasso about the

importance of the guitar throughout his work, it is now up

to further art historians to pick up the pieces and make

sense of this motif that is imbedded throughout the early to

late work of Pablo Picasso.

Annotated Bibliography

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Cotter, Holland. “When Picasso Changed His Tune” The New York Times. 10 Feb. 2011.

Foster, Hal. “The “Primitive” Unconscious of Modern Art.” The MIT Press. 34 (1985):

45-70.

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State of Research: Pablo Picaso's Guitars

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