Picasso and appropriation

Picasso's perception of appropriation as a magical transference of power development in response to traumatic events in his life that were linked by the related themes of death and artistic and sexual impotence. His revelatory visit to the Trocadero Museum of ethnology in Paris in 1907 convinced the artist that an art work is not merely a simulacrum, but rather is a magical object, endowed with the properties of its model and capable of affecting its density. Picasso subsequently assimilated this idea of appropriation into his art to give form to his fears, to exorcise them, and to regain control over what he termed the "unknown hostile forces" of nature and man.

COPYRIGHT 1991 College Art Association
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