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=The Point of This Wiki... = To whomever may stumble upon it, is simple. I'm working on an English portfolio on presentation and perception of the Picasso art exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and I'm extremely unorganized, therefore I need a place to store all my research for it. The portfolio is partially based on our own personal experience at the exhibit as well; I took extensive notes on what I saw and felt while I was there in order to, as Profesor Carleton puts it, "become one of the sources". He has us using a wiki for another portfolio and it has proven useful, so I thought I'd take another stab at it with this one. So... here goes nothing!

Ray Googe Picasso Outline

Intro Paragraph
 * Description of the trip to VMFA
 * Mention Picasso's works and their organization at the exhibit (talk about the layout of the exhibit, anything in particular you noticed about it or the spectators)
 * Talk about something specific about the exhibit that changed the way you looked at the art (blue rooms, colder temperatures, etc.)
 * Thesis: The manner in which art is exhibited can change the viewer's experience and interpretation of it
 * New Thesis: The way the Picasso exhibit is structured and organized helps to show Picasso as being able to paint with a freedom of expression that children possess and adults do not.

P1: The way an exhibit is organized can help to tell a story (in VMFA case, tells the artistic journey Picasso took throughout his life)
 * Dernie pg. 20
 * Randomly placed artwork is noticeable; themes or similarities must be in place in order to establish a flow
 * In Picasso exhibit, rooms corresponded with time periods and artistic style changes over those times
 * In first truly "Surrealist" exhibition put on by Surrealist artists (including Picasso) in 1925, the different pieces were weaved together through narrative for viewers to "create their own journeys" (Grant 145)
 * To me, the exhibit simultaneously exemplified Picasso's freeedom to express himself and his compulsive production of artistic works.

P2: Every part of the exhibit contributes to the viewer's reception of the works on display.
 * With paintings, background colors are important; viewing the same works on different colored backgrounds can highlight different aspects of the art and change the viewer's reception (Newhouse 227)
 * In the Picasso exhibit, I experienced this firsthand with the blue rooms; combined with the temperature difference, I perceived the works in those rooms completely differently than I did works in other rooms
 * Even label placement, or the lack thereof, can alter the viewer's experience (Newhouse 231)
 * In my experience, the somewhat detached labels present in the blue rooms of the Picasso exhibit added to my discomfort along with the politically-charged artwork and disconcerting cold temperatures

P3:

Observation & Description Notes
__Nude with Crossed Legs__. Paris, 1905. Pencil and charcoal on canvas. Lots of detail on face and neck, none anywhere else

__Studies for Self-Portraits__. Paris, autumn 1906. Graphite on paper.

__Study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: The Medical Student__. Paris, spring 1907. Pastel and charcoal on paper.

__Standing Nude with Raised Arm__. Paris, spring 1908. Charcoal on laid paper. Early Cubist sketch with highly geometric shaping of human form. What looks like shadow makes the form look as if it is wearing some sort of clothing

__Bust of a Man (Study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon__. Paris, spring 1907. Why is the right eye unopened, or not painted?

__Head of a Spanish Woman__. 1910-1911. Charcoal and highlights in black graphite pencil. This drawing only slightly resembles a face to me. There are elements of the drawing that suggest facial features but for the most part it's lost to me as to how this is supposed to be a face.

__Guitar__. C éret, spring 1913. Oil on canvas mounted on wood. This figure doesn't even vaguely resemble a guitar to me. It almost reminds me of one of those sculptures that doesn't look like anything unless you look at it from exactly the right angle, at which point a picture comes into view. Except this one doesn't have one of those special viewpoints.

__Man with a Mandolin__. Paris, autumn 1911. Oil on canvas. Where is the man? I can make out a face and what looks to be a mandolin but everything else is lost in a sea of boxes and geometric shapes. There's a distinct point in the painting, however, where the color scheme gets darker. Above a certain line in the painting, it looks as if there's a shadow cast over it.

__Studies__. 1920. Oil on canvas. Fusion of many styles on one painting. There are cubist influences as well as impressionist ones, for example. An interesting piece to look at.

__Three Figures Under a Tree__. Paris, winter 1907-1908. Oil on canvas. I like this one. It is richly colored, with serene looking figures. The entire painting looks warm and inviting. This is my favorite so far.

__The Painter and His Model__. Paris, February 11, 1928. Pen and India ink. A geometric representation of people. I don't particularly care for this one.

__The Painter and His Model in Front of the Painting__. Boisgeloup, October 31, 1930. Pen and India ink. Near-exact, realistic version of the aforementioned __Painter and His Model__.

__War and Peace__. October 5, 1951. Pen and India ink. Two warring eras, one mechanized, one not. A political message, perhaps?

__Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat and an Ice Cream Cone__. Mougins, August 30, 1938. Oil on canvas. Blue man with a multicolored beard and hair with green eyes. Picasso saw himself in this way?

__Massacre In Korea__. Vallauris, January 18, 1951. Oil on plywood. This is absolutely a political statement against the Korean War. Picasso illustrates the Koreans as innocent victims of the knights in medieval armor; symbolism for the barbaric nature of combat?

__Pregnant Woman__. Vallauris, 1949. Bronze. A bronze pole with patterned nicks along either side; it looks like the steel piping used in reinforcing concrete barriers. The figure has two legs, a large round stomach, and small breasts. There is no face or head, but there are two arms with hands present, all made out of the same type of reinforcement pipe.

O & D Continued: Picasso Quotes from the Walls of the Exhibit
First Room: Barcelona, Paris, and the Blue Period 1900-1905
 * It took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child.**

Second Room: Rose Period, Early Cubism, and African Art 1906-1909 Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.

Third Room: Cubism 1910-1914 Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

Fourth Room: Marriage, Family, and Classicism 1915-1924 When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

Fifth Room: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs 1905-1971 Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

Sixth Room: Muse and Metamorphosis 1925-1935 Art is never chaste.

Seventh Room: Political Painting 1936-1939 No pleasure without the taste of ashes.

Eighth Room: Picasso and War 1936-1951 Art is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.

Ninth Room: A New Start in Southern France 1946-1973 Tenth Room: Picasso Miscellanea (Photos of Picasso at work, with his family, etc.)
 * It takes a long time to become young.**

Eleventh Room: The Bathers 1956
 * God is really only another artist.** He invented the giraffe, the elephant, the cat. **He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things**.

Hallway leading out of exhibit- **Give me a museum and I'll fill it.**

Even More Observations (Miscellaneous)
Nearly every room of the eleven-room Picasso exhibit had white walls; that is, except for the seventh and eighth rooms, which contained art from 1936-1951. The walls in those two rooms were painted navy blue. Also, the temperature in the exhibit, while generally cool throughout, noticeably dipped in the navy-blue rooms. I noticed that people didn't spend quite so much time looking at the art in those two rooms; also, those rooms contained some of Picasso's more unsettling Surrealist artwork and also some of his politically-charged work. I suspect that making those rooms darker and more uncomfortable was an intentional device; I'd say it worked, because I certainly didn't spend much time in those rooms as I was made uncomfortable by the sights and sensations. Another thing I noticed at the exhibit is that the earliest paintings bore subdued tones, and as I progressed throughout the exhibit, Picasso's works became more and more colorful and vibrant; to some extent, this coincided with Picasso's move away from realistic depictions of people and objects toward his more "Surrealist" works. Now that I think of it, Picasso's early artwork seemed to blend into the white walls; it wasn't until he began experimenting with non-impressionist styles that his works began to really grab my attention.

Potential Picasso Sources
Grant, Kim. //Surrealism and the Visual Arts: Theory and Reception//. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 141-157. Print. I'm going to read chapter 8 of this book in particular, as it has to do with presentation and reception of surrealist art.

Gee, Malcolm, ed. //Art Criticism since 1900//. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1993. N. pag. Print. This book refers to Picasso several times as stated in the index, so I think it's worth a shot looking into.

[|Perception of Classical Art.pdf] This scholarly article examines the relationship between ancient art work and its reception. I don't know if it's going to be relevant or useful to me, but I thought it'd be worth putting up here. So we'll see how that one goes as well.

Durnie, David. //Exhibition Deisgn//. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006. N. pag. Print. This book is going to be instrumental to my argument that the way an exhibit's designed can alter perceptions of the pieces on display. I'm glad I found this book.

Newhouse, Victoria. //Art and the Power of Placement//. New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 2005. N. pag. Print. This book is also going to be very important to my argument. Another great find.

Haskell, Francis. //The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition//. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2000. N. pag. Print. I'm not sure to what extent this book will be useful to me, but I think it's worth looking at more closely.

Grant quotes and notables

 * At the first "official" Surrealist art exhibition, created and managed by Surrealist artists themselves, the pieces of art were arranged in a way that invited viewers to connect them and "create their own journeys" (145)
 * To create the catalog for the exhibition, Surrealist writer Andr é Breton and Surrealist artist Robert Desnos worked together to create a text to lead readers on the journey and invite them to interpret the art in their own ways (145)
 * The exhibition offered a new way to view works by established artists Picasso and de Chirico already seen by the public, but critics failed to initially recognize this and panned the exhibition as a failure to move avant-garde forward as an art form (146)
 * **Lends itself to the idea that art can be seen and interpreted in different ways based on the manner and context in which it is displayed**