Pablo Picasso's Girl With Mandolin Term Paper

Girl With Mandolin

According to John Golding, Pablo Picasso's 1910 rendition of Fanny Tellier entitled "Girl with Mandolin," is "not only one of the most beautiful, lyrical and accessible of all Cubist paintings, but is also a valuable document of the period." Golding's comment points to the historical significance of Picasso's development of the cubist style during the early twentieth century, a style that he and fellow artist Georges Braque popularized through their deft talents with brush and canvas. "Girl with Mandolin" signifies the early stages of cubism, when the style first emerged in the art world.

Also known as analytical cubism, this early phase introduced some of the philosophies underlying the movement: the wish to rend images into their essential parts, to show objects from various angles and perspectives, and to draw attention to the primacy of visual perception in art. Picasso, though, has denounced the peculiarity of cubism, having said once, "Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all," (quoted by Olga's Gallery). Ironically, Picasso himself deemed "Girl with Mandolin" to be an unfinished work. Art historian Golding continues: "For the fact that at the time Picasso saw the work as unfinished, allows us an insight into his aesthetic intentions and his technical procedure."

'Girl with Mandolin" imparts a rich sense of depth and texture, an almost three-dimensional quality. Picasso's ability to render three dimensions on the two-dimensional canvas is largely due to the theoretical intent underlying cubist painting. Like the Impressionists, Picasso conveyed on the canvas not simply a snapshot of what his eyes perceived. Rather, the Spanish artist aimed to show his viewer what his subject looked like had he or she examined it from all angles. The girl holding the mandolin therefore appears to be moving, even though her image is stationary on the canvas. Although Golding notes that Picasso was expressing "the need to flatten them up onto the picture plane," her body and her musical instrument are "sculptural, or multi -- dimensional" in effect. In "Girl with Mandolin," Picasso used earthy, almost dull tones to depict the mandolin player. The color scheme of the painting contributes….....