Inspiration Avenue Challenge: Pablo Picasso

This week at Inspiration Avenue, Tammy asked us to interpret our take on Pablo Picasso. Since I'm not a painter, but I am a collage artist, I brought out the one and only thing I ever made that was influenced by Picasso.

A few months ago I was searching for an artist who might have created sunflowers, possibly similar to the ones made by Van Gogh. However, there were no other examples of artists and sunflowers. It was at that time I stumbled onto a term called synthetic cubism. I continued to read and learned this was the final stage of Cubism, made popular by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. According to the Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art:

This process of incorporating everyday materials (newspaper cuttings, tickets, tobacco wrappers etc) into their paintings marked a move away from the austere cerebral abstraction of Analytical Cubism to the more relaxed and decorative Synthetic Cubism. In effect, this advanced form of Cubist art reversed the compositional principle of analytical Cubism. Instead of breaking down an object into fragments and then re-assembling them (analytical Cubism), the image was being built up (synthesized) from new elements and shapes. Moreover, the inclusion of these items suggested that art could be made with scissors and glue as easily as with brushes and paint.

Possibly the most famous of this style by Picasso was Three Musicians. Of further interest, according to Art History at About.com:

The invention of collage, which integrated signs and fragments of real things, is one aspect of "Synthetic Cubism."

So I asked myself what if Picasso had used sunflowers as a model or theme to depict synthetic cubism during that time period (1912-1914). What I came up with is the above, using paint chips and painted book pages, "fragments of real things" using scissors, and a sewing machine in place of glue. I really liked how this piece turned out, but I have to admit, sewing through four layers of paint chips was a bit of a challenge. In the end, I thought this piece looked vaguely like the sunflower I was going for.

And although this is a piece I created for my friend Marlynn several months ago, it is how my synthetic cubism sunflower, in the vein of Picasso, came to be a part of this Inspiration Avenue challenge.