Pablo Picasso, Guitar, 1914, ferrous sheet metal and wire 30 1/2″ x 13 3/4″ x 7 5/8″ / 77.5 x 35 x 19.3 cm (MoMA)
I have seen what no man has seen before. When Pablo Picasso, leaving aside painting for a moment, was constructing this immense guitar out of sheet metal whose plans could be dispatched to any ignoramus in the universe who could put it together as well as him, I saw Picasso’s studio, and this studio, more incredible than Faust’s laboratory, this studio which, according to some, contained no works of art, in the old sense, was furnished with the newest of objects… Some witnesses, already shocked by the things that they saw covering the walls, and that they refused to call paintings because they were made of oilcloth, wrapping paper, and newspaper, said, pointing a haughty finger at the object of Picasso’s clever pains: “What is it? Does it rest on a pedestal? Does it hang on a wall? What is it, painting or sculpture?’ Picasso, dressed in the blue of Parisian artisans, responded in his finest Andalusian voice: ‘It’s nothing, it’s el guitare!’; And there you are! The watertight compartments are demolished. We are delivered from painting and sculpture, which already have been liberated from the idiotic tyranny of genres. It is neither this nor that. It is nothing. It’s el guitare!
André Salmon, New French Painting, August 9, 1919
[0:00] [music]
Sal Khan: [0:06] So what are we looking at here?
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:07] This is a sculpture by Pablo Picasso. It dates to 1912, called “Guitar,” made out of sheet metal that Picasso cut, and crimped, and folded.
Sal: [0:17] This one is awesome. It’s just a fascinating thing to look at. It’s something that…I mean, a guitar is never a mundane thing. That’s what’s fun about it. Even if you put a guitar on your wall, it kind of inspires you. I like to leave my guitar in the corner of my room. It makes me always want to be more creative, and this takes it to another level.
[0:33] It takes this idea of a guitar, and it’s very recognizable as a guitar, but it really plays with the geometry of the guitar. The things that you think would pop out are popping in, and the things that are popping in are popping out, but it’s still, fundamentally, it has the idea of its guitar-ness.
[0:50] The strings don’t cross, where you… [laughs] It’s definitely not a functional guitar, but it definitely conveys what a guitar is. At least aesthetically, I get this.
Dr. Zucker: [1:01] I think Picasso is applauding your interpretation. When you think about sculpture, what comes to mind? What kinds of subjects have you seen in sculpture?
Sal: [1:12] More classical sculpture, which is the Venus de Milo, and then you have the more geometric type of sculptures that…
Dr. Zucker: [1:19] More modern sculptures, absolutely. Now, this is something that was made in 1912, and when it was made, I think that that more classical kind of sculpture that you were referring to is really what there was.
[1:29] There were sculptures of the human body. Occasionally, there might be a piece of armor. There might be some drapery that was sculpted. There might be a horse, but sculpture was always about something that existed in nature. Something that was not man-made.
[1:44] Nobody had made a sculpture of a guitar because we make guitars. Picasso could become a luthier. He could just make a guitar.
Sal: [1:55] No, I fully appreciate that. I think that this is challenging people’s notion of art. As you just pointed out, that seems counterintuitive to make a representation of something that we already make, and we can make it very well and represent it perfectly.
[2:09] Here, he’s intentionally representing the essence of the thing without making the thing.
Dr. Zucker: [2:15] How can he create a visual vocabulary that represents the thing while not in any way constructing that thing? He has to be really deliberate. He has to make sure that that fingerboard can’t actually work. Otherwise, he’s making a fingerboard. He’s not making a sculpture.
Sal: [2:32] No, you’re exactly right. I could probably remove several of the guitar-like cues, and it would still very clearly be a guitar. Yeah, but I definitely appreciate this. I definitely, I think, get this.
Dr. Zucker: [2:45] Think about what’s happening at this moment. His understanding of art making is coming out of the 19th century, when photography had really released artists from the responsibility of having to depict. And so now, artists had moved to this second level, which is “let’s focus on the language of depiction, as opposed to depiction itself.”
[3:03] Take a look at one of the things that makes it most clear that this is a guitar. Look at the contours of the body of the guitar, that S-curve on both sides. Do you notice how they’re not the same scale?
Sal: [3:15] Absolutely, yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [3:16] Picasso does this thing in a lot of drawings at this time, late 1911-1912. Because the right side is smaller, a lot of historians suggested that Picasso is actually representing a guitar not flat against the wall, but actually turned slightly in space.
Sal: [3:33] Yeah, I definitely see that, we’re looking at all angles of the guitar at once.
Dr. Zucker: [3:37] This sculpture is actually coming out of a series of collages that Picasso has been making. It’s this funny thing where you have the idea of the guitar, a three-dimensional, real thing in the world, which then he collapses into the realm of drawing that represent the thing in space. Then he literally cuts those things out and reconstructs this in three dimensions.
[3:57] In fact, the very first version was made out of paper, from the three-dimensional to the two-dimensional and then back to the three-dimensional.
Sal: [4:04] I think it’s fascinating.
[4:04] [music]
