A Blue Heart

Tonight I am considering the heart. Can you hear a heart break? Interesting, and admittedly odd, question – it reminds me of the endless quandary of a tree falling in the forest. The great and the good would argue that logically the tree would have to make a noise, and the same great and good would argue that equally logically it doesn’t have to do a damn thing. It’s the same thing with hearts. I remember the first time it happened to me; the sound itself is inextricably linked with arguing and the smashing of glass and sound of flesh hitting wall (don’t panic it wasn’t my own). Amongst all of that there was a silence. A silence which stretched on for an eternity; then a flutter like the wings of a butterfly against glass and the tinkle of crystal.

Pablo Picasso, Women With Crossed Arms, 1902. Oil on Lithograph. Private Collection

More than anything I remember a pain without a wound. It seemed to appallingly wrong to my mind that there was nothing to show for the agony. I’ve sat next to a couple as they broke up, and experiencing it at close quarters is like going to the theatre to see Oedipus Rex or Electra – you know it’s going to end badly but you can’t turn away. The shock, pain, rage and sadness radiates outward almost immediately, but just before it hits there is a second of bewildered quiet, where hope is flattened and despair waits in the wings to take the stage.

Pablo Picasso, Blue Nude, 1902. Private Collection.

Now before any of you start beating a path to my door with worry for my relationship, I am not talking about myself. Though that is admittedly one of my favourite topics, this time it really was a simple case of wrong thought wrong time and a need for a little catharsis. This is so much the case in fact, that I haven’t decided whether or not to even publish this post. I should report dearest readers that it is four o’clock in the morning and my +1 is, if not asleep, then being very quiet and leaving me to write and muse.  The heart in all its myriad different guises, has no sense of timing. It can tip us from happy oblivion to desperate introspection in the time it takes for a thought to flit quietly across ones mind. It is this that has driven me from my bed, to expound and ponder

Pablo Picasso, La Vie, 1903. Oil on Canvas. The Cleveland Museum of Art

Whilst hearing your heart fall apart is a moot point, there is definitely a booming market in depicting it. If you tap ‘heartbreak’ in to Google the images are, to be completely honest, slightly disconcerting – and that’s me being polite. None of them seem to be accurate, in fact the whole page is a study in red hearts and cartoons. Last time I checked it wasn’t exactly like that. Luckily some of the greatest artists in the world have tackled the subject slightly better than Manga and moody black and white drawings. Thank. Goodness…

Pablo Picasso, The Old Jew, 1903. Oil on Canvas. The Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

Heartbreak pretty much always follows the conclusion of a relationship – whether by desire or death or distance, it is an end product. There is so much inspiration for artists with this emotionally charged period of time, and many of them do some of their best works when plunged into such turmoil. My personal favourite is Picasso and his Blue Period which it is now believed to have followed the death (suicide) of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Out of the ashes of tragedy etc, etc.

Pablo Picasso, Mother and Child, 1902. Oil on Canvas. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. 

A brief history lesson and then I’ll continue: The Blue Period is a term used to define to the works produced by Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue, blue-green and blue-grey, only occasionally warmed by other colours.  In choosing austere colour and sometimes dubious and disheartening subject matter—prostitutes, beggars and drunks being amongst the most frequent—Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Casagemas, who took his life at the L’Hippodrome Café in Paris, France by shooting himself in the right temple on February 17, 1901 over a love affair that went wrong.

Pablo Picasso, Death of Casagemas, 1901. Oil on Wood. Musee Picasso, Paris.

For four years Picasso was plunged into the strony and emotionally destructive depth of depression, his canvases his only outlet for the grief he felt at the loss of his closest compatriot. The sadness, the ache and the profound sense of loss roll over you when you see these beautiful, stark and vulnerable images. 

Pablo Picasso, The Guitarist, 1903. Oil on Panel. Art Institute of Chicago.

The colour of blue is an interesting choice given the way in which it was originally venerated for its vitality and vigour when it appeared in Europe in the 15th century, but the tonality which Picasso uses perfectly complements the mood of the images. It seems an odd thing to say that a colour can typify an emotion, but the hues he explored during those years really do seem to be those of loneliness – it is almost as if the life has been leached from the pigment, leaving us with figures who have been cast adrift on an endless sea of melancholy, no longer sure of their place in the world they inhabit.

Pablo Picasso, Blind Man's Meal, 1903. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Oil on Canvas

Now hearts heal and time takes the edge of pain – whilst never forgotten it is accepted as a daily ache – and the same is true of Picasso. His Blue Period ended with the beginning of the Rose Period (anyone else seeing a theme in nomenclature?) and the darkness began to recede. However, these striking, disturbing and haunting images remain as a constant testament to the loss we all endure during this wonderful, terrifying and brilliant journey called life.

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Sebastia Juner Vidal, 1903. Oil on Canvas. LACMA