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but none of that looks realistic. It's becoming more and more symbolic. The thing that he was lauding about leonardo was not symbolism, but his ability to portr

but none of that looks realistic. It's becoming more and more symbolic. The thing that he was lauding about leonardo was not symbolism, but his ability to portray a realistic visual perspective as if your eye was seeing it. Picasso's bull has nothing to do with that, and really picasso was uninterested in it and it wasn't what he was trying to do. None of those bull images try to portray a realistic looking bull the way your eyes would see it.

Pulcinella 4y ago
I do like how Picasso’s more symbolic bulls mimic the Aurochs on the walls at Lascaux. Definitely not realistic though, as you said. Pretty cool that I can easily recognize what someone from 17,000 years ago was trying to depict, though.
shusaku 4y ago
The point was that just as Leonardo knew the key aspects of a figure to highlight for realism, Picasso used them for deconstruction. Picasso here, is not about symbolism, but about the interaction of the shape of objects with our experience of looking at it.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  They're not even related concepts. For sure Leonardo knew the basic form of a bull. But 100% Picasso's entire exercise was to remove the bull and leave only a symbol you interpret as bull. You can dress it up as "experiential bull" but even his detailed bulls don't really have 3d surfaces. Leonardo wa dealing with three dimensional forms, lighting, the interaction of light and materials, etc. It's what makes even the picture in the article look "real". It's got nothing at all to do with what Picasso was doing.
  - crabkin 4y ago
    From plate 6: "At this stage, another new head and tail are created to conform to the style and direction of the developing image. Picasso introduces more curves to soften the network of lines that crisscross the creature. Once again he adjusts the line of the back which now begins as wave on the shoulders and flows like a pulse of energy along the length of its body. The two counterbalancing lines discussed in the previous plate are extended down the front and back legs to act like structural supports for the weight of the bull. All three of these lines intersect at a point that suggests the bull's centre of balance. Through the development of these drawings, Picasso is beginning to understand the displacement of weight and balance between the front and rear of the animal." I agree that Picasso's intention with the bull drawings was mainly to draw a mythological or symbolic looking bull, and then deconstruct it into a more abstract, simple looking bull. He was almost flicking through the range of aperture changes in our symbolic internal representations of things, from finer and crisper to simpler and more abstract. But I also think part of what informs him and his cubism, his method for dissecting and understanding these ideas, takes greatly into account "three dimensional forms, lighting, the interaction of light and materials, etc" as you like to put it. Unlike Leonardo, he was uninterested in merely making them faithful to reality, instead he was trying to put many instances of reality into one instance, like a prism. I think you are underselling the overlap in their interest about reality and the value in faithfully depicting it. Both are clearly obsessed with it. Even if they both go radically different directions, since of course they lived in different worlds basically.
madaxe_again 4y ago
Picasso could have done a beautifully rendered bull, as his very early work demonstrates - he chose instead to capture energies, emotions, motions, rather than form. Perhaps there is something more real in a representation in depth than in a “realistic” image.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Or maybe his dad did all the early work.
- to1y 4y ago
  Tbh as someone whos drawn their whole life(worthless anecdotal exp i know) i think he was just having fun experimenting
eternalban 4y ago
Degas knew how to draw: https://harvardartmuseums.org/index.php/article/homecoming-for-a-degas-drawing https://harvardartmuseums.org/index.php/article/homecoming-f... https://www.pubhist.com/person/286/edgar-degas/works/drawings https://www.pubhist.com/person/286/edgar-degas/works/drawing... Sargent knew how to draw: https://www.pubhist.com/w24267 https://www.pubhist.com/w24267

Pulcinella 4y ago

I do like how Picasso’s more symbolic bulls mimic the Aurochs on the walls at Lascaux. Definitely not realistic though, as you said. Pretty cool that I can easily recognize what someone from 17,000 years ago was trying to depict, though.

shusaku 4y ago

The point was that just as Leonardo knew the key aspects of a figure to highlight for realism, Picasso used them for deconstruction. Picasso here, is not about symbolism, but about the interaction of the shape of objects with our experience of looking at it.

LegitShady 4y ago
They're not even related concepts. For sure Leonardo knew the basic form of a bull. But 100% Picasso's entire exercise was to remove the bull and leave only a symbol you interpret as bull. You can dress it up as "experiential bull" but even his detailed bulls don't really have 3d surfaces. Leonardo wa dealing with three dimensional forms, lighting, the interaction of light and materials, etc. It's what makes even the picture in the article look "real". It's got nothing at all to do with what Picasso was doing.
- crabkin 4y ago
  From plate 6: "At this stage, another new head and tail are created to conform to the style and direction of the developing image. Picasso introduces more curves to soften the network of lines that crisscross the creature. Once again he adjusts the line of the back which now begins as wave on the shoulders and flows like a pulse of energy along the length of its body. The two counterbalancing lines discussed in the previous plate are extended down the front and back legs to act like structural supports for the weight of the bull. All three of these lines intersect at a point that suggests the bull's centre of balance. Through the development of these drawings, Picasso is beginning to understand the displacement of weight and balance between the front and rear of the animal." I agree that Picasso's intention with the bull drawings was mainly to draw a mythological or symbolic looking bull, and then deconstruct it into a more abstract, simple looking bull. He was almost flicking through the range of aperture changes in our symbolic internal representations of things, from finer and crisper to simpler and more abstract. But I also think part of what informs him and his cubism, his method for dissecting and understanding these ideas, takes greatly into account "three dimensional forms, lighting, the interaction of light and materials, etc" as you like to put it. Unlike Leonardo, he was uninterested in merely making them faithful to reality, instead he was trying to put many instances of reality into one instance, like a prism. I think you are underselling the overlap in their interest about reality and the value in faithfully depicting it. Both are clearly obsessed with it. Even if they both go radically different directions, since of course they lived in different worlds basically.

madaxe_again 4y ago

Picasso could have done a beautifully rendered bull, as his very early work demonstrates - he chose instead to capture energies, emotions, motions, rather than form. Perhaps there is something more real in a representation in depth than in a “realistic” image.

boppo1 4y ago
Or maybe his dad did all the early work.
to1y 4y ago
Tbh as someone whos drawn their whole life(worthless anecdotal exp i know) i think he was just having fun experimenting

eternalban 4y ago

Degas knew how to draw: https://harvardartmuseums.org/index.php/article/homecoming-for-a-degas-drawing https://harvardartmuseums.org/index.php/article/homecoming-f... https://www.pubhist.com/person/286/edgar-degas/works/drawings https://www.pubhist.com/person/286/edgar-degas/works/drawing... Sargent knew how to draw: https://www.pubhist.com/w24267 https://www.pubhist.com/w24267