Pablo Picasso 1944

This color screenprint titled 'Pablo Picasso' was created by Harry Sternberg. The work appropriates the visual language of Picasso. It's worth asking: what does it mean for one artist to represent another? What does this act tell us about the institution of art itself? Sternberg takes a master and makes him an object. The composition, with its flattened picture plane and multiple perspectives, closely follows Picasso’s Cubist style, which was developed in France in the early 20th century. Here we see Picasso rendered in a geometric form and bright colors holding paintbrushes and a palette. A rooster sits next to him. As historians, we can look at the lives of both artists, their place in society and the art world, and consider this image in relation to the artistic and political concerns of Sternberg’s time. The meaning of the image is contingent on its social and institutional context.