(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
The Old Guitarist sits, cast in the colour of a cloudless night. Swathes of ink-like blue threaten to smother defiant, cold silvers taking the shape of a busker. Clad in rags, he hunches over a terracotta-coloured acoustic guitar, clutching it like it is the last vestiges of life. For him, it most likely is. It stands out in the painting—the one warm tone on the canvas draws the eye and brings together one of the great masterpieces in the career of Pablo Picasso.
It is a hauntingly beautiful image, one typical of the ‘Blue Period’ during which Picasso painted it. Named so partly because of the blue colour scheme he used for his work at the time and partly due to the deeply depressed Picasso being, as we would coin over the course of the century, blue. It does not take a genius to work out that this is a work reckoning with the artist’s relationship to art, but the nature of that relationship is another question entirely.
For me, I’m confronted with a question right from the off. By clinging to his guitar, The Old Guitarist is clearly clinging to life itself. However, what life is there to be had? He plays alone, reduced to street corners in the dead of night. When most people, and most artists in particular, depict a person on the brink, clinging to life via their art, it’s a joyous image—one celebrating resilience and human persistence. The Old Guitarist, I believe, takes a contrary stance.
After all, Picasso was not much further up the food chain than The Old Guitarist at the time. The loss of a dear friend to suicide had rocked the then 30-year-old Picasso. While he began the period feted by the art world, with buyers and patrons aplenty, his Blue Period’s focus on haunting imagery depicting the world’s outcasts and the impoverished lost him many of his supporters.
He was nearly destitute at the time of painting The Old Guitarist. I believe that his depiction of a man fruitlessly clinging to a life already lost for the sake of art that no one cares about is a self-criticism. Perhaps even a twisted self-portrait—one of a severely depressed person who cannot perceive why he keeps on going, yet still does. I wish I could not relate to it so deeply. However, was he always meant to be alone?
Infrared scans revealed other figures in the painting that Picasso painted over. Studies conducted by The Art Institute of Chicago uncovered a young woman with long, flowing hair and a thoughtful expression. She is depicted reaching out to a kneeling child by her right, with an animal to her left. This pastoral image contrasts greatly with The Old Guitarist and the depictions of urban decay and solitude that Picasso depicted more generally in this period.
Based on research conducted by The Institute, in conjunction with The Cleveland Museum of Art and The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the most accepted theory is that the woman behind The Old Guitarist was never meant to be part of the piece. Instead, it is another piece altogether. This is supported by a number of sketches Picasso shared with his friends of a woman in a similar pose to the one found in The Old Guitarist.
It seems that this was a painting that got away from Picasso, and the impoverished artist decided to paint over the previous image and start again rather than pay for another expensive canvas. A strangely heartwarming note to end on, perhaps. That no matter how trapped The Old Guitarist is in his misery, he is never lonely. Here is hoping the man who painted it—and anyone else going through what he did—can also find out the same thing in due course.
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