Pablo Picasso was arguably one of the most prolific, and least understood of the twentieth century modernists. He was a vanguard of a movement that involved the audience in the viewing and imagining of his work; work that he did, not so much for others, but for himself. The challenge for cubism and the modernist movement as a whole was the reception of the audience to something new.
The mainstream by, definition, is rarely open to new forms of expression. When Picasso and his associates broke away from the established norm of realistic portrayals, many believed they were walking a short plank to obscurity and were certainly striding the double edged sword of artistic freedom. The level of interactivity in the cubist movement and its ability to touch each individual who opens themselves to expression is surely responsible for its, and Picasso’s, continuing popularity in a world where many people consider him to be little more than a fraud with no talent. Some will claim that anyone, even children, could compete on his level. What they don’t realize is that he was a talented artist, who could have easily competed with contemporary realists and was very capable of accurate and precise renderings.
As with many bold statements though, there is some truth to what the naysayer claims. A child could compete with Pablo in some ways, for many of these children don’t know and aren’t bound by the rules of “proper” art. They create vivid worlds of color and bombastic shapes straight from their imagination. Until they are scolded for coloring outside the lines, they create art much like Picasso did, for them selves. They actively use their imagination to affect the art they compose, relying on the imagination of their audience to fill in the details. It took effort and dedication for Picasso to let go of his training and paint with his mind rather than his eyes and his hands.
Picasso followed an almost Zen approach to artistic achievement, letting go of the barriers and borders of traditional realism. His work forced the viewer to utilize a portion of them selves to flavor the art with their own perceptions. He didn’t simply render an image as it was, as imagine what an image could be. In Picasso’s own words:
“To search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or steps towards an unknown ideal of painting...When I have found something to express, I have done it without thinking of the past or of the future."
Picasso claims that the traditional artists were searching, stretching for the perfect stroke of the brush, or blend of color to render the perfect image, one which encompasses the world as they saw it, without realizing that everyone perceives the world differently. Picasso’s solution was to let go, to embrace nothingness. No form, no technique, sometimes, no palette. Enlightenment comes not from the search for what can not be found, but in the surrender to what already is possessed.
Picasso realized, as many of his peers did, that the world is perceived differently by every person, that art wasn’t simply the reflection of light but also the decoding of that light by the mind of the audience, and ultimately their emotional investment in the final result. An attempt to achieve that perfect realism was flawed if the rules of perception change for every viewer. Instead, they chose to activate the mind of the viewer to engage their imagination and emotion by simply suggesting the shape or color of what an image could be. In this way they freed every member of their audience to perceive something different, to create their own perfection. Their paintings were a tool to imaginative freedom, not the end result of artistic expression and allowed every person who saw their work to participate in the works completion.
interview published in The Arts, 1923