Picasso’s best guitar
In the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hangs a work by Picasso titled simply “The Guitar.” It consists of drawings on two overlapping pieces of paper — one dark and one light — floating against a sand-colored background, with a piece of twine strung around protruding nails. A thin band of vermilion bisects the piece, sloping upward to the right and counteracting the overlapping planes of paper that exert a downward pull. Like the artist’s other sculptures and paintings that feature guitars, this 1926 piece deconstructs the instrument, but it does so with such simplicity and elegance that it’s easy to overlook it in the context of its more famous cousins.
This piece is not about a particular guitar but, rather, the essence of “guitar.” The hint of feminine curves of the guitar’s body is dominated by an angular representation: two overlapping diamonds that are emphasized by parallel lines suggesting frets and/or strings. The soft outlined contours on the right are echoed by two shaded crescents on the left. There is a feminine/masculine duality in the contrasts between curves and angles, dark and light, outlines and shading, upward and downward slopes — perfectly balanced yet conveying motion: not the string at rest, but resonating immediately after being strummed. To get a sense of the work’s energy, picture the vermilion band as a straight line like a horizon. All at once it is drained of motion and becomes static.
It is unusual for an artist to be able to convey the dynamism of music in a static medium, yet Picasso has managed to do just that — and with such elegant simplicity. As interesting as his other guitar pieces are, and as great as they are compositionally, they aren’t as musical as this one.
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