3 ms·

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

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.

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.