Picasso's Blue Period was done in hot, bright hues. The painting considered the first of his Blue Period, "Casagemas in His Coffin", was completed later in 1901 when Picasso was sinking into a major depression. Picasso, normally an outgoing socializer, withdrew from his friends. Picasso's bout of depression was to last several years. Picasso's career had been promising before 1901 and early in that year he was making "a splash" in Paris. However, as he moved towards subject matter such as society's poor and outcast, and accented this with a cool, anguished mood with blue hues, the critics and the public turned away
De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period Blue Period" marks a shift in Salinger's fiction towards subjects that contrast religious or mystical experiences with the spiritual emptiness of American society. John Smith is described as an extremely lonely and alienated young man whose narcissism (he admits to painting seventeen self-portraits) and pretentiousness serve to insulate himself from his own suffering. The protagonist ultimately transcends his self-absorption and misanthropy through epiphanies that reveal to him the presence of God. In his new job as instructor, Smith finds the artwork of two of his students, Bambi Kramer and R. Howard Ridgefield (each described with great humor by Salinger) demoralizing