There are so many subtleties in both horses and human figures. Even if an artist re-arranges the forms, and assembles them differently, such as Picasso did in many of his works, knowledge and feeling gained through years of practice, is evident.

The child and the primitive, both create figures we can enjoy, because they use only the basics necessary for their communication. It is the person who `advances' to the stage of desiring more complexity, and usually realism, where the problems start to occur.

It is important that the would-be-artist struggle to attain the indispensable tool of being able to use people in his visual communications. Working from the `life' figures in art schools is only a brief introduction, yet often considered experience enough .

My favourite painting instructor, and mentor, Mr. Stan Blodgett once said : "It takes fifteen years of doing the figure to get good at it. "Sixteen years later, I can agree with him.

Stan is a master at the figure! So was Picasso.


 

"If, instead of meaning and character, you see a human body in the flesh, or if, instead of the human body, you see formal relations, something is wrong with the figure." (25)
Rudolf Arnheim


"What do you suppose an artist is? If a painter, an imbecile who has nothing but eyes, nothing but ears if he is a musician, a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, nothing but muscles if he is a boxer? Quite the contrary, he is a political being constantly aware of what is going on in the world, whether it be harrowing, bitter, or sweet, and he cannot help being shaped by it. How would it be possible not to take an interest in other people, to withdraw in some ivory tower so as not to share existence with them? No, no, painting is not interior decoration. It is an instrument of war for offence and defence against the enemy." (26)
Picasso
 

25. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A., U of California Press, 1966), p. 10
26. Hans L.C. Jaffe, Pablo Picasso, (N.Y., U.S.A., Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1964)