Artists tend to initiate deep methodologies to catch the realities of the material world. Various artists, with their keen perspective, have been able to catch the movement of the world, transformation of the man through the eras and the transition of the periods through simple but fascinating literary and artistic procedures.
A powerful example is the ‘Bull’ by the all-time famous ‘Pablo Ruiz Picasso'(1881-1973), Spanish painter, sculptor poet and more, who had animals like bulls and horses as central figures in many of his artworks.
Picasso created the above mentioned ‘Bull’ as suite of Lithographs around a figure of a bull between 1945 and 1947; all pulled from a single stone.
The primary depiction was a realistic brush drawing of a bull. This basic figure was powerful in form, huge in volume, heavy in mass.
Retaking this basic work, Picasso retouched it to highlight bulkiness in various organs such as eyes and horns by their placid magnification;
This was followed by its dissection and reduction. With a shift of focal point, specific features like the reproductive organ and tail were overstated to emphasize on elements like gender.
A tactful distribution of structured lines balanced the front and rear part of the body of the bull at all levels, from the basic to the last depiction – such that at no point the bull fell out of balance.
The last depiction was the most concise depiction reduced to mere outline – yet, markedly expressing, even in nothingness, the quintessence of a bull.
Some theorists described these lithographs as successive stages investigating the absolute ‘spirit’ of the beast by exploring and analysing the essence of the bull.
The essence of the bull, extracted by Picasso is seen as the essence of Spain, as a symbol of virtues and values of Spanish culture. The ‘Bull’ in this particular work is considered as a metaphor of the Spanish people – and the transition of its appearance as an imagery of the transition of their condition, state and state of mind during the revolutionary changes within the society – a time of war , of intensification of technology and at the same time an époque of dominating fascism.
A simple experimentation – dissecting the form became an effective method in art to reveal the truths of the external world and its movement, while searching the self.
The process is the very root of all abstract trends and movements developed in the history of art, the very initial being “Cubism”, initiated by Picasso himself. Cubism, apart from dissecting the image, extended to superimposing /juxtaposing on the same plane, its depiction through multiple perspectives.
The logic behind this process seems as meaningful as interesting:
According to Cubists, the classic art obliged the painter to maintain unique point of view to paint a picture of a still model object. The object had to be depicted as it would seem to the eye in space from a single angle, at a particular moment of time. A depiction of the model object from a single position, according to the cubists, meant depicting just partial picture of the model- that which would be seen by an immobile viewer, in a particular moment of time. Asserting that in the modern epoch, the speed was obliging the man to displace rapidly, therefore, such image portrayed was partial and not absolute.
Cubism claimed to aim at catching the objects more deeply in their movement and complexity by putting to play their fragmentation and dissection through the multiple perspectives – that is juxtaposing on the same plane, different faces of the reality, that the eye misses to see simultaneously, but the mind has the faculty to reunite by depicting the reality in its entirety. It was an attempt to catch and illustrate the unlimited facets of the mental image:
This face that one shows me, I should also know its profile” Picasso
This was the beginning of abstraction, a search of means to perceive beyond the tangible with mind, all that the eye cannot see physically….
