Picasso La Vie
Picasso’s “La Vie” (1903) When Picasso returned to Barcelona, a deep and significant change took place in his painting. ... Picasso made the most of Barcelona, when Barcelona was one of Europes most enlightened cities. ... It was against a background of perfected cosmopolitanism that Picasso got to be Picasso, and he could go through a new book, a new kind of painting on a new kind of person as fast as anyone in the history of art. ... Spain gave him an enduring idea of physical beauty, one that derived both from his friend Carlos Casegemas, who died by his own hand in 1901 and can be seen in the major painting "La Vie" of 1903. Throughout the Blue period Picasso also created intimate portraits of his bohemian comrades and acquaintances in Paris and Barcelona, who sought to identify themselves with societys dispossessed. ... Indeed, in his masterpiece La Vie Picasso originally planned to depict himself as the protagonist, although he ultimately substituted a portrait of Casagemas and gave the young woman the face of Germaine, over whom Casagemas killed himself. ... However, Picasso did not intend to create a specific symbolic meaning but rather to evoke the different stages of life in a deliberately mysterious and ambiguous fashion. ... La Vie’s most cryptic feature is an image of a strange flying creature that once appeared at lower center, but which Picasso subsequently obscured by overpainting it with an isolated, crouching woman(Wertenbaker). ... Painted in Barcelona, La Vie remains one of the key works in Picasso’s repertoire. ... The title, La Vie, translates to “Life”. ... Although some say that "La Vie" was not attributed to the picture by the artist and is therefore irrelevant except in so far as it represents a particular critics interpretation of the picture. ... The painting seems to be both intimate and hopeless all the same; maybe that’s how Picasso saw the times or saw life in general, that it was worth living even though it may have been a fool’s hope that keeps people going? ... It is true that the female figures have a gravity and power about them which suggests some sort of deep understanding but it is in the male figure that Picasso expresses that spiritual depth in the human condition which it is the artists job to express. ... And yet "La Vie" belongs essentially to Picassos artistic adolescence. ... Overall, in connection with this, La Vie can be interpreted, pretty obviously, as using Christian iconography to express his feelings of desperation. ... Regardless of how one looks at the painting, one thing is clear: This painting, with the pessimistic expression of its subjects, and its desolate blues is a depiction of the way Picasso viewed life in general during this time. ... In addition to the changes Picasso made while painting La Vie, a second painting was discovered beneath its surface that appears to be the lost work, The Last Moments (or The Moribund).