Themes

Can Themes be invented? Presumably not. The old Picasso at least complained about the lack of themes; van Gogh then, yes, with his old shoes, he still had invented new themes!

But poor Vincent had his own troubles with that and helped himself at times stealing from others! Which Picasso did not hesitate do do himself - what can you do if nothing comes to mind! That is kind of an accepted method.

John Berger (The Success and Failure of Picasso, Penguin 1965) arrives at the depressing conclusion that in most cases Picasso did not find his themes at all and became absurd hence. So it's a hot theme, those themes! But here, it's a more humble thing: The production is simply organized by aspect of phenomenon, not more than that. But this is interesting enough! If there are themes showing up and which themes do still has to be inquired in the future at more length. At least, to me the pictures are not absurd at all.

• Heads: This is generally noticed: Those many heads. Who am I? It seems, the heads are heritage from Picasso also, at least he has produced a lot too. I have written upon 359.
• Two: Typically also, societies of two. At first I thought this has to be related to the outer world, i.e. man-woman-relations. But this cannot be the case. I wrote upon 361 and 306.
• Three: Very frequent also. Wrote upon 248.
• Many: In the course of time pictures populated more and more, as can be seen clearly. Slowly, I became anxious - what was this all about? The whole sheet full of heads?
• Multi: The stories with the triptychs und above all the altar was quite crazy. Rarely anybody has seen them so far.
• Women: Well, this is a theme, I am a man in the first place. There are much more women than shown here. Naked and dressed. Strangely, many do read.
• Pregnants: I painted my first pregnant woman when I was single. And also later on, it never was associated with real pregnancies.
• Kids: Once I noticed that I painted quite a few Kids already. I was really surprised when I noticed the warriors. Maybe I will notice some more when I will look more closely. The children are often fair-haired. There is a term in psychology: The Golden Child.
• Family: I thought the first family to be on the poster for Düren. Actually there the father is missing. He is very much present on 618. This painting looks very intimate to me. I like it very much. Then I hit upon 192, later I found three more before the poster.
• Animals: At some time or other animals showed up. A much finer classification is possible: birds, dogs, cats, snakes everywhere, crocodiles etc. Some sorts only appear once (lion, ape, frog, elephant), others extremely frequently (snakes, birds). Also there are even animals which don't exist.
• Puppets: On 292 that's really Punch and Judy Show. And the crocodile belongs to that show also. Maybe it showed up in this painting for the first time.
• Paraphrases: Well, I did this at first too, more or less conscious. There are more of that, not without interest. Gives a good start and energy to take off.
• Copy: In earlier times, this was done more often, Cezanne is cited to have loved to copy a Poussin or so in the Louvre after nature. Must be very instructive indeed. To me, one Picasso was enough.

Of course, there are more themes resp. classifications - as there are far more pictures than shown here.