Picasso and the art of distortion and dislocation: the artist as researcher and experimentalist.

This paper is divided into four parts. In the first part, some general ideas about Picasso are set forth including: his association with multiple artistic innovations; his use of many different media; his notions of beauty and the relationship between art and nature; his ideas about the placement of body parts, symmetry, and color; and his relish in producing paintings with shock value. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between art and science and on Picasso's role as a researcher and experimentalist. In the second part, works of art during the cubist and postcubist years are discussed with emphasis on the development of simultaneity--the coexistence of different views of an object in the same picture. Topics included are: facial grafting; facial accommodation; multifacialism; profile insertion; snout formation, elevation, and rotation; concurrent faces; and more comprehensive simultaneity. In the third part, other influences on Picasso are presented including: the effects of action, motion, and activity; Surrealism and sexual symbolism; and Picasso's artistic treatment of women. In the fourth part, a comparison is made between Picasso's experiments and nature's experiments.