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Picasso painted over another artist's work—and then over his own, new imaging reveals
Hidden beneath the brush strokes of Pablo Picasso's 1902 oil painting La Miséreuse accroupie (The Crouching Beggar) lies the work of another Barcelona artist. And the underlying work seems to have inspired some of Picasso's artistry. Mountains in the original painting—a landscape scene—became the outline of the back of the subject in Picasso's work, which depicts a crouching, cloaked woman.
Experts have known about the hidden image since 1992, when the underlying layers of the painting were first probed using x-ray radiography. But new work, using modern imaging techniques, is revealing more detail—not only about the original painting, but also about Picasso's. Researchers discovered another hidden layer: Under the woman's cloak, Picasso painted an image of her hand clutching a piece of bread, the team announced here today at the annual meeting AAAS, which publishes Science.
The discovery allows us "to look inside Picasso's head and get a sense of how he was making decisions as he was painting the canvas," says Marc Walton, a cultural heritage scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a lead researcher on the study. "He reworked, he labored on painting this individual element, but then chose to abandon it at the end."
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday February 18 2018, @11:19PM (5 children)
Probably bought a crap painting for the frame it was in at a "garage sale" just to save money.
I doubt there was all that much thought going into his underlying painting.
Trying out a new brush, maybe a new paint, or using excess paint mixed for another project.
Hey, its Picasso, how the hell would you know the woman was holding bread, and not a dead rat, or a shoe?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @11:43PM
The man smiled. The woman cried. The woman screamed. The woman screamed. The woman screamed. The woman became a corpse. The man smiled. Another victory for men's rights.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 18 2018, @11:43PM
There's some guy in the UK who purchases garage sale portraits then paints the heads of dogs on them.
An original painting of a labrador retriever wearing a century-old suit looks quite cool.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday February 18 2018, @11:49PM
For the discerning and educated eye it's evident: Picasso used different kind of cubes for all you mentioned.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 19 2018, @01:23AM
No about the painting, it's about the technique [soylentnews.org]: specifically, non-destructive and $1000 cheap - makes quite a difference for museums to be able to read the "signature" of pigments, could mean a huge difference for the budget the museum may have for buying genuine painting (as opposed to fakes).
As a conservative, you can appreciate a "your money at work" difference, can't you frojack?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday February 19 2018, @06:57PM
You're so right. In many cases a work of art is about the finished product. I bet a lot of famous paintings looked like utter shit partway through their construction. These are things the artist never expected nor wanted anyone to see. I think it's actually a little disrespectful therefore to reveal them. Yes, some works of art have "Making Of"s and in some cases the technical process or thought processes that go into them can be very interesting or useful. Here though it does seem like over-analysis. Can't say I'm a huge fan of Picasso anyhow. I prefer artists that either shoot for outright photo-realism or those that want to achieve something more surreal but still highly detailed and immersive like Escher or Dali.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?