Pablo Picasso Museum

I have just got back from my trip to Barcelona where I visited the Pablo Picasso Museum (it’s free for students wahey). I really love art in all kinds of forms but I haven’t had the chance to visit any art galleries in recent years which has been a shame – instead I wrote about my longing for it here. So it was pretty cool to finally get the chance!

I can’t say that Pablo Picasso is my favourite artist, or that I would hang his art on my wall, but I don’t think these things have to be true for art to just be interesting. I have tendencies to analyse art as I look at it and so I ended up walking the halls thinking what does all this mean? What caused it to come alive?

As many of you probably know, Picasso’s artwork is abstract and to many may be seen as child’s art because it doesn’t accurately portray reality as we see it. But I think that just because it doesn’t seem like reality, doesn’t mean it can’t be.

What struck me the most as I was thinking about the way different shapes moulded together, was the way the paintings captured the jumbled nature of the inside of your head, on the outside. It’s almost a reverse viewing of the way your mind thinks except you actually see the struggle to comprehend rather than see a perfectly formed structure of a human being instead. This made me see the whole gallery completely differently. Picasso isn’t just imitating child’s work, he is perhaps imitating how he feels inside but through the conflicting elements of other characters and people. All his portraits are perhaps his way of trying to put himself into the mind of the person he is painting. And wow, do I love this whole idea. It makes me love his work even more.

So if you ever get the chance to visit an art gallery, always remember that there are hidden meanings behind everything (even if they weren’t intentional). Art doesn’t have to be pretty or obvious to be successful. In fact, the ones I like the most are neither.