Thank you to Arlee Bird,
Alex J. Cavanaugh, and all the co-hosts
of the 2014 A to Z Challenge,
for your tremendous efforts
to 'make it happen' each year.
The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.
Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music, and
Police;
Thursday & Saturday - PUPUS: Hawaiian snacks to whet
your appetite;
Monday & Wednesday - REVIEWS: mini-style book
reviews
When I
worked in the Chicago Loop, my interest in Picasso was fueled by a daily
lunchtime rendezvous with Picasso’s unnamed sculpture. Donated to the city in
1967, it dominated the Civic Center (Daley Plaza).
I also
spent an inordinate amount of time at the Art Institute of Chicago (now The
Chicago Institute of Art) in Grant Park. Picasso’s most popular ‘Blue Period’
painting, THE OLD GUITARIST, was
displayed prominently there. I purchased a poster of the piece, framed it, and
hung it on my apartment wall. Years later, the poster still triggered images of
the original painting’s genius brush strokes. Far from feeling blue, the obvious message of despair
Picasso projected, I felt my spirits soar.
I
especially like the elongated fingers of the old guitarist in the painting.
They reflect the influence El Greco had on Picasso. His blue period, from 1901
through 1904, was dominated by themes of loneliness and poverty, possibly
sparked by his friend’s suicide.
Some say
it was not poverty that led Picasso to paint the impoverished outsiders of
society: beggars, prostitutes, drunks, and outcasts, but that he painted them made him poor himself. If this is true, does it follow that subject
matter also determines a writer’s spiritual wealth?
