The Three Musicians - Picasso

the three musicians - Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was taught at a young age by his artist father. His Father taught Picasso that many tools can be used to create a work of art, and gave him his own first palette and brushes. Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. In one of these periods Pablo Picasso was instrumental in the development of the style of painting known as Cubism. This style uses monochrome brown and neutral colors. In the painting the Three Musicians, an example of Cubism, Picasso takes apart objects and analyzes them in terms of their shapes. By doing this, Picasso separated pieces of information about his subjects and only showed certain parts and viewpoints he chose in the finished painting. He made the appearance of the painting itself more important than the depiction of his subjects in a realistic space.

This artwork is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA). "The three musicians and dog conjure a bygone period of bohemian life, enjoyed here by Picasso in the guise of a Harlequin flanked by two figures who may represent poet-friends of the artist: Guillaume Apollinaire, who had recently died, and Max Jacob. The patterned flatness of the work is derived from cut-and-pasted paper, and stands in stark contrast to the sculptural monumentality of Picasso’s Three Women at the Spring, also painted in the summer of 1921." (excerpted from MOMA website)

questions:

• What shapes do you see? What does three dimensional mean? What does two dimensional mean? Point out

shapes in each dimension.

• What colors has Picasso used in this painting? (Red, yellow, and blue are primary color that define the focal point)
• Where do you see designs? How did he create these designs? (Lines create design and visual texture)
• Why do you think this painting is called Three Musicians? Where are the musicians in this painting? What

instruments are they playing? (Violin (the French clown), clarinet (French clown), accordion (Monk))

• Why do you think Picasso choose non-speaking musicians in this painting? (Music and art are way of
• communication) Can people communicate without speaking to each other? How?
• What is a performance? Are the Musicians giving a performance? Has anyone given a performance? Do you

need an audience to perform?

• Is being a Musician a talent? What is Talent? Does it need to be practiced? Is it a gift? Does everyone have a

talent? (Everyone possess at least one) How can you become great at something? What are some of your

• special talents?

activities:

Using the 'Three Musicians' template, ask the students to use markers to add color and pattern to the coloring sheet. Next have them cut them out and arrange and glue the shapes onto contact paper or brown/black construction paper. Encourage them to try several ways to arrange the cutouts before they glue them down. The students can then add pieces of cloth, musical notes, other colors of paper, etc to their artwork. See the example in the Resources binder.

Ask the students to draw a picture of themselves or their classmates giving a performance. Ask them to use neutral colors. They can then add cut outs of shapes that represent the instruments, music, set design, etc. that was used during the performance.

Click for link: Three Musicians guitar project (note that our version of the print has a violin instead of a guitar)

Notes on this activity from a mom who did it last year: It took a long time to draw a violin, they didn't really get to the cutting and pasting and collaging part as I had hoped, which is where the fun/cubisim comes in. A sample would have been a good idea, and maybe I should have pre-cut some of the of the collaging papers into smaller shapes (I got white paper for them to draw violins on, black paper to paste upon, then random construction paper and scrapbooking/wrapping papers I had around, plus a few I bought. I even found some scrapbook papers at JoAnn's that was printed to look like sheet music). So while I think this activity was the right age level, I just wasn't quite as prepared or did not allow enough time to do it justice.

Similar to above but which might go a little faster (more of a self-portrait/collage of a person...which might be easier than drawing/coloring a violin first) http://ksmaghini.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/picassos-three-musicians.html

And another activity - so fun but requires too much time/supplies, I fear but very cute! http://artasticartists.blogspot.com/2011/02/picassos-3-musicianswith-our-own-twist.html

resources:

three-musicians-coloring-page.pdf

Additional Kid Friendly Resources at the AHML are "Pablo Picasso' by Linda Lowery, and 'Picasso' by Mike

Venezia.

Links: