■ Picasso series of works
■ Collector's Weekly reporter Liang Zhiqin
In the West, the cow is almost one of the earliest animal figures to appear in fine art works, the French Lascaux and the Spanish Altamira cave paintings, is the masterpiece of the primitive people about 20,000 years ago, Paleolithic artists carved many animal images, more common such as wild horses, bison and so on. But the image of the cow in Western art is different from Chinese painting, the former is more of a manifestation of power or as a manifestation of pure animal image, and there are not many cases of giving higher spiritual pursuits, which can even be seen in Picasso's works, he used the image of the cow to conduct different experiments in order to explore the change of visual symbols.
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The dynamic image of the cow in the cave painting is realistic
It is speculated that praying for the harvest of the hunt will be fruitful
In Europe, among the most prominent examples of animal figures painted on rock walls deep in caves, there is no shortage of images of bison. Some of the bison images on the murals are very tall, and the author uses delicate brushwork to use limited colors such as ochre, red, yellow, and black to dye the manes of different colors, and cleverly uses the uneven walls in the cave to express the shape of the animals, resulting in a strong shocking effect.
The contour line of the cow in the Altamira cave painting is relatively thin, the body structure of the cow is closely combined with the line and color, and the uneven walls in the cave also make the dynamic of the cow more vivid and the feelings more delicate. But it is not as bold and rough as the cow frescoes in Lascaux Cave. The cows in the Lascaux cave paintings give the impression of rough lines, imposing and dynamic, in contrast to the static of the Altamira Caves in Spain.
The picture has begun to show the sense of composition, for example: six large bulls in the front hole, forming a circle, running in one direction.
According to studies, these caves depicting animal figures are generally very private and do not appear to be suitable for human habitation. Researchers speculate that these caves were places where primitive religious ceremonies were held, where people prayed for the fruitful results of hunting and gathering.
Historical records also record that a reindeer antler found in France, created from about 11,000-9,000 BC, is engraved with a bison that looks around, which is realistic and vivid, in stark contrast to the stylized and abstract human figure.
During the Renaissance, Pisanello created many cattle study works, and Pisanello's cattle were more humane than the deified and dull images in medieval religious paintings. Later, the cattle in Western fine art works have experienced a variety of styles such as Baroque, Rococo, romanticism, etc., and the most outstanding of which is Portel's famous work "Bull", which is the expression of the spiritual world of man and the depiction of personality, which negates reality, uses beautiful colors and compositions, and contrasts the image of the early Renaissance with a slightly divine harmony and brilliance, the clouds in the sky in the distant view, using brilliant tones and bold compositions. Although the whole is based on realism, with lines and rigorous structure, the work has shown the author's subjective ideal image.
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"Yellow Cow" pays attention to harmonious rhythm and rhythm
In terms of style, it is closer to "Fauvism"
Expressionism can be called Germany's unique contribution to the world art of the 20th century, and there are two groups of young artists who constitute the main body of German Expressionism, namely the "Bridge Society" and the "Green Knight".
In 1905, in dresden, a city full of Baroque art in Germany, several young students formed a painting group called the "Bridge Society", which was composed of Kelsina, Haigel and others, and later Norder also joined this group. The so-called "Green Knights" arose from another Munich painting group.
Many of Marque's works express his efforts to find a real sense of survival from the form of animals, and his drawings depicting animals in large patches of color, such as Yellow Cow, pay attention to harmonious rhythm and rhythm, and are closer to "Fauvism" in style.
The image of the cow in Western painting is becoming more and more abstract, and even seems to return to the primitive era, such as the work of matisse, a famous Fauvist painter in his later years. Matisse's cattle reflect the appreciation of brushstrokes, the paintings use seemingly immature techniques, so as to prevent the use of experienced brushstrokes and weaken the expressiveness, some studies believe that Matisse's cattle, reflecting the modern Western art of oriental art, can see the lines are extremely concise, with flat decorative art.
In modern Western culture, the cow is also a symbol of wealth and power, such as the American wealth symbol Wall Street bronze bull, perhaps out of historical accident, Westerners chose the cow as an image ambassador. In Spain, bullfighting is considered an integral part of a deep-rooted national culture by its bullfighting supporters and gives it many aesthetic meanings: style, skill and courage. In his 1932 book Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway had a high opinion of the bullfighter, arguing that bullfighting was "the only art in danger of life".
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The saddle is erected upside down on the handlebar to form a "bull's head"
It is used as a precursor to artistic image
Picasso is known for his change, and the reasons for his change are complex, including the factors of competition in the art market in the Western world and the need to adapt to the curiosity of some audiences, but the main one should be considered to be exploring.
Picasso's constantly changing techniques of form have earned him a reputation among modern artists who admired fashion. He was the first to put the saddle of a real bicycle up and put it upside down on the handlebars, turning it into a bull's head, becoming the precursor to the "pop" art (or "pop art") that later used the physical object as an artistic image.
Around 1945, Picasso created the "Deformation of the Bull" series of works, in this series of figures, Picasso decomposed the form of the cow in a continuous and gradual manner, and gradually explored the inner essence of the pure form, each picture in the series is to find the "essential meaning" of this beast, in order to study the division and evolution of the form, it can almost be seen as the process of the mainstream form of Western painting from the academic school to the abstraction.
First of all, Picasso very vividly created a cow, close to Chinese freehand ink, and then he began to exaggerate the parts of the cow, for example, exaggerated the structure of the most characteristic parts of the cow to make it more expressive, and the form of the cow tended to be fictionalized, such as enlarging the cow's head and making its facial muscle texture stronger, the appearance more vicious, the back ridge bulging, strengthening the leg muscles, and strengthening the contrast of the picture. The cattle of the second stage are more expressive than the cattle of the first stage. In the third draft, Picasso changed the direction of his creation, no longer continuing to portray the beast's twisted and wild skeleton and muscles, but began to use lines to decompose the results of the second stage of creation, using lines that followed the outline of bones and muscles to dissect the beast. In the fourth draft, Picasso began to greatly simplify its external form according to the anatomy of the cow, strengthening the outline of the main structure, and Picasso had previously said: "Usually the creation is to construct the work step by step, but my creative process is to destroy the work step by step." The cattle at this stage began to tend to be flattened and composed of color blocks, which was more symbolic. The fifth draft continues to simplify, Picasso erases many blocks of the work from the picture, the shape is fully contracted to the characteristic part of the "cow", the huge head of the cow is removed, the newly constructed head is shrunk to the previous forehead area, the eyes are enlarged, and the horns are flattened. In the sixth draft, Picasso created a new form of head and tail for the cow to conform to the overall style and future direction of the work, and he introduced more crisscrossing curves to the cow's body to soften the contour grid, while once again adjusting the lines of the cow's back. The cow is unified into a black tone, and the white line is interlaced between the back and legs to form the tension of the line. The horn, on the other hand, is reduced to a single line, or even replaced by stick figures. In the seventh stage, Picasso set out to remove excess lines and simplify the construction of some lines, but still maintain their structural effect, and then close the most essential elements to make them appear neat and tight. The retained lines are basically the most important contour elements, and these elements have been reasonably exaggerated to make them better express the inner spirit. The eighth draft continues to merge and simplify the picture, make the structure more clear and linear, and reconstruct the head, tail, and legs, and appropriately display the reasonable details of the relevant parts. In the ninth and tenth drafts, only the lines of the whole cow are left, and the difference between the former and the latter is that the latter is more concise.
In the last draft, Picasso used a few lines to create the most classic cow in history, and in the process of creation, Picasso constantly thought about what factors made us still think that it was a cow, although the changes before and after have been vastly different, which has also left a major topic for art history, the complexity and simplification of visual symbols.