Pablo_Picasso's_the_Old_Guitarist

Pablo Picasso, “The Old Guitarist”, Oil on panel, 122.9 x 82.6 cm, 1903-1904 “The Old Guitarist” by Pablo Picasso portraits an unsmiling old man sitting crossed legs on a sidewalk playing the guitar. The man is in an angular pose reclined against a wall; his head of white hair is leaning to the left side as if he lacks the energy to keep it up, and his right shoulder is pull up. Picasso uses curvy lines to outline and accentuate the appearance of the old man’s body: the man has a skeleton like figure, his limbs are elongated, and his head and shoulders are gaunt. The man is barefoot, the left foot continues off the painting, and he is dressed in dark blue rags. The skin color of the man is a mix of blue and white. Picasso uses a monochrome palette, for that reason the painting is only dominated by the color blue and its various shades. The guitar the man is holding against his chest is the only object that has a shift in color, a dark brown. The painting is a vertical piece therefore the man and his guitar covers most of the area, width sense. The man and his guitar are the only subjects on the paintings so they are the focus of the painting. Picasso, I believe, created “The Old Guitarist” to portrait the saddest aspects of life through a person that is experiencing it, in the case of the painting a beggar. The man in the painting shows how hopelessness can be physically and emotionally deteriorating for humans. The posture of the man shows how careless he is about his situation and states that he has given up on succeeding in life. The physical appearance of the man represents the outcome of his melancholy and poverty; it drained him. The shift in color for the guitar might be to emphasize the importance it plays for the man in the painting. The guitar is the only object the man is portrayed with therefore it is his only companion in his solitary life. Also the guitar seems as his tool for escaping reality because he seems lost in contemplation while playing it. The chose of blue for the painting is deliberately because it intensifies the cold atmosphere in which the old man is living in. I find “The Old Guitarist” as a fantastic piece of work because it is able to evoke me emotions such as compassion, sadness, and sympathy. I find interesting that besides the brown guitar, Picasso made use of only blue to create the painting and its atmosphere of misery. The painting is likeable to my eyes because the figure creates lines that enable my eyes to travel easily through all the painting appreciating every detail of it. I enjoy the most that the painting is elegant, even thought the subject is a beggar, due to the simplicity it was painted with.