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. 

(guitar tone) 

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. 

(guitar tone) 

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. 

(guitar tone) 

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. 

(guitar tone)