“Study the long career of Pablo Picasso and you might notice something: The subjects of his paintings don’t run off the canvas. His figures and faces aren’t cut off,” observes Jerry Saltz in his wonderful book, How to Be an Artist.
“Almost every shape, body, plane, line… or form he painted fits within the four sides of the canvas, crammed against the edges or dancing with them; everything is held under optical pressure by the four borders. This produces a distinctive visual tension.
His friend and rival Henri Matisse followed no such classicism. In his paintings, legs and feet go off canvases; heads are cropped willy-nilly… Patterns shoot right past the edges of his work… Every artist has his or her own relationship with these borders.”
After reading Saltz’s observation it occurred to me some of us live inside the borders we create in our lives, while others, less so. What’s important is to decide how we will relate to them; are these borders permeable, or delineating?
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