Appreciating Art: Picasso Museum

Today I went to the Picasso museum with two of my guy friends, Andrew and Matt. A great thing about museums in Spain (and probably throughout the rest of Europe) is that they are free from 3pm onwards on Sundays. :) So we decided to go today and not spend the 9euros that it would normally cost to go inside.

The one thing I really liked about the Picasso museum was it was set up like a giant timeline. So it took you through all of his work from when we was very young (14 yrs old) up until his death (92 years old). It was really interesting to see the progression and change of his work, and his different "periods" of work. For example Picasso had some famous periods such as his Blue Period, Rose Period and Cubism Period.

Now when I think of Picasso I think of crazy distorted faces with lots of colour etc. But surprisingly Picasso started out as an average artist while he was attending various art schools in Spain and other parts of Europe. He use to paint regular portraits, or landscapes, without them being distorted using oil paint, or pastels etc. Then as he got older you were able to see that his style changed and I thought they became more basic, and brightly coloured. Then I came to a part of the museum, where all of the portraits had suddenly changed to the Picasso I know, where the face and bodies of people he is painting are distorted. Picasso also liked to take famous artwork and do his own interpretations of it. He did over 40 different interpretations of Las Meninas which is a famous painting by Diego Velázquez, and can be seen in El Prado in Madrid (see picture below for a comparison). Each room in the museum gave a historical facts summary about the year the paintings were done, where Picasso was living at the time and what influenced his work. So it was a very informative visit today!