TheMommyBlog

Looks like he’s out-Picasso’ed Picasso on this one!  Love his lips and bird!

I’d say he probably just felt like doing his own thing.  I love the lips and bird too.

I see a lot of similarities between the two--but what I’m wondering is, is it possible that Picasso later did a cubist version of this earlier work, and gave it the same title? secret word: theory: mine, and I’m sticking to it ...

Birds have beaks, not lips—come on people!

Now—as for the drawing—it’s outstanding. I think jilbur is on to something here - I THINK Picasso did indeed do a more abstract version of the painting a few years later. I’ll be at the Art Inst. this weekend—I’ll take a look-see—and take a photo if I find it.

Personally, I like the Dylan’s version—and the LIPS on the girl are outstanding

I like Dylan’s treatment better!  What else would you expect from his Grandfather??l

THE LIPS!!!! and whats up with picassos? back in MY day, we made “hand turkeys.” the times are a changing…

Hmmm...that’s a stumper. Maybe after learning about cubism, they were asked to do Child with a Dove cubistically? Or, maybe Dylan was having a Calvin moment:

http://kun.co.ro/putsch/chch-cubism.jpg

Opps...missed Mindy’s post while surfing Picasso.

...and yes, opps is a lot like oops.

...which is nothing like the Moops, which we all know is actually the Moors.

my favorite picassos are, in fact, the series he did riffing cubistically on Velasquez’s Las Meninas. So Dylan is definitely on to something.

wow. that is really good. looks like he’s outmastered the original. i like his better.

At his age all I could draw was army tanks.

Oh, and the sun, up in the corner of the paper, all yellow with spiky things sticking out of it. 

Such the realist.

mine included big wide flat m’s that served as sea gulls.

When kids concentrate on the details of their work, they overdraw, as it were, and then the picture looks distorted.

What if he wasn’t wild about the original and decided to go his own way? What a little arteest!

Your son has such a wonderful “feel” for Picasso! His big, unselfconscious strokes and marvelous use of color suggest a great gift.

Jilbur: My just-turned-six daughter requested a print of Velasquez’ Las Meninas on her homemade birthday invitation!

Ah, to see life through the eyes of a child!

He just gets it.  Be proud.  I’m guessing he saw some of Picasso’s other stuff.  Of course, he could just be a little strange and you might want to consider getting him some therapeutic help (I’d leave the steak knives in the back of the car until you’re sure.)

Brilliant, obviously.

Hi, I just wandered over from someone else’s blog, and now I can’t even remember whose.  I’m enjoying your writing immensely.  I had to comment here because I actually am an art historian (professor of art history at a university that will remain nameless, because I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate), so here’s my reaction, bearing in mind that it may be worth what you paid for it:

I wouldn’t necessarily think, from looking at Dylan’s drawing, that he was “channelling” the later, cubist Picasso in his painting.  It looks to me like he was doing his own thing—producing his own, very personalized, reaction to the original work. 

Picasso’s cubism was characterized by a multiplicity of perspectives—that is, you see the same person or thing from several different angles at once.  By contrast, Dylan’s painting has the same frontal perspective as the original (i.e. the figure is viewed from a single vantage point). 

What Dylan has done, to my way of thinking, is to essentialize the original painting: to “take it apart” into its simplest visual components.  So the original, three-colored background of blue-gray, green, and rust becomes a smooth wash of blue-gray (but the green floor is echoed in his bird’s green tail).  The ball has disappeared completely, being somewhat extraneous.  The figure of the child with the bird has the same heavy dark outline as the original, but it’s mostly uncolored. 

The splashes of color that Dylan has used to pick out the essential details of the child (hair, mouth, bird) contain all the basic colors of the original (cherry red, pale rusty ochre, turquoise blue, and forest green), but instead of blending them as Picasso did, he’s separated them out.  Nothing is really omitted except the ball and the distinction between floor and wall in the background.  It’s really a rather sophisticated reduction of the visual qualities of the original.  I would think his art teacher would be impressed. 

So there’s an official art-historical reading of Dylan’s painting.  Clearly he is an artistic genius