Living Vicariously Through Picasso ~ A Found Object Necklace

” Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. ” – By Pablo Picasso

Picasso was alive and often in the news when I was a child. I was fascinated by his unusual lifestyle especially since I remember my mom rolling her eyes as I read an article about him. Parental disapproval was always a great motivator. My interest was piqued. I wanted to be the female Picasso.

Living Vicariously Through Picasso is dedicated to my fascination with Picasso, the painter. “Now wait a minute”, you say, “That necklace is white and silver. Picasso didn’t paint with just white.” And I would say you are absolutely correct. White is symbolic in this jewelry piece.

If you know a little bit about color theory and light, you probably know that in the additive color model, white is the combination of all colors. When light flows through a prism, like the crystal at the center of the necklace, the light is fractured into pieces. You will see a rainbow, i.e. all colors. An object is a color because it reflects a color and absorbs the rest of the colors. All the colors we see are reflections of light off objects.

…so where is Pablo in this found art necklace? First I made two little symbolic Pablos using an image I remember of him with a beret on top of his head. They are at the top of the necklace. Each is a little bone bead with a button (cap) on top. The second is the monkey covering his eyes which will require some help from the quote and some explaining. I have two thoughts about blindness and art.

First, I had an Aha! Moment after I had been drawing a while. In order to really “see” what I was drawing, I had to turn off (or blind) that part of my brain that was editing my visual input. It was so efficient that I couldn’t see the subtle changes in colors of an object or the position of one object against another. I had to be blind to draw.

My second thought about blindness and art has to do with photograph, how it changed the way some artists paint. Before photography a realistic image of a person was painted as a keepsake. Paintings were used to tell stories to people who couldn’t read or wanted to experience history or distance places. Before photography, artists strived to make paintings as true to life as they could. Since a photo captures a realistic image, a painting could be something different. A painter was free to shut his eyes and interpret the world in a totally different way. A great painter no longer just saw the world, he interpreted it.

Artists like Pablo Picasso and many before and after him, helped pave the way for artists like me who can now see a face in a bead, a hat in a button, a charm in an earring, and color in white light. The key to creating and appreciating art is to blind the part of us that edits what we see and encourage the part that allows us to feel, touch, taste, smell, and hear with our eyes and hands. An artist absorbs from all the senses and reflects the full spectrum into his art.

The necklace is now in my Unique Re-tiques etsy shop, here.

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