Easy art book on why Picasso is famous: The Making of a Masterpiece

Why is Picasso so famous?

I saw Picasso's paintings in school art textbooks countless times, those slightly grotesque faces broken into pieces, and even as a kid I often wondered, "Why is this famous?" They didn't look that hard to do, and sometimes I even thought, "I could draw better than that."

They're called masterpieces, but I honestly never really got why these paintings are still famous and so highly praised across the ages.

Why I picked up "The Making of a Masterpiece"

I found "명화의 완성, 그때 그 사람" (The Making of a Masterpiece, Those Artists, Those Lives) through algorithm recommendations after searching a few times about famous paintings. With those questions in my head, related posts and book recommendations kept popping up, and this book was the one that caught my eye.

Can you read it without knowing art?

An art book recommendation made me worry: would someone as clueless about painting as me be able to read it? I'd written reviews of thick, difficult critical works before, and they were just stiff and hard.

But the reviews said that rather than explaining the works, this book unpacks the lives of the artists behind them, so most people found it easy going. So I set my worries aside and just opened it up.

Two reasons Picasso is famous, according to the book

The book mostly covers painters we'd all recognize. I was curious about Picasso, so I read his chapter first. The book gives two reasons for his fame.

A style that never stayed fixed, changing with his life

Picasso is famous for dramatically changing his style. As he lost people and met new ones, he used blue, then vivid colors, and later took on new styles again.

The blue works especially stuck with me, and it turns out he chose blue out of depression, when he was struggling with the death of a close friend and with poverty. It made me think that being able to change styles at will is itself proof of his genius.

A technique of not painting what you see

His highly rated Cubist works in particular are known for not painting things as they appear. To an ordinary eye they look a bit grotesque, like something a child drew. But they're praised for not copying the subject, instead blending emotion and angles to dig out its essence.

Caravaggio and Rembrandt: stories that stayed with me

After understanding Picasso's work, I got curious about the other artists. The "Michelangelo" mentioned at the start of the book is not the Michelangelo of the famous statue of David, but a different painter.

Caravaggio, a mix of genius and flaws

Caravaggio, a genius painter of the Baroque era, shares a name that can be confusing, so art books usually don't call him Michelangelo and use Caravaggio instead.

I found it fascinating, and ironic, that a man of such genius lived a life of going around killing people.

And the sad part is that what eroded his genius was those very flaws in his own character.

The book explains the background of well-known works, but it also tells in detail how the artists lived, so I felt my understanding of the works deepen.

Rembrandt, the master of light, and his tragic life

And one more: Rembrandt, called the master of light. Even people who know nothing about famous paintings or art have probably seen his work at least once.

Rembrandt first made his work together with his beloved wife, and then lost her and went bankrupt. Reading that, I thought, wow, a person can fall apart like this.

The book also points out things worth noticing in works an ordinary person would just glance at and move on. For example, there's an interpretation of what he meant to show through the shape of a hand, and I actually went "Wow!" Without this book I'd probably have only seen the surface and passed by.

He's called the master of light, but in bright places ruin found him, and only in the dark did his artistic spirit shine. I thought, what a tragic life.

What I felt after finishing "The Making of a Masterpiece"

After finishing the book, I took away two main things.

Every art needs a muse

First: in the past and now, all art needs a muse! Even for a painter of genius, it's other people who draw that genius out, and that came up again and again, which I found interesting.

The genius hidden deep inside a person comes to the surface through losing and gaining people, and I wondered if that's possible because humans are social animals after all.

It amazed me that what makes a person brilliant, and what drives a person to ruin, both come from relationships with other people.

Everything has its time

The other thing is the saying that everything has its time. The people we know as famous masters and great geniuses lived shabby, harsh lives in their own day rather than shining ones, and I found that quite comforting.

As I approach forty, I've had a lot of thoughts like "Am I living well?" and "What if nobody ever recognizes me?" Yet most of the people in this book weren't greatly recognized in their own time, only in modern times.

Seeing that, I felt courage: everyone has their time, and if I don't give up, someday I can be recognized too.