Tag: muses

Postcard from Bilbao, Spain: Picasso’s sculptures reflect women he loved

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Above: Museum-goer interacting with Pablo Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” made from sheet metal

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.” 

Pablo Picasso

And Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) loved a number of women, many of whom served as temporary muses appearing in his work until his romantic attentions turned elsewhere.

He once famously said, “For me, there are two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.” Some of his goddesses soon found themselves in the role of doormats.

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Postcard from Bordeaux, France: Sculptural details reward those afoot

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Sometimes you feel as though a sculptor caught his subjects mid-sentence, as above where a god appears mansplaining to an unimpressed goddess. The mermen sentenced to forever support a balcony must complain constantly of stiff necks. A saint might appear empathetic to those below; a goddess indifferent. The muses atop the Opera House may be designed to inspire, but the satyr with the glaring eyes is a figure of nightmares. Is the horse heralded for its nobility or merely serving as a sign for a butcher of yore?

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