Must art be beautiful? Picasso's The Old Guitarist
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- Опубликовано: 14 апр 2020
- Beth and Steven ask, "Must art be beautiful" looking at Pablo Picasso's, The Old Guitarist, late 1903 - early 1904, oil on panel, 122.9 × 82.6 cm (Art Institute of Chicago, © 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso).
speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
This is totally irrelevant, but have you guys thought about narrating a book about art? You have incredibly calming voices. Even more calming and expressive than the usual narrators on Audible. You talk about art with such fervent passion and love that it becomes contagious. How wonderful would it be for someone unable to see but able to imagine the beauty of art, just by listening to your enthusiasm for the artworks you’re narrating about!
I think this channel is beautiful 💗
I give you all my respect and love. I've been watching your content for over 2 years and I'm pursuing a career as a professor and art historian, and so I like to think of myself as your disciple. I admire so much about your videos... The historical accuracy, the relevance of the analysis, descriptions of the artists' biography, cultural context, and your soothing, calm voices. Thank you for everything!!
We are delighted that we have been helpful, and wish you the best in your studies. Stay in touch.
Thanks for this video, I’ve been really curious about what your take would be on this painting.
I cannot stress how much about art I’ve learnt because of this channel. Thank you so much.
The first time I saw a photo of "The Old Guitarist" was in high school and it immediately made a big impression on me even though I wasn't really into art back then, I've always thought it was beautiful even long before I began to understand art.
The Teacher who taught Japanese at my High had a laminated replica of the Old Guitarist on her door for all of us to look at when the classroom door was closed during classtime/ passing period.
I always thought of it as strange , but as I got older in the setting of the school I understood and appreciated the ‘beauty and the raw blueness’ of the random art in the middle of a capitalist setting of a modern high school. I think about it almost every week
emotions may not be beautiful all the time, but holding them back is ugly. the creation of art is what makes art beautiful
Amazing video! I never looked at this painting with this interpretation.
I felt his pain and was brought to tears.
My wonderful high school art teacher revealed to me that beauty is NOT art's SOLE purpose. Sometimes the message of a art piece is it's overarching purpose. Does it make us think about something? Does it make us feel a certain way? Is there a lesson or idea we take away from our encounter with it? Is it pointing out or protesting an injustice? Art is multipurpose and multifaceted...and all of that is beautiful.
I only recently stumbled upon your channel, and am really enjoying it. First through reliving places visited on a family vacation 2 years ago to Italy, and now with videos like this about this work of Picasso. Very informative and extremely interesting and entertaining. If you ever chose to do a longer piece/documentary I’m sure it would meet both critical and popular success. Thank you for your work
Wow, absolutely amazing content! This video sums up everything I want to do and study for the rest of my life
I had this poster on my walls years ago and what I got from it was that it's a man that's broken but the guitar gives him light. In a world surrounded with blue, the only thing that he holds true is the guitar. I know nothing but that's what it'll mean to me. Art.
Im new to all this but this is first time someones is talking art in a language that my perception can comprehend. I do not know if its just my perception or you are universally more clearer in conveying that abstract meaning and feeling of art. Thanks, happily continuing on to the next one :)
Gradually I am understanding Picasso.😊🙏
That's my favorite painting from my boy Pablo. I used to pose like that old guitarist when I was a small kid.
BEAUTIFUL
The late Scruton wrote 'A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't.' Same goes for beauty.
Survive the Jive good to see you here :) and spot on.
True words from Scruton
For future videos, I would recommend checking out the Speed Museum in Louisville, KY. They have some amazing art there, especially of Native American and African art.
I love these videos and am super excited/nervous to take the AP Art History exam! These help a ton!
I would very much like to have Beth and Steven over for a spot of lunch
Aahhh ♥️
Art is always beautiful, in that it should and will evoke an emotional reaction. So yes, art must be beautiful by inherent necessity--it's additive to the emotional reaction.
A beautiful painting despite distortion. Perhaps is a way to see beauty in another context. In the abilities of a painter, or in the capacity of a blinded man to be absorb by his own music. Thanks for your description. Smoothly goes along with beauty. I will find out more about El Greco’s painting. In which sense he distorted Christ while carrying the Cross.
Thanks again.
can you maybe do a video about the place of beauty in abstract art?
“His name is Kant”
*opens eyes, rewinds video*
Dia 08/06/2022 completando ''Olhando para a arte'' no Khan Academy.
A pergunta do que é belo, me lembra especificamente o debate de Peter Atkins vs William Lane Craig, quando Atkins diz que a ciência prova tudo, Craig dá 5 exemplos provando que a ciência não pode provar tudo e dentre eles está o da beleza, a ciência não pode provar o que é belo/feio, desta forma acabamos por entender que na verdade a beleza é eventual como diz Baudelaire, reforçando a ideia que é passa na série ''Explicando'' da Netflix, onde no episódio ''Beleza'' nos dá vários exemplos de como a forma que entendemos algo como belo é influenciado pela forma atual em que entendemos o mundo e com entendíamos.
Desta forma chegamos a conclusão de que na verdade a beleza é subjetiva e influenciada por períodos atuais e anteriores, assim explicando o porque de sempre termos algumas coisas das quais os antigos consideravam belo e hoje nós também consideramos.
Um período atual é sempre influenciado por um período anterior, mas se formos a fundo nesta afirmação, cairemos no problema do infinito, ora, portanto existe um referencial de beleza que temos desde os primeiros humanos.
Concepts of beauty are really quite consistant across history and cultures. The differences/changes in "ideas of beauty" are really not as big as is made out. What's changed in recent years is some people have tried to say "look, here is something ugly/non conformist, and this is also art". But they are hoisted by their own petard. They are defining their "ugly art" by agreed universal standards of beauty, and therefore intrinsically tied to beauty. This type of art is also more of a anti-art statement for artists unsure of meaning, wrapped up in itself and its own personal and narrow idea of art, so therefore ends up being exactly the thing it is trying not to be. So in the end the issue of "does art need to be beautiful" is a non issue. It's a contrived question. We already know the answer, we've had the answer for thousands of eyars of human history.
Pythagorus' view on beauty is intriguing, but I appreciate the artists who dared to break away from conventional standards of beauty and other things. I hope to find something that consumes me the way the guitarist's music consumed him.
I do agree that beauty is subjective and anything could be beautiful to anyone. I also agree that back when the standards for art beauty were so rigid and centralized this was also a bad thing. But I think its understandable why I ,like many others, look so much to the past for beautiful art. After WWII so much art and architecture went in such a radical direction. Movements like "abstract expressionism" and "minimalism" went to a place where most people (from anecdotal experience) think the art is so devoid of beauty and creativity. Yet for some reason it is propped up by museum curators and purchased by wealthy people. For someone like me who really loves art, this is somewhat mentally painful to see.
I know what you mean. But I'm glad we have the freedoms we have in art today as it must have been so oppressive back in the day. Could you imagine how many Mary + Christ child pieces artists would have had to produce back in the day? They were like the superhero movies of their day. I enjoy this older art too, but I think a lot of it has to do with nostalgia and pieces that don't seek to challenge my ideas of "what is art?". That old chestnut is tiresome as all hell.
If you take the longer view, you'll realize the same was said in the past about art you appreciate today. For example, when the impressionist aesthetic was new, it was considered ugly and technically unsophisticated by many - till the tide changed. Maybe we'll need more time to get used to post-war art before we can see its beauty.
I'm wondering if the portrait underneath the old guitarist (3:31, it looks like a beautiful lady) was painted over precisely to send a message ("everything fades away ", "life is a rollercoaster") or it's just a coincidence.
Picasso painted over his own canvases at this point in his career. Read more here: www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/PicassoAS/html/7327426.html
Nah, he was just too poor to buy canvas...sometimes we project a lot of symbolism on stuff and although our knterpretation can sometimes be cool, beautoful, thought-provpcing or whatever...it's just not true. I don't know which is more important, jussayin..
Beauty is a product of art and art is a product of the soul. Ugliness can also be a product of art from the soul. The difference is what state the soul is in: divine grace or diabolic disgrace.
But then beauty is fashionable and so is art. How does a work of art (painting) maintain its worth? It comes up to be a piece of art history, i get it, but its "beauty" as such changes as our perception does... that Picasso piece certainly was overwhelmingly innovative and beautiful 70 years ago, what about today??
Today it’s just regarded as art, but isn’t seen with the revelancy it was. It’s no longer innovative or fashionable, because it has become part of the status quo. Someone might argue it is no longer it’s former self, because it showed a rejection to academicism, but now it’s part of the mainstream.
Picasso's Blue Period is thought to have been influenced by the suicide of his close friend Carlos Casagemas. For several years after his tragic death, Picasso painted exclusively with blue tones.
Because Picasso stole his girlfriend and slept with her behind his friends back ! Smh
the question you pose is a very important one, and there are other questions connected to it, like: who is the artist? how important is the artist? today, we operate with romanticist notions of the artist; in previous epochs, it was not the artist but the work of art itself that was at the center of attention. today, the commercialization of art determines the importance of the artist as well... the Greeks of course had their canons of beauty, but it is important to note as well that the beautiful was intimately connected to the good and the true... Kant would treat aesthetics as essentially a field of its own, bifurcated from truth and goodness; though he talks of the sublimity of the beautiful, nevertheless this becomes a matter of taste, a subjective disposition... perhaps what would be more interesting would be to range not just diachronically about our changing notions of "art," the "artist," and the "beautiful" but also synchronically across cultures: Japanese, Chinese, African, Aboriginal, Indian, Amerindian, Islandic, etc...
Logically, concepts of beauty changing through time does not say anything about whether art needs to be beautiful. It simply demonstrates that each era, say, had its own value of beauty. It doesn't address the question, you are still saying that art is beautiful to whomever it was creating it.
Since art endures, the question seems to be how new audiences engage with perceptions of beauty different from their own. We then fall back in the old debate about authorial intention. In my understanding, the concept of beauty intended by the artist is not determinant in the interpretation of their work - in some cases, we may not even know what their ideas were.
Kafka once said : ''I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.'' I would say we should look only at the kind of paintings that wound or stab us ... might help soothing our anxiety.
Being frequently exposed to pain, physical, spiritual, psychological...indeed makes you stronger later on and more aware. So yes, progression through pain.
If i was a multi-millionaire i would pay Beth & Steven to tell me a bedtime story every night in person..😁
Everything that god “Allah” creates is beautiful
I bet there's a cockroachologist out there who thinks they're beautiful.
I compare this and "Sunflowers," finding the guitarist much more beautiful. But, the ugliness of the flowers is itself a statement, maybe about art in general and so I can tolerate looking at them.
Yes it doesn’t have to be beautiful
But it needs to be realistic
I could like a painting of an ugly person if that person is rea!
Picasso's guernica is not beautiful. It is powerful, terrible, wrenching art. Art does not need to be aesthetically pleasing to be art.
Ugly is beautiful too