1. PICASSO WRITTEN STUDY – LIBBY ALLARDYCE
This image represents a return to the love of
primitivism and the roots of cubism that
Picasso developed in the early part of the
20th
century. This self portrait of Picasso
reveals a variety of emotions about himself.
This piece appears to be something between
an ape and a human, but at the same time it
could come across looking like a cow skull.
Picasso has used coloured crayons which
emphasises the different tones and the
harsher lines of the face. The left side of this
drawing is slightly different to the right side
as it has no harsh line to outline the face so
therefore it looks like it is fading away. He
has used a mixture of red and white to create
this fade, which could represent his death.
Picasso has drawn the eyes so that they are
big and immense which swallows up the
viewer. Pierre Daix explains, “he did not
blink. I had the sudden impression that he
was staring at his own death in the face, like
a good Spaniard”. Under the eyes there are
thick lines that could define wrinkles and old
age. He looks crushed by time as he is
facing his mortality, and the glare Picasso is
giving off seems terrified but brave at the
same time. The shape of the face appears
distorted, and the colour that he has used gives it that abstract look.
This drawing makes the viewer feel that Picasso wanted us to think that this is more than
just a drawing. He wanted to tell us how he was feeling at the time by expressing his
emotions through colours and lines. I think Picasso intended to make this artwork look like it
is staring right through us to engage our attention. He did this by creating this facial
expression of fear. He wanted us to know his real feelings at the time by expressing his face
how he truly feels. His friend Pierre Daix recalled that Picasso, “held the drawing beside his
face to show the expression of fear was a contrivance”.i
Picasso is addressing ideas about his death in this piece of work. This is shown by all the
emotion that he has expressed through his self-portrait. In this piece there are stylistic
similarities with other
pieces of his work. It
looks like Picasso has
turned his face into a
mask, like the African
masks that he used as
the faces of the women in
his artwork ‘Les
Demoiselles d’Avigon’
(shown on the right).
Pablo Picasso, Facing
Death, 1972
