Pablo Picasso – Oh, Those Guitars!

‘Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can’t explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.‘ (Pablo Picasso)*

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Guitar, 1921

I’m not a particular fan of Picasso, but earlier this month I found myself absolutely besotted by his collages and guitars. Oh, those guitars! I was so inspired by them that I started making collages myself, with guitars and cut-out pieces of newspapers. Despite their seeming simplicity, I feel a strong creative energy from them and that’s why I like them.

Picasso’s art can be clearly divided into periods, some by colours he used, others by the specific motifs and themes he painted repeatedly: in his melancholic ‘blue phase’ he was interested in beggars, the homeless, prostitutes, drunk people, in his ‘rose period’ it was all about joy, carnivals and harlequins. Then, inspired by Cezanne’s theory that everything in nature and world around us can be divided into geometric objects, Picasso, along with Braque, delved into Analytical Cubism which resulted in rather confusing, dark and distorted paintings. Their alteration of reality is almost psychedelic, which is kind of cool. What followed is known as Synthetic Cubism or Crystal Cubism which followed the idea that a painter’s job is not to ‘copy’ world around him, but to ‘construct’, and so they did, discovering at the same time the power of collage as a technique. Instead of breaking an object into its essential pieces, they built objects using contrasting colours, pieces of newspapers, fragments of their own sketches. Picasso’s painting Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass made in autumn of 1912, is usually considered the first example of Synthetic Cubism. It’s so simple yet so striking. The background is actually a wallpaper, and then there’s a piece of blue paper, and a piece of black paper, all very simple, and then, out of nowhere, a piece of sheet music and a charcoal drawing of a glass made in the style of the previous Analitical Cubism. The most interesting of all, a cut out piece of newspaper with half a title showing ‘Le Jou’, shortened from ‘Le Journal’  meaning ‘Newspapers’. Picasso is playing a word game with us here, ‘le jou’ means ‘game’. Below that it says ‘Le Bataille s’est engage’ which means ‘The battle has begun’ alluding to the raging wars on Balkan, when Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro fought for the independence from the Ottoman Empire. However, this is usually interpreted not just as Picasso’s awareness of the political situation of Europe, but is seen as symbolic for the battle of Cubism and collage as new styles and methods in art.

I hate it when people say something like: ‘Oh, everyone could do that, what’s so revolutionary about it?’ My art teacher in grammar school had a good answer to these ignorant remarks, she said: ‘ Well, yes, everyone could cut out a piece of newspaper and glue it on paper, but the fact that no one did it before, that no artist dared to do it before, that’s what makes it avant-garde and revolutionary!’ This can well be applied to many more artists, like Matisse, Miro, Malevich, Mondrian, Rothko, even Pollock.

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass, Paris, autumn, 1912. Papers and newsprint (Le Journal, 18 November 1912) pasted, gouache and charcoal on paper

Pablo Picasso, Musicians with masks, 1921

Pablo Picasso, The Guitar, 1916, Synthetic Cubism

Pablo Picasso, Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare), 1924

Czech Avant-Garde: ‘Daisies’ and ‘Valerie and her Week of Wonders’

Today I’m going to talk a bit about two films I recently watched and still can’t stop thinking about.

“The imaginary is what tends to become real.” (Andre Breton)

Daisies (1966)

Last Wednesday I finally watched these two brilliant films – Daisies or Sedmikrasky (1966) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). Looking back, it seems I had an afternoon of Czech New Wave, and what a wonderful afternoon it was! The first film I watched, Daisies, directed by Věra Chytilová, is about two girls, Marie I (Jitka Cerhová) and Marie II (Ivana Karbanová), who, led by the thought that everything is relative and that the world is f*cked up, decide to do everything they want, and that includes behaving improper at restaurants, cutting sheets, dining with wealthy men, eating lots and lots of food, cutting eggs and pickled cucumbers with scissors, having a bath in milk, walking through a corn field, just fooling around really.

Every scene of this film is so aesthetically pleasing; from Marie II’s floral headband and bright orange hair and their pretty 1960s dresses, to their walls half-covered with drawing of flowers and pressed flowers and half with phone numbers and addresses of their ‘sugar daddies’. Just to observe them having fun is a cure for mundaneness of daily life. And Czech language is so soft and pleasant to the ear, especially when Marie I says something like ‘Kam jdeš?’ (Where are you going?) or Marie II proclaiming she likes food very much. Their cheeky behaviour is hilarious. Oh, did I mention it was forbidden by the Communist regime? Forbidden fruit always tastes better.

I’ve read about these two films on a website about weird films. This is what makes this film weird, according to the author of the website:

“Watching the bright colors and bratty joie de vivre of Marie I and II as they slash and burn their way through square society, cutting up phallic symbols and the film stock itself with scissors, it’s hard to believe that Daisies wasn’t produced under the influence of drugs. Made a year before and half a world away from San Francisco’s Summer of Love, this proto-flower power film nonetheless captures the anarchic spirit of Sixties psychedelia; it’s a relic from an alternate universe populated by sexy Czech hippy chicks with serious cases of the munchies. Alternately described as a feminist manifesto, a consumerist satire, and a Dadaist collage, it seems that no one—possibly including the director herself—is quite clear on what Daisies is supposed to be about. Does it matter? No, it doesn’t.” (source)

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“I’m an enemy of stupidity and simple-mindedness in both men and women and I have rid my living space of these traits.” (Vera Chytilová)

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Valerie and her Week of Wonders (original title Valerie a Týden Divu), 1970, directed by Jaromil Jiroš, is different in subject and atmosphere, but what connects it to Daisies is a similar creative and non-commercial approach to film making. Valerie, played by Jaroslava Schallerova, is a thirteen year old girl who lives in a small town with her granny who, by the way, looks really frightening. Actually, Valerie’s surroundings hold a sinister appeal all together; from a pale-faced man referred to as ‘the Weasel’, a lusty priest, mass that resembles an orgy, granny whipping her self and proclaiming her love to the priest. Valerie falls in love and often rescues a boy named Eagle (Orlik, played by Petr Kopriva), who is either her brother or just her neighbour.

You could draw a parallel between ‘Valerie and her Weeks of Wonders’ and Lewis Caroll’s opium-laced classic Alice in Wonderland, but Valerie’s story has a flair of Middle European small towns, with a dash of vampires, Edwardian-revival white lace dresses, barley fields, and lots of mystery. All these weird things start occurring after Valerie becomes a woman, symbolised by a daisy splashed with blood drops. The film is an adaption of Vítězslav Nezval’s novel of the same name. Nezval was a co-founder of the first Czech Surrealist group, and I think the film’s dreamy, surreal atmosphere justifies the story’s origin.

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As I’m writing this, I’m planning to watch two more Czech films – Morgiana (1972) and Alice (Neco z Alenky, 1988), and I hope they’ll be equally weird in a good way! Strange are the paths of one’s imagination; in the beginning of June I was crazy about kitchen sink dramas and wouldn’t watch anything else, and now I totally want to delve even deeper in Surrealism and Czech films. Crazy.

Egon Schiele’s Nudes and Manic Street Preachers

Egon Schiele is known as the painter of anxiety, sexuality and death – a combination of which makes his paintings provocative, twisted, slightly morbid and trashy. Schiele was too radical for his contemporaries but later on he proved to be an inspiration for pop icons and rock stars from David Bowie to Manic Street Preachers.

The May 1991 NME cover of Nicky and Richey, photographed by Kevin Cummins

Many artists painted nudes, but Schiele’s nudes are certainty one of the most striking. Titian’s Venus of Urbino, Goya’s The Nude Maja, Manet’s Olympia – none of these masterpieces are as eye-catching, as disturbing or as decadent as any of Schiele’s nude or semi-nude women with pale skin, ribs sticking out, untamed pubic hair, dark circles underneath the eyes, overall unsettling appeal – Schiele defined ‘heroin chic’ look eighty years before it was trendy. And I’m sure Kate Moss would be more than welcomed to pose for him because Schiele’s ideal was a fragile and lean body.

Twisted body shapes and very sexualised poses typical for Schiele’s oeuvre raised the dust in conservative society of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire. Poses, more than nudity, shocked the audience. His anti-academic tendencies and subjectiveness to the core drove him to explore human body and perspectives like no one else at the time. He captured his models in bizarre movements and weird, probably uncomfortable poses. Often, he’d step on the ladders and draw the model from above. The process of sketching is interesting as well. Schiele was very skilled in drawing, had a firm hand, never used a rubber, and if he did make a mistake, which was rare, he’d simply throw the paper away. Schiele’s paintings were based on lines, just like those of Ingres. He’d always colour his drawings in the absence of the model, working from the memory. This was probably good for the models because it meant that they didn’t have to spent a lot of time in those awkward poses – sketching was quickly done, and they could get their money and go home. About his fragile, world-weary figures Schiele said: ‘They were intended to look buckled under, the bodies of those who are tired of life, suicidal.‘

Egon Schiele, Pair Embracing, 1917

It’s easy to see the similarities between Schiele’s expressive, twisted body shapes and Kevin Cummins’ photo of Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers. Wire is in a leopard print shirt, Edwards in a black crocheted top; they both have make-up, this, along with the gold background certainly evokes the ‘trashy glam look’ that Cummins was aiming for. Still, the position of their bodies, their hands interwoven, along with love-bites and slogans written on their chests evoke a slightly nihilistic, anxious mood of Egon Schiele’s paintings. Also, with his angular face and messy hair, Edwards does look a bit like some poor girl Schiele would pick up from the streets and use as his model.

And now a bit about the Manic Street Preachers’ first ever NME cover shoot:

”The May 1991 NME cover of Nicky and Richey was photographed by Kevin Cummins. ‘This was their first NME cover’, he says, ‘I bought the gold sari cloth to give it a trashy glam look – although it’s since drawn comparisons to the paintings of Egon Schiele, with the gold backdrop and the slightly twisted bodies‘. The cover image showed the two band members on their backs, gazing up at the camera. Wire has his right arm around Edwards’ shoulders and Edwards is pressing it to his chest. Both have panda-eyed make-up. Wire is in a leopard print shirt, open to below his nipple, while Edwards has a black crocheted top. Before the shot, they’d decided that they should both have a collection of love-bites on display and so the night before they had gone nightclubbing to try and get some. Wire succeeded but Edwards didn’t, much to his own disgust. In the photo studio, Kevin Cummins wrote ‘Culture Slut’ across Nicky Wire’s upper chest in lipstick. Edwards, upset about losing the love-bite competition, was determined not to be upstaged. He produced a school geometry compass and wandered over to a mirror, where he scratched ‘HIV’ into his upper chest. But he forgot he was looking at his reflection so what he actually wrote was ‘VIH’. It still made the cover.”* (A Version of Reason: The Search for Richey Edwards, by Rob Jovanovic)

Egon Schiele, Kneeling Girl, Resting on Both Elbows, 1917

Egon Schiele, Female Nude (Weiblicher Akt), 1910

Egon Schiele, Squatting Female, 1910

Egon Schiele, Woman, 1917

Comparison: Picasso and Kirchner

Who knew there’s a connection between Picasso and Kirchner? Even though their painting styles are rather different, on one occasion they did portray a similar subject – a subject of prostitutes, common for Kirchner, and also a theme of one of the most famous Picasso’s work – The Young Ladies of Avignon.

Five Women in the Street, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913

These two paintings are executed in very different ways which is a result of the different art movements Kirchner and Picasso belonged to, but the subject that they portrayed so memorably is the same. Pablo Picasso’s painting The Young Ladies of Avignon is a good representation of the Cubist art movement which Picasso co-founded, whilst Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Five Women in the Street is painted in Expressionistic manner. However, both of the paintings show prostitutes, five of them on each painting. While Picasso painted their bodies in very natural pinkish tones, and shaped them quite sharply, following Cezanne’s theory of shapes (an idea that everything in nature can be parceled into geometrical shapes). If you take a close look, you’ll notice how torsos are shaped like triangles, and their breasts like circles and quadrilaterals. Also, it’s interesting to note the unusual perspective, typical for Cubism by the way; a perspective which shows women’s eyes and nose from different angles, as if the viewer was walking around the painting. On the other hand, Kirchner painted these ‘fallen women’ in a very gothic manner; elongated, with thin, fragile bodies wrapped in dark coats, their faces pale, sickly, resembling masks. While yellow colour in Picasso’s painted exceeds into warm and safe earthly, pinkish tones, in Kirchner’s painting yellow looks feeble, grim and apocalyptic.

Refusal of the traditional conception of beauty is evident in both paintings. If we remember the ways Rubens or Titian painted their voluptuous beauties, and compare it with these part angular, part mask-like body parts, and add the other details I numbered above, it becomes clear that these two paintings are pure avant-garde. Both Picasso and Kirchner’s women appear ugly and grotesque compared to more traditional artworks, but we have to be open-minded in order to appreciate these peculiar, off-beat beauties. It is also the atmosphere of these paintings that differs them; Picasso’s painting appears stable, almost frozen in time, while Kirchner portrayed the city’s dynamics, hastiness, feeling of anxiety, fear and hopelessness – Kirchner’s women are walking up and down the streets of pre-catastrophe Berlin.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon), Pablo Picasso, 1907

David Bowie, Alienation and Avant Garde in 1970s Berlin

“The greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine.” – David Bowie

Berlin was a border between west and east; a world of Capitalism and a world of Communism; clashed between two European ideologies for four decades, Berlin had to turn in on itself, reinventing and reinterpreting the rich, yet louche past of Weimar Berlin, blending it with the grey landscape of concrete alienation. Isolated by the Cold War and divided by the wall, Berlin’s culture flourished in the clash of Political and Cultural values. Reveling in the cynical present of spies, dehumanising grey concrete buildings, government subsidies and anarchy, the city had a world-weary self regard. It was this bleak, heavy with despair atmosphere of unified collapse that attracted young bohemians to the city, promoting it as a cult destination because it was an alternative to both Capitalistic west and Communist East. Foreigners saw their own alienation mirrored in the city’s outsider status.

Berlin’s youth felt this alienation more than the other citizens. They absorbed all the boredom, alienation and negligence they felt, not only from their parents but from their surroundings of cruel concrete buildings in Kreuzberg, Schöneberg or the infamous ones in Gropiusstadt, from schools and authorities. Nobody cared for them. Or at least that’s how they felt. In schools, teachers were just doing their jobs and nothing else, nobody cared how were they, what are they thinking. They felt that Political clash more than their hard-working parents in the new west Berlin consumerist society that Capitalism was creating. Coming home with the sunset, their parents had little time for their sensitive teens, affected by the atmosphere in their wall divided city more than one could imagine, and already, at a tender age such as thirteen, drown into the eternal hell of heroin which seemed the only answer.

Christiane F. is the best example of what living in the alienated environment of Gropiusstadt, among thousands of other people and not a single friend, can do to a child, especially when they find acceptance and attention they seek from their parents in places such as ‘Sound‘; an infamous discotheque on Kudamm where, among cherry juices, dance floors and David Bowie’s songs, heroin could also be found. Hippies in the 1960s took drugs because they were ‘doors to perception’; youth in the 1970s Berlin took them because they wanted to numb their senses, not sharpen them; by taking heroin they seemingly eliminated all the problems. The irresistible feeling of emptiness was something they could never get rid of. Where ever you went in Berlin; whether it’s a shabby flat in Gropiusstadt, a dance floor in Sound, Bahnhof Zoo with its smell of urine and male prostitutes leaned against the wall waiting for the customers; the endless feeling of alienation and void was always there.

Living in the clash of political ideologies and cultural experimentation, in a city divided by the wall, and numbed by its concrete buildings, youth oriented towards something that was above the shitty triviality they couldn’t handle; music. To Christiane F. and her friend, David Bowie was an idol, a hero. Christiane had all of his records and listened to him in the dreary and rainy Berlin days, gazing on the cloudy sky from the tenth floor. Bowie wasn’t above that at all, deep in a cocaine hell himself, he sought to find inspiration and new creative sources from that same spring of alienation that suffocated Christiane and her friends so badly. Seeing the life which awaits them; shitty flat and a crappy ten hour job, work around the clock in the shadow of the wall (Berliners thought the Cold war would never end), Berlin youth protested by immersing into a world of music and drugs. Taking heroin was a protest against the petty-bourgeois lives their parents led; there had to be something more. Christiane F, the most famous person from Berlin at the time, which only adds to its Zeitgeist, later came to symbolise the atmosphere of desolation and neglect that permeated Berlin at the time.

While the youth suffered and finally succumbed to the heavy and grey atmosphere of their suffocating city, many bohemians, artist and musicians found their inspiration in the very same atmosphere, most notably David Bowie. However, Lou Reed was inspired by this enigmatic city as early as in 1973. and the product was a concept album Berlin which dealt with themes of love and junkies. The album, although harshly criticised at the time it was released, is a grandiose and decadent masterpiece, and though it’s depressive, it is oddly beautiful in its darkness.

David Bowie and Iggy Pop came to Berlin in November 1976. drown to the city’s world-weary self-regard and the inspiration that emerged from the divided areas, the wall and the powerful political clash which only emphasised the culture. Bowie’s ‘Berlin era‘ is a defining postwar musical moment. In Berlin Bowie found what he was looking for in vain all those years; freedom, anonymity and new creative inspiration. He could be seen cycling around the city, especially in Schöneberg where he shared a flat with Iggy Pop. He enjoyed the comfort of privacy; people either haven’t noticed him at all, or if they did, they paid no attention what so ever. Still, Berliners were flattered that he chose to live among them in that wasteland. While other bohemian artists chose the rather more funky Kreuzberg, Bowie settled in Schöneberg on Hauptstrasse 155, an address he still hasn’t forgotten, recording his music in a studio ‘Hansa by the Wall‘, as he called it.

David Bowie emerged himself into Berlin life, loving the quirkiness of it. There were all sorts of crazy people there in those times; half crazy-half genious artists, ridiculously dressed girls and boys in nightclubs; Bowie was amazed and intrigued by these diversities and cultural flourishment in times of great political instability. The product of his fascination with the city were three albums; Low, Heroes and Lodger – today known as Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy‘. Iggy Pop’s most notable achievement from the time was album Idiot (1977) which gained a cult status. Prelude to Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, the album Station to Station (1976) foreshadows the following Euro-centric, electric music phase and marks the transition between Ziggy Stardust era and Berlin era.

Surrounded by Expressionistic art and other artists and musicians, Bowie was just another weirdo in the town and everybody left him alone and that’s what he liked. Freedom and liberal atmosphere suited Bowie and provided him with peace for new blossoming ideas. This free and sometimes amateurish spirit of West Berlin is well described by Wolfgang Muller – ‘There was this open, liberal atmosphere… People really didn’t care. A friend of mine once laid down on Oranienstraße, on the street, and cars just slowly drove around her.‘ In the middle of the Cold war, this ‘outsider status‘ city had a magnetic charisma and attracted artists with its bleak, liberal, magically alienated, decadent and experimental atmosphere; the same atmosphere that pervades David Bowie’s albums from his Berlin trilogy.

At the time Bowie arrived in Berlin, the smell of cultural blossoming was permeating the air. Still neglected and desolated, Berlin was a place ideal for artistic experimentation and soon many bohemians, visionaries or simply young people protesting against the Capitalist culture that invaded the rest of Germany, found shelter in cheap flats on the west side of the wall. In the 1970s the party never stopped in this ‘cabaret wasteland‘; discotheques, cafes, gigs, numerous art happenings, music scene; all of these things created the atmosphere of endless possibilities and experimentation. ‘You could meet anybody and everybody. That was the change.‘, Muller also said. A change was in the air, and David Bowie acted as a catalyst.

Berlin provided unique opportunities for wanna-be artists and bohemians. It was a place of refuge for the people who disagreed with the pressure to make everything economically viable; a sentiment that was shared all across west Germany. The wall had its advantages, as 0n the western side the alternative way of life was developing. Although Berlin still continues to attract people who want to experiment, that liberal, free, untouched by capitalism or consumerism spirit is long gone. Art has succumbed to money, experimentation and alternative gave place to financial security and complete westernisation. Still, ‘Ars longa, vita brevis.‘; perhaps Bowie’s ‘Berlin trilogy‘, Iggy Pop’s Idiot and the infamous Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo are the last testaments to the old experimental, liberal and Avant-garde Berlin.

West Berlin allowed Bowie and Iggy Pop to distance themselves from British and American music expectations, to leap into the unknown areas of music, and using experimental techniques, they drew inspiration from city’s world-weary self regard, creating thin, alienated sound that would become almost symbolic for Berlin’s Zeitgeist of the 1970s. Bowie’s song Heroes has since became almost iconic, in adition to being featured in the movie Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the song crystallized the life in Berlin, telling a tale of two lovers walking by the wall. Also, one song on the same album has a name Neuköln which is the name of another Berlin district, though it’s actually written with two ‘L’.

Out of all three Bowie’s Berlin era albums, ‘Heroes‘ is the one that reflects the Zeitgeist of the Cold war and the divided city the most; it stands as a deeply passionate and positive artistic testament to Bowie’s time spent in Berlin, with its dark and atmospheric instrumentals such as Sense of Doubt and V-2 Schneider. Relative optimism of the album distinguishes it from the previous, melancholic and slightly disturbing ‘Low’.

David Bowie definitely had an impact on Berlin’s culture and music scene in the late 1970s. In those times Berlin was nowhere; a divided city which Bowie added glamour to, and absorbing its decadent spirit he also directed it into a cultural extravaganza. However, at the time when Bowie’s ‘Berlin era‘ was at its peak, a new musical style was developing, and soon, by the time Nick Cave arrived in West Berlin in 1983, the cultural landscape was totally different. Punk, Post-Punk and Industrial bands sprouted from the fertile ground Bowie had set for them, influencing and encouraging a whole new generation whose music and cultural tastes were shaped by late 70s decadency in the shadow of the wall. Even in the early 1980s Bowie’s influence resonated through the city. Bands such as Müller’s Die Tödliche Doris, Malaria! and most importantly Blixa Bargeld’s Einstürzende Neubauten created a musical language and style that Berlin could call its own.