Looking at artists : Pablo Picasso.

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CONTEXT

This light painting is by Pablo Picasso, a famous artist known for many of his abstract paintings. He isn’t as known for his light paintings but they are still styled towards his usual theme of abstract creations. 

AESTHETICS

This light painting photograph would have been made by using a very slow shutter speed. This would have most likely been taken using a film SLR. While the shutter is open, Picasso would have used either a torch, candle or something of that sort to create this abstract piece. In this, you can see two images of the artist, as the camera would have picked up him moving while the shutter was open, so not only can you see him standing still, you can also see him moving around with whatever he is using to make the light drawing. The composition in this photograph is good - there is a sense of the space in the setting being used well. The artist and the painting are pretty much central, but because there are objects around the centre in the background, all of the space is being used particularly well. The colour in this photograph, perhaps because of the time of day (this would have taken some time, so if the sun was setting, or rising, it would have had an effect on the lighting in the photograph), is slightly faded and there is a purple/pink gradient tint to the whole photograph.

MEANING

This photograph, I think, fits into the category of Portraiture, as the artist is included in the photograph, but I think it also fits into a category of Abstract, as the artist is best known for his Abstract paintings and work in general. I can’t quite make out what he has drawn, but to me it looks a bit like a figure. The thing about Picasso’s work, is that it can look like more than one thing, and can look and mean like different things to different people, depending on their age, gender or even at what point in time that they look at it.

PERSONAL RESPONSE

I personally quite like this piece by Pablo Picasso. Although it is not my favourite piece of light painting work that I have seen, I like the fact that you can see him drawing the painting, and that he is blurred and also that due to the slow shutter speed, it makes two of him appear - I think that this is quite effective, and makes it look like there is more than one person painting the image. The blurriness and the fact that there are two of him makes the image seem somewhat ghostly, which I think gives the photograph a nice ‘atmosphere’, if that is at all possible.