Picasso « We Love… Life

Posts Tagged ‘Picasso’

Paul Cézanne

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

The man considered the father of modern art would be 172 years old today if he were still alive. Possibly a strange number to celebrate but Google have chosen one of Paul Cézanne’s famous still life paintings for it’s homepage art today, so why not just jump right on that bandwagon.

Still Life With Skull And Candlestick, 1866

Of all artists of his time, it is perhaps Cézanne who had the most profound influence on twentieth century art (Matisse admired his use of colour and Picasso developed the flattened structure of Cézanne’s compositions to create the Cubist style.) During his time he was unknown as a painter, had few friends, mistrusted critics and exhibited very rarely. He demonstrated antisocial behaviours such as not washing and refusing to shake hands. Many of his early works were painted with deep pigments and dark tones, reminiscent of romantic and melancholic expressionism of previous generations and reflective of his own self-doubt and depression.

Still Life With Milk Can And Apples, 1880

Cézanne achieved financial independence not through exhibition or sale of his works, but by inheritance after the death of his banker father in 1886. He remained in relative isolation, but showed an incredible evolution in style around this period. He continued to paint from life but with a new, brilliantly coloured impressionistic style, gradually simplifying the application of paint to the point where he could express volume and shape with just a few touches of colour juxtaposed. Cézanne had discovered a way of representing light and shapes in nature, simply by using colour. He reintroduced structure that impressionists had abandoned.

The Bathers, 1902

Cezanne had a meticulous obsession with composition, he would use tiny coins to prop up objects in his still life configurations, looking to gain a perfect balance between the objects. He would also move his canvas to paint from different viewpoints, in many ways this paved the way for the upcoming cubist and abstract eras. Cezanne’s use of colour as tone and his obsession with formal elements of composition made it possible for artists who came after to question what they saw and how they represented this on their canvas. By the end of his life Cézanne reduced even his figurative forms to mere representations of themselves. Said Pablo Picasso, “My one and only master . . . Cezanne was like the father of us all”.

You can find a fine archive of Cézanne’s complete works here.

Tags: Impressionism, Painting, Paul Cézanne, Picasso
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Line Drawing

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Vetruvian Man

With our inaugural blog post we would like to introduce you to the man behind the recent graphical vision and creative identity of We Love. David Tazzyman, originally from Leicester studied illustration during the heady days of early 90′s Manchester. By his own admission he “enjoyed going out a bit too much…”. After 3 years at Manchester Metropolitan University, ’90 to ’93, there was another 3 spent traveling Asia with friends – from where he drew the inspiration for his first solo exhibition showing drawings from India and Nepal. He cites Picasso, Egon Schiele and Ralph Steadman as some of his biggest influences.

Anti-Cooler by David Tazzyman

Drawing with a minimum of lines to show the whole volume and essence of a figure has been a challenge to artists since Greek vase artisans circa 400BC. The line is at the heart of breathtaking drawings by Picasso ranging in style from cubist to “neo-classical”. The brilliance of technique and fertility of his imagination is no-where better represented than in his use of the line. Picasso, master of all methods, always returned to his origins in line. In his own words: “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

Picasso - Nude And Draped Models 1934 Etching (27.7 - 19.8 cm)

Nude And Draped Models by Picasso 1934

After moving to London in 1997 commissions came quite quickly for David Tazzyman. His first big break was working for Darren Hughes at Cream (also founder of We Love) in 1998, designing all of the artwork for the summer residency at Amnesia in Ibiza.

A collage of the Cream Ibiza artwork by David Tazzyman 1998.

The variety in subject available to the line artist is vast. Ralph Steadman most famous for his work with Hunter S Thompson as “Gonzo” journalism uses the line as wit. Slaying political egos with ironic violent imagery – in the words of Thompson: “By way of exaggeration and selective grotesquery”. Another artist to revel in the line, Egon Schiele, used it to explore not only human form but also explicit human sexuality.

Schiele Drawing A Model In Front Of A Mirror by Egon Schiele 1910 / Cartoon of Nixon by Ralph Steadman.

Since his commission for Cream in 1998, Tazzyman has designed campaigns for clients such as Vodafone, Orange, Natwest, Yahoo, Renault and Virgin Atlantic. As well as advertising he has worked on numerous design projects, published across magazines and the broadsheets. He has a uniquely playful yet mature and sincere style. To paraphrase what Darren Hughes said of David Tazzyman’s work: It provides a graphic identity which is totally in sync with how the musical output is “rolling out” this year in Ibiza and beyond.