Picasso, Guitar

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Picasso, Guitar A conversation between Salman Khan and Steven Zucker about Pablo Picasso's sculpture, Guitar and related work, 1912-14 at The Museum of Modern Art

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Picasso, Guitar

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So what are we looking at here?
This is a sculpture by Pablo Picasso.
It dates to 1912, called Guitar.
Made out of sheet metal that Picasso cut and crimped and folded.
So this way is awesome.
It's just a fascinating thing to look at it.
It's something that...I mean guitar is never among daily thing.
And that's what is fun about it.
Even if you put a guitar on your wall, it kind of inspires you.
I like to leave my guitar in the corner of my room,
it makes me always wanna be more creative.
And he takes it to another level,
he takes this idea of the guitar
and it's, it's very recognizable as a guitar.
And it really plays with the geometry of the guitar.
And the things that you think would pop out are poppin in,
the things that are poppin in are poppin out.
But it still fundamentally has the idea of its guitarness.
And you know the strings don't cross the sound hole
I mean it's definitely not a functional guitar,
but it definitely could base what the guitar is.
So, at least esthetically I get this.
I think Picasso is applauding your interpretation.
When you thin about sculpture, what comes to mind?
What kinds of subjects have you seen in sculpture?
Well, classical sculpture, which is you know the Venus of the Milo.
And then you have the more geometric type of scupltures.
More modern sculptures, absolutelly.
Now, this is something that was made in 1912.
And when it was made,
I think that more classical kind of sculpture that you're reffering to
is really what they was.
There were sculptures of the human body.
Ocassionally there might be a piece of an armour,
might be some drapery that was sculpted.
There might be a horse.
But sculpture was always about something that existed in nature,
something that was not menmade.
Nobody has made the sculpture of a guitar
because we make guitars.
Picasso could become a luthier,
he could just make a guitar.
I wholly appreciate that, I mean,
I think that this a challenging people's notion of art.
As you just pointed out,
well that seems kind of intuitive to make a represenation of something that
we already make and we can make it very well.
And represent it prefectly.
Here is intentionally representing the essence of the thing
without making the thing.
How can he create a visual vocabular that represents the thing,
well not in any way constructing that thing.
He has to be really deliberate,
has to make sure that that fingerboard can't actually work.
Otherwise he's making a fingerboard, he's not making a sculpture.
No, you're exactly right.
I would probably remove several of the guitar like cues,
and it would still very clearly be a guitar.
Yeah, but you know I definitely appreciate this.
I definitely, I think get this.
Think about what has happend in this moment.
His understanding of art, making his coming out of the 19th century,
when the photography had really released artists from the responsibility
of having to depict.
And so now artists have moved to the second level which is,
let's focus on the language of depiction, as oppossed to depiction itself.
Take a look at one of the things that makes it most clear
that this is a guitar.
Look at the contours of the body of the guitar.
S - curves on the both sides.
Do you notice how they're not the same scale?
Absolutelly, yes.
Picasso does this kind of thing in a lot of drawings of this time,
late 1911, 1912.
Because the right side is smaller, the one historian
has suggested that Picasso is actually representing a guitar
not flat against the wall but actually turns slightly in space.
Yeah, I definitely see that.
If you're looking at all angles of the guitar at once.
This sculpture is actually coming out of the series of collages
that Picasso has been making.
It's this funny thing, when you have the idea of the guitar,
three - dimensional real thing in the world,
which then collapses into the realm of drawings
that represent the thing in space.
And then he literally cuts those things out
and reconstructs this in three dimensions.
And in fact the very first version was made out of paper.
From three - dimensional to the two - dimensional
and then back to the three - dimensional.
I think it's fascinating.

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