環(huán)球英語 — 657：Pablo Picasso
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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Ryan Geertsma.
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And I'm Robin Basselin. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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Pierre Le Guennec lives in Southern France. To most people he is just an old man who used to work as an electrician. He worked with electricity in their homes. But now he is the man with a large number of Pablo Picassos's works of art. He has 271 pieces total! This art has never been seen before!
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Pierre claims that forty years ago he did work at the artist's house. He claims that Picasso gave him all the art as a gift. Picasso is no longer living, but his family does not believe Pierre's story. They are accusing Pierre of possessing the art illegally. Picasso's art is worth a lot of money. Experts say this unknown collection could be worth 80 million dollars. Today's Spotlight is on Pablo Picasso.
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Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. His parents must have liked long names, because his full Spanish name is:
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Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso.
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No wonder everyone today uses the short version: Pablo Picasso!
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Picasso became interested in art when he was very young. His first art teacher was his father. His father was a painter - and he was a teacher in the local school for arts. It soon became clear that Picasso was a skilled painter. When Picasso was about thirteen years old, his father stopped painting. He stopped his painting because he believed that his son had become the better artist.
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Picasso began showing his paintings publicly in 1894, when he was thirteen. Three years later he showed a painting at the National Exhibition of Fine Art in Madrid, Spain. The painting was called "Science and Charity." It was a painting of a doctor. While it was in this art show, the painting earned an "honorable mention" - a kind of prize.
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Picasso's father and uncle saw Picasso's talent for painting. Because of his gifts and skills they helped Picasso attend an art college - the Royal Academy of San Fernando, in Madrid. However, Picasso did not like the teaching at this school. He left, and moved to Paris. There he continued to learn by copying the methods of old artists. He also made friends with other artists in Paris. Art collectors in France and the United States began to buy his artwork. After 1900, Picasso began spending more time in France.
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Picasso was not only a painter. Picasso experimented with different kinds of art like drawing and sculpting. But his most famous works of art are his paintings. To Picasso, art just represented something else. Art alone did not tell the truth. But Picasso believed that through art, people could see and understand truth.
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Pablo Picasso's art was different from the art of most other artists of his time. Picasso experimented with different colors and shapes. Experts now look at Picasso's art and group his paintings into different periods of his life. There is his Modern period, his Blue Period, his Rose Period, his African-Influenced period, cubism, classicalism and surrealism.
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During the early periods, objects in Picasso's art looked much like they do in real life. People looked like people. During the Blue Period, Picasso did most of his painting in the color blue. He used dark blue, light blue, and mixed other colors with blue. But it was almost all blue. And many of these paintings showed people who were sad or hurting. But during the Rose Period, Picasso created art that looked warm and happy. He used colors like orange and pink. The subjects in his paintings appeared funny or friendly.
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For a short time, Picasso's painting was influenced by African tradition. But then Picasso began experimenting with shapes. During this period, Picasso painted common objects in ways that made them difficult to recognize. It was like he would break an object into pieces and put it back together in a new way. He painted many of these paintings in brown colors. This was his Cubist period.
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Finally, Picasso began to return to more traditional kinds of painting. The subjects of his pictures looked more like they did in real life - and he used more colors. This was his period of classicalism. This led into the period of surrealism. Surrealist paintings show objects in ways that seem out of shape - yet they appeal to the mind of the person who looks at them.
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Pablo Picasso died in 1973. During his life, not everyone liked his work. Some people did not understand it. But Picasso's experiments often led other artists to experiment too. In this way, his work greatly influenced the entire art community.
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Picasso always put his name on his art. However, he did not always put his name in the same place. So there were times when people would bring paintings to him to ask if it was something he had created. An artist named Brassa? [bras-seye] wrote a book called Conversations with Picasso. In his book, Brassa? tells about how Picasso reacted to one woman who came to see him. She wanted him to sign the painting so that everyone would know it was a real painting by Picasso. Picasso told her:
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"People are always asking me to sign my old paintings. It is not reasonable! In one way or another, I always marked my pictures. But there were times when I put my signature on the back of the painting. All my works from the cubist period, until about 1914, have my name and the date on the back side of the painting. I know someone spread the story that in Céret, the artist Braque and I decided not to sign our pictures any longer. But that's just a story! We did not want to sign the painting itself. That would have interfered with the painting. For that reason or for another, I sometimes marked my paintings on the back. If you do not see my signature and the date, it is because the frame around the painting is hiding it."
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Picasso loved his art. He was always creating new pieces of art. Now his art has great value. When people find new pieces that look like other art by Picasso, art experts must decide if the new discovery is real or not. Art experts study known artworks by Picasso. They look at his methods. They know how he signed his works. They also study color and other elements of the art. These are the things art experts compare between old and new pieces of art. Then they can decide if a new artwork is a real work by the world famous artist Pablo Picasso.
