Entry #5

• Study Pablo Picasso's painting, Olga Picasso In An Armchair (shown in Chapter 12) and Picasso's Woman Holding A Fan (not shown in the text, but can be seen via the Sakai course site.)
• Carefully consider both of Picasso's portrait paintings.
• Compare (identify the similarities) and contrast (note the differences) the details that you observe between these paintings with similar subject matter. Use correct terminology!
• Which painting do you personally find to be more appealing. Explain.

• Olga Picasso in an Armchair is naturalistic / Woman Holding a Fan is abstract
  
• both women are seated
• both women are holding a fan but in different hands
  
• the posture of both woman is essentially the same
• each woman's dress is painted seductively over the left breast but the breast is revealed in Woman Holding a Fan
• both paintings are done in a similar palette just executed differently; the grey of Olga's dress in Olga Picasso in an Armchair dress becomes the background of Woman Holding A Fan; the skin tone of Woman Holding A Fan becomes the background of Olga Picasso in an Armchair.
• Because Olga Picasso in an Armchair is naturalistic AND it was painted at a time with Picasso was in love with Olga, Picasso renders Olga with soft curvy lines including the romanticism of floral embellishments on the chair and on Olga's dress / this is in contrast to the abstract characteristics of Woman Holding a Fan, which reflects Picasso's changed feelings about Olga.
  
• Both paintings create a sense of sadness
  

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Woman Holding a Fan is more appealing to me than Olga Picasso in an Armchair. I like the simplicity of the abstraction, the cleanliness of the angles and lines, and the saturation of color.