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