The Turbulent Life Of Pablo Picasso (Art History Documentary) | Behind The Artist | Perspective

hello this is valdemar nuschak art critic producer and presenter of documentaries thanks for watching perspective youtube's home for classical art it's a style known to everyone recognizable at a glance this picture painted around 100 years ago looked like nothing that had ever been painted the young ladies of avignon dated 1907 was to change art forever it's now considered as the starting point of modern art this painting was the work of a 25 year old artist pablo a spanish immigrant who had arrived in paris a few years earlier with no money and speaking hardly any french it's this development that we're going to explore the journey from youth of an exceptionally gifted artist and how this young man from the depths of spain was to become this brilliant painter the most famous in the world an icon of the 20th century when pablo became picasso [Music] i have something to tell you [Music] [Music] on the 25th of october 1881 a baby of just 10 days old was baptized according to strict catholic tradition in the church of santiago almayor in malaga in southern spain [Music] his baptismal name was pablo diego jose francisco de paula maria de los hermes cipriano de la santissima trinidad he was to become known as pablo picasso [Music] he was the eldest son of jose ruiz blasco and maria picasso lopez [Music] the ruiz picasso family belonged to the traditional andalucian middle class in malaga [Music] a sleepy city on the sunny southern coast of spain [Music] pablo grew up in the heart of the old town at number 36 placer de la mercade in the family's pleasant apartment [Music] pablo as the eldest son was at the center of family life from his earliest years he was pampered by his mother and admired by his two younger sisters lola and concepcion the first thing that struck his family was the intensity of his gaze [Music] a little face with enormous black eyes which seemed to take up all his face and even then stared at the viewer so he was already a confident little person and also a charmer who beguiled the women around him throughout his childhood little pablo grew up admiring his father don jose he wanted to follow in his footsteps as a painter and even to surpass him [Music] we know that he was a crucial role model for picasso because it was his father who handed his art down to him little pablo spent his time in don jose's studio among the brushes and tubes of paint he would spend hours watching his father paint his canvases don jose specialized in a somewhat surprising subject pigeons art for dining rooms and highly prized by the middle classes of malaga [Music] quite naturally as he observed his father perfecting the plumage of his pigeons pablo started drawing more than for any other child drawing would become his life's passion [Music] he was drawing right away in the family memories he was always drawing from the age of five pablo drew compulsively he drew anywhere on anything and only agreed to go to school on condition that he was allowed to draw he filled his books with caricatures and sketches as if he wanted to transform the world through his drawings [Music] he sketched everything he saw his family people in the street everything very quickly became art with picasso he had a real drive he had to be doing it all the time he had this thing this urge very early he had the talent and the urge [Music] he was always looking for new challenges to impress people drawing a donkey with a single line starting from one leg or a dog ending with the tail [Music] if something caught his eye and fascinated him even if he didn't know what he would do with it he would stare at it and he would be totally absorbed in it and the outside world no longer existed unless he was reminded of it he was an exceptionally gifted child you can see the early quality in his drawing the great virtuosity very quick strokes it was a gift really an extraordinary gift aware of his son's abilities in drawing and convinced he could become a great painter don jose took pablo under his wing and educated him in academic techniques don jose was an aficionado a fanatic of bull fighting he regularly took pablo to the local bull ring bull fighting was to become a recurrent theme in his painting lessons [Music] picasso was closely monitored motivated and pushed by his father who no doubt envisaged a career as a virtuoso academic painter for his son so yes there was an investment and attention was given to his training from his early years pablo drew bullfighting scenes like this one when he was not yet eight years old his pencil strokes were quick very different from the more laboured efforts of a child of that age he wasn't afraid to sketch the crowd in outline in order to concentrate on the fight going on in the ring [Applause] pablo painted his first oil painting in his father's studio he was eight and a half years old when he painted the little yellow piccador pablo's brush strokes certainly were as yet unsure but his gaze showed remarkable precociousness [Music] what he did was stunning because he was already looking at pictorial problems which weren't those of a child his age you just have a look at the architecture the questions on the faces etc as a child he was asking questions about what he was painting that no other child would do a good teacher would say and i don't know if his father reacted that way he'd say you still need to work my boy but you've got the temperament there's a painter in you don jose judged his young pupils technique to be very promising but did he realize that his precociousness wasn't just in his technique did he notice that pablo had a very personal perception of the world around him [Music] pablo was nine years old he was still a very young child but he often set off alone for long walks across malaga they always took him to the old castle of hebrew alfaro which dominated the town there he discovered a world far removed from the middle class society he lived in the world of the gypsies [Music] when he encountered the gypsy world it very quickly attracted him and interested him i think it was the first time he'd seen a different and let's say wild world the gypsies were poor people excluded from society outcasts whom he saw begging outside the cathedral in malaga the gypsies were people who were different socially unacceptable but they were fascinating because of the music because they represented an aspect of spain's past which was both denied and terribly present and fascinating it was another world we see all the time with picasso in the life of picasso there's another place another place far away from his father's middle class academic world a place populated with symbolic figures who would later come into his art [Music] pablo's emancipation was hastened when the ruiz picasso family suddenly had to leave malaga don jose was earning very little as an artist so in 1891 financial problems forced him to take a better paid job as a drawing teacher at the other end of spain in la caruna right in the north [Music] pablo was 10 when he arrived with his family in this austere town on the atlantic coast the carter shock was brutal [Music] where it rained a lot where the housing was crowded together it really was a much more closed atmosphere imagine living in marseille and moving to mullhouse it was a different world with a different culture space and landscape [Music] so these years were associated in the life of picasso's father and even in the life of the teenager that he was with a kind of melancholy in la caruna in this new land without sun without bull fighting and without friends don jose became depressed and spent most of his days watching the raid helpless pablo watched the psychological collapse of his role model [Music] to escape from the sad sight he took refuge in drawing unlike don jose pablo was rather stimulated by this new face of spain and by the spectacular landscapes of the wild coast during the years he spent in lacaruna pablo's production was remarkable abundant and varied [Music] pablo was 11 when he drew these pigeons his progress was such that they could easily be confused with those painted by don jose pupil and teacher are now on an equal footing it was in the execution of the figure of a pigeon that pablo unintentionally was to undermine his father the transfer of power from father to son was only a question of time [Music] it took place three years later one evening don jose asked pablo to finish one of his pigeon paintings pablo was 14 years old as usual he carried out the task incredibly quickly and with a steady hand don jose was stunned by his son's undoubted mastery but he also realized that his life as a painter was a failure he knew then that he would never belong to the important artistic circles of spain so in a solemn gesture he gave his palette brushes and paints to pablo [Music] in a way he handed his painting on perhaps he said to himself that his son would succeed where he had not so i think he handed it on so either in the gesture of handing on his palette and saying look you're too good i'm giving up or just saying look you go ahead you're 14 years old and you can devote yourself to painting in a twist of fate don jose rapidly picked himself up he finally obtained the post he had wanted for a long time as a teacher of drawing atiotia the school of art in barcelona cheered by this happy news don jose's only preoccupation was to help his son become a great academic painter and he would do everything he could in april 1895 the whole ruiz picasso family moved to barcelona the largest city in catalonia of course don jose immediately enrolled pablo at the prestigious school of art where he himself toured that way he could closely monitor his son's education and he constantly pushed him to excel pablo was just 14 years old when he attended his first drawing class he was the youngest there with his classmates being generally five or six years older than him and yet he was the most talented in spite of his young age he immediately dominated all the others and he was respected for that he was also respected for the way he absorbed every style the old masters and cannibalized them we would say today to transform them into works by picasso pablo's progress was so dazzling that by the end of his first year he had no more to learn from his studio studies for don jose there was no time to lose in order to become known pablo had to present an ambitious work in a salon where the important artists in spain exhibited he had to do a real painting for exhibition so a scene something posed a serious thing and he needed a subject in 1896 he produced his first official painting it was a huge canvas a real tour de force for such a young boy [Music] father and son had chosen the subject together the first communion [Music] pablo was just 15 when he signed this first painting pablo ruiz picasso using the names of his father and his mother we can recognize the father with his red beard looking austere melancholic introverted he's present in all the first major compositions also in the young picasso's drawings we constantly see the figure of his father from being a painter he turned into a model for his own son so it's a somewhat ambiguous freudian kind of situation in any case his father the model found this first attempted exhibition painting to his taste in july 1896 pablo returned to malaga as a hero the whole ruiz picasso family was there parents uncles godfathers and cousins all came together to support the young artistic prodigy pablo had never been so proud and his esteem was to be heightened even more when he achieved something no other apprenticed artist in spain ever had [Music] in 1897 to reward the extraordinary quality of his academic work at the age of just 15 pablo received a medal of honor at the national exhibition of fine art was a tour de fox a 15 year old kid had never exhibited in this kind of show with this kind of painting what was great was that he was recognized by the other artists the spanish academic artists recognized the young pablo as one of their own he had reached a level that they had only achieved after several decades of effort he was a prodigy of the kind you see once in a hundred years for don jose his son's career was already assured he could do everything in drawing and painting so he could do great religious painting he could do great portraits and why not go and paint the king and be like velasquez and goya and have his paintings in the prado and be a great court painter why not he had it in him but don jose was far from imagining that his son was already tired of academic painting at 16 years old in the face of general in comprehension pablo wanted to move away from it towards other more exciting paths for a young talented artist who was also curious and intelligent it was clear that he wouldn't root himself in academic art he also doubtless moved away to put some distance between him and his father whose influence must have weighed down on him a bit too much for a young artist who needed to find his own path this painter's academic technique was like no one else's and he decided to unlearn it and i think that is what's interesting in picasso there's always this dual movement learning and unlearning pablo was still a teenager when he turned his back on academic art for good he wanted to find another kind of art a great artist was in gestation pablo was 18 years old and living in barcelona away from his father's supervision but with no money as don jose had cut off his allowance he hung around with a group of friends who were also former art students one of them was carlos casajes the romantic figure in the group and his best friend the young artists were rebels they needed to renounce everything they'd learned and everything that made them their family values their art education with these friends pablo was seeking a new path for his painting he was a seeker someone who was trying to invent a new language who was curious about everything and saw what was going on around him he was completely immersed in the bohemian life of barcelona it was known as the city of marvel's at the time because of its exuberance at the turn of the century and its modernist culture at the end of the 19th century barcelona was a town in intellectual and artistic ferment in the evenings the group took interminable trips across the lively barriochino visiting trendy bars and also the brothels in avigno street which means avignon in catalan don jose was devastated by pablo's behavior [Music] he said my son has it in him to have a good career as an artist he can become the great classical artist of his generation and he's going to waste his life penniless in bohemian barcelona where there are pleasant and interesting painters but they're living from hand to mouth in fact with his new friends pablo was opening his eyes to his age and its modernity [Music] the merry group often ended their evening forays at the el cuatre gads cabaret the meeting place for the artistic avant-garde in barcelona [Music] it was a tavern where you could meet where you could eat and drink for a few pennies and it was also a sort of intellectual circle where you exchanged ideas here pablo met a world of avant-garde artists like the cartoonists ricardo orpiso who drew him surrounded by his friends these were modern artists with their sights fixed on paris then the center of the art world through his contact with them pablo would completely change his view of painting his friends made him realize that other things were happening in heart and that art was changing in paris and munich and toulouse-lautrec was doing something different that was much more interesting than what he'd learned to do and he couldn't do first communion and science and charity all his life [Music] it was evident to pablo that if paris was where modern art was happening he had to go to paris [Music] in october 1900 with his friend carlos casajes pablo left barcelona for the city of light that day he finally turned his back on what his father a 19th century man wanted to make him into don jose could do nothing by entering the 20th century with its modernity pablo was breaking the last link that connected them [Music] pablo ruiz picasso arrived in paris on the day of his 19th birthday the atmosphere he discovered in the french capital was truly indescribable the city of light was invaded by 50 million visitors from all over the world it was crazy in paris because the welfare 1900 was on it's hard for us to imagine nowadays because the whole of paris had been reconstructed to accommodate the crowds the first metro line had just opened there was also a moving walkway to carry visitors along the sen its banks were full of hundreds of pavilions in the colours of every country [Music] it was like a sort of giant theme park when he arrived he was flabbergasted pablo and his friend cassajes were dazzled even though he was a recognized painter in spain the young pablo ruiz picasso was quite unknown in the capital of the arts he didn't speak a word of french and found it very hard to learn but pablo wasn't intimidated because he'd come to see the art of the great french masters he'd heard so much about in barcelona [Music] when you enter paris as an artist at the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century it was to succeed to be recognized because it was the center of excellence [Music] one of the major attractions of the world fair was the crown palais opened for the event it housed a huge exhibition tracing 100 years of french art and all the great masters were there rhoda toulouse la trek cesar renoir pablo was overwhelmed at the site of this brightly coloured exhibition as he had only seen these masterpieces in poor black and white reproductions even though he revered all these great artists he only had a single idea in mind to measure himself against them and he was convinced that he pablo ruiz picasso could do better he was a man who was willing to work he had huge ambition and total confidence in himself as to what he would do he had an overwhelming ambition to become the greatest artist of all time with the extraordinary visual memory he had also his extraordinary virtuosity his ability to copy any style it was a terrific education for him and we know what he did with it because very soon his career his work both in painting and sculpture would be transformed to conquer paris pablo had identified the area where he should live it was the gathering place of painters and artistic bohemians he and his friend cassahemis moved into 49 rue gabriel they joined a small community of penniless catalan artists in a studio [Music] pablo had only just arrived when he was noticed by pedro manach he was the art dealer who sold the paintings of the catalan artist in montmartre manic immediately noticed the skill in pablo's paintings he thought he could easily sell them for an income of 150 francs per month a workman's wages pablo had to supply him with paintings on demand it was extraordinary good luck for the young ambitious painter who was newly arrived in paris but could already make a living from his art [Music] pablo became intoxicated on the great spirit of partying and debauchery that reigned in the french capital he and his friend cassahemas spent their evenings in the cafes and cabarets of the boulevard de cliche or at the mulan de la galette on the bhutmo march in this party atmosphere he met the girls on homage liberated girls of easy virtue these dancers and waitresses were sometimes models but more often lovers of the bohemian artists [Applause] he didn't know anything about love or about women he'd never seen people kissing in the street for example he thought it was amazing to be able to find a mistress so easily that life should be so easy so inexpensive he lived on painting in a sort of ideal orgy pablo and casserjemes were not yet 20 when they threw themselves headlong into this life of pleasure where everything seemed possible but without assessing the risks casagrames developed a violent passion for jermaine gagallo she was a laundry girl who also posed for artists in the neighborhood the young romantic artist lovingly drew the muse who occupied his every thought but the young couple grew apart rouse became a daily event and pablo saw his friend gradually sink into alcoholism cassagemasu's relationship with women was very difficult and complicated very sensitive in fact he couldn't have a sexual relationship with this woman so she considered him to be the lowest of the low and he was desperately ashamed and couldn't talk to anyone cassahemis didn't realize it but germain was greatly attracted to pablo he was a seducer with a certain autonomy and a more dominant relationship with women and germaine was attracted to picasso so there was a kind of infidelity on the part of germain but also on the part of picasso towards his friend and this love triangle that could have been just a bedroom fast ended in tragedy [Music] on the evening of the 17th of february 1901 cassahemis defeated invited all his friends to dinner in a restaurant near the place cliche picasso was absent since he was visiting friends in barcelona [Music] and he took a revolver out of his pocket and said since germaine doesn't want me my life is worth nothing then casserjemez rose from the table and shot himself in the head in front of germain and the whole gathering pablo heard the news on his return from spain strangely he seemed unconcerned and then at the same time his agent pedro marach told him some incredible news he had just secured him an exhibition with gallery owner android volar renoir and cezanne's dealer pablo was absolutely unprepared for such an event so he threw himself headlong into his work in just one month he was to deliver around 60 canvases we have most of these canvases which were greatly inspired by lutrec they don't have any great originality he churned them out on the 25th of june 1901 the amphibola gallery in ruler feet in the ninth orange small of paris held the first exhibition of pablo's works a 19 year old spanish artist as yet unknown to the public [Music] the young painters self-portrait proudly welcomed the visitors pablo's painting had completely changed it had become sunny dazzling in its craftsmanship and its influences were many toulouse la trek but also van gogh this self-portrait is entitled yo picasso i picasso from then on ruiz his father's name would no longer appear he had found his signature and picasso was to be his professional name [Music] he seemed bigger he signed it picasso his mother's name it was also a sort of escape he was aware of who he was says a lot about the sort of triumphant ego he's turning towards us towards the viewer in a defiant sort of pose it means i picasso know how good i am he was really sending a punch through the painting the exhibition was a success he sold several paintings but more importantly the press carried their first articles about him calling him the little goya to celebrate this triumphant arrival on the paris scene pablo proudly posed for a photograph in a velvet suit surrounded by his courtiers he had never looked so triumphant and self-confident but that character was soon to break apart six months later in the autumn of 1901 once the enthusiasm of the volar exhibition had died down the face of casa kemes returned to haunt pablo the image of his dead friend forced itself on him and took on a dimension bordering on obsession [Music] suddenly the image of his dead friend resurfaced and he started painting it pablo was just 20 when he painted his friend on his deathbed with the mark of the bullet on his temple there's no doubt that this was one of paulo picasso's most personal and unclassifiable works he kept the painting himself and only revealed its existence 50 years later [Music] a painting of a dead person can be clinical it's a body but this was him mourning for his very close friend it's not a dead body who's dead my dead friend pablo was riddled with guilt and broke up with germain for good [Music] was to be a common theme in picasso's painting right up to the end the presence of death was fundamental to his work the feeling of death mixed with amorous desire mixed with sexuality you get the impression these things were established at that time this was when the break really occurred picasso was 20 years old and he completely stopped doing simple painting and started painting in a way that was haunted by death [Music] the blaze of color was over pablo's painting became blue only blue [Music] through this melancholic veil of blue pablo now looked at the other side of the bell epoch the underside of paris the city of pleasures which had consumed cassahemas a crepuscular blue light spread over people and things the winding streets the flaking facades of the grey houses [Music] for pablo painting should no longer linger on the picturesque or the anecdotal it should seek the truth of human nature his painting from then on would focus on the faces of those in poverty the beggars these deprived people whose future seemed without hope it was an anti-commercial period where picasso closed himself in for over three years without being able to sell he sold a few canvases but very few pedro maniac the dealer was troubled by his protege's development this blue monochromy appalled him even his catalan friends were worried to see him persist in this gloomy unsellable painting suddenly everyone turned their back on him maniac said what on earth is the matter with you goodbye so he had no agent and therefore no way of earning a living there were times in paris when we know he had nothing to eat there's an anecdote people tell that he once went to steal a piece of bread from a friend's studio it was a very hard bohemian life i think he went through a very difficult period of uncertainty when he wondered should i go back to barcelona to get fed by my family should i keep going in paris or not what should i do at the age of 21 and broke pablo was forced to return to barcelona to live off his family it was an admission of failure don jose judged that his son was living the life of a good for nothing layabout and that he had no chance of earning a living with the painting he was doing pablo was totally lost he was trying to find himself and his art between 20 and 24 years old that's normal many artists even great ones are still trying to find themselves when they're 40 45. he also had the sort of naivety of a child who's grown up too fast pablo reflected on what he was on the meaning of his existence and it was in a great painting that he was to find the first hints of an answer [Music] in 1903 in a small studio he rented in barcelona pablo painted lavi he was 22 years old in this allegorical and very moral composition pablo returned to the tragedy that had distressed him so much he plays germain in the arms of casajes and opposite them represented the child they might have had together [Music] it's a sort of transfiguration of what might have been a projection of a couple with a child [Music] it's a sort of fantasy of what kasajim as his life should have been one can see a certain form of guilt but also a form of love for his friend a sort of infinite regret over this life that ended so tragically when he finished this composition pablo was able to close the darkest chapter of his life he was able to leave behind him his years of doubt and return to his career he wanted to show everyone what he was capable of so in april 1904 pablo picasso moved back to paris for good he was then 22 years old in just three years he was to revolutionize painting by producing a work that would make him the most important artist of his generation the picasso revolution was about to start [Music] pablo picasso moved back to the heart of our march to a place which was a real artistic institution the bato [Music] was a former piano factory it was nicknamed the batolevoir because it looked like the flat bottom boats where the washer women did their laundry it was made of wooden boards it was freezing in winter and very very hot in summer but it cost nothing pablo picasso moved into a studio in this dilapidated building he was there with 15 other artists mostly catalan who like him were trying to make a name for themselves as artists but in this world of poverty pablo picasso was to experience the happiest and most productive period of his youth there one day he caught someone's eye her name was fernand olivier and she was a professional model she was 22 like him from the first time he saw fernande he fell madly in love he pursued her tirelessly and was finally successful one stormy day that evening fenand ran as fast as she could to shelter in the bato lavoie pablo was waiting for her inside that's a topic she was standing there soaked and he said would you like to see my studio and then she got a shock fenant was used to artist studios but pablo's was like no other bordeaux it was a mess a real dump there was a stove canvases all over the floor [Music] there was coal that was completely fossilized on one side a sort of pile of coal there were cigarette ends on the floor bits of newspaper sardine cans it really wasn't very clean [Music] fenond was to spend several years living in this incredible mess with pablo with her his painting was transformed colours returned to the canvas [Music] a circle of friends formed around the young bohemian couple among them was the poet max jacob one of the characters of mumache he taught pablo french by reading paul verlande's poetry to him the poet and art critic guillaume apollinaire an unfailing supporter of picasso also made frequent visits to the studio there was at the same time a proliferation of friendship and an artistic proliferation that was absolutely fantastic the strong point of all those people was that they knew they were great geniuses they knew they would shake the world that allowed them to accept the poverty that they lived in every day [Music] but in november 1904 providence came through the door of the wretched studio in the bato lavoie [Music] she was 30 years old and her name was gertrude stein she was an american heiress from a very wealthy family [Music] she and her brother leo were building up the largest collection of avant-garde paintings a few days earlier at a dealer's gertrude stood before a painting by pablo seduced this upper-class woman from the left bank went all the way to the betolevoir without warning and bought about 10 paintings for the sum of 800 francs it was a small fortune for pablo the meeting with gertrude and leo stein completely changed picasso's life materially because after meeting them he never had any financial problems again pablo was struck and thrown off balance by the force of this most unusual figure who had just come into his life as she was a big woman she was homosexual and didn't hide it at all she wore men's sandals she was quite imposing pablo guided by his ambition knew he was in the presence of the person who could change his life it was an opportunity not to be missed he offered to paint gertrude stein's portrait and she accepted every day gertrude left her chic quarter and traveled across paris to pose at the bato lavoie [Music] for the first time in his life pablo was very unsettled by his model and couldn't find the way to represent her face in spite of the long and repetitive sittings [Music] the challenge presented by this face gradually became a sort of obsession he couldn't represent this woman as he had painted other women he wasn't looking at a lover or a traditional female model her homosexuality which for him as a lover of women must have seemed like an enigma how could he paint this unusual face pablo sought inspiration in narcotics one night he had a very disturbing opiate dream it signaled the starting point of a revolution [Music] one night after taking opium picasso said in his delirium i'm completely finished photography has been invented that was the start of a thought process that all the contemporary artists were going through photography painted detail so artists no longer needed to paint the detail or more importantly the moment naturalism couldn't express the intelligence or the keenness of expression on gertrude stein's face he had to invent a new way of painting it was the realization that was to bring about modernity he had to do something different pablo was 24 when he decided to start again from scratch to restructure his painting on the 11th of may 1906 he left gertrude stein's portrait unfinished and went with fernand to spain he took her to gosol a small village high in the mountains of the catalan hinterland which a friend had recommended it was here in the raw natural environment in this archaic rural world that pablo was to find new energy and new inspiration pablo took long walks alone across this arid landscape the earth on the stony ground was the colour of ochre this ochre was to take a permanent place in his palette of colors he saw people and he felt good he felt good with the peasants and with the wood cutters they were very physical people very real in the natural environment but the nature itself was deep ancient connected to history to the archaic and to myth [Music] pablo made the real discovery which influenced his painting by accident when he entered the church in gosol he noticed a small archaic statue from the 12th century in an alcove on the left it was the virgin and child the virgin of gosol [Music] pablo was overwhelmed by the purity of its face and above all by the magnetism of its empty gaze so simple and yet seeming to be fixed in an eternity [Music] in this strange enigmatic mask pablo found a new path for his painting in autumn 1906 back at the bato levoir pablo finished his painting the portrait of gertrude stein but without her [Music] under his brush strokes gertrude's face took on a geometric appearance it was taken back to a sketch that of an almost impersonal mask the gaze was absent without emotion pablo presented this enigmatic portrait to his model gertrude stein is mr she said this portrait doesn't look much like me she was pleased with it but she judged that the representation was somewhat different from her face [Music] because it was to say you will end up looking like this painting implying that if she succeeded in her mission of becoming the high priestess of modern art she would end up looking like this painting and that was absolutely right the portrait of gertrude stein became the lasting effigy of this writer in painting this icon in this manner pablo picasso had invented a new way of capturing a portrait on canvas freed from a realism that could be left to photography gertrude quickly understood this and hung it on the wall of her salon as a major item in her collection pablo picasso was only just 25 and his painting was hanging alongside the great masters renoir degas manet cesar and also a certain ori matisse thanks to this unique collection the steins salon was the most fashionable place in all of paris [Music] every saturday evening they received artists and writers who were recommended to them so you only had to be recommended by someone to be introduced to the salon on the rue de fleurs it was in this legendary place that the meeting between the young ambitious painter picasso and the master of the avant-garde matisse would take place it was a confrontation between two concepts of painting matisse an established middle class figure then aged 37 thought that art was a matter of harmony in poetry but for picasso the young bohemian painting had to be a shock for the person viewing it once the head-to-head between picasso and matisse started you had two giants in confrontation and on it went for half a century matisse was the star of the evening the man they called master leo gertrude's brother had recently acquired his latest masterpiece the joy of life it was a monumental highly colored canvas which defended his harmonious vision matisse being very sure of his art lectured the young picasso talking down to him you have to understand that matisse was older than picasso and was very good at handling language and words he was a thinker and an intellectual in painting and he and leo stein made picasso's head spin with the theory of painting this painting revolutionized art but not for picasso he said people think matisse is the first of the modern painters but not at all he's the last of the classical painters implying that he was the first of the modern painters because i was furious he was to lash out at matisse wanting to defy him [Music] that's when he said well i think painting is the opposite of what matisse does and i'm going to prove it by doing the brothel an american woman said what is the brothel it's a place with in it he wanted to find matisse with a painting that was a complete departure both in its chosen subject and its treatment he wanted to demonstrate that he was the more creative and modern of the two for his revolutionary work picasso was inspired by what he had just discovered in the trocadero museum african sculptors and masks were exhibited there he was struck by their magic powers the deep ancestral feelings that he experienced he was overwhelmed by their simplicity of form and geometric appearance pablo picasso shot himself in his studio for months in order to produce his monumental work which would crush matisse's joy of life he put all his energy into it banning anyone from entering the studio and this was the work the brothel of avignon in memory of his years of debauchery this painting which was renamed the young ladies of avignon is now considered as the starting point of modern art for the first time an artist dared to break the resemblance by creating a new pictorial universe the women's faces resemble masks further developing the principle started with gertrude stein from person to person the representation differs large rimmed eyes a nose in profile on a face that's head-on angular features cross-hatching in colours or deliberately contradictory proportions desire and death seemed to be mixed together the painting caused a scandal matisse hated it but picasso had opened the way for the most important artistic movement of the 20th century cubism collectors would soon be fighting over his masterpieces his father died a few years later in 1913 just before his son made his fortune with his paintbrushes and became the most famous artist of the 20th century [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 569,729

Keywords: full art documentary, performing arts, art and culture documentary, hd documentary, high quality film, TV Shows - Topic, documentary movies - topic, art history, Documentary movies - topic, culture documentary, full documentary 2022, tv shows - topic, BBC documentary 2022, documentary art history, picasso documentary, pablo picasso, picasso, pablo picasso (visual artist), documentary art, pablo picasso film, picasso art, art history documentary, pablo picasso paintings

Id: BtLOzMXb42E

Length: 54min 30sec (3270 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022