Picasso and Paul McCartney’s Two Fingers
Picasso, The Old Guitarist (1903) Manet, Spanish Singer (1860) Courbet, The Cellist (1847)
Alberti’s Window, an art history blog, has an intriguing video of Paul McCartney discussing the origin of his song Two Fingers. McCartney was in the waiting-room of a hospital staring at a poster of Picasso’s painting, The Old Guitarist (above left), when he wondered what chord the old man was playing. It looked strange. Taking his cue from the guitarist’s two fingers he created the song. Alberti’s Window goes on to note what experts have claimed, that Picasso’s lack of musical training is evident in other paintings too where performers play instruments with the wrong hand.1 Twanggg! I’m not McCartney nor musical but that struck a major chord.
Art historians have enjoyed pointing out that Manet’s Spanish Singer (center) is playing a right-handed guitar strung for a left-handed player, a serious mistake in their eyes.2 Courbet’s self-portrait in The Cellist (right) receives similar criticism. Linda Nochlin, for instance, noted how “in a reversal of the standard procedure for musicians, it is [Courbet’s] left hand…that here holds the bow.”3 Three great masters all made musical mistakes? That seems unlikely.
Anyone who has read our entry on Manet’s painting will know the answer. Artists do not paint exterior reality but their own minds and, ever since Antiquity, the psyche has been compared to the surface of a mirror or, as in the myth of Narcissus, a pool of water. Minds are reflective because we all paint our own reality (see previous entry, “Why Painters Paint Themselves”). That’s why we speculate too. The linguistic evidence proves that mankind has long known what we forget everyday. Everything we perceive is a reflection of ourselves. Artists know that and they remind us of it, at least those of us who can see their art. That's why if you take these three paintings and look at their reflections in a mirror all the “errors” correct themselves. The surface of each of these paintings, each depicting the surface of the artist's mind, is a "mirror" reflecting the transformed image of the artist himself in front of the "mirror", painting his painting.
This teaches another important lesson: great artists never make mistakes in their masterpieces. Only we do.
1. "Picasso and Paul McCartney" in Alberti's Window at http://albertis-window.blogspot.com/search?q=Guitarist (8 Jan 2011)
2. See "Manet's Spanish Singer (1860)" here at [url=http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/manets_the_spanish_singer/ (26]http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/manets_the_spanish_singer/ (26[/url] Sept 2010)
3. S. Faunce and L. Nochlin, Courbet Reconsidered (New York: Brooklyn Museum) 1988, p.95; Nochlin also saw an “affinity” between Courbet’s hand holding the bow and his “painting” hand. Thus Courbet playing the cello, as we show for musical activity in other paintings by other artists, is a metaphor for the act of painting. She should also have noted, though, that Courbet's long, thin bow is a visual substitute for “a long, thin brush.”
Posted 08 Jan 2011: CourbetManetPicassoTheoryVisual Perception
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