Bull's Head by Picasso (bike content)

[Pastashop]

http://kottke.org/16/01/bulls-head-by-pablo-picasso

"Guess how I made the bull's head? One day, in a pile of objects all jumbled up together, I found an old bicycle seat right next to a rusty set of handlebars. In a flash, they joined together in my head. The idea of the Bull's Head came to me before I had a chance to think. All I did was weld them together... [but] if you were only to see the bull's head and not the bicycle seat and handlebars that form it, the sculpture would lose some of its impact."

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/picasso-bulls-head.jpg

[jmoore]

This needs to be a Recovered Saddle tshirt.

[CampyorBust]

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/PedalPusher33/Hmmmm_6c7d20_2020595_zps9wzz2oek.jpg

[MattTuck]

Yep, I saw it too in December.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/q0gwwTnqM0dk9Cceu1dJ5qofpJbhRpZiBVPafto4xo3ki3gB2z UCOw6iE7IEDjxSFVu2eupCLN0U47FbjnsmNsepoYTujxp7i14I 8bftDA_NQYUJJvJ1nw-MNjwOqBCHzQj5FbJh0Ojulq0w56J643Wd2zIbH1e2du6HPmtkN ra_j-m-UNwYE0FpYCY11W095hd2rCOB29Mv2Du6YIRq4XTzRcI2RRG59Q 4irDnQRPhNX-JFEbS-Mi7Oa5_cOgnRlF-8xuOJVUq5GbfPCyg-Ii-2F6rkmaaeMWS2T0_XSkUkG9WllbWvVe65HO8kFMHRSkEKqwRny FZaDehBgDSszgTitfx3RUlRube1t0DpNgTbKwOATMGDnlLOTe-5ftTWikxx7y18AZGAGVEuCTZhs58OMXSVJ1Kgm7n4khjmQKYC2 jTiqFX105ComZzDFgX4riVjyRCgFTrDcIPtdM9fpW9PGr8TbgR KS6FEBr-p3wIgJElogMGUr3jQnxELR8S_GP6ukyKBNbgnU6Q6pttL2KX5S D8vvI2iVJnNcga6ngM564uhnUtaebFuoXYzXyr6WylW=w505-h897-no

This one, I didn't see as much artistic merit in.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fUUIiR0j-3BfjJEJLpqZB7JpBkMPKJ5kdlEIJs_NFcRpeIN6BEV-4eQrOO8MAFVcWOWnMycSlROtgsvo9Mj_8idGqS1JN_1wdjUGg6 cfGNRAd0gskXYEkS_VOBr5HwY3WN8Q1GYkV5jeJUEuPqJyYQx6 rdgW6nAMSaFf_6jl_pgYE79vz4dS1-L3eyIKNeGwHGqscBm9fow_JbfBzlM0qZYQqsPjatZaMIX2yXve y71z1LysTGqtmcYdxWLdu9wh-WHWiTOyllFiGmpMnSvdngersJJkYDzTQHDaZqK2peL6baC8Lk-hEtA1bQJ1rqbt6LYMRE3yhj_wNjgfiIossAVGJ2nMX0pIisHqM 3R9wnH1uQaozI_0EzvXTlMlNVGzhVMpD7AMi6kteEd5awDVxX6 1gshBQs5paC8JRIyxHQI8sFPMEez9Lt6wzgsY_a6KoL7rDK2tU lbtgE6n-aL2YEwyjyL60bVQCcUeWzuFnUaPeVNmxV4CcuNMHF0sFUiDlyu ESsNzj2LKsLB6lXmYzB1viq7PkLdGE1shzHUueBngww12puE8m hHZ_3pgk5tWKw6M=w505-h897-no

This one, on the other hand
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7e66N0n-By2mK3iJNMN8a68ivuTpGBn6KM_dAJf7wEgofK3GIEFrfl0Eek MEnOHHFKkKXffOgHZZCLP7-FcsUBPo2Za928kwynV1DZpNwrJtRk8gG8Nn2C8R1F7sT3fGvyC xT5qJpyapwPTADnz5oIBcppghutA-5Drol-990LbM5Yrfwx0esYibqxw5FYKkXOgspCCB4_ILcaqRABNHp2rw c58P-Ak2VETN94NWoHQwJ_74TlL136Mygh17rFnlNwXz7phaE3Ye5hq 0ifbQGQrOpMo_uhipj-1wSkU5tSxuttMGXByvTyPf1PKqlUuY0E3uJKxigJjmWV98v3jm caXN-KeLKzCylT8Lry0Qq87R_JP5DBuPQF1M-pX1JdblS-ypZEkLQjGhu8DfdWWjTTtepvvNC15ydfQHRdMNkkHy2ptIWZW9 G_0j6IqCvJIAK_hvRHldkYUr8vk3W8yVho4FGbyW-1QbPaciAJNqyYffxUyxNa3InZbI0OcYj3pWv1ej4jk5Slb1uld 8l9TPQWJ0DguLPK3_Z9SeeLuvEWGxRGp4xTp1B0rKODpmWcoFV bdc=w505-h897-no

[torquer]

The wife and I saw the MoMA show yesterday, and that Bull's Head was one of the few works I snapped a photo of. (Awesome show, BTW. Try to get in before it closes next week, if you have any interest in recent art.)

Matt's comparison to Duchamp's readymade is interesting, but aside from the shared bike content, the two pieces really point out the divergent paths art has taken in the last century.

Picasso's piece takes familiar, recognizable everyday objects, combines them (and casts them in bronze, a material associated with "fine" art) and creates a new object at once surprising, amusing, and which gets us to "see" beauty not seen before. In other words, its more than the sum of its parts, by virtue of the artist's creativity. And that's why he got the big bucks.

Duchamp also combines the familiar in an unexpected way, but that's sort of as far as he goes. Except (and here was the art-historical breakthrough) all he needs to do is declare it an artwork, because he is an artist! Depending on your view of art world developments since, this was either Eve's first bite of the apple or the last nail in the coffin of figurative/representational art. (Maybe both.) Damien Hirst's shark in formaldehyde is at the bottom of that slippery slope.

As sculpture, I always preferred Duchamp's Fountain, which didn't even rely on assembling more than one object; the artist's signature was enough. It also should have signaled (ATMO) that there was nowhere further to go down this particular road.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T07/T07573_9.jpg

As it turned out, Picasso's work could be seen as the end of figurative art. But not to be outdone, he found a cast-off stove burner which probably could have been slipped into a show of primitive art:
https://news.artnet.com/wp-content/news-upload/2015/09/venus-of-gas.jpg

In the final analysis, the Picasso show is powerful (in a way that much contemporary art is not) because it shows the hand (and not just the mind) of the artist as creator.