Renoir's Influence on Picasso

This research examines the nature of Renoir's influence on Picasso in the years following World War I. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical and cultural context in which Picasso became attracted to Renoir's art and then to discuss the manner in which association with Renoir's influence on Picasso's art is made visible, with particular reference to three works: Portrait de Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1919/20), a pencil-charcoal drawing; Le m�nage Sisley d'apres 'Les Fianc�s' d'Auguste Renoir (1919), a pencil drawing; and Quatre baigneuses (1920), a pastel.

It is impossible to separate the details of Picasso's biography from the details of his work. The onset of World War I was decisive both personally and professionally for Picasso because it had the effect of interfering with--not to say breaking up--the salon of modernist artists and writers among whom Picasso had lived and worked for several years in Paris. At the time of the war, Picasso was part of the artistic salon that also included Gertrude Stein, Leo Stein, poet and critic Guilliame Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, and George's Braque. When war broke out, Apollinaire and Braque went into the army. According to Mailer (367), members of the artistic coterie in Paris thought ill of Picasso for not joining up, a feeling compounded by his apparent desertion of Apollinaire and Braque when they were wounded in battle.

Picasso's artistic reputation had just emerged when war broke out. Les Demoiselles d'Avigno

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with Cubism and primitivist forms in the war years, it is noteworthy that Renoir is not portrayed as a grotesque or a primitive. Comparisons in this regard would be the oil portrait of Gertrude Stein or, more generally, the variously grotesque portraits of the artist's mistresses. That is not the case with the Renoir Portrait, which can be interpreted as a valedictory tribute, rendered with care and respect. However, the notion of a tribute does not prevent Picasso from accurately suggesting in the subject's hands the profoundly crippling and distorting effects of rheumatoid arthritis. The right hand of Renoir is rendered as little more than a clubbed fist, and a distorted one at that. The fingers of the left hand can be made out; however, the distorting effects of the crippling disease can be seen in the odd angle at which the finger knuckles and the thumb are bent. Once the eye goes to the hands, it is immediately drawn to the face, which seems to reflect what was undoubtedly the pain that accompanied the crippling effects. And that causes one to notice that Renoir's entire body is angled oddly and that he sits quite stiffly, as if shaped by arthritic pain. One infers that Picasso was deeply affected by the permanent disappear

Category: Arts - R