Andrea Jacks

Professor R. Thomas
HUM 2250
10 April 2014

A Comparative Look at Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dal

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While completing this course I noticed almost immediately that Pablo Picasso shared
many artistic qualities with Salvador Dal. Both are noted Spanish artists and, although they
subscribed to differing artistic movements for much of their lives, both of these artists focused
heavily on the medium of painting and developing groundbreaking new styles. Picasso focus
nearly exclusively on Cubism, while Dal focused more on Surrealism. My goal of this paper is
to show that it is possible to understand the work of both artists better by looking at both their
similarities and differences.
To accomplish this, I have separated by paper into two main sections. The first section
will be a brief description of the three works by each artist that I will be analyzing, starting with
Picasso and moving on to Dal. The second section will be a comparative analysis of the major
stylistic elements of these works.

Description of the Artwork
I have chosen to use the more famous works by Picasso and Dal to maximize the likelihood of
the reader being familiar with the painting described. I have also used these painting for ease of
comparison to make my point clearer, though many of the same conclusions could be drawn
from other works by the artists. The descriptions given are quite rudimentary as more details will
be described in the next section covering the comparative analysis.
Les Demoiselles dAvignon is a painting of five nude prostitutes, two of which are
wearing African tribal masks. In the classic Cubist style, the proportions and angularity of the
figures are greatly distorted.
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Girl Before a Mirror is a painting of Picassos mistress, Marie-Thrse, looking at herself
in a mirror. Picasso highlights both her pregnant belly, her breasts and her buttocks with bold
colors throughout. Like Demoiselles the proportions of the figure is greatly distorted.
Guernica is Picassos response to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The painting
depicts corpses and people wailing over the dead with a bull and dying horse. The painting is
done is a classic Cubist style with collage elements.
The Lugubrious Game is one of Dal first Surrealist paintings. It depicts a kaleidoscope of
figures and images ranging from a female buttocks transforming into Dals sleeping face, to a
statue reaching out an oversized hand while covering its face with its other hand.
The Persistence of Memory is a painting of a formless, almost melting sleeping Dal, with
several melting clocks around and on top of him. A fly rests on one of the melting clocks and
many ants swarm the closed face of a melting stopwatch.

Comparative Analysis
I will be basing my analysis on three factors: the presence of the artist within the painting, the
presence of sexual themes, and the use of color.
Presence of the Artist within the Painting
In all of the paintings being compared in this paper, with the exception of Les
Demoiselles dAvignon, the artist has either painted himself directly into the picture or has used a
representative figure symbolizing himself. In both The Lugubrious Game and The Persistence of
Memory the sleeping head of Salvador Dal is a focal point. In Girl Before a Mirror Picasso is
represented by the harlequin pattern of the wallpaper, in Guernica he is represented by the bull
or Minotaur seen in the upper left-hand corner.
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By insisting on placing themselves within the scope of the painting, both artists are
showing tremendous ego and also pride in their work. By placing themselves into their paintings
both Picasso and Dal are displaying Surrealisms most basic themethe self in all its
complexity (Sayre 1161).
Presence of Sexual Themes
In all of the paintings by Picasso and in Dals The Lugubrious Game, there is a presence
of sexual themes. The most overt is of course Les Demoiselles dAvignon with the completely
nude prostitutes. The Lugubrious Game uses both the bare buttocks of a woman and the figure of
a castrated man being embraced by the humanoid form of his severed testicle. The sexuality of
Girl Before a Mirror is less obvious than Demoiselles but still very present in the naked form of
the model, the prominence of her breasts and buttocks, and the protrusion of her pregnant
stomach symbolizing sexual conduct and fertility. Guernica is the hardest to see the sexual
themes however the proximity of the Minotaur to the wailing woman with the exposed breasts
suggests that the attack on Guernica was a figurative rape of the people of the town.
The emphasis on sexual themes was carried over into their personal lives as well. Both
men were known to have had several mistresses in their lives as well as their wives. Picasso in
fact used his mistress Marie-Thrse in many of his most famous works. The difference here
though lies in the fact that Picasso despised his wife Olga in the later years of his marriage
whereas Dal had a loving relationship with his wife Gala whom also had out of marriage
dalliances.
Use of Color
In this category Picasso and Dal differ. In the works of Dal the color palette is
essentially the same throughout, the same muted and generally true to life colors. In contrast,
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Picasso wields color as though it were its own person, using it to set the mood, provide drama,
and give emphasis to the areas he thought most important. Les Demoiselles dAvignon is mostly
blue gray walls and figures in light shades of fleshy colors, except in the faces of three of the
women to imply but not confirm that they are wearing masks or of a different race. Girl Before a
Mirror uses bold colors to in both a light and dark palette to show the duality of nature in
humans. Picasso takes a different approach with Guernica by painting it in shades of black and
white, evoking a somber mood and a more newsreel like feeling.
Both men were very outgoing people, surrounding themselves with great artists and
colleagues. In this category I believe the difference in their work comes from the difference in
the artistic movement they subscribed to. The Cubist movement was more about using color to
emphasis the picture, especially when the subject became increasingly distorted. Surrealism was
more about shifting reality but so far as to make it unrecognizable. Therefore true to life colors
are understandable because the subjects featured are basically true to life with a few details
shifted to make it dream like.

Conclusion
After examining several works by both Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dal I can say that
these men had many similarities in both their personal and professional lives. By using
comparative analysis on their paintings I was able to pick up subtleties that I did not see when
looking at the paintings separately. The differences in style means that the themes were
presented in a completely different way but in essence the two men had very similar presentation
styles.
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I was also able to infer more about the men behind the paintings by looking at the
overarching themes that came up again and again in their work. These two men shared more than
just a birth country, they were both passionate about life, the women that would be their muses,
the pursuit of perfection in art, using their art to bring awareness to the world as a whole, and
through all that becoming famous for generations to come.
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Work Cited
Sayre, Henry M. The Humanities: Culture, Continuity & Change. Upper Saddle River: Prentice
Hall, 2012. Print