Picasso: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”

Picasso

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Picasso

 

You need to understand the mechanisms that make the existing worlds function to create a new world. You need to understand how a language works to create a language.

If you want to beautify a garden, you need to know where that garden is.

The reasoning is elemental, and Picasso’s rule seems obvious because it is. But not everybody takes it as a rule.

Becoming an artist takes patience: the patience of knowing you are a learner. And the humbleness and joy of knowing you are a learner your whole life, even after you start breaking the rules.

Picasso is a great example to illustrate Picasso’s rule. He had studied Cézanne for years, when he broke the rules and “started Cubism” with The Young Ladies of Avignon. It took him nine months to finish the painting.

At least 800 sketches and studies made for The Young Ladies of Avignon have been kept. A clear example to show that breaking the rules is harder than following them.

We may say that he already knew how to break the rules when he painted Guernica: but there are still 45 sketches in which he worked the previous weeks to the execution of the work.
There is no such a thing as a genius who became one just by mere chance.

 

Image: Guernica (1937).

 

Recommended links:

Picasso and Dissociation.

Timeline: Picasso.

Picasso and His Admiration for Toulouse-Lautrec.

Picasso and the Portraits of Marie-Thérèse.

Stories behind Works of Art: Guernica.

Blue Picasso.

Six Paintings: The series of Picasso that continues the Guernica.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso.

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