Comparison of Picasso and Raoul Dufy

While visiting the Norton Museum, there were two works of art that were very interesting. The first work of art is a sculpture by Pablo Picasso called, Head of a Woman (Fernande). It was made in 1909 when he was in Paris. When he made this sculpture he was in the cubism period. Picasso sculpted this sculpture of bronze.

While looking at this sculpture it is transformed every time you move your own head, walk around it, and bend closer. It just has a way of changing shape. While looking at it, it first appeared to me as a man or some kind of creature. Looking at the name, one would realize what the sculpture is. The sculpture was a woman. It has a lot of rough and sharp points, but the surface was very smooth. It is kind of disturbing on how Picasso seems to see beneath the skin. He reveals the tendons in Fernande's neck. The fractured texture of Fernande's face, her hair a system of gorges and upland ridges, is a metaphor for the way we experience another person. (Hughs) Like Rembrandt's most intimate portraits, it is about the mystery of being close to another human being. (Cooper) Picasso makes you recognize this by inviting your eye down into those channels and crevices, until you feel you are inside Fernande's head. You can never exhaust the richness of this head. (Hughs)

The subject of this sculpture is Fernande Olivier. She was Picasso's lover. Fernande's real name was Amelie Lang. She had worked as an artist's model in Montmartre and was an aspiring painter. They had spent the summer of 1909 in the Spanish mountains, where Picasso painted Fernande in a similarly way. He made this head almost as soon as he returned to Paris. Picasso spoke about being caught by her beauty and began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier; however by 1909, when he made this head the strain in their relationship was showing. By 1912, the relationship had ended.

Picasso broke the tradition in 1909 in creating Head of a Woman (Fernande). It is considered the first cubist sculpture. Cubism was an art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. The idea of cubism is that instead of viewing subjects from a single fixed angle, the artist breaks them up into several different aspects/faces of the subject so they can be seen simultaneously. (Penrose) He molded Fernande's head in clay, and then made two plaster casts from which he made a series of bronzes. It is a key work in the development of the cubism period because it was the first time Picasso realized he could translate his new kind of painting into three dimensions. This is one of his paintings from that time in which was made in solid form. Solidity is what Picasso wanted in art, he wanted not just to see the world but to touch it. Fernande's head is a masterpiece because it perfectly shows his desire to represent not the surfaces of things but, the essence, the structure. (Penrose)

The second work of art is by Raoul Dufy. This is a painting is called Nude on a Pink sofa. This painting was made in 1902 when Dufy was in school studying. It is an oil on canvas and it is 38 x 28 Ð'Ñ* in.

When you look at this painting you see a naked woman on a pink sofa facing backwards. The room is lightly lit from the right side and the light is hitting her on her back side. The room has turquoise and cream walls and the floor has a nice medium toned rug with different colored flowers. The one thing that was noticeable was the woman had her hair up to emphasize her body. Her body was a light grey and green shade, but looking closely, one could see her stockings. It was a little hard to see them at first because they basically matched her body. The only light shades in the picture, is the pink sofa and the green and grey body.

Dufy immediately began to incorporate the lively brush strokes and brilliant color of Fauvism into his work. Fauvism was