A Blue Guitar

The Man with a Blue Guitar
by Wallace Stevens

I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

Seeing the Picasso guitar assemblages yesterday, I was reminded of the very first poem read by Sabrina Klein at the first Julia Morgan Lincoln Center Institute sessions. I'm pulling out my copy of Maxine Green's Variations on a Blue Guitar: Maxine Green on Aesthetic Education to read yet again, and I wanted to share the free reading and sage advice to be had on her foundation website. http://www.maxinegreene.org/articles.php

For an intro to the philosopher-in-residence at the Lincoln Center Institute, the grand dame of aesthetic education, try this Edutopia interview, Maxine Greene: The Importance of Personal Reflection http://www.edutopia.org/maxine-greene-daring-dozen-2008

Read the entire Stevens poem here:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/cas/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Wallace_Stevens.html

Steven's poem was inspired by this Picasso painting, The Old Guitarist, 1903

The Picasso painting and the Stevens poem are both featured on the website for Picasso Guitars 1912-1914 at MOMA which shares Picasso's process in creating these works and the public's reception to this artistic breakthrough.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/picassoguitars/index.php

Picasso's two Guitar constructions–one in cardboard, one in sheet metal–bracket a brief but intense period of experimentation in the artist's long career. It is this moment in his work, and the place of these two modest yet revolutionary objects within it, that Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 explores.

On this site, there is an acoustiguide track about the guitar assemblage featured in the de Young Picasso show. In November of 1913, Les Soirées de Paris, an avant-garde publication ran 5 photos of Picasso's still life constructions, including Guitar and Bottle of Bass. Apparently, readers were outraged, subscriptions were cancelled, and the assemblages were never publicly shown by the artist.

Another round of Blue Guitars came in 1977 with David Hockney's The Blue Guitar Suite, a series of 20 etchings published as both a portfolio and book, The Blue Guitar, etchings by David Hockney who was inspired by Wallace Stevens who was inspired by Pablo Picasso

In a 2009 article, David Hockney, struggling with deafness at the age of 72, had this to say about his interest in Picasso.

"I was always struck by how Picasso had no interest in music," he says, "he was tone deaf. But then he had this incredible grasp of tone in drawing, of chiaroscuro. He may not have been able to hear them, but he could see more tones than almost anyone who has lived."

XXXIII

That generation's dream, aviled
In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,

That's it, the only dream they knew,
Time in its final block, not time

To come, a wrangling of two dreams.
Here is the bread of time to come,

Here is its actual stone. The bread
Will be our bread, the stone will be

Our bed and we shall sleep by night.
We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.