Brain Food #505
Feeling blue
Thoughts of the day
Yesterday was Pablo Picasso’s birthday, an artist I return to often, though the quality of his wisdom and work were sadly not reflected in his behaviour to those close to him. Though Picasso’s legacy, both written and visual, suggests a man who was confident, sometimes overly so, this was not always the case.
In the early 1900s, Picasso went through his infamous Blue Period, which he claimed started after his close friend, Spanish poet Carles Casagemas, took his own life. In the three years that followed, Picasso, from the depths of depression, began to paint portraits of outcasts as a homage to his friend, with a dark, melancholic blue hue setting the mood of each scene. Artists, prostitutes, homeless figures, those who suffered at the edges of society, painted from someone who was, at the time, at the edge of living.
His blue paintings were too sad to purchase. Instead of choosing to hide it, pressured by a public demand for uplifting images, he went through this phase by embracing his sadness and exorcising his grief through his work, while exposing his vulnerability to the world.
The Blue Period did not last forever. After three years, Picasso’s Rose Period had begun.
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