Aristotle defined metaphor as giving one thing a name that belongs to something else because of some kind of similarity between them (Green). Most of the time metaphor is thought of in a literary and language-oriented sense. For example, Shakespeare’s line, from Romeo and Juliet, “Juliet is the sun” is a very famous example of metaphor. However, can these literary tools be applied to visual works? In Jon Green’s article, “Picasso’s Visual metaphors,” Green looks to explore the definitions and functions of metaphors in a few of Picasso’s works.
Before Green looks to dive headfirst into analyzing Picasso’s art works by exploring their metaphorical implementations and significances, Green first explains how some figures of speech can be demonstrated visually. Green explains that in an Article by VC Aldrich, Aldrich defines visual metaphor as “a ‘fusion’ or ‘interanimation’ of two visual images (A and B), whose colors, forms, or positions cause us to link them visually into a single (though complex) metaphorical unit (C).” Green then explains that metaphors are very different than similes in the fact that metaphors carry meaning from one thing to another unlike it. Going back to “Juliet is the sun,” Romeo’s comparison of the sun and Juliet not only insinuates that Juliet provides “light, love, and life,” but also that she is the “center of Romeos personal universe” (Green).
By first defining metaphor and its significant meaning in the visual arts, Green then explains that other verbal figures of speech can be portrayed in the arts. He says that oxymoron may be illustrated by drawing “horns and a halo on a figure;” that personification may be shown with human characteristics drawn on an inanimate object; and even puns may be used in paintings with the use of a “line element in a drawing in two incompatible ways.” Green then gives an example of these literary tools in famous paintings. For one example, Green explains that Mary and Jesus’ physical swooning positions in Van der Weyden’s Deposition is a visual simile illustrating pain from physical death and pain from “spiritual anguish” (Green).
After providing definitions and examples of verbal figures of speech in visual art, next Green examines and analyses metaphor and other figures of speech in Picasso’s Guernica. First Green looks at the light illustrations in the painting. He explains that the “metallic electric sun” takes over the center of the page by illuminates nothing, demonstrating the “coldness of an inefficient power.” Next he examines the oil lamp in the center of the page. It provides the light in the painting and is being carried out of a window by a “classicized nude” illustrating freedom. Green finally states that the light images in Guernica have duel meanings. Some images of light represent life and hope, whereas others represent oppression and destruction (Green).
Green also looks at the structure of the painting as a metaphor. He explains that as the figures “fall from left to right across the canvas in progressive states of approaching death, they represent a theme relating to the Deposition.” Green explains that the Deposition was “designed to amplify the believer sorrow over the suffering and death of Christ” and as a result, Picasso expands the theme to “embrace all suffering humanity.” Green also notes that the lack of color beyond black, white, and shades of grey, portrays the absence of life in the painting (Green).
Green next explores the idea of illusion vs. reality. He notes that Picasso’s Cubism style threatened to create super abstract ideas that were too far from reality. As a result, Picasso invented collage in which he “pasted real objects onto paintings.” This reconnected the abstract Cubism style with reality as it stuck real, everyday objects in the paintings. Green goes on to explain that this idea further advanced Picasso’s use of metaphor. An example may be Picasso’s Goat, in which the figure had a ribbed belly made out of a wicker basket. Picasso explained that by using the wicker basket “I move from the basket back to the rib cage; from the metaphor back to reality. I make you see reality because I used the metaphor.” This shows that by making the collage from ordinary materials with independent identities, Picasso could further advance his metaphor utilization (Green).
Lastly, Green looks at Picasso’s Bull’s Head as a visual metaphor. Picasso explained that he found the bike seat and handlebars in a junkyard and immediately saw the potential for the Bull’s Head. In evaluating the metaphorical aspect of the Bull’s Head, it is important to keep the idea of illusion vs. reality in mind. Especially as Green explains that the metaphor behind Bull’s Head is a double metaphor held by its two parts. First the ferocity of the bull is “trivialized” by the bicycle parts, and second that the bicycle is “heroicized in comic associations” with the head of the bull itself. The image of the bull carries metaphor in and of itself symbolizing fear, aggression, and violence, so the fact that Picasso made it out of everyday materials makes the bulls overall preceding image less fierce (Green).
In this article, Green evaluates whether or not verbal figures of speech can be portrayed in visual works of art. He determines that they can, and quite easily in fact. By then analyzing and evaluating some of Picasso’s great works, the actual utilization of these verbal figures of speech can be seen in visual art work. Green explains that in an age of violence, world wars, genocides, and eventually the threat for nuclear annihilation, Picasso’s visual metaphors were able to capture these things and in fact provide a shred of hope (Green).
Works Cited
Green, Jon. Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 61-76
Bulls Head Image from
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