By Katerina Papazissi

Σάββατο 2 Μαρτίου 2013

Picasso's Man with pipe 1915 and the representation of a representation.


While looking at the painting 'Man with Pipe', 1915, by Pablo Picasso, an alternative interpretation occurred to me. What Picasso has created is in fact a painting of an idea about a painting.
Of course, I am not totally familiar with writings on the subject and it is possible that somebody has already put forward such an argument. Nevertheless here it is.
Let's first look at the painting. We see some parts of a man's body. Half of his head and hat, his right arm and his left hand, holding a cigar. Other elements include parts of his jacket and vest, as well as abstract areas of plain colour and dots.  There are also elements depicting parts of a chair and elements that refer to parts of a room. The different painting styles co-exist, in classic Picasso style.
The composition forms a sort of irregular triangle, from top to bottom.
I see one dark blue rectangle cutting the head in two at the top ,  and a brown form in the shape of a greek π at the bottom-center. I see these two elements as the edges of an easle. The rest of the elements can be seen as parts of dismantled paintings, one of them being the painting of a man with a pipe, others perhaps being paintings of a chair, a painting of the  room, and abstract paintings. In my mind, these  fragments  of paintings are reassembled to form a three dimensional picture with irregular edges, supported by the easel that breaks out of the frame of a standard easel painting.  The picture is thus opened up to the space around it. It is opened up perhaps to the real (in the painting) man with pipe, the representation thus merging with the represented.
We can take this further.  If we take the form in the upper right corner to be a keyhole, what we are witnessing is a sneak view of a painter's mind.
Picasso has thus painted his idea of a painting. By confining it to two dimensions, making an easel picture out of it, he preserved the status of this as an idea.  It is not reality, but a construction of reality. Even, a construction of a construction of a constructed reality. (!) Picasso has painted an infinite space.
Perhaps the π  shape stands for man-with-a-pipe's legs, but to me, the easel explanation is much more interesting.

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