Guitar

Øystein Ustvedt
It is a bit special that we are not really looking at anything clearly in this painting. It doesn't have a clear motif. 

Narrator
What Pablo Picasso has painted here... it is one of the great turning points in art history, according to Øystein Ustvedt, art historian at the National Museum. 

From here on - nothing will be the same.

Øystein Ustvedt
Photographs were discovered in the mid-1800s. They take over much of the need to have images that reflect reality. (…) This creates a situation where you wonder what the painting can do that the other media cannot do. Is there anything special about the painting?

Narrator
In his artworks, Picasso attempts to capture reality - not as a camera does - but as a puzzle, in constant motion. 

Øystein Ustvedt
In this, he breaks with the great Western painting tradition, or pictorial tradition, which has been founded on a realistic rendering of reality. It's just like turning everything around, so that it's not an image you're looking into, but an image that comes out towards you. 

But as we look, we discover that there are fragments of motifs. 

Of a staircase. 

Narrator
A wooden board. A curved shape.

Øystein Ustvedt
Of a door, perhaps. 

Narrator
Strings 

Øystein Ustvedt
Elements of a guitar. 

Narrator
Because Picasso has painted a guitar here. But a guitar that is unfolded, where you see it from the front, from the back, from the inside, far away and close, all at once. 

Picasso did not want to paint only what we see, he wanted to make the invisible visible. 

Øystein Ustvedt
He often used an association with perfume. That atmosphere, which constantly flows past… capturing that which cannot be captured.

Narrator
Like the sound of a guitar.