Picasso’s studies of Las Meninas

In my last post I shared Auerbach’s study of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’. This is another post about artists studying other artists. Did you know that Picasso did a series of studies in Velasquez’s Las Meninas?

When we did modern studies of masterwork compositions in class, many students did one little study of a painting and figured they were about done, but they were only getting started. These creative iterations grow with time, and multiple of opportunities. Even if you don’t have any amazing ideas, think of each replication as a DNA copy. Eventually you’re going to get a variant by accident, and that could lead to an evolution.

Picasso, for example, made a series of 45 interpretations of Velasquez’s painting. You can watch as his first sketch is a stylized copy, then his ideas emerge, turning and shifting with each iteration.

It’s a common misconception that an artist needs lots of ideas. Really, I think we just need one or two per season, per year, or per even lifetime that we can work and rework into layers of discovery.

” load_in_animation=”none ” load_in_animation=”none ” load_in_animation=”none[image_with_animation image_url=”14957″ alignment=”” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] So – what’s a work of art you’d like to play with?