PICASSO (TV)
Summary
This documentary about the early life of painter Pablo
Picasso frames his biography with footage of Spanish
matadors engaged in violent and balletic bullfighting.
The narrator opens by noting that Picasso said, "The
hand of the artist is the hand of the matador." After
explaining that Picasso was a child prodigy, the
narrator reveals that the Spanish artist's career began
to take shape when he moved to Paris in 1900. In
France, viewers learn, Picasso adopted the style of
illustrator Toulouse-Lautrec, mixing in elements of
Vincent Van Gogh's brush strokes. After a difficult
time in his life that saw many friends and family
members die, Picasso began to eliminate all color from
his work with the exception of blue. When he finally
returned to Spain, he also returned to sunlight and
color. The earliest years of the century were also
marked for Picasso by a long stretch of romantic trouble
that caused him to adopt a misogynist outlook; he was
reportedly suffering from venereal disease. By 1913,
Picasso was experimenting with entirely different art
forms, like wall reliefs and cut outs. He abandoned the
cubism that had earned him his notoriety and then
slipped into a cycle of paintings of minotaurs that went
on for years. Picasso was fascinated by the minotaur's
bull head and man body, and he became obsessed with the
figure much as he had become obsessed with bullfighting.
Picasso later entered another period of dark and gloomy
work that was, in the narrator's words, "painted in
code." He returned to color after taking a teenage
lover. The relationship was tempestuous and troubled.
Nevertheless, the narrator explains, this young woman
went on to serve as his muse for some of his most
famous work. During this time, Picasso was quoted as
saying, "There are two types of women: goddesses and
doormats."
The acquisition and cataloging of this program were
made possible by Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, 2002.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: November 30, 1985
- RUNNING TIME: 1:32:08
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:16409
- GENRE: Arts documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Art, Modern - 20th century; Biography; Cubism; Painting; Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV, 1986
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Didier Baussy … Director
- Waldemar Januszczak … Writer
- Bob Peck … Narrator
- Pablo Picasso
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Van Gogh, Vincent