Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 (Taschen Art Ebook)
Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 (Taschen Art Ebook)
Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 (Taschen Art Ebook)
Carsten-Peter Warncke
Pablo Picasso
1881-1973
TASCHEN
KOLN LONDON MADRID NEW YORK PARIS TOKYO
Illustration Page 2:
Picasso is not just a man and his work. Picasso is always a legend, indeed al-
most a myth. In the public view he has long since been the personification
of genius in modern art. Picasso is an idol, one of those rare creatures who
act as crucibles in which the diverse and often chaotic phenomena of culture
are focussed, who seem to body forth the artistic life of their age in one per-
son.The same thing happens in politics, science, sport. And it happens in art.
Even idols, of course, are subject to change. They come and go. Some,
however, remain untouched by time and become classics; and one such is
Picasso. Just as it now seems inconceivable that a Michelangelo or Rem-
brandt, a Caesar or Napoleon, an Einstein or Galileo should ever be forgot-
ten, so too it seems impossible that the name of Picasso should ever vanish
from sight.
Indeed, even in his own lifetime Picasso was already the most famous liv-
ing artist. Now, twenty years after his death, his artistic achievement has
gone down in history, his fame is as secure as ever, and his work and person
still possess all their charismatic fascination for succeeding generations.
Like all classics, Picasso is reviewed by the judgement of following periods.
But unlike some of the greats of earlier eras, it is impossible to pass easy ver- Self-Portrait at the Age of 36, 1917
Autoportrait a I age de trente-six ans
dicts on him. For that, he is still too close to us. Much that needs accounting Pencil on paper, 34 x 26.8 cm
for still remains subject to speculation. Those who become idols, in art as in Maya Ruiz-Picasso Collection
any other field of endeavour, do not do so purely on the strength of their
achievements. Idols are social phenomena, and at least as much projections
of society's wishes and ideas as the embodiment of their own personal con-
cerns. Picasso the classic merits sociological scrutiny: one imagines that he
himself would be a marginal figure in the resulting study. It would also be
good to know more about how Picasso's pioneering innovations, and the
details of his works, have affected and influenced other artists, in order to
assess the Picasso phenomenon fully. A great deal has been written on this
subject, but there is no remotely comprehensive overview. And what is true
of these ancillary matters is most assuredly true of the heart of the matter,
Picasso's art.
There is no doubt that the reason for the massive global pull of Picasso,
the reason why crowds flock to exhibitions of his work year in year out, the
reason why millions buy books about him, the reason why is impact is so
widely felt, is quite simply the sheer exceptional diversity of his work. Pi-
Self-portrait with a Palette, 1906
casso was pre-eminent as painter and graphic artist, as sculptor, many-
Autoportrait a la palette
talented craftsman and stage set designer. The mere scope of his output Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm
makes it next to impossible to engage with
it all, and his tens of thousands Philadelphia (PA), Philadelphia Museum
of works have not yet all been catalogued, described, analysed, or indeed of Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection
even made accessible, in every case, to critical scrutiny or to the public eye.
Whatever we say about Picasso must remain provisional for the time being.
For that reason it seems wise, if one is to convey even a hint of Picasso's
growth and accomplishment as an artist, his significance and stature, to re-
strict one's view to the essentials: to a generous selection of works, to be
sure, but a rigorously chosen selection that affords a concentrated overview
and thus a well-informed point of access to his oeuvre. In the present vol-
ume, therefore, the stages in his development are documented and illustrated
with the works that most illuminate Picasso's artistic qualities at that point
in his career. The range covers his very earliest childhood efforts and the last
work of the aged Picasso, and includes a compressed but nonetheless fully
representative choice of his paintings, ceramics, sculptures, graphics and
drawings. Preliminary studies and sketches make it possible to follow the
creation of famous works from the first idea to the mature execution. Picas-
so's distinctive technique of variation, as he repeatedly rethought and re-
shaped subjects and forms, is clearly evidenced. And Picasso's art is placed
in the context of the age. This book attempts to explain what Picasso was
and what he still is for the art public of today, both as individual and as so-
cial phenomenon.
Youth is the period in life that leaves a permanent imprint, and artists are of
course no exception. But there are few artists about whose early years we
know much at all in sufficient detail. Their early attempts to express them-
selves artistically are very rarely preserved. Not so in Picasso's case. In this,
accomplishment. There are sketches and painted studies of the kind that
were routinely prepared in the course of academic tuition, but also doodles
in school exercise books. There are works done in practically every tech-
nique of painting and drawing. They are instructive, revealing both the play-
ful adventuresomeness of the child and his early endeavour to meet the de-
Hercules with His Club. 1890
mands of professional training. Hercule avec sa massue
It is striking, and comes as something of a surprise, that the essential traits Pencil on paper. 49.6 x 32 cm
of Picasso the artist are already present in these early works, in all their Barcelona. Museu Picasso
diversity, and can indeed be detected in the pencil drawing Hercules with
His Club (p. 1 1 ) done in 1890 by the nine-year-old Pablo. Assuredly it is an
awkward study, and unoriginal, being copied from a painting in the parental
home. But what is staggering, given that it was drawn by a child, is the un-
childish manner of the portrayal, and the clearly apparent effort to achieve
the copy in the spirit of the professional rules. Wherever we look in the
The education he was given was the making of a genius. Picasso started
school in Malaga in 886. aged five. None of his drawings of that time sur-
1
vive. But we have a reliable witness to what they were like: Picasso himself
Self-portrait: "Yo Picasso". 190
recalled drawing spirals at school in those days. This suggests that art in-
Autoportrait "Yo Picasso"
struction at that Malaga primary school was designed along lines adopted Oil on cam as. 73.5 \ 60.5 cm
and adapted by teachers throughout the world. Linear drawing was the in- Private collection
11
variable point of departure: children were encouraged to think and create in
geometrical terms. Then they were taught to abstract forms from the world
about them. And only then did they move on to the representation of actual
things.
Children in the 19th century learnt to perceive a repertoire of stock shapes
in all things, and to reduce individual forms to variations on geometrical
themes. The drawbacks of this method are plain: individual characteristics
are subordinated to unbending principles of representation. But we must not
overlook a salient advantage. Anyone who had been schooled in this way,
and (of course) possessed a certain amount of native talent, would thereby
gain the lifelong ability to register and reproduce objects and motifs quickly
and precisely. Picasso benefitted from the training of his boyhood till he was
an old man. It was that early training that gave him his astounding assurance
in his craft.
ing to the Madrid Royal Academy of Art's guidelines. This meant that he
Head of a Man in the Style of El Greco. 1 899
once again studied drawing and painting in terms of copying models. And Tete d 'homme a la Greco
the constant repetition of the same task did provide the art student with an Oil on canvas. 34.7 x 3 1 .2 cm
available repertoire of representational methods. Barcelona. Museu Picasso
12
What was more, students were also taught the essentials of art history; the Portrait of the Artist's Father, 1 896
Portrait (In pere de I' artiste
models they followed in their exercises were the masterpieces of ages past.
Oil on canvas on cardboard. 42.3 x 30.8 cm
So it was that in his early youth Picasso was familiar with the sculptures of
Barcelona. Museu Picasso
antiquity. He had to copy them over and over. His lifelong engagement with
the art of antiquity was thus as firmly rooted in his early training as his as- Portrait of the Artist's Mother. 1 896
sured technique and his idiosyncratic manner of approaching a subject. For Portrait de la mere de I 'artiste
Picasso, drawing always came first, irrespective of whether he was working Pastel on paper. 49.8 x 39 cm
Barcelona. Museu Picasso
in oil, printed graphics, sculpture or ceramics.
He was exposed to his schooling not only in extreme youth, but also re-
La Premiere Communion
browns or ochre yellows and sparing local colour to model the light and Oil on canvas. 166 x 118 cm
shadow on faces. The use of brush and paint followed preliminary training Barcelona, Museu Picasso
rendering of living models. This training was rigorously formal and de-
La Fillette aux pieds mis
signed to drive out the spontaneity in an artist, and inevitably had consider- Oil on canvas. 74.5 x 49.5 cm
able disadvantages. Pans. Musee Picasso
13
v- Si*
Science and Charily. I Sn 7
Science el chariti
Oil on canvas. I
l
)7 \ 249.5 cm
Barcelona, Museu Picasso
16
Autonomous values of colour, so important to new movements such as
Impressionism, were played down. Colour established form, confirming the
contour established by the drawn line. This sense of colour stayed with Pi-
casso till the end of his career: colour was intimately connected with form,
and could be used to intensify or defamiliarize it. Still, Picasso's academic
training alone could never have made him what he became, much as he
owed it in later life.
Picasso's father was unremitting in moulding his son along his own lines.
He wanted him to be the academic painter par excellence. He himself
painted animal scenes and genre paintings, the kind of work traditionally
considered of secondary value; and he wanted his son to paint figure and his-
tory paintings, which were then valued above all else. This culminated in
two paintings the father prompted the son to do in 1896 and 1897. First
Communion (p. 14) and Science and Charity (p. 16/17). Picasso's father sat
for the doctor whose skill and knowledge will determine the patient's fate.
And his father also influenced the reception of the pictures by using his con-
tacts with newspaper critics. He was omnipresent young Picasso's life.
in the
The boy's whole education took place in schools and colleges where his
father was on the staff.
Deliberately though Picasso's training was steered by his father, however,
and intelligent though it was, it was also outdated. Elsewhere in Europe, this
academic method had been superseded. So a crisis was inevitable in Picas-
so's life. In 1897, when his father sent the sixteen-year-old to the Royal
Academy in Madrid, it was a great mistake. The legend-makers have tended
to claim that Picasso attended none of his courses at all - but he did in fact
go to those of Moreno Carbonero. Still, he was profoundly disappointed by
studies at the Academy, and concentrated on copying the old masters in the
Prado. In June 898 he gave up his Madrid studies for good.
1
Not yet seventeen, he set about achieving his independence in every respect.
And from now on he went his own way.
Portrait of Pedro Manach. 1 901 But first the upheaval of having to leave everything behind produced an
Portrait de Pedro Manach immediate and visible result: he fell ill. In spring 1898 in Madrid he came
Oil on canvas. 100.5 x 67.5 cm down with scarlet fever, and was quarantined for forty days. After recover-
Washington (DC). National Gallery of Art
ing he returned to Barcelona and embarked on his independent career in art.
The Catalan metropolis was his base till his definitive final move to France
in 1904. Those were restless years. In 1898, through its colony Cuba, Spain
19
became involved in a war with the USA. Defeat spelt the end of what re-
mained of Spain's colonial empire and claims to be a world power. It was a
turning point, and brought profound political, social and cultural insecurity
with it.
Frenzy. 1900
Pastel. 47.5 x 38.5 cm
Private collection
21
Le Moulin de la Galette. 1900 So Picasso was known to those who followed contemporary art when he
Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 1 17 cm set out on his own way. And Barcelona was a good place for it. a pro-
New York. The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum.
gressive city where Spanish art nouveau was based, in the form of a group
Justin K. Thannhauser Foundation
of artists known as the modernists; and in Barcelona too were their succes-
sors and antagonists, the post-modernists. In June 1897 the Barcelona cafe
"Els Quatre Gats" (The Four Cats) opened its doors. Itwas an artists* cafe
and hosted changing exhibitions; in its short life it was the hub of Catalo-
nian artistic life. Leading "Modernistas" helped establish it. It cannot have
been too difficult for Picasso to join these circles, since they would ha\ e
heard his name; and belonging to them was a good start for his career. In the
art world as in any other, talent and energy need personal contacts to help
impressed by what he had heard about Munich, it was to Paris that he made
his move. The French capital had an established Catalan community, includ-
ing a number of artists temporarily living and working in the city. Through
them he was introduced to the industrialist and art dealer Pedro Manach.
who afforded him a first secure foothold. Manach signed a contract with Pi-
casso guaranteeing to take his pictures for two years and to pa\ 150 francs
::
per month by way of fixed income. He also floated the idea of a first Paris
Picasso exhibition at the Galerie Vollard in 1901
To Picasso, this was no more than an entree into the art market. For the
moment, Spain seemed the better territory for his ambitions. In early 1901
he went to Madrid and started an art magazine together with a young writer,
Francesc de Asis Soler. Contributions were squarely in line with the "Mod-
ernista'* spirit. When failure became inevitable, Picasso returned to Bar-
celona, and subsequently devoted his attention to Paris.
The line-based art of art nouveau presented no problem to him. The menu
he designed for Els Quatre Gats (p. 28) in 1899 is a good example. Every
shape is rendered in clear line. Figures and background details work in plain
zones of monochrome colour, or else are offset from each other by minor,
stylized details. The illustration shows the speed and assurance with which
Picasso had adopted a "Modernista" approach. He did not confine himself to
The Blue Dancer. 1900
the repertoire of art nouveau, however. He was omnivorous in his taste for
Pierrot el danseuse
new aesthetic trends. Some of his drawings and paintings (cf. p. 12) show Oil on canvas. 38 x 46 cm
him reworking the formal idiom of El Greco. Private collection
23
The Two Saltimbanques (Harlequin and His Companion). 1901
/ es Deux Saltimbanques (Arlequin el sa compagne)
60 cm
Oil on canvas. 73 \
Moscow. Pushkin Museum
24
Harlequin Leaning on His Elbow. 1 90
Arlequin accoude
Oil on canvas, 82.8 x 61 .3 cm
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
25
Lady in Blue. 1901
Femme en bleu
Oil on canvas. 133.5 \ 101 cm
Madrid. Museo Espanol de Arte
Contemporaneo
But it was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who made the most powerful im-
pression on the youthful Picasso. His posters and paintings, draughtsman-
like in manner, economical, precise, often on the verge of being caricatures,
held a particular appeal for Picasso. In 1900, Picasso's interest in Toulouse-
Lautrec peaked in his painting Le Moulin de la Galette (p. 22). Inside, there
is a crowd; further on. beyond a diagonally cropped group of women seated
at a table to the left, we see dancing couples as in a frieze. The subject and
the treatment are reminiscent of a Toulouse-Lautrec done in 1889. which in
turn was a reworking of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1876 painting of the merri-
ment at the famous Moulin, transposing the colourful fun from the garden
to the interior and to night. Picasso follows Toulouse-Lautrec, and inten-
sifies the effect by using the gas lighting to establish an atmosphere of half-
light, a uniform duskiness in which the figures appear as patches of colour
against a dark background. Correspondingly, the style of brushwork is more
26
Child Holding a Dove, 1 901
L 'Enfant au pigeon
Oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm
London. National Gallery)
a blue table, leaning on both elbows, her right arm crooked to clasp her left
shoulder. Her attitude is one of protective barring and signals that she
is
withdrawn within herself. Dreamily she gazes away into an undefined and
indistinct distance. A sense of transported absence is conveyed not only by
the woman's pose but also by Picasso's compositional subtlety. The woman
is leaning across to the left side of the picture, establishing a falling diag-
onal and thus introducing a quality of movement into the work. But it is
27
movement that is meticulously counterbalanced and neutralized by the com-
position as a whole. The use of spatial areas is richly ambivalent. Inclining
across the table, the woman seems to be coming nearer to us, and with her
hat cropped more than once by the picture edge it is as if she were on the
point of stepping out towards us. At the same time, though, her position on
the other side of the table emphasizes inaccessibility. It is a painting of
mood, and the contrastive use of colour, with the dichotomy of flat areas
and broken-up form, serve mood. Picasso was using tech-
to underline its
niques borrowed from the pointillists, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and
the Nabis all in one, to make a style of his own. The same applies to his
portrait of Pedro Mahach (p. 18).
current avant-garde artistic styles. Reviewing the work shown in 1901 at the
Galerie Vollard, Felicien Fagus wrote that Picasso had plainly been in-
fluenced by "Delacroix, Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Pissarro. Toulouse-Lau-
trec, Degas, Forain, perhaps even Rops". The only thing wrong with this as-
r
* sessment is that it name or two, such as that of Gau-
misses out an important
guin. But the sheer number of influences on Picasso at that time need not
Menu of "Els Quatre Gats". 1899
only be seen in a negative light. It is normal for young artists to be in-
Menu ties"Quatre Gats"
Pencil and India ink. coloured, 22 x 16.5 cm fluenced as they try to find their own style. And Picasso was not merely co-
Whereabouts unknown pying; he was quickly able to harmonize various influences into new
wholes. If this had not been so, it would be hard to understand his early suc-
cess on the art market. He had an excellent memory for formal qualities, one
which stored them so deeply that they became part of his own way of think-
ing. He was imitating, yes - but he did so in order to find a style entirely his
own.
Pierreuse, 1901
Pierreuse, la main mr I'ipaule
Oil on cardboard, 69.5 \ 57 cm
Barcelona, Museu Picasso
28
3 The Blue and Rose Periods
1901-1906
In the year 1901 Picasso was already in a position to create something new
of his own - the long series of works known as his Blue Period. These
works constitute no less than a resume of European artistic progress since
the mid- 19th century - though Picasso did forgo the newly-discovered
potential of colour. In this respect he was diametrically at odds with Fauv-
ism. which flourished at the same time. Though the fundamentals of the
Blue Period were evolved in Paris, Barcelona remained the centre of Picas-
so's actual labours till he finally moved to the French capital in April 1904.
In fact his work in Catalonia was interrupted only by a brief (and commer-
cially dismal) stay in Paris from October 1902 to January 1903. His pictures,
not merely melancholy but profoundly depressed and cheerless, inspired no
affection in the public or in buyers. It was not poverty that led him to paint
the impoverished outsiders of society, but rather the fact that he painted
them made him poor himself.
All Picasso invented was his treatment; otherwise he was squarely in the
avant-garde line of development since the mid- 19th century. Gustave Courb-
et's realism had located subjects in everyday village life. Courbet liked to
give plain physical work the full monumental treatment, knowing the sub-
ject had hitherto not been taken seriously. In Honore Daumier's drawings,
society's weaknesses were lampooned, but Daumier also took the lives of Study for "The Visit". 1902
"
Etude pour "L 'Entrevue
smiths, butchers or washerwomen seriously in paintings and graphic art that
Pencil on paper 45.9 x 32.8 cm
owed no slavish debt to any classical norm. And Impressionism, of course, Paris. Musee Picasso
would be radically misunderstood if we saw it purely as formal virtuosity,
games played with colour, and atmospherics. The Impressionists also dis-
covered the modern city as a source of subjects. If they recognised no hierar-
chy of formal values, they also knew no precedence of subjects. There were
no taboos in their approach to the new reality, no refusal to face subjects that
were beneath their dignity. Smoke-filled railway stations and cathedrals,
boulevard life in Paris and night clubs and the gloom of drinkers and
whores, all appeared in their work. Picasso's Blue Period portrayals of beg-
gars and prostitutes, workers and drinkers in bars, took up this line. His ab-
sinthe drinkers had antecedents in Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec; his arresting
Woman Ironing (p. 44) was also a product of a recent tradition, with af-
31
conjunction with other ideas too. A self-portrait Picasso painted in the winter
of 1901/1902 (p. 30) captures the mood. It is as if Fyodor Dostoievsky's
novels, Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and the theories of Mikhail Bakunin had
stood godfather to the painting.
The influence of anarchist literature and of Isidre Nonell's socio-critical
art is apparent in many of Picasso's works of 1899 and 1900. But his new
style of the Blue Period neither simply continued this line nor conformed
with his sources. His formal approach was different for a start. Whereas Non-
ell (and Picasso himself in his '"Arte Joven" days) had done compositions in-
volving several figures and having a narrative character, the Blue Period
works established just a handful of emphatic motifs. In Nonell's panoramic
works, human misery was seen as a slice of real life in its real environment
and implied comment on larger societal conditions. But in Picasso's case
The Visit (Two Sisters). 1902
L'Entrevue (Les Deux Soeurs)
fate was an individual thing, endured in isolation.
Oil on canvas on panel. 152 x 100 cm The Absinthe Drinker (p. 33). an emotionally arresting painting, draws its
St. Petersburg. Hermitage power from this. Everything seems stony: the glass, the bottle, the woman
A sense of volume is conveyed by juxtaposing variant tones of the
herself.
Crouching Beggar. 1902
same colour within purely linear spaces. Spatial values are produced less by
Misireuse accroupie
Oil on canvas. 1 1 .2 x 66 cm perspective than by the overlapping of forms. It is a meticulous, clear, bal-
Toronto. Art Gallerv of Ontario anced composition, with lighter and darker echoes of the skin tonalities uni-
'1
The Absinthe Drinker. 1 90 1
But the Blue Period Picasso did not merely pursue one-sided variations of
an expressive approach. He produced very varied work, monumental,
smoothly-constructed pieces alternating with detailed work the brushwork
of which is nervy and dabbed. It is not only an art of considerable artifice, it
it was more important to experiment, to try and test new visual approaches.
In The Absinthe Drinker the subject is not only the melancholy pub atmos-
33
PAGE 35:
de Paris
phere and the dreariness of alcohol. The painting's meaning also lies in the
Picasso was a master of intensifying contrast and evocative effects. His mas-
tery came from his assured grasp of certain formal and thematic antecedents,
and of the various media (such as drawing, graphics or paint). One of his ear-
liest etchings was The Frugal Repast (p. 42). done in 1904 and one of the
masterpieces of 20th-century printed graphic art. In it. Picasso's approach to
The Death oj Casagemas. l
l
H)l
line etching resembles his handling of colour tones in the paintings. Velvety
Iai Mort </< Casagemas
black /.ones fade to grey and to bright clarity. As in The Blind Man's Meal Oil on panel. 27 X 35 cm
Picasso plays with formal correspondences; but the cylindrical thinness of Paris. Musee Picasso
34
the arms, the elongated spread fingers, and the bony angularity of the figures
with their dark and light areas, all recall El Greco. Not that the conspicuous
influence of El Greco was the only presence in the Blue Period. Other artists
has a long tradition in Christian iconography, in which it stands for the di-
vine. German Romanticism gave blue the task of representing the transcend-
ent, albeit in secular fashion. Ever since the first third of the 19th century
there had been a regular mania for blue, as it were, which peaked in 1826 in
the tourist discovery of the Blue Grotto on Capri. As early as 1810, Johann
16
Wolfgang von Goethe had advocated the use of dominant colours to set Two Figures and a Cat. c. 1902/03
moods: blue light could be used for mourning, and one could look at one"s Deux Nus et un chat
Watercolour and pencil on paper. 1 8 x 26.5 cm
surroundings through tinted glass in order to marshal divergent colours in
Barcelona. Museu Picasso
a single tonality. In 1887 the French Symbolist painter Louis Anquetin
actually adopted this method. The Mackerel (Allegorical Composition).
Picasso's The Visit (p. 32) shows how consciously he was gathering these c. 1902/03
Le Maquereau Composition allegorique)
traditional values into a new synthesis. The attitudes and gestures of the I
The Blue Period peaked in La Vie (p. 39). a major composition which
Picasso completed in May 1903. In many respects it is not only the major
work of this phase but also the very sum of Picasso's art. At first the struc-
ture seems straightforward, but in fact the history and message of the paint-
ing are complex. There are two groups of people, an almost naked couple
and a mother with a sleeping babe, separated by half the picture's breadth.
Between them we can see two pictures leaning against the wall, the lower
showing a crouching person with head on knee, the upper - a kind of variant PAGE 38:
on the other - a man and woman crouching and holding each other. The Poor People on the Seashore. 1903
Les Pauvres cut bord de la mer
overall impression is of an artist's studio, so that we are tempted to see it as
Oil on panel. 105.4 x 69 cm
a representation of the life of the artist. But neither the subject nor the im- Washington (DC). National Gallery of Art.
port of the work is easy to interpret. It is too fractured: nothing is what it Chester Dale Collection
seems. The location itself remains undefined, uncertain. The perspective
PAGE 39:
angles are at odds with one another, the architectonic details ambiguous. Pi-
La Vie (Life). 1903
casso has used Blue Period compositional techniques we can see in various
Oil on canvas. 196.5 x 128.5 cm
pictures in one single, intense piece: and the same is true of his subjects. La Cleveland (OH). The Cleveland Museum
Vie is a kind of pastiche of Picasso's Blue Period. of Art
37
The Blind Man
7
s Meal. 1 903
Le Repas d'aveugle
Oil on canvas, 95.3 x 94.6 cm
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The male figure in La Vie was his sometime friend Carlos Casagemas,
who committed suicide in Paris in the year 1901 while Picasso was back in
Spain. When Picasso heard the news in Spain, he was deeply affected. That
same year he started to paint works that dealt with the dead man and his
own relations with (pp. him They were fictive, heavily symbolic
34 and 35).
paintings. The fact that Picasso returned to Casagemas in the great 1903
composition suggests that the existential impact on him was profound. The
painting was also in line with an artistic preoccupation of the times; the sub-
jects of early death, despair of one's vocation, and suicide were frequently
addressed and much discussed in Barcelona's artistic circles. Casagemas
evidently stood for Picasso himself. X-ray examination has revealed that
Picasso used a canvas on which something had already been painted - and
not just any canvas, but in fact his painting Last Moments, seen at the Paris
World Fair in 1900 and in other words a thematically and biographically
extremely significant picture.
It is idle to want to read an exact message into La Vie. Yet Picasso's
meaning is clear enough. All that mattered in biographical, artistic, creative
and thematic terms in those years is present in this one picture. The melan-
choly and existential symbolism of that period in Picasso's life are richly ex-
pressed in this ambitious work. Picasso's technique of veiling the paintings
meaning is in fact one of its signal qualities. He has managed to sidestep the
Celestina or Woman with a Cast. 1 904
vapidness of one-sided allegory: we are involved in this painting, drawn into
Celestina
it and - meditatively - into ourselves. The process opens up entirely new Oil on cam as. SI \ 60 cm
dimensions to historical painting. Paris. Miiscc Picasso
40
Looking back, we can see the Blue Period works as a progression towards
this goal, even though they were not specific preliminary studies, of course.
For the first time we see in Picasso's art something that will strike us re-
peatedly in the sequel, a notable tension between the autonomy of the single
work and the endeavour to gather the fruits of a line of development into
one sum. La Vie is the first of a number of Picassos that stand out from the
and the white paper gleaming through, the deep black o\' the crow 's plumage Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
12
against the woman's chalk-white face - all of these features are extraordinar- The Actor. 1904
L'Actcur
ily evocative. The figures seem almost engraved. The delicacy of the heads
Oil on canvas, 194 \ 1 12 cm
and the long, slender fingers of the woman emphasize the intimacy of ges-
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ture. It is a decorative picture, a work of arresting grace and beauty. Painted
in 1904, it also records Picasso's new approach: in the period ahead, he Woman Ironing. 1 904
chose subjects to match his newly aestheticized sense of form. Connoisseurs La Repasseuse
Oil on canvas. 1 16.2 \ 73 cm
and friends dubbed his new phase the "'Harlequin Period". Harlequins are
New York. The Solomon R. Guggenheim
outsiders too. But they have something to compensate for their low social Museum
rank - their artistry. Picasso avails himself of their colourful costumes and
graceful, decorative lines to create what can only be created by art: beauty.
He had made his final move to France in April 1904, taking a Montmartre
studio on the Place Ravignan in May. It was one of a number in a barrack-
like wooden building nicknamed the "bateau [avoir" from its similarity to
the washboats on the Seine. Of course Picasso did not move solely among Woman with a Crow. 1904
Femme a la comeille
the artists of Montmartre and his old Spanish colony friends. He also knew
Charcoal, pastel and w alcrcolour on paper.
the literal) avant-garde in Paris. And he was increasingly establishing re-
64.6 \ 4 l ).5 cm
warding contacts with art dealers and collectors. Toledo (OH). The Toledo Museum of An
44
"
&4&A
The Acrobat's Family with a Monkey. 1905
Famille d' acrobats avec singe
Gouache, watercolour, pastel and India ink
on cardboard, 104 x 75 cm PAGE 4" BOTTOM
46
Clown and Young Acrobat. 1905 Seated Harlequin. 1905 Harlequin on Horseback. 1 905
Banffon etjeune acrobat Arlequin as sis Arlequin a cheval
Charcoal, pastel and watercolour on paper. Watercolour and India ink: Oil on cardboard. 100 x 69.2 cm
60 \ 47 cm dimensions unknov\n Upperville (VA). Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Baltimore (MD). The Baltimore Museum of Art. Private collection Collection
Cone Collection
47
Circus Family (The Tumblers). 1905
Famille de bateleurs
Watercolour and India ink on paper.
24.3 \ 30.5 cm
Baltimore (MD). The Baltimore Museum of
Art. Cone Collection
IS
The. Acrobats. 1905
La Famille de saltimbanques (Les Bateleurs)
Oil on canvas. 212.8 x 229.6 cm
Washington (DC). National Gallery of Art.
Chester Dale Collection
49
At the "Lapin agile". 1905
,4;/ "Lapin agile" (Arlequin an verre)
99 x 100.5 cm
Oil on canvas,
Rancho Mirage (CA). Mr. and Mrs. Walther
H. Annenbera Collection
Even so. the Rose Period pictures are not merely records of a pleasant
time in the artist's life. Nor are they straight representations of everyday
reality. At the "Lapin agile" (p. 50) is a variation on an approach he had
already used in his Blue Period for works such as The Absinthe Drinker
(p. 33), with people gazing listlessly into vacancy, their bearing expressive
of wearied lack of contact. The harlequin costume suggests that it is all a
masquerade set up by an intellectual process. His Woman with a Crow
(p. 45) is not so much a portrait as a type study, stylized beyond individ-
uality. The harlequins, street entertainers and other artistes of the Rose
Period all enact the process of grasping the role of the artist. They were the
product of complex reflection inspired not least by Picasso's relations with
the literary world in Paris; he was now a regular at the "Closerie des Lilas",
a Montparnasse cafe where the Parisian literary bohemia liked to meet.
Under poet Paul Fort they met on Tuesdays for discussions, which were of
particular interest to up-and-coming artists.
themes, though not till then. It is not so much a reflection of Picasso's own
50
life in a promiscuous milieu (though it is that too) as an extension of basi-
cally political convictions. Taboos set up by mindless social convention are
breached by the freedom of art.
nadir; but, as the age of the middle classes took a firmer grip, the harlequin,
was seen as the epitome of the rootless proletarian, the People in person.
Deux Saltimbanques avec tut chien
After the 1848 revolutions, the new symbolic figure of the sad clown be- Gouache on cardboard, 105.5 x 75 cm
came familiar. New York, The Museum of Modern Art
Just as in the Blue Period a number of sketches, studies and paintings cul-
Acrobat and Young Equilibrist, 1905
minated in a major work, La Vie (p. 39), so too the harlequin phase produced
Acrobate a la boule (Filiate a la bottle)
the huge canvas The Acrobats (p. 49). It was Picasso's definitive statement Oil on canvas. 147 x cm
95
on the artistic life. And, tellingly, it was another artist, the Austrian poet Moscow, Pushkin Museum
51
Woman Wearing a Chemise. 1905
Femme a la chemise
oil on canvas, 73 \ 59.5 cm
52
Rainer Maria Rilke (who in 1916 spent some months in the home of the then Three Dutch Girls. 1905
painstaking labours, of frequent new starts and changes. It was begun at the
start of the Rose Period in 1904. That composition, later painted over, was Dutch Girl (La Belle Hollandaise). 1905
Hollandaise a la coiffe (La Belle Hollandaise)
like a study now in the Baltimore Museum of Art (p. 48). All of the charac-
Oil. gouache and blue chalk on cardboard
ters, even specific gestures and poses, appear in other Rose Period pictures, on panel. 77 x 66 cm
most famously Acrobat and Young Equilibrist (p. 5 1 ). But Picasso was dissat- Brisbane. Queensland Art Gallen
isfied w ith the result, turned the canvas round, and painted over it. Through
a set of preliminary studies he hit on a strategy that combined all three of the
approaches he had been toying w ith. as we can see from a gouache now in
the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (p. 48). Four male acrobats, standing, now
provide the focus - among them Tio Pepe and. from the first version, the
young girl. In due course Picasso painted over the canvas for a fourth time,
at long last arriving at the version we now have. He put the man on the left
in harlequin costume, replaced the boy's dog with a flower basket for the
girl, and dressed the boy in a blue and red suit rather than a leotard. At bot-
tom right he added a young seated woman. She too derived from a pre-
viously used motif (cf. p. 58). In other words, much as The Acrobats (p. 49)
fact constitutes a synthesis of the motifs Picasso liked to paint during his
Rose Period.
There are now six people: the background is not exactly defined. There
are two blocks: the left-hand group, accounting for some two-thirds of the
picture's breadth, consists of five people, while at right the young woman is
53
Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1906 sitting on her own. The contrast is heightened by subtle compositional
Tetc defemme (Fernande)
means. The positioning of three of the figures at left very close together con-
Bronze. 35 x 24 x 25 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso veys a sense of weight and unity, and the Mallorcan woman at right scarcely
54
?tt4
23*
Naked Youth. 1906 Boy Leading a Horse, 1906
Gargon mi Meneur de cheval nu
Tempera on cardboard. 67.5 x 52 cm Oil on canvas, 220.3 x 130.6 cm
St. Petersburg. Hermitage New York. The Museum of Modern Art
SI,
and through. The picture lacks a single point of view: the figures are spa-
tially placed in a curiously all-round way, as if each zone of the picture were
subject to its own perspective. Picasso is in fact once again telling us that
artistic viewpoints are relative. And he is doing it in a narrative mode that
would well suit a historical picture. His de-clarified world is precisely the
one these melancholy, uncommunicative characters would inhabit. And Pi-
casso's departure from the laws of Nature is apt since it matches the manner
in which acrobats earn their living by defying the law of gravity. The harle-
quin theme offered not only a visual means of approaching the life of the
artist but also a pretext to review formal fundamentals.
The tendency to experiment formally grew upon Picasso throughout the
Rose Period. In summer 1905, at the invitation of writer Tom Schilperoort.
he made a journey. The writer had inherited some money, and asked Picasso
I I
to join him on the homeward trip to Holland. For Picasso it was an en-
counter with an entirely new landscape and way of life. The few drawings
and paintings he did on the
tures. They drew on
trip were markedly different from the acrobat
classical sources and ancient forms. Three Dutch Girls
pic-
(p. 53) was the most important fruit of his journey. It readily betrays its
Spanish Woman from Majorca. 1905
model: even if the young women are wearing Dutch national costume, they
(Study for The Acrobats)
Espagnole de I'tle de Majorque are still grouped as the Three Graces traditionally were. Picasso was casting
Gouache and watercolour on cardboard. about for new numerous new studies and paintings, the colour-
bearings. In
67 x 5 1 cm ful palette of the acrobat pictures was replaced by a monochrome red. Not
Moscow. Pushkin Museum
only the male nudes in other paintings but even portraits done at the time
make a three-dimensional impression, abstracted and simplified, like sculp-
tures transferred to canvas. At this time Pablo Picasso began to give greater
attention to other media such as printed graphics or sculpture.
He had made an early attempt at sculpture in 1902, and The Frugal Re-
past (p. 42) in 1904 had shown him a master etcher at a date when he had
only recently been taught the technique by the Spanish painter Ricardo Ca-
nals. Just as printed graphics had helped the pictures of acrobats on their
way, so too three-dimensional work in wax or clay (cf. p. 54) informed the
formal vocabulary of the pictures that concluded the Rose Period. Picasso
was developing in a new direction again.
58
I
4 Cubism 1906-1915
From the winter of 1905 on. Picasso did nothing but experiment. Increas-
ingly he was seeing human form in terms of its plastic volume. He sim-
the
plified it. stripped it down to essentials, to a very few blocks, stylizing it into
something that was less and less naturalistic. Any infringement of natural
proportion he accepted with a shrug, even accentuating it in order to high-
light the independence of art. Picasso deliberately abandoned professional
technique, and placed his outlines and areas of colour rawly and inchoately
before us. making no attempt to flesh out an appearance of a living person.
There were no illusions in these lines and this paint. They were simply there
on the canvas to do the job of establishing a form.
Picasso pursued this path in a lengthy series of studies. In summer 1907
they culminated (at least for the time being) in the famous Demoiselles
d Avignon (p. 67). It has long been recognised as a key work in modern art.
It took Picasso a full three-quarters of a year to complete it. And the intens-
ity of his labour can be proven by statistics: no fewer than 809 preliminary
studies! Not only scrawls in sketchbooks but also large-scale drawings and
even one or two paintings. This degree of preparatory toil is unparalleled in
the history of art. Thanks to this material, we can follow Picasso's method
clearly enough. There were two strands of evolution, one formal, one the-
matic. In Picasso's mind they were distinct, as we can see from the fact that
Headofa Woman (Fernande), 1909
most of the sketches only ever tackle one formal or one thematic problem.
Tete defemme {Fernande)
At irregular intervals he would then sketch combinations of distinct lines of
Bronze. 40.5 x 23 x 26 cm
development: they record solutions to problems: the yokings become ever Paris. Musee Picasso
more radical till at last the goal is in sight. The final stage involves work at
As we can now see. in most of the individual sketches Picasso was striv-
ing for clear insight into the nature of artistic mimesis. The value of the en-
deavour lay in recognising the tw in poles of mimesis: on the one hand the
ideal coincidence of object and representation, and on the other hand the
complete absence of any representational value. Every mimetic drawing con-
tains elements of both extremes. Picasso's conclusion, like all things of
genius, was in essence very simple, but it has been of revolutionary import-
ance for 20th-century art: the mimetic image is a compound of elements that
must be possible to mix them quite differently and thus create forms that can
still, it is true, be understood as representational in some sense, but which
Self-portrait. 1 907
are pure art rather than a mimetic imitation of Nature.
Autoportrait
The images we have of things already constitute an abstraction; so it takes Oil on canvas. 50 \ 46 cm
little to draw a generalized representation of an object. In sketches done dur- Prague. Narodni Galeri
61
Two Nudes, 1906 ing the winter of 1906, the method Picasso used to draw a face was a
Deux Femmes nues simple, indeed conventional one. Two irregular lines indicated the breadth
Oil on canvas, 151.3 x 93 cm
and shape of a nose, and parallel hatched lines on one side conveyed its size
New York, The Museum of Modern Art
by means of shadow. The same procedure was then applied to other parts of
Two Nude Women Arm in Arm, 1906 the face (p. 65). Now all that was required was to stylize all the principal and
Deux Fannies nues se tenant secondary lines, in a mechanistic fashion, and a far more artificial impres-
Oil on canvas, 151 x 100 cm
sion would be conveyed.
Switzerland, Private collection
In May and June of 1907 he resumed this quest, to see how relatively
synthesis of the monochromatic and the contrastive. The figures are painted
in colours ranging from whitish yellow to brown, as are areas of the back-
ground; this contrasts with the blue that divides the right group from the left.
clarity and order. We can identify three zones, increasing in si/e from left to
right: first the woman at far left, then the two frontally positioned women
against the whitish-grey background, and then, seeming!) split off b) a
harsh colour contrast, the two at the right. But this irregular tripartite scheme
is at odds with a more orderly spatial division marked b\ the still life at the
64
x
65
PAGE 66 TOP: PAGE 66 BOTTOM: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907
Study for "I^es Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907 Study for "I^es Demoiselles d'Avignon". 1907 Oil on canvas. 243.9 x 233.7 cm
Etude pour "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" Etude pour "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" New York. The Museum of Modern Art
Pencil and pastel on paper. 47.7 x 63.5 cm Watercolour on paper. 17.5 x 22.5 cm
(sheet size) Philadelphia (PA). Philadelphia Museum
Basel. Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. of Art
Kupferstichkabinett
67
foot of the canvas: the table, seen as a triangular shape pointing upwards,
coincides precisely with the centre axis. Logically, that axis is occupied by
the middle one of the five women.
We also need to register the different ways of presentation within individ-
ual figures and objects. The bodies are seen at once from the front and the
side, in a way not naturally possible. Lines, hatchings and blocks of colour
are used to make random changes and de-formations in parts of the women's
bodies, and Picasso's over-layering makes for entire areas of abstraction.
Even so, Picasso has not completely abandoned mimetic representation. The
lines and colours still plainly show naked women in various positions. It is
because this is still apparent that the deviations from a conventional aes-
thetic shock us. And the shock was only heightened, for Picasso's contempo-
raries, by the ostentatious and provocative nakedness of the women.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is a meticulously considered, scrupulously cal-
culated visual experience without equal. The formal idiom and utterly new
style were h\ no means a mere relinquishing of prevailing norms in the vis-
Woman with Pears Fernando.
< 1909
ual arts but rather a subth elaborated marriage of relinquishing and preserva-
Femme aux poires (Femande)
tion. The same is true of the subject matter. The first complete compositional Oil on canvas, 2 \ 73 cm
l)
plan, done in March 1907 (p. 66), showed a brothel in Barcelona's Carrer New York, Private collection
Queen Isabella. 1908/09
La Reine Isabeau
Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm
Moscow, Pushkin Museum
Landscape. 1908
Paysage
Watercolour and gouache on paper.
64 x 49.5 cm
Bern. Kunstmuseum Bern. Hermann and
Margrit Rupf Foundation
Oil on canvas. 92 x 73 cm
Moscow. Pushkin Museum
ticular to do with the French town of Avignon. It was not till 1916 that the
writer Andre Salmon put about the innocuous and simply wrong title by
which the picture is now known. After he did the Basle drawing he changed
Picasso re-conceived the entirety of the European art tradition from the roots
up, and used its constituents to create a new visual language. This painting,
more than any other work of European Modernism, is a wholly achieved
Landscape. 1908
analysis of the art of painting and of the nature of beauty in art.
Paxsage
Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm Picasso marked the end of a historical process that had begun in the mid-
Private collection 1 8th century. The absolute aesthetic impact of painting and the autonomous
status of draughtsmanship and colour were established. This was a fun-
House in the Garden. 1908
damental change. Where once content and form, message and image had
Maisonnette dans un jardin
Oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm needed to harmonize, now form became dominant, and indeed became the
St. Petersburg, Hermitage content. If ways of seeing, conceptualization, and cognition were to be con-
71
I
Study for "Carnival at the Bistro". 1908/09 sidered inseparable, then the cognitive content of painting must logically
Etude pour "Carnaval au bistrot"
enough be purely a matter of how the observer looked at it. Inevitably, once
Gouache on paper. 32 x 49.5 cm
this view gained ground, painting would tend to lose its mimetic character
Estate of the artist
and become detached from the things which it claimed to represent. French
Study for "Carnival at the Bistro". 1908/09 1 9th-century art and the art of post-Romantic northern Europe underwent a
Etude pour "Carnaval au hist rot"
parallel move towards greater abstraction, and greater autonomy of image.
Pencil on paper. 3 1 .3 x, 23.8 cm
That evolution peaked in Picasso's Demoiselles d 'Avignon.
Paris. Musee Picasso
And this marked the arrival of Cubism, slowly but surely: the first major
Study for "Carnival at the Bistro". 1 908/09 peak that it reached is generally known as Analytical Cubism. Picasso's fa-
Etude pour "Carnaval au bistrot" mous portrait of art dealer Ambroise Vollard is an arresting example (p. 77).
Watercolour and pencil on paper.
It fulfils the main requirements of a portrait: it represents the outer appear-
24.2 x 27.5 cm
ance of a certain individual in a recognisable way. But the artist is also dis-
Estate of the artist
playing his skill at playing with the natural image. The lines are continued at
laps and correspondences can constantly be read anew. The essential charac-
teristics of the subject are preserved purely because Picasso is out to demon-
strate that the autonomy of line and colour is on a par with straightforward
and the demarcation of subject and setting, which were still present in the
Loaves and Howl of Fruit on a Table, Demoiselles. Between the two extremes lay a three-year transitional period.
1908
It began in 1908 and can be seen as the phase in which Cubism was estab-
I'auis el compotiei am. fruits surune table
lished.
Oil on canvas, 164 \ 132.5 cm
Basel, Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel. In midsummer 1908 Picasso made a breakthrough with his landscapes.
Kunstmuseum House in a Garden (House and Trees) and the simph -titled Landscape
72
Houses on the Hill (Horta de Ebro). 1909
1 ~*m
make L'Amitie
a stereometrically stylized impression. At the same time, the young
Oil on canvas. 152 x 101 cm
French painter Georges Braque had arrived at a similar position in paintings
St. Petersburg. Hermitage
of the landscape near UEstaque. At first glance, the motifs look like cubes -
which is why the term Cubism was coined in the first place. In autumn The Dryad (\ude in a Forest). 1908
1908. Braque unsuccessfully submitted his new work for the Paris autumn Lei Dryade (Nu chins uneforet)
together. was emphatically a mutual process: both artists have the same
It
75
By contrast, Picasso was more restless and abrupt, jumping
to and fro
amongst various formal options. Both were experimenting in their own way,
and both, independently, hit upon significant innovations. For Picasso, draw-
ing and the investigation of form were always the focus of his interest.
One of the finest and most instructive of his games played with form is
the Loaves and Bowl of Fruit on a Table (p. 73), painted in winter
still life
new rhythmic sense arises that introduces dynamics to the work. In the paint-
ings, this analytic deconstruction of form inevitably led to the presence of
non-representational elements.
In 1910, Picasso and Braque took their strategy to the borders of pure ab-
straction, producing paintings of great artistic charm which clearly demon-
strate that beauty in art need not be pinned down to illusionist representa-
tion. Cubism now entered a somewhat different phase, one that was heralded
in new visual forms different in structure
1911 and led the following year to
and principle. Braque. who had already used single letters of the alphabet in
Cubist paintings of 1909. now took to using entire words.
Man with a Moustache and a Clarinet. 1911
Another innovation also originated with Braque. As a youngster he had
Homme moustachu a la clarinette
Ink, India ink and black chalk. 30.8 x 19.5 cm been an apprentice house painter, and was familiar with a number of trade
Paris. Musee Picasso techniques, such as the "comb" - a template for mechanically establishing a
whole area of parallel lines. Braque used it to imitate the graining of wood,
and achieved a higher level of illusionism, conveying not only the appear-
ance but also the material consistency of an object - a technical trick daz-
zlingly and absurdly used! Picasso borrowed the method for a number of
still lifes, sometimes in combination with letters. Cubism had changed con-
siderably. A "simple" deconstruction of the mimetic, representational func-
tion of a picture had become an art which used the picture, itself a system o\
bert Delaunay. The pictures they exhibited, however, were meiel\ pleasing
cm variants of Braque's idiom of 1908; and their true point o( reference was
Vluseum Ce/anne. not the revolutionarj work of Picasso and Braque. Though the)
/ S/^r
Violin VolieEva", 1912 attracted attention and indeed provoked violent controversy, their work was
"
Vwlon "Jolie Eva
neither radical nor new. The distorted perception of their status was essen-
Oil on canvas. 60 x 81 cm
Stuttgart, Staatscalerie Stuttgart
tially a product of the new environment in which artists worked and ex-
hibited, a 20th-century environment in which the machinery of the art trade
78
3.U3UI9J
The official Cubist shows of 191 1. at which Picasso and Braque were not Still Life with Chair Caning. 1912
Suture morte a la chaise cannee
represented, inevitably changed things. The public debate forced their work
Oil on oilcloth on canvas framed with
into the open and made it imperative to establish their significance in the
cord. 29 x 37 cm
evolution of Cubism. In 1912 Metzinger and Gleizes published Du cubisme, Paris. Musee Picasso
a theoretical, popularizing view of Cubism that took Cezanne as the great
exemplar. But numerous writers in Picasso's circle published other views.
That same year. Andre Salmon published two books which are seen to this
day as vital sources in the history of Modernist art: his Histoire anecdotique
du cubisme. and La jeune peinture frangaise. He was the first to stress Picas-
so's key position and the seminal importance of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
in the founding of Cubism. Then in 1913 Apollinaire's book Les peintres
cubistes appeared, and made an attempt to distinguish and characterize
groupings within the movement. Braque and Picasso were labelled "scien-
tific" Cubists.
All of this produced a fundamental revaluation of Cubism and the individ- Bottle on a Table. 1912
Bouteille sur une table
ual painters. Now Picasso stood centre-stage, vilified and acclaimed as the
Papiers colles and charcoal on
innovator par excellence. Though it does not fit the facts. Braque has been newspaper. 62 \ 44 cm
viewed ever since as Picasso's junior partner. This too can be accounted for Paris. Musee Picasso
81
if we look scene of the time. Before Cubism. Picasso already had a
at the art
name, while Braque was merely the young man among the Fauves. Though
Picasso was the elder by a mere half year, he retained his advantage. From
the start it was a financial advantage too: though both artists were under con-
tract to Kahnweiler. the dealer paid Picasso four times what he paid Braque
for his Cubist work. This appears to have had no effect on the two artists'
cally (as we can now see), was to redefine the visual function of technique
and of the material(s) used.
Bottle of Bass, Glass and Newspaper. 1914
In early 1912. following a stay at Sorgues, Braque showed Picasso his
Bouteille de Bass, verre et journal
new work. It was three-dimensional. He had been cutting sculptural objects Tinplate. sand, wire and paper,
together, using paper or cardboard, and then painting or drawing over them. 20.7 x 14x8.5 cm
The spatial experiment was designed as a way of assessing illusionist tech- Paris. Musee Picasso
his found material: the part of the newspaper from which he had clipped the Violin. 1912
83
\ iulin and Sheet Music. 1412
Violon etfeuille de musique
Papiers colles on cardboard. 78 x 65 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
The form and content of the picture are at variance, but they are necessar-
ily combined; and thus a subtle tension of great aesthetic and intellectual
been joined to a slant rectangular area showing the weave of a cane chair.
This naturalistic component is at odds with the style of the rest. In fact it is
not a representational piece of work by the artist, but a printed scrap of oil-
cloth The semblance of reality is deployed as an illusion, identified as such, Violin, 1913/14
and exploited iconographically. During this phase of Cubism, using new ma- Violon
Papiers col Ices and charcoal on paper.
terials and techniques. Picasso was exploring the problem of spatial values
62 \ 47 cm
in the illusion established by pictures. Many of his works therefore started Pans. Musee National d'ail Modeme,
from three-dimensional work. Centre Georges Pompidou
86
It
Guitar. 1912
Guitare
Cardboard, paper, canvas, string and
pencil, 22.8 x 14.5 x 7 cm
Paris, Musee Picasso
ss
Guitar and Bottle of Bass. 1913
Gititare et boitteille de Buss
Pieces of wood, paper, charcoal and nails
on wooden board. 89.5 x 80 x 14 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
89
Alongside the papiers colles he began to make guitars out of cardboard The Glass of Absinthe, 1914
(cf. p. 88). The instrument is crudely but recognisably made: the brown Le Verre d 'absinthe
Painted bronze after a wax maquette with
colours of the cardboard, reminiscent of the wood of guitars, doubtless help
silver absinthe spoon, 21.5 x 16.5 x 8.5 cm
us in the recognition. But inappropriate materials are used too, and spatial New York. The Museum of Modern Art
values subverted. The lid, bottom and side walls of the cardboard boxes are
flattened to equal status. The basic Cubist rule of combining the representa- The Glass of Absinthe 1914 .
Following this line, Picasso devised another new form, the assemblage.
Basically it transposed the methods and effects of collage into three dimen- The Glass of Absinthe. 1914
Le Verre a" absinthe
sions. As well as wood, Picasso used metal here; but it was painted over, and
Painted bronze after a wax maquette with
its original textural properties were no longer recognisable. Picasso also silver absinthe spoon. 21.5 x 16.5 x 8.5 cm
combined multi-level semantic defamiliarizations with tandem aesthetic and Philadelphia (PA). Philadelphia Museum of
intellectual appeals in his only regular sculpture from this period, a famous Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection
serial work of which six copies were made: The Glass of Absinthe (p. 91).
He made a wax and plasticine mould and variously painted the bronze casts.
Absinthe (a vermouth brandy now banned because it is a health risk) was
drunk from a glass goblet of the kind the sculpture shows. Picasso dissolved
its transparent volume, with various highlights occasioned by the light, into
isolated zones which he then juxtaposed, adding a genuine little spoon with
a wax model of a sugar lump. The distinction between reality and simple rep-
resentation inevitably vanished, because the spoon too now became only a
representation of itself; but what matters, in terms of the principles of Syn-
thetic Cubism, is the contrast between conventionally faithful representation
(the spoon and sugar) and Cubist methods. In all six copies this contrast is
Violin (p. 82), done in 1915 and a full metre high. It is made of cut sheet Ville de Paris
91
metal, but the parts are wired in and colourfully overpainted so that the na-
ture of the materialonce again not immediately apparent. The volume of
is
the metal components and the spatial values implied by the painting are at
variance. The impact is further blurred because Picasso has interchanged spa-
tial values. Parts that should occupy a foreground position in the object sup-
posedly represented, and others that would be further from us in a conven-
tional three-dimensional treatment, have exchanged places. The two holes in
the soundboard are not depressions or holes in the metal but added compo-
nents. Reversing their state in the real world, they have here become small
rectangular boxes lying on the board. Then there are the colours, white,
black and blue areas alongside the brown ones suggesting the actual colour
of a violin. Black areas seem suggestive of shadow, just as white ones imply
bright light; yet this contrasts with the way things appear in reality. Graphic
and spatial approaches, and the art of the painter, have all been combined in
idiom. Constructions such as these thus took Cubism to the furthest limit of
its options. And ever since, from Dada to the present day, artists of every
stylistic persuasion have used and developed the methods evolved by Cub-
ism. Small wonder, then, that as Cubism gained ground it also founded inter-
national recognition of Picasso's special status in 20th-century art. In the sec-
ond decade of the century he was already being seen as the artist who in-
Harlequin, 1915
\ri:
I
( )il on 105.1 cm
York, I he Museum of Modem \n
5 Classicism and Surrealism
1916-1936
The work Picasso did from 1916 to 1924 was among the most baffling in his
entire output. The public, his critics, and fellow artists were now familiar
with him as the founder of Cubism and indeed of modern art. But now the
great iconoclast bewildered the experts and general public alike by returning
to a representational art of a monumental, statuesque kind, painting classicist
nudes, portraits, scenes, and works in the spirit of Synthetic Cubism - at
first sight quite incompatible - all in the same period. And yet Picasso's
work matched the mood of the age, and pursued his own intentions as an
artist.
Now an established artist, Picasso moved in theatre and ballet circles, and
thus had an entree into high society. He saw Naples and Pompeii; he saw the
most important works of classical art; and changes in the art
originals of the
world accompanied those in his personal life. France saw itself as the direct
descendant of antiquity, the guardian of human values; and a return to the
values of the ancient world was common in all the Mediterranean countries.
It is certain that these years of Modernism were by no means of a piece,
though. There was a strong tendency to render the formal features of avant-
garde art purely decorative.
Remarkably enough, Picasso was very interested in the applied arts at that Olga Picasso in the Studio
time, primarily in art design for the theatre.From 9 6 to 924 he was in- 1 1 1
Photograph, c. 1917
95
sided view can be readily seen if we grasp the irreconcilability of his own "Parade": Costume of the French Manager.
works with the European classical ideal in art. The human image 1917
is central
"Parade": Costume de managerfrangais
to his work as it is to classicism, and the tendency to monumentalize it un-
Cardboard and cloth, painted.
mistakable. But in contrast to classical tradition his treatment ignores prin- approx. 200 x 100 x80 cm
ciples of balance and goes for monstrous and disproportioned physical mass. Original destroyed (photo dated 1917)
Picasso was exchanging the two poles of formal visual definition, the
"Parade": Costume of the American
mimetic and the Cubist. This exchange was a return to first principles. A re-
Manager, 1917
turnseems logical since Cubism could go no further. To attempt to go on "Parade Costume de manager americain
":
would have meant adopting total abstraction - a step that other artists did Cardboard and cloth, painted.
this is a consideration that has been too little taken into account by Picasso's
critics. Yet Picasso was an enthusiastic photographer as far back as Cubist
days, and Picasso will inevitably have noticed the distinctive features of the
photographic image. The unfinished Portrait ofOlga in an Armchair (p. 94)
painted in 1917, the 1923 Paul, the Artist's Son, on a Donkey (p. 10), his
1
studies of dancers (Olga among them) and of Sergei Diaghilev and Alfred
Le Retou r du baptime (d'apres Le Nain)
Seligsberg or Igor Stravinsky (p. 100), were all painted or drawn from photo- Oil on canvas. 162 x 118 cm
graphs. Nor must we forget his many copies and variations of works of art Paris, Musee Picasso
97
Curtain for "Parade".
1917
I , Rideau de "Parade"
Tempera on cloth,
10.6 x 17.25 m
Paris Musle National
lodeme, Centre
Pompidou
ti-(M-
The seated man seems rather too bulky below the waist compared with his
loo
PAGE 100 TOP LEFT
Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev and Alfred
Seligsberg. 1919
(altera photograph)
Portrait de Serge Diaghilev et d Alfred
Seligsberg
Charcoal and pencil on paper. 63.5 x 49.6 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
Studies. 1920
Etudes
Oil on canvas. 100 x 81 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
101
Sleeping Peasants, 1919 Picasso approached the unfinished portrait of his wife Olga (p. 94) in sim-
La Sieste
ilar fashion. The figure is cropped at the knee and placed vertically in the
Tempera, watercolour and pencil,
right-hand two-thirds of the composition. In her left hand, resting lightly on
31.1 x 48.9 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, her crossed left leg, she is holding a half-open fan. Her right arm, crooked at
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Bequest the elbow, is out-stretched across the back of the armchair. Her wide-open
eyes are gazing dreamily into nowhere, or within her own inner depths. The
lustreless dark brown dress contrasts with her light flesh, the colour of
which is also the colour of the canvas ground. The armchair is covered in a
striking fabric of red and yellow flowers, purple grapes and green leaves - a
floral pattern which makes the loudest visual impact but somewhat muted
is
by the patterning of the dress and fan. These agitated areas of the picture do
not distract from the true subject, the portrait, but in fact lend emphasis to it.
16.3 \ 21.7 cm sense of forms - otherwise it cannot easily be grasped. The camera is impar-
',
Picasso tial towards its subjects and therefore able to open up surprising perspectives
Family on the Seashore. 1922
Famille au borcl de la mer
Oil on panel, 17.6 x 20.2 cm
Paris, Musee Picasso
107
The levers. 1923
Les Amoureux
Oil on canvas, 130.2 x 97.2 cm
Washington (DC), National Gallery of Art.
Chester Dale Collection
I OS
At that time, a great deal of thought was going into the nature and
potential of photography, and it had achieved recognition as an art from
which other visual artists could in fact learn. From about 1920 on. Da-
daists. Surrealists, Soviet Constructivists and artists at the Bauhaus were
all trying to bring new ideas to visual art with the help of experimental
photography.
And Picasso was trying to do the same. All of his figure drawings after
1916 were constructed according to the basic principles of photography -
and for that reason they lack something we usually find in an art drawing:
variability of line. Lines can be thick or thin, deep black or pale grey, and
the gradations chosen can make the visual rhythm of a picture by emphasiz-
ing certain portions and not others. Not so in Picasso. From his portraits of
composers Satie and Stravinsky (p. 100) to his copy of Renoir's portrait of
Sisley and His Wife (p. 100), the lines are almost mechanically even. It is an
astonishing effect, at once cold and utterly stylized.
Picasso was not only adopting the photographic contour. His paintings
Paul, the Artist's Son, on a Donkey. 1923 and drawings also borrowed the characteristic overemphasis of light-dark
Paul, fils de I' anisic, a deux cms contrasts in defining volume, the juxtaposition of the linear and the spatial,
Oil on canvas. 100 x 81 cm even the distortions of perspective. He still used the visual artist's conven-
Paris. Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Collection
tional methods, thus often mixing forms. In the Stravinsky portrait, for
nudes in contexts of action. And he was also looking back to art history. His
arresting motion study, Women Running on the Beach (p. 107), uses motif
from Raphael's Vatican frescoes and from an ancient Medean sarco-
details
Paul Drawing. 1923
Paul dessinant
phagus in the National Museum in Rome, both works Picasso saw in 1917.
Oil on canvas, 130 x 97.5 cm The range of different techniques Picasso was using all shared a concern
Paris. Musee Picasso with identity of craftsmanship and form. As well as painting in oil on
canvas, he painted on wooden panels as in centuries gone by. He even trans-
ferred pastel to canvas and combined it with oils:The Reading of the Letter
PAGE 112: (p. 108) is a fine example. The textural effect of pastel chalk on a rough
Paul as Harlequin. 1924 canvas ground curiously reinforces tonal contrasts.
Paul en arlequin As in earlier periods, the experiments were all subsumed into one major
Oil on canvas. 130 x 97.5 cm
work recapitulating his experience throughout this period: The Pipes of Pan
Paris. Musee Picasso
of the year 1923 (p. 106). Over fifty studies in sketchbooks and on single
113: sheets have survived, but the number of preliminary studies for the painting
Seated Harlequin (The Painter Jacinto must have been far greater, for Picasso also used his 1920-1921 pencil and
Salvado), 1923
pastel drawings of bathers on the beach for his new purpose. He settled on
\rlequin assis (Le Peintre Jacinto Salvado)
the idea of tightly ordered groups of standing and seated figures. He re-
Oil on cam as. I 30 \ l
)7 cm
Paris, Musce National d'Art Moderne, turned to this idea in 1923. linking it to bacchanalian motifs from antiquity.
s Pompidou The result was the final big painting completed in summer 1923.
no
Rough brown, beige and sandy areas provide a backdrop to the youths, Three Musicians. 1 92
Musiciens aux masques
foregrounding them through the contrast, accentuating the spatiality. and
Oil on cam as. 203 \ 1 SS cm
rounding out the centripetal composition. The two figures illustrate Picasso's
New York. The Museum of Modern Art.
methods of three-dimensional modelling: darker and lighter shades, vari- Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
ously contrasting, to indicate a range of volume qualities from flat to round.
together with the natural proportions of the bodies, heighten the picture's
evocativeness. Like Picasso's entire output from 1916 to 1924, this picture
was a variation on others, uniting in one place subject-matter with shades of
antiquity, classical models, a classicist mode of composition, and a style
derived from photography and blended with Synthetic Cubism.
In the year 1928, in the Paris studio of the Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzales,
The Dance. 1925
Picasso made lour constructions using iron wire and sheet metal, three o(
In Danse
which have survived (p. 1 18). They are fairly small, from 38 to 60 centi- Oil on canvas, 215 x 142 em
metres high, and economical in their use of iron wire of various thicknesses. London, tale Gallen
I I -I
Studio with Plaster Head, 1925 At first glance these constructions look complicated and confusing. But on
Tete et bras de pldtre
closer inspection we see two fundamental features. On the one hand, they
Oil on canvas. 98. 1 x 1 3 1 .2 cm
present a juxtaposition of geometrical shapes, rectangles, triangles and el-
New York. The Museum of Modem Art
lipses grouped spatially into irregular stereometric configurations - extended
pyramids, squashed cubes. On the other hand, at points there are details
- small spheres, discs, irregular tricorn ends - recalling, however remotely,
the human figure. This encourages us to read the works entirely differently:
what looked totally abstract at first now seems to be a stylized representa-
tional figure.
The works are like picture puzzles. Picasso's remarkable and noteworthy
handling of the fundamentals of sculpture is striking. The use of wire trans-
lates form into an issue of linear definition. This is a principle of the draught-
sman, not the sculptor. Strictly speaking, these works are three-dimensional
transfers of two-dimensional graphics. They were given the label "spatial
drawings" by Kahnweiler. The ambiguity of formal meaning, the open ex-
pressive significance of an art object, the fundamental doubts concerning
images conveyed by draughtsmanship - all these basic issues entered into
Picasso's picture puzzles, on page and plinth alike. In 1932. this process cul-
The Sculptor, 1931
minated in the oil Bather with Bench Ball (p. 126). The visual opulence o\
l.c Sculpteur
Oil on plywood, I 28.5 x
l
)d cm this work at once proves it a peak achievement, a final point along a develop-
Paris, Mus6e Picasso ment, the sum of a long series of studies, experiments and insights.
116
Figure (Maquette for a Memorial to
ApoUinaire). 1928
Figure (Maquette pour un monument
a"ApoUinaire) PAGE 1 19 TOP:
Iron wire and sheet metal. Guitar. 1926
50.5 x 18.5x40.8 cm Guitare
Paris. Musee Picasso String, newspaper, sackcloth and nails on
painted canvas, 96 x 130 cm
Figure (Maquette for a Memorial to Paris. Musee Picasso
ApoUinaire). 1928
Figure (Maquette pour un monument PAGE 119 BOTTOM LEFT:
d'ApoUinaire) Guitar. 1926
Iron wire and sheet metal, 60.5 \ 15 x 34 cm Guitare
Paris. Musee Picasso Cardboard with India ink. string, tulle
Guitar. 1926
Guitare
Cardboard, tulle, string and pencil
on cardboard, 12.5 \ 10.4 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
MS
The Studio, 1927/28
L' Atelier
Oil on canvas, 149.9 x 231.2 cm
New York, The Museum of Moderrn Art
the beach cabin and the blue sea, Picasso's view of life at the seaside is dis-
tinctly humorous. But for Picasso form was devoid of content; so he
in itself
Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Comte de Lautreamont and Apolli- Oil on canvas, 128 x 98 cm
Estate of Jacqueline Picasso
naire, from whose work the label of the new movement was indirectly
121
production of visual, textural effects by rubbing, and grattage, a kind of The Swimmer. 1 929
reverse frottage, in which paint is thickly applied and then scraped off reveal- La Nageuse
Oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm
ing the layer underneath. Nor should we forget "Ecriture automatique", the
Paris, Musee Picasso
Surrealists' rediscovery of automatic writing and equivalent procedures in
painting and drawing whereby what mattered was to suspend rational con-
trol and allow the subconscious to express itself directly via the text or
image produced.
In 1925 Picasso exhibited at the first joint Surrealist show in the Galerie
Pierre in Paris. He did portraits of Surrealist writers for their books, and in
1933 one of his collages was taken for the title page of the new magazine,
Minotaure (p. 1 39;. Like the Surrealists, Picasso too explored the visual
potential of tactile qualities. There are a number of affinities in technical
methods, the use of montage, and the further development of collage and
assemblage.
The Blue Acrobat, 1929
Yet still the tensions that existed between Picasso and the Surrealists were
L'Acrobate bleu
the product of deep-seated differences. It is no exaggeration to say that their
Charcoal and oil on canvas,
respective aims and intentions were in fact diametrically opposed. For that 162 x 130 cm
very reason there were superficial overlaps in the approach to artistic experi- Pans. Musee Picasso
125
Bather with Beach Ball. 1932
Baigneuse cm bord de la mer
Oil on canvas, 146.2 x 1 14.6 cm
Now York. The Museum of Modem Art
ment and the transformation of conventional techniques and modes of ex- Figures at the Seashore. 1931
pression.The assemblages Picasso did in spring 1926. which were published Figures au bord de la mer
Oil on canvas. 130 x 195 cm
that summer in La Revolution surrealiste, point up the differences of cre-
Paris. Musee Picasso
ative method nicely. The assemblages consist of just a few, simple, everyday
things. Scraps of linen and tulle, nails, string, buttons and newspaper are put
together to make almost abstract images.
In Guitar (p. 119 top), for instance. Picasso has arranged a piece of sack-
cloth, a scrap of newspaper, two long nails and some string in such a way
that what looks like a random collection of objects takes on the appearance
of a "picture". By referring to the title we can perceive this work as being
representational. The cut-out circle in the middle of the cloth echoes the
hole in a guitar's soundboard, and the two nails loosely suggest the strings.
The yellowed newspaper denotes the side and bottom of the instrument,
and the string must presumably represent the (oddly angled) neck. The
image as such is wholly non-naturalistic, and the form contrasts with that
of an actual guitar. But in its details there are enough similarities to estab-
lish the concept of a guitar. Picasso is continuing the line of Synthetic Cub-
ism here, seeing the picture as a system of signs, the arbitrary nature of
which leaves the imagination leeway for untrammelled invention. The
possibility of recognition is anchored in concepts and definitions, and hap-
pens entirely in the intellect. Surrealism does exactly the opposite. It too
primarily operates with a conceptual system, but its techniques and aims
alike depend on the irrational.
127
The Red Armchair. 1931
Femme assise clans unfauteuil rouge
Oil and enamel paint on plywood, 130.8 x 99 cm
Chicago (EL), The Art Institute of Chicago
128
Bust of a Woman with Self-portrait. 1929
Buste de femme el autoportrait
Oil on canvas. 71 x 60.5 cm
Private collection
129
Reclining Nude. 1932
Femme nue couchee
Oil on canvas, 24 x 35 cm
Rome, Private collection
133
/V-2"
Bullfight (Corrida), 1934 Scarcely controlled creative acts may produce random results, or logical
Course de taureaux (Corrida)
and meticulous labour may produce images beyond rational interpretation:
Oil on canvas, 97 x 1 30 cm
that is not the point. In the former case, form expresses the artist's subcon-
Private collection
scious and appeals to the beholder's emotions. In the latter, the beholder's
subconscious is activated via feeling even though he has no rational access
to the work. In terms of form and the meaning of form, however, emotion
plays no part at all in Picasso's work. He appeals to the emotions to prompt
conflict or even shock, starting an intellectual process in the course of
which we reflect not on ourselves but on art. This was also the aim of his
wire sculptures of autumn 1928 (p. 1 18).
135
Silenus Dancing in Company, 1933
Silene en compagnie dansante
Gouache and India ink on paper, 34 x 45 cm
Private collection
Minotauromachy 1935 .
La Minotauromachie
Etching and grattoir. 49.8 x 69.3 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
Minotaur and Horse. 1 935
Minotaure et cheval
Pencil on paper. 17.5 x 25.5 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
"
Maquette pour la com erture de "Minotaure
Collage: Pencil on paper, corrugated
cardboard. sil\er foil, silk ribbon, wallpaper
o\erpainted with gold and gouache, doilies,
brow ned can\ as lea\ es. draw ing pins and
charcoal on wooden board. 48.5 x 41 cm
New York. The Museum of Modern Art
139
Interior with a Girl Drawing. 1 935 A large number of Picasso's etchings are responses to Rembrandt. Picasso
Deux Femmes
was placing himself on a par with Rembrandt - a high ambition indeed, for
Oil on canvas, 130 x 195 cm
New York. The Museum of Modern Art.
Rembrandt is widely seen as the master of etching, and in Picasso's time
Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest was considered the greatest artist of all time. Picasso was asserting that he
himself was Rembrandt's legitimate successor, that he himself was the most
important 20th-century artist.
at the top, amidst the seeming chaos of loud colours and contrasts, mouths
locked in a devouring kiss; a figure at left, holding another in an embrace:
an exploded backbone atop straddled legs. But what looks like a mouth or
eye, soulfully intimate, is in fact a vagina about to be "eaten", and at the bot-
late work done in the 1960s did Picasso again treat sexuality thus.
A picture as aggressive as The Kiss was of course not merely the articula-
Picasso presses it vividly. In other works of the period, distress and violent feeling
are apparent in the visible tension. From 1930 on, we frequently find the
Christian motif of the crucifixion (p. 132J> Above all, he dealt with relations
between the sexes, in numerous variations on his artist-and-model subject
but also in a new version of his bullfight pictures: the motif of the Minotaur.
The various states of the Minotauromachy etching, and the India-ink and
gouache studies of 1936 (p. 137). allude both to the ancient tradition and to
the modern. The Minotaur invades the sculptor's studio. He is also seen
dragging the dead mare, a symbol of female sexuality, from his lair. He is
plagued by demons, and is vanquished by Theseus. But the creature can al-
ways be identified with the dual nature of the artist. This owes something to
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, in which Nietzsche saw art as essentially a
duality, possessing Apollonian and Dionysian features.
Of course we must remember that the violence in many of these works
also reflected contemporary politics. France and indeed all of Europe was
radically unstable at the time, and Fascism was on the rise. Spain had been
in the hands of a military dictatorship since 1923, and it was not till 1931
that an elected government replaced it. Since 1930. the Surrealists had been
increasingly committed to the Communist Party, but Picasso refused to be di-
rectly involved in politics. This does not mean that he took no interest in pol-
itical events or was ignorant of social conditions.
The key picture in political terms is the composition showing the Mino-
taur in the clutches of a gryphon figure (p. 137 top). Picasso's variation on
a famous ancient model, the Hellenistic Pasquino group, showing the dead
Patroclus in the arms of Menelaus. It was done as a study for the curtain for
L
Girl Before a Mirror. I )32
Romain Rolland's play 14 j nil let. performed in Paris in summer 1936 in
Jeune Fillc devant un miroir
honour of the election victory of the French People's Front. Like the bull-
Oil on canvas. 162.3 x 130.2 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art.
fight, the use of the Minotaur motif shows the subject's symbolic value in
Gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Picasso's eyes, as an expression of social concern.
6 War, Art and Politics 1937-1953
Republican government, which appointed him director of the Prado in Ma- Tete de Femme en pleurs
Pencil and gouache on paper. 29.2 x 23.1 cm
drid, Spain's most important art gallery, in July 1936. In January 1937 the
Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra de Arte
government commissioned him to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at Reina Sofia
the Paris World Fair, due to open in July. At first Picasso intended to meet
the commission with a representation of the freedom of art, using a studio
scene with painter and model. But when the news of the bombing of the
holy Basque town of Guernica reached him, he changed his mind. On 26
April 1937 the town was totally destroyed in just three and a half hours by
Falangist forces, Spanish, Italian and German troops, under German com-
mand. The town was of no military importance; its destruction was an act of
pure terrorism. But it rapidly acquired political significance as reports of the
atrocity appeared in the world press. Guernica was transformed by those re-
With these new impressions of war vivid in his mind, Picasso abandoned
his original idea for the mural and began sketch work on a new idea on 1
145
l^~>',
<I) I
Study for "Guernica" (1). I May 1937 Study for "Guernica" (2). 1 May 1937 Study for "Guernica" (3). 1 May 1937
Etude pour "Guernica" (I) Etude pour "Guernica" (2) Etude pour "Guernica" (3)
Pencil on blue paper, 21 x 26.9 cm Pencil on blue paper. 2 1 x 26.9 cm Pencil on blue paper. 21 x 26.8 cm
Madrid. Museo National Centra Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra
de Arte Reina Sofia de Arte Reina Sofia de Arte Reina Sofia
Horse. I May 1937 Horse, 1 May 1937 Study for "Guernica" (6). 1 May 1937
Study for Guernica (4). Cheval Study for Guernica (5). Cheval Etude pour "Guernica" (6)
Pencil on paper, 21 x 26.9 cm Pencil on blue paper, 21 x 26.8 cm Pencil and oil on plywood. 53.7 x 64.7 cm
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centra Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra
de Arte Reina Sofia de Arte Reina Sofia de Arte Reina Sofia
Study for "Guernica" (10). 2 May 1937 Study for "Guernica" (15). 9 May 1937 Mother with Dead Child. 2$ Ma> 1937
Etude pour "Guernica" (10) Etude pour "Guernica" (15) Stud) for Guernica (37)
Pencil and oil on plywood, 60 \ 73 cm Pencil on paper. 24 \ 45.3 cm Mere avec enfant mort
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centra Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra Pencil crayon, gouache and collage on paper.
de Arte Reina Sofia ile Arte Reina Sofia 23.9 \ 45.5 cm
Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra
de Arte Reina Sofia
Guernica (1st state). 1 1 May 1937
Guernica ler
< etat)
147
&_
In fact Guernica, the great symbol of the terror of war, had prompted an
allegorical composition. The painting is monumental in effect but not op-
pressive. The horizontal-format composition uses seven figures, or figure
groups; it is clearly yet subtly divided up. Two presentations occupy the left
and right sides, with a flat triangle between. In the middle, unnaturally
posed, stands a wounded horse, its neck wrenched to the left, its mouth w ide
open in pain. To the right, from a square space, are a styli/ed human head in
profile and an arm holding a lighted oil lamp over the scene. Above the
horse's head is an ambivalent motif: a large eye of God. surrounded by a circ-
let of irregular jags, with a lightbulb for a pupil - standing for sunlight as well
as electric light. To the right of the horse a woman is hurrying, her pose
148
plainly conceived to fit the falling diagonal: this is where the central group Guernica. 1937
is completed, in compositional terms. A counterpart to this figure is a war- Oil on canvas. 349.3 x 776.6 cm
Madrid. Museo Nacional Centra de Arte
rior statue on the ground to the left below the horse, its arms outstretched, a
Reina Sofia
broken sword in one hand. The statue has been smashed into hollow pieces.
Picasso avoids the involuntary rigidity of precision composition. The sun
and lamp are to the left, the equally striking white house wall to the right of
the painting's central vertical axis. Above the smashed statue stands a uni-
fied group. A mother is kneeling before a bull, screaming, holding her dead
child in her arms. A corresponding figure at the right edge of the canvas has
its head flung back, mouth open to cry out, and arms stretched heavenwards
in a gesture of profound emotion.
149
Weeping Woman. 1937
/(nunc en pleurs
Oil on canvas, W) \ 49 cm
I
ondon, Tate Gallery
Woman Crying. 1937
La Suppliante
Gouache and India ink on panel. 24 x 18.5 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
151
The use of dark and light areas and irregular jags suggests that we see this Great Bather with Book. 1 937
were carried out with the utmost concentration. From its inception on 1 May
to its completion on 4 June, Picasso took just five weeks. For a work on so
monumental a scale, and of such formal and thematic complexity, this is
sition: Peter Paul Rubens' great allegorical painting The Horrors of War (in
Florence. 1638). Raphael's Vatican fresco of the Borgo fire, the traditional
pieta image of the Virgin holding the dead Christ, light as a symbol of En-
lightenment, and the Minotaur and bullfight complex which Picasso had
been using since the mid- 1930s, not least to convey political statements. The
work Picasso did on the studies and on the final canvas of Guernica shows
how he altered what were at first unambiguously political symbols in order
to endow them with universal validity. The work as completed on 4 June
sition and content but also from the stylized, schematic manner in which the
figures are presented, at once timelessly ancient and universally accessible.
Any direct evocation of an identifiable contemporary reality or even a politi-
cal grouping has been carefully avoided. The symbolic idiom is deliberately
generalized. The bull and horse, through their association with bullfighting,
stand for Spain: the horse is the people suffering, the bull the people trium-
phant, but both are victims of aggression and destructive violence. All the
figures in Guernica are victims. The meaning of the painting, deliberately
stated in general terms borrowed from Rubens' great painting, lies in its rep-
The form of the work matches its fundamental simplicity of statement per- Seated Woman in a Garden. 1938
fectly. There is neither caricature nor propaganda in it. Picasso's allegory is Femme assise dans unjardin
Oil on canvas, 131 x 97 cm
rigorously done. The blacks, greys and whites echo the old use of grisaille in
New York. Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Saidenberg
altarpieces. Nothing work is specific to the medium of paint: it is a
in the
Collection
draughtsman's creation. The simultaneity of perspective and figures, the jux-
taposition of linear and volumed representation, and varying frontal and PAGE 155:
153
Xude Dressing Her Hair. 1 940
Femme se coiffant
Oil on canvas. 130 \ 97 cm
New York. Mrs. Bertram Smith Collection
156
Once again, Picasso's stylistic quest had been catalysed by examination of Night Fishing at Antibes, 1939
Peche de unit a Antibes
source material. In this case, the key is the fourth sketch of May, the first
1
widely termed classical, with surreal recordings of the subconscious; and the
foundation on which the combination was established was the basic idiom
of children's drawings. Children's principles determined his contouring, the
use of detail motifs, and the perspective.
For Picasso, the idiom of children's drawings was evidently a completely
new discovery. His early professional training had given him no oppor-
tunity to draw in a childlike way himself, nor had his own children
prompted him an awareness of the child's way of seeing the world. This
in
the more remarkable when one considers that Picasso had actually
is all PAGE 158:
157
The Sailor, 1938
Le Marin
Oil on canvas, 58.5 x 48 cm
Private collection
Thus Guernica, for Picasso, became a great synthesis of the very various
artistic approaches he had been taking since his period of so-called classi-
cism. In Guernica he had arrived at the formal idiom with which we auto-
matically associate his name. Since the great experiment of Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon, the subsequent further development of Cubism, and the years of
so-called classicism, two mutually contradictory principles of depiction had
coexisted in Picasso's art. They may be labelled dissociation and figuration.
fluence.
Within the overall system of depiction, figuration and dissociation repre-
it polar opposites. The former reproduces the subjective viewpoint, shows
the subject as the beholder sees it. The laws of perspective apply: a subject
irom the front cannot reveal its rear. That aspect of its appearance is
The Yellow Sweater (Dora Maar). 1939
Le Chandail jaune {Dora Mann
left to the imagination, figuration relying upon the associative cooperation
Oil on cam as. SI \ 65 cm
of the beholder. Dissociation, by contrast, includes the whole subject, shows
London. National Gallon, on loan o\
veil as the frontal view if it so wishes. In this respect it is more the Hem/ Berggnien Collection
Women at Their Toilette. I
l
)38
(Cartoon for a tapestr) >
The portrait of his daughter Maya, done on 16 January 1938 (p. 159).
clearly reveals how capriciously Picasso handled this new system. The little
girl is sitting on the floor, a doll in her arm. Her legs and skirt are rendered
as geometrical blocks, unnaturally crossed; the legacy of Cubist dissociation
is unmistakable. Her face shows the familiar combination of profile and fron-
tal angles, the two angles not additively juxtaposed in Cubist manner but
simultaneously present, as in a superimposed photograph. Picasso more or
less retains the natural proportions. There is just one striking exception: the
girl's right arm was painted as a child might have painted it. a short stump
ending in sketchy shapes that stand for five spread fingers.
The Temple of Peace at Vallauris
Photograph. 1952 Cubist dissociation, figuration and childlike symbolism are the three foun-
dations on which the formal idiom of the "Picasso style" was built. They
made possible a vast potential of variation. Every one of these formal sys-
tems consists of a number of characteristic features which only define a sys-
tem once they appear together. But these features can be used separately, or
combined with others. This fact is illustrated by a study of a Seated Woman
done on 27 April 1938 in India ink. gouache and crayon (p. 155). It is a
study in both the autonomy and the functionality of the line. The woman's
head is done in the familiar combination of frontal and profile; and. in the
process, the line as an instrument for conveying form has taken on an inde-
pendent life of its own. Admittedly an identifiable image of a bod) has been
-
produced, and thus a certain representational value; but the picture is a fab- Peace. 1952
ric of webs and meshes. This use of lines totally alters the character of the La Pai.x
165
The Chamel House. 1944-1945 form that conveys the shattered feelings. Given the associative relation of
Le Charnier
Picasso's forms to the emotional content, he succeeds in presenting things
Oil and charcoal on canvas.
which are fundamentally open to analogy - the aim of figurative painting.
199.8x250.1 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art But the Picasso style is actually far richer in technical scope, and in a posi-
tion to reformulate the traditional aims of visual presentation - without b\
any means dropping historical work, genre scenes or other conventional
types of painting.
Picasso was able to deploy his formal means to achieve very different re-
sults. His work from 1937 to 1943 saw him continually testing those dif-
ferences. One of the most important pictures of the period was the Nude
Dressing Her Hair (p. 156), painted in May and June 1940 in his studio at
Royan. In the bottom quarter of the canvas Picasso has placed a violet trape-
zoid, with two dark green vertical trapezoids at the sides, a thin, almost
black triangle at the top. and a large, not quite regular rectangular area o(
olive green between the two dark green sides. This suggests a space or
room: the illusion is almost of a view through a peephole, framing the sub-
ject, a seated woman reaching behind her head to pull her hair back. She
occupies almost the entire canvas, so that she not only has a monumental
quality but also makes the space seem cramped.
Study for "Man with Sheep". 1942
Etude pour "L'Homme au mouton "
India ink wash drawing on paper. 68 x 44.5 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
167
Head of a Bull. 1942
Tete de taureau
Bicycle saddle and handlebars.
33.5 x 43.5 x 19 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
m
The Bull. 1946
Le Taureau
Lithograph. 28.9 x 41 cm
170
The use of this tight compositional grid introduced a note of disquiet: the La Joie de vivre (Pastorale). 1946
Oil on hardboard. 120 x 250 cm
figure's attitude calls for elbow room, but space is precisely what this paint-
Antibes. Musee Picasso
ing, in a direct appeal to our emotions, denies her. Picasso has emphasized
this disquiet. The figure's bodily proportions are unnatural. The feet still fol-
low nature, albeit in crudely simplified form; but thighs, knees and calves
are harshly juxtaposed, angular areas of light beige and dark brown. The
figure is rendered with extreme foreshortening, a capricious use of perspec-
tive, and a playful rethinking of the elements of visual presentation. Whole
parts of the body (such as the left thigh) are simply left out. The face is no
longer an overlapping yoking of frontal and profile views; rather, the sil-
proaches he had already tested. Nude Dressing Her Hair was not sponta-
neously done. In fact a large number of sketches and studies preceded it. In
all. Picasso worked on Nude Dressing Her Hair for a full six months.
Fascist countries, so too in France, political change had brought with it the
triumph of reactionaries in the arts. Not that the Modernists did not defend
171
their position vigorously. Indeed, two fronts were defined. On the one side Pitcher, Candle and Enamel Saucepan. 1945
Picket, bougeoir et casserole emaillee
were the reactionary, nationalist advocates of traditional art, and those artists
Oil on canvas, 82 x 106 cm
who collaborated with the Nazis. On the other were young French artists,
Paris,Musee National d*Art Modeme.
such as Charles Lapicque and Jean Bazaine, who exhibited in a 1941 show Centre Georges Pompidou
of Modernist painting. Like other radical Modernists, such as Alfred Manes-
sier, Nicolas de Stael and Jean Dubuffet, their endeavours all tended to the
continuation of pure abstraction.
For Picasso there was no room - as a contemporary artist, that is, rather
than a mere cult figure of the Modernist movement. Thus he was doubly iso-
lated during the war. True, his studio was open to German visitors; but when
they came he would give them postcard reproductions of Guernica, and on
one famous occasion, when a German officer asked Picasso. "Did you do
that?" the artist replied, "No, you did." Moreover, when he ran out of fuel.
the newh rounded Museum of Modern Art in New York bought Les Demoi- Private collection
Plate: Goat's Head in Profile. 1950 selles d 'Avignon, and in 1940, together with the Art Institute of Chicago,
White clay, relief painted with oxidized
mounted the major retrospective "Picasso. 40 Years of his Art", which was
paraffin, glazed
seen in no fewer than ten major American cities. In the eyes of the Ameri-
Diameter: 25.5 cm
Private collection cans, the tour established Picasso as the most important living artist of the
century.
Plate: Goat's Head in Profile. 1950 The Allied landings and the reconquest of France, followed by the end of
White clay, relief painted with oxidized
the Second World War, marked a turning point in Picasso's life. Suddenly he
paraffin, glazed
Diameter: 25.5 cm became what he had not been (to the same extent) before: a public figure.
Private collection Ever since he had been recognised as the founder of modern art. his fame
had spread, albeit within the cultural sector only. He was international!)
known, though purely as an artist. With the entry of the Allies into Paris,
two factors enhanced his status: the growth of his overseas reputation, and
the post-war reinstatement of Modernism at the heart of the arts and political
life. Picasso, more than any other, was the artist whose studio soldiers, gal-
lery owners and reporters wanted to visit. Photographers such as Lee Miller
and Robert Capa documented his life and work in entire series of pictures:
and these photos, widely seen in the mass media, earned Picasso enormous
popularity. As the leading practitioner of an art condemned by the Fascists,
and as a man who had not yielded an inch to them. Picasso became a cult
figure. Anything he said was eagerly noted, printed and parroted.
He was of great importance for the new political and arts scene in lib-
Vase: Flute Players and Dancers. 1950
erated France. Just six weeks after the Allies entered Paris, the autumn salon
Red clay, moulded on the wheel, decoration
- the "Salon de la Liberation" - opened its doors, on 6 October 944 It was
1 .
174
It was in fact the first Salon he had ever shown at; his participation con- Baboon and Young. 95 1 1
stituted the first official recognition by his French fellows. His political Le Guenon et son petit
Ceramic ware, two toy cars, metal
stance and his standing as an artist went hand in hand - and provoked im-
and plaster, 56 x 34 x 7 1 cm
mediate reactions, too. Artistic and political reactionaries, the stragglers of Paris, Musee Picasso
Petain's regime, attempted to tear down his pictures from the walls, and
prompted a scandal. The French society of authors took Picasso's side. The
day before the Salon opened, there was news that only served to exacerbate
tempers: Picasso had joined the Communist Party of France.
It was a logical consequence of recent history, the expression of his
ideals: art, he believed, was not so much something to prettify the home as
a weapon in a political struggle. And indeed, many of the works that fol-
lowed in rapid succession attest to Picasso's involvement in the concerns of
the times. Not that those works were an art of direct statement. For in-
stance, in 1945 Picasso painted a number of still lifes that glance at the pri-
vations and fears of life during the occupation. Surely the most important of
these is Pitcher, Candle and Enamel Saucepan (p. 172). The picture shows
three objects only. It draws upon crucial formal insights that Picasso had
developed in his great Guernica. Here too, tried and tested stylistic modes
serve to question and undermine what appears unambiguous, but at the
spired by a Spanish film about a family killed in their kitchen. When Picasso
PAGE 178:
this dimension only entered the work at a late stage, as the composition was Plaster, ceramic ware, wicker basket, baking
tins, shoes, wood and iron, 152 x 65 x 66 cm
already fixed in formal terms before any of the photographs were published.
Paris, Musee Picasso
This only lends additional weight to the painting's statement, though, taking
as it does political terror as its subject. PAGE 1 79:
The picture shows a heap of corpses after an execution. One figure, still Nanny Goat. 1950
Chevre
tied to a post, is collapsing onto the others. was only during the course of
It
Plaster (Wicker basket, ceramic ware, palm
Picasso's work on the painting that the location became more precisely de-
leaf, metal, wood, cardboard and plaster),
fined. Greyish blue, white and black areas denote walls, floor and posts, a set 120.5 x 72 x 144 cm
of architectonic props that suggest both exterior and interior, as in Guernica. Paris, Musee Picasso
177
*"
^_
The still life of kitchen utensils at top left of Guernica is not only a glance at
the film original; it also underlines the everyday banality and ubiquity of
terror. It can hit anyone, anywhere, any time. Even more than in Guernica
the monochrome scheme, the linearity and the use of areas of unbroken
colour serve to make a universal of the statement. First Picasso sketched in
the simple outlines of his stylized figures, heaping them so that the lines are
interwoven, creating a tangled network that defies distinction of separate
forms. Later he filled in some of the segments, so establishing an equili-
brium of figural and spatial motifs. (Only the line-drawing still life remains
different.) The heap of bodies can be seen as replicating the destruction of in-
dividual identity in the world of totalitarian terror. Human beings cannot
even preserve their individual physical identities; even their bodies are taken
from them.
But six years later things looked somewhat different when he painted
Massacre in Korea (p. 186/187). The Korean War had begun six months ear-
the May Salon in Paris, it took sides in a war of ideologies. And its formal
idiom was an unambiguous, partisan one, using handed-down simple sym-
bols and only sparingly heightening the figural naturalism with cautious
HI Greco
Portrait of Jorge Manuel Theotocopulos.
touches of the dissociative. We see the good and evil sides in straightforward
c. 1600-1605 confrontation on an extremely broad format. Four naked women, rigid with
Oil on canvas. 81 x 56 cm fear, and their four similarly naked children (the nakedness symbolizing de-
Seville. Museo de Bellas Artes fencelessness), are being aimed at by six soldiers armed to the teeth (symbo-
lizing far superior power). The soldiers' postures seem at once mechanical
and archaic; they are ancient warriors transmuted into death-bringing robots.
Jacques-Louis David's Rape of the Sabine Women (1799) and The Oath of
the Horatii (1784). This blatant use of other paintings is in line with the one-
dimensionality of the painting's form and content. It is very different from
other pictures of similar subject.
Plainly a naturalistic, representational image is in the foreground. What
counts for Picasso is the message. Consistently, he has presented the action
as a picture within a picture. It is worth examining this defamiliarization.
Mimetic representation was far more in line with public expectation than the
formal idiom of Modernism, and could therefore count on a more approving
response. In this we seethe predicament of political, ideological art. Since
the early days of Stalin, international Communism had been advocating real-
ism as the only acceptable mode of artistic work. The French Communist
Party toed this line too. It was an urgent dilemma for Picasso, as became
clear at the 1945 Party congress, which gave him an accolade as man and ar-
Oil on plywood, 100.5 \ SI cm Massacre in Korea was a special case, an attempt to reconcile opposite
Rosengart Collection points of view.
ISO
Gustave Courbet
Young Women on the Hanks of the Seine. 1857
Les Demoiselles des bonis de la Seine
Oil on cam as. 173.5 \ 206 cm
Paris. Muscc du Pclil Palais
Young Women on the Banks of the Seine
(after Courbet). 1950
Les Demoiselles des bonis de la Seine
(d'apres Courbet)
Oil on plywood. 100.5 x 201 cm
Basel. Offentliche Kunstsammlung Basel.
Kunstmuseum
183
Mediterranean landscape. 1952 Communist Party was using Picasso for propagandist rea-
Essentially, the
Paysage mediterraneen
sons. His commitment to the Communist cause was necessarily no more
Ripolin on shipboard. 81 x 125 cm
than an episode in the immediate post-war years. Still, Picasso persisted in
Private collection
expressing his general humanitarian and political concerns in his work. Dur-
ing the period when he was questioning Party sovereignty in the arts, he was
painting two huge murals (p. 164 f.) on the subject of war and peace for a de-
consecrated 14th-century chapel at Vallauris. They were completed that De-
cember, though they were not installed till 1954. War is symbolized by a
kind of frieze in which a horse-drawn chariot is taking the field. By contrast,
the other mural (Peace) affords a prospect of unsullied happiness. The frieze
shows mothers and playing children, around the central figure of Pegasus,
pulling a plough at the bidding of one child and so personifying the fertile
world of peace.
Politicalcommitment was only one aspect of Picasso's creative efforts at
that time. The distinctive dichotomy in his activities was not least a result of
particular artistic interests. This is clearest in the sculptures he did between
1943 and 1953. One of his most famous and characteristic, done in 1943 dur-
ing the darkest period of the occupation, when Picasso felt utterly isolated.
was the Head of a Bull (p. 168). The skeletal head and horns of a bull are
conveyed by two found objects which in themselves arc meaningless, a bi-
cycle saddle and handlebars. Picasso subsequently had this assemblage cast
in bronze, thus reassessing the original materials, eliminating the contrasts
and opening out the ambivalence o\' form. It was a continuation o\' what he
had done in The Glass ofAbsinthe (p. 91 ). that famous product of synthetic
Cubism. The absolute economy of the Head of a Bull was breathtaking, and
remains stunning to this day. And from then on Picasso retained the basic-
principle of metamorphosis of formal meaning and interpretation in all his
sculptural work.
Baboon and Young (p. 176). done in October 1951, achieved a comparable
popularity. It was immediately cast in bronze in a limited edition of six. Pi-
casso was inspired by two toy cars which the art dealer Kahnweiler gave to
his son Claude, and used them for the head of the ape, bottom to bottom so
that the gap between the two becomes the slit of the baboon's mouth, the
radiator the whiskers, the roof the receding forehead, and the two front win-
dows the eyes - to which Picasso added two plaster balls as pupils. Picasso
then used coffee cup handles as ears and an immense jug for the body. The
arms and the remainder of the baboon's body, and her young, were modelled
in plaster. Finally, the outstretched tail was another found item: a car suspen-
Smoke Clouds at Vallauris. 1951
sion spring curled at one end. Picasso proceeded similarly with his 1950
Fumee a Vallauris
Nanny Goat (p. 179) and Girl Skipping (moulded the same year but not fin- Oil on canvas. 59.5 x 73.5 cm
ished till 1954: p. 178). Paris, Musee Picasso
IS5
Massacre in Korea. 1951
Massacre en Coree
Oil on plywood, 109.5 x 209.5 cm
Paris, Musee Picasso
187
Goat Skull, Bottle and Candle. 1952 There are few better places than his sculptural work to see the intellectual
Crane de chevre, bouteille et bougie
vigour of Picasso's art. Every detail is sophisticated in conception. In the
Oil on canvas, 89 x 116 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
Girl Skipping, for instance, we see a small child still unsure of how to use
As they came into existence, these works defined new areas of meaning,
playing with visual form, three-dimensionality and surface structure.
Qualities of plasticity, though not unimportant, were distinctly of secondary
significance. The best illustration of this is the large-scale sculpture Man
with Sheep (p. 167), done in early 1943. Unlike the objets trouves and the as-
semblages, the figure was wholly modelled in clay on an iron frame, in con-
ventional style, and then moulded in plaster for subsequent bronze casting. A
large number of detail and compositional document Picasso's pro-
studies
tracted irresolution whether to use the idea as a painting or a sculpture. Even
the finished group still reveals this indeterminacy. Man with Sheep is strictl)
speaking a failure. But we must bear Picasso's attitude to sculpture in mind.
Compared with the intellectual act of evolving the concept, the work of pro-
ducing the final object was a negligible business. What counted was the art-
ist's mind and will. He saw the artist's command of the various aspects of Goat Skull, Bottle and Candle. 1952
technique his art involved as absolute. Crane de chevre, bouteille ei bougie
Oil on canvas. X9 x 116 cm
The Vallauris years from 1947/48 to 1954 marked Picasso's most intens-
London. Tate Gallery
ive work with ceramics. He acquired both the potter's and the ceramic pain-
ter's skills. His ceramic work includes painted plates and vases, but also
189
ally lithography had been purely a reproductive art because, unlike wood-
cuts, copper engravings or etchings, it can produce an absolutely faithful
copy of an original drawing. The specific technique does not necessarily af-
fect or change colours and lines. It was this that appealed to Picasso. He
used the plates and paper, crayons and oils unconventionally, and regularly
turned lithographic orthodoxy topsy-turvy, making seemingly difficult or
senseless demands on Tuttin the printer. Broad though their thematic range
is, Picasso's lithographs ultimately have but one true subject: the artist's
own virtuosity.
Thus
his art of those years, like his life, was Janus-faced. Freedom and
commitment, expansionism and withdrawal, went hand in hand. Picasso
tended increasingly to retreat from Paris, where he had lived and worked for
half a century, and spend his personal and creative time on the Cote d' Azur.
His new-found political and artistic freedom was accompanied by a new
partnership, with a young painter, Francoise Gilot; in 1947 and 1949 their
children Claude and Paloma were born. His exploration of new artistic
media and techniques was a counterbalance to his political involvement. If
he was to be avowedly committed, adopting political positions with all the
Seated Woman. 1953
limited vision that that could often imply, then Picasso would also be abso-
Femme nue accroupie
Oil on canvas, 130.2 x 95.9 cm lute in his art, a creative human being who recognised no constraints.
'
/ \anu II. I' surfond vert
145.5 \ 96,5 cm
'
-non ( ollection
^M
7 The Man and the Myth 1954-1973
Picasso's work from the later 1950s onwards typically drew upon personal
material and also worked with constant repetition of his own motifs and
compositions. Picasso was now scarcely concerned to mirror the outside
world. Instead, he took his own work as the centre of the creative universe.
As in the Twenties and Thirties, this self-reflexive vein led him to the stu-
dio itself, and archetypal scenes of the artist at work with his model (cfl.
p. 2 17). as subjects.
In 1955 Picasso bought La Californie. a sumptuous 19th-century villa
splendidly situated on the hills above Cannes, affording sweeping views all
sophisticated ways (cf. p. 201). An overall formal unity was supplied by the
prevailing linearity of La Californie's interior. The cupboards, windows,
The Sculptor. 1964
walls, easels and paintings constituted a loose ensemble, the elements of Le Sculpteur
which lent weight to each other. In the picture done on 30 March 1956. Pi- Aquatint and gouge. 38 x 27.5 cm
casso used a simple but witty device to underline his own creative inventive-
ness, placing at the centre of the studio scene a fresh, virgin canvas awaiting
the artist. The pure, white, empty space contrasts with the rest of the picture
and is also its prime subject. The picture within a picture was one of Picas-
so's traditional motifs: through it. he grants us access to the very essence of
the creative process. Picasso is showing us his power. He can make a world
out of nothing.
But as Picasso well knew, creative power such as his had its less happy
side: freedom accompanied by a sense of compulsion, the virgin canvas
crying out to be painted on. for the artist to supply constant proof of his
power. But still his studio picture is optimistic, showing that Art can van-
quish the void: beside the blank canvas, two others in varying degrees of
completion are on the floor. Not that work already done can serve as a sub-
stitute for no more than proof of past productiveness. This
present work; it is
insight may explain the frenetic output of Picasso's late years. At times he
painted three, four, even five pictures in a single day. driven by the compell-
Seated Man (Self-portrait). 1965
Homme assis (Autoportrait)
ing urge to prove himself anew over and over again.
Oil on canvas. 99.5 x 80.5 cm
In his old age. Picasso transferred to his art the task of expressing the vi- Estate of Jacqueline Picasso
tality which was ebbing from his life. Hence, for instance, the new graphic Courtesy Galerie Louise Leiris. Paris
193
IB
a/-.
PAGE 194:
195
Great Reclining Nude with Crossed Arms, works which, when successful, articulated lifelong fascinations in a succinct
1955
and impeccably judged manner - for instance, the 1957 etching series La
Femme nue allongee
Tauromaquia. All of the etchings are precise records of carefully-observed
Oil on canvas, 80 x 190 cm
Estate of Jacqueline Picasso scenes, using just a few dabs and strokes, quickly but perfectly done
(p. 204). All but the title leaf were aquatint etchings, which enabled Picasso
Great Reclining Nude (The Voyeurs), 1955 to use solid-printed blocks. The complexity of the process is essentially at
Femme nue allongee (Les Voyeurs)
odds with spontaneity or the snapshot recording of bullfight scenes, and it
Oil on canvas, 80 x 192 cm
Estate of Jacqueline Picasso
is this incongruity that lends Picasso's series its particular genius. Using the
most economical of means he succeeds in achieving a maximum of effect.
A handful of lines mark the extent of the arena and grandstand; dabs repre-
sent the spectators; and grey and black patches add up to the precision-
placed image of a torero, say, driving his banderillas into the neck of an at-
Seated Nude, 1956
tacking bull. Picasso's stylistic approach succeeds particularly well in con-
Femme nue accroupie
Oil on canvas, 130 x 97 cm veying the physical bulk of the bull, its dynamic presence, and its nimble
Paris. Galeric Louise Leiris movements.
197
Jacqueline in Turkish Costume. 1955
Jacqueline en costume litre
Oil on canvas, XI \ 65 cm
acqueline Picasso,
rah rie I ouise Leiris, Paris
Women of Algiers (after Delacroix), 1955
Les Femmes a" Alger (d'apres Delacroix)
Oil on canvas, 1 14 x 146 cm
New York, Mrs. Victor W. Ganz Collection
Jacqueline in the Studio. 1956 The renderings may appear hasty, but in fact Picasso's images are the pro-
Jacqueline dans I' atelier
duct of many was an interest that united
years of interest in the subject. It
Oil on canvas. 1 14 x 146 cm
personal experience and art history. Picasso was taking his bearings from
Lucerne. Picasso Collection. Donation
Rosengart Goya, transposing the older painter's classic treatment of the bullfight theme
into modern terms and, in the process, proving himself Goya's equal. Simi-
PAGE 201:
lar proof was provided by over a hundred sheet-metal, collapsible sculptures
The Studio at"La Californie", Cannes, 1956
done between 1959 and 1963. The extent to which Picasso was drawing on
I.' Atelier de "La Californie" a Cannes
Oil on canvas. 1 14 \ 146 cm his own work in these sheet-metal sculptures can be demonstrated down to
an arc. There is a classical contrapposto in the position of the legs. The foot-
baller is plainly about to put his full force into a kick. However, no player
would strike quite this attitude. The unstable position recalls a dancer: and
in fact the artistwas drawing on studies he had drawn of the Ballets Russes
in 1919 and which he had worked on further in the Twenties. Calling the
200
the basics of visual experience. And deception is the fundamental principle
of this art. At times, Picasso's habitually self-referential mode can seem her-
PAGES 2027203:
metic.
The Bathers. 1956
His self-referential habit distinguished the Picasso of old age fundamen-
Les Baigneurs
tally from earlier Picassos. He was no longer in the contemporary main- Six figures: wooden original
stream of developments in art. Be it in the USA or in France, the prevail- Stuttgart. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
ing mode was abstract art. of one kind or another. The tragedy of late Pi-
from left:
201
.* ..
The Bullfighters Enter the Arena ("La Tauromaquia". 3). 1957 The Banderillas Go In ('La Tauromaquia". 14), 1957
Paseo de cuadrillas. Etching. 20 x 30 cm Clavando un Par de banderillas. Etching. 20 x 30 cm
Capework (
""La Tauromaquia". 17). 1957 Aiming the Deathblow ("La Tauromaquia". 19). 1957
Suerte de muleta. Etching. 20 x 30 cm Citando a matar. Etching. 20 x 30 cm
/ /
The Torero Proclaims the Death of the Ball Bullfighting on Horseback ("La Tauromaquia". 26), 1957
i"I .a Tauromaquia". 2 957. Despues de la Estocada
1 ). 1
el torero senala Alanceando a an Torn. Etching. 20 \ 30 cm
la mucin- del tow Etching. 20 \ 30 cm
nu
\
A
The other was that the "Picasso style" rendered the defamiliarization tac- The Fall oj Icarus, 1958
La Chute d'Icare
tics of modern painting accessible. Picasso did both naturalist representa-
Mural. 8x10 m
tions of his sitter and abstractive, schematic, anti-figural renderings of the
Paris, Palaisde TUNESCO, Delegates' Lobby
real image. Even those who disliked deformed figures had to acknowledge
and respect Picasso's He had become the great go-between, easing
artistry.
205
an avowedly universal character. He made engravings on celluloid, and Reclining Nude on a Blue Divan. 960 1
turned to linocuts. He also agreed to paint a work for the delegates' foyer at Femme nue couchee sur un divan bleu
Oil on canvas, 89 x 15.5 cm
UNESCO headquarters in Paris, his first commission to do a mural since
Paris. Musee National
1
d'art Moderne.
Guernica. What he painted, in 1958, was a seaside scene with standing and Centre Georges Pompidou, Gift of
reclining figures and one dark figure plunging with outstretched limbs into Louise and Michel Leiris
the great blue waters: The Fall of Icarus (p. 205). The central figure evolved
from a child's plaything, a swallow made of folded paper. Picasso was evi-
dently deeply indebted to the simple technique of folding paper; it also gov-
erned his work in sheet-metal sculpture. Picasso returned to this motif in a
stage set design he did in 1962 for a Paris Opera House production of a bal-
let, The Fall of Icarus.
Picasso returned not only to his own work but also to that of old masters.
Starting from a single original, he would produce entire series of variations.
From 13 December 1954 to 14 February 1955 he did fifteen oil variations
on Eugene Delacroix's The Women of Algiers from 1832 (cf. p. 199). The
exotic brightness of the Orient was handled contrastively and colourfully: Pi-
Seated Nude. 1959
casso combined subtle illusionist approaches with abstractive methods. Over
Femme nue accroupie
the next few years he extended his paraphrase series considerably. In 1957 Oil on canvas. 146 x 1 14 cm
he did over fifty variations on Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas (cf. p. 2 14). Private collection
207
Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe (after Manet), 9601
They were followed by over 150 sketches and drawings, and 27 paintings,
Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe (d'apres Manet)
done after Manet's Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe (cf. p. 208) from 1959 to 1962.
Oil on canvas, 129 x 195 cm
Finally, he did a number of larger works adapting Jacques-Louis David's
Paris. Musee Picasso
Rape of the Sabine Women (cf. p. 212 f).
The series of 58 very different large-scale oils related to Las Meninas.
painted by the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez in 1656-1657 and so titled
after the two maids at court included in it. dealt with Picasso's central theme
The vertical-format rectangular picture shows a gloomy room lit only from
windows at the side: the artist's studio. Ten figures are in this space, making
a somewhat lost impression: a Spanish princess and her retinue, consisting
of two maids-of-honour, two court dwarfs, and a peaceful dog: the painter
himself: two servants; and at the very rear, visible through an open door, the
chamberlain of the court. Different though the postures and attitudes of these
people are, they are almost all giving their attention to the same place, to
Hdouard Mancl some vis-a-vis. The mirror at the rear reveals that this is the king and queen.
Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe, 1 863 Thus the painting unambiguously, albeit subtly, expresses the facts of every-
Oil on canvas, 20X \ 264.5 cm day life for Velazquez, painter at court. Life at court was strictl) hierar-
Paris. Muscc d'Orsay
chical. The composition preserves that hierarchy, and marginalizes the
painter. Velazquez showed himself in this work to be the "true painter o\~ re-
Picasso now set about restructuring that reality (p. 214. 215). In contrast
to his previous procedure when paraphrasing Delacroix's Women ofAlgiers
composition came first this time, and not last.
(p. 199). the largest full-scale
sult was not convincing. In the end. his variations on Las Meninas came to
nothing. It is true that he succeeded in articulating the core idea of his new
version: that the artist occupies a new, changed position in modern, liberal
society. The large composition that opened the series expressed this idea
Le Dejeuner sur Vherbe. 96
1 1
powerfully. Picasso, revising the original in terms of colour too, was aiming Oil on canvas. 60 x 73 cm
to outdo his illustrious forerunner. But to transfer his colourist concepts to Private collection
UN
Woman with Outstretched Arms. 1961
Femme aux bras ecartes
Sheet metal and wire, cut and painted.
183 x 177x72.5 cm
Paris, Musee Picasso
His ware, and the artwork with which was decorated, was no imitation
it
of a classical original (cf. pp. 174 and 175). It was not a copy of ancient
storage, cultic or drinking vessels, nor did the decorative style have any-
thing in common with the technique or form of black and red vase paint-
ings. Picasso varied the first principles and translated into a modern idiom
whatever was capable of analogy. His thick-bellied vases with sheer coni-
cal necks were decorated with figures organically adapted to the shapes o\
the vessels. Maenads, nymphs and fauns, generously and tellingly outlined
The Rape of the Sabine Women. 1963
and economical in detail, people the surfaces of the ware. In its modernity,
/ Enlevement des Sabines
Oil on canvas, 195.5 \ 130 cm Picasso's ceramic art was one of classical harmony, in compositions o\
mained within the parameters laid down in 1917 with The Peasants' Repast
(p. 96). after Le Nain's original, adapting compositions and subjects b\ con-
centrating attention on particular aspects of them. The variations arc modern
in that they bring the past works up to date, and in this Picasso was entering
a tradition stretching from Delacroix's copies of Rubens to van Gogh's paint-
ings after Gustave Dore: one early 20th-century masterpiece of this kind was
Matisse's 1915 Variation on a Still Life by Jan Davids:, de Heem.
The paraphrases do. however, have the effect of highlighting the increas-
ingly tautological and almost autistic tendency of Picasso's collage-guided
PAGE 214:
RFI
1
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215
art to repeat itself in the late Fifties. Simply to metamorphose a picture was Rembrandt and Saskia. 1963
Rembrandt et Saskia
not in itself invariably adequate as the informing concept behind hundreds
Oil on canvas. 130 x 162 cm
of works. The high standard Picasso had set in matching form and content
could not always be maintained. In many of the paintings and studies of the
period, he was plainly satisfied with having filled the canvas. It was a trivial
reversal of the priorities of the artist: what ought to have been the sine qua
non had become the raison d'etre.
Picasso had long become a classic of modern art, but still attempted to in-
fluence the public reception of his work. For instance, when the Museu Pi-
casso in Barcelona was opened in 1970, prominent members of the Franco
The Artist and His Model. 963 1
single-mindedness and energy with which he pursued his subject was un-
usual even for him. Contemporaries were staggered by the sheer bulk of
his production, and the statistics are indeed astounding. For example, from
16 March to 5 October 1968 he did 347 etchings, from January 1969 to
the end of January 1970 no fewer than 167 paintings, and from 15 Decem-
ber 1969 to 12 January 1971 194 drawings. 156 etchings followed from
January 1970 to March 1972. 172 drawings from 21 November 1971 to 18
August 1972. and a further 201 paintings from 25 September 1970 to 1
June 1972. These figures represent only the works published to date. And
all this by a man aged 87 to 91 ! If we consider the endless portrayals of
the painter and model scene, of nudes, of sex, or the portraits and so forth.
we are confronted with an art plainly at odds with aesthetic ideals of creat-
ing beauty. Overhasty painting, blotches and dribbles, mock-primitive
Bust of a Woman with Hat. 1962
figures dismembered beyond recognition, colours that can be genuinely Buste de femme au chapeau
painful to look at. all guarantee that these pictures come as a shock. Coloured linocut. 63.5 x 52.5 cm
PAGE 220:
PAGE 221:
again - though with the crucial difference that now Mougins, 24 March 1968
the act of painting, the
Etching, 42.5 x 34.5 cm
imprecise movement of the hand, is being emphasized. The two paintings
are complementary. While the motifs in that of 18 February are linear and "Suite 347". Plate 8
the colours of secondary importance, Picasso proceeds in that of 19 Feb- Mougins, 25 March 1968
ruary in exactly the contrary fashion. He fills the canvas with undefined Etching. 42.5 x 34.5 cm
bright colours, then, the good draughtsman, indicates forms that translate
the colour composition into a figural painting. The vigorous brushwork and
the seemingly expressive style are masks, to deceive us: they are there to
confuse, to subvert perception.
Things make a similar impression in the graphic work. Never before
had Picasso done as many etchings as he did in the last years of his life.
his work.
The main subject is sexuality. It is so obsessive that Picasso seems to have
been getting a dirty old man's fantasies out of his system. But in fact the
truth of the matter is far more intractable. Picasso's explicit pictures were
part of the Sixties rebellion against taboos. In almost all Picasso's erotic pic-
Nude and Smoker. 968 1
tures, the voyeurist element is dominant. The artist and his female nude
Femme nue dehorn et homme a la pipe
model are almost invariably being observed by ugly old men in various Oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm
kinds of costume (p. 225). The painter always remains the creator. This fact Lucerne, Galerie Rosengart
225
expresses Picasso's view of art as an act of (pro)creation presented to a pub-
lic itself incapable of creative endeavour. In view of the intimacy of the act
of (pro)creation, it is tantamount to shamelessness if the urge to expose is
constantly being satisfied, the private secrets revealed. Picasso rarely ex-
pressed the role of the modern artist, under constant observation by the om-
nipresent mass media, with such illuminating force. The painter under public
scrutiny (i.e. Picasso himself) is obliged constantly to play new roles. He is
the knight and the sailor, the circus artiste and the nobleman, but above all
judge him by conventional standards, the vastly ambitious scale of his pro-
ductivity and versatility would be cut down by the fact that the many thou-
sands of studies led to relatively few final works of any substantial complex-
ity. The concept of what constitutes a work of art has itself undergone
change. We no longer check to see whether prior intentions have been en-
acted according to plan. Anything can be a work of art. Yet even by these
new criteria, Picasso's unusual ouvre is unique in extent, if not in diversity.
The view of Picasso as the pre-eminent genius of the century is due not
least to his willingness to fulfil public expectations of artists. In Henri
Georges Clouzofs revealingly titled film "The Mystery of Picasso" (1956), The Family. 1970
for instance, the artist demonstrates his working methods to the camera, and La Famille
thus to millions: it is an eloquent proof of his approach to the myth. The ar-
Oil on canvas. 1 62 x 1 30 cm
Paris. Musee Picasso
tist as magus was a role Picasso quite deliberately played.
In the work of his old age in particular, Picasso presented himself to a
shamelessly voyeuristic public as a man of unfailing potency: a compul- PAGE 22S:
sively, feverishly productive artist wholly immersed in his work. This was Musketeer and Cupid. 1 969
Mousquetaire et Amor
both a mask and a vital means of self-preservation. His work, forever expan-
Oil on canvas. 195.5 x 130 cm
ding into new genres, substantiated his image as a universal genius. Of Cologne. Museum Ludwig
greater interest in relation to Picasso's status in art history is the clearly ap-
parent factor of conscious strategy. In Picasso's ouvre we plainly see a ra- PAGE 229:
227
Reclining Nude and Head. 1973
Fernme nue vouchee et tete
The painting above. Reclining Nude and In this respect he was essentially different from modern concept art, in
Head, is the last Picasso worked on. He ap-
which the concept precedes and accompanies the work, which in turn refers
plied the creamy white, to brighten the im-
oils Picasso painted were shown. He received lines. Thus in Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon he vanquished the representational
the picture, not yet dry. immediately before picture, while in Guernica he revived the genre of historical painting in a
Picasso's death, to prepare it for hanging in
new form.
the exhibition, which was opened on 23 May
Picasso's true greatness and significance lie in his dual role as revolution-
1973. Picasso's widow Jacqueline later con-
firmed the information. To date, no oils from
ary and traditionalist at once. He gave a new vitality to art even as he
1973 have been exhibited or published. Prob- preserved the creative presence (outside the museums) of its history. For this
ably Picasso only drew, and perhaps did a reason he became the pre-eminent figure in 20th-century art.
little work in watercolour, in the final months
of his life. LEW.
Head. 1972
^
Pablo Picasso: A Chronology
Pablo Picasso at the age of four. 1 885 Pablo Picasso shortly after his arrival in Barcelona in
in Malaga. Spain, first son of Don Jose 16/17), his second large oil; it receives an
Ruiz Blasco (1838-1913) and Dona Maria honourable mention in the national exhibi-
Picasso's birthplace in Malaga. Plaza de la Merceded tion of fine art in Madrid and is awarded a
Picasso Lopez (1855-1939). His father, a
painter, comes from the north and teaches gold medal in a competition at Malaga. His
drawing at the local School of Fine Arts and father's brothers send money so that Pablo
Crafts, "San Telmo". His mother is Andalu- can study in Madrid. Passes entrance exam-
PAGE 232:
Pablo Picasso. Cannes 1956
1 899 Returns to Barcelona. Begins to fre-
Photograph: Lucien Clergue quent the cafe "Els Quatre Gats" (The Four
233
Paris (The Absinthe Drinker, p. 33). with
7] I
the brothers Fernandez de Soto, and the of jugglers and circus artistes) and the of Iberian sculpture at the Louvre. Meets
poet Jaime Sabartes (later to be his secre- "Lapin agile". End of Blue Period. Henri Matisse. Andre Derain and the art
tary and lifelong close friend). Becomes ac- dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Vollard
1900 Shares studio with Casagemas in Summer holiday in Schoorl. Holland. First the north of Catalonia, where he paints
Barcelona. Exhibits about 150 drawings at La Toilette (p. 55). Influence of Iberian
"Els Quatre Gats". At the beginning of Oc- sculpture on Portrait of Gertrude Stein
Picasso at the Bateau-Lavoir. 1908. with sculptures
tober Picasso and Casagemas leave for
from New Caledonia behind him (New York. The Metropolitan Museum
Paris and open a studio in Montmartre. of Art) and Self-Portrait with Palette
Visits art dealers, where he sees works by (p. 6).
month in exchange for pictures. Berthe pares his large canvas Les Demoiselles
Weill buys three pastels of bull-fights. d' Avignon (p. 67). which he finishes in Jul) :
Paints his first Paris picture. Le Moulin de his first cubist painting, even before the be-
la Galette (p. 22). Departs for Barcelona ginning of cubism. Sees African sculptures
and Malaga with Casagemas in December. at ethnographic museum, which impress and
influence him. Visits two Cezanne retrospec-
1901 Casagemas commits suicide in tives. Meets Georges Braque. Kahnweiler is
Paris. Picasso moves to Madrid, where he enthusiastic about his Demoiselles and be-
becomes co-editor of the magazine Arte comes his exclusive dealer.
./oven. Second move to Paris in May. Sets
up a studio at 130. Boulevard de Clichy. 1 908 Paints numerous "African" nudes.
First Oaris exhibition at Ambroise Vollard's Spends summer w ith Fernande at La Rue
gallery; sells \5 pictures before the open- des Bois. north of Paris. Paints figures and
ing. Begins to sign his pictures simply landscapes there. Braque shows his first
"Picasso", his mother's name. Paints life in cubist pictures, his L'Estaquc works, at
Kahnweiler's gallery. In November he gives Kahnweiler goes to Italy, his gallery is con-
a large banquet in his studio, honouring fiscated. Picasso's pictures become sombre.
Henri Rousseau, one of whose paintings he
has bought recently. 1915 Realistic pencil drawings of Max
Jacob and Vollard. Paints Harlequin (p. 93).
1 909 Paints Loaves and Bowl of Fruit
on a Table (p. 73). Beginning of his "ana- 1916 Jean Cocteau brings the Russian im-
lytical" cubism (i.e. gives up central per- presario Sergei Diaghilev and the composer
spective, splits up forms in fragmented, Eric Satie (cf. p. 100) to meet Picasso and
stereometric shapes). In May he takes Fer- asks him to design the decor for Parade, a
nande to see his parents and friends in Bar- ballet to be performed by the Ballet Russe
celona. Goes on to Horta de Ebro. where (cf. pp. 97-99). Moves to 22, Rue Victor
he has the most productive period of his Hugo in Montrouge.
career: landscapes and townscapes (The
Reservoir Horta de Ebro, p. 8) in analyti-
1917 Travels to Rome with Cocteau and
spends his time with Diaghilev 's ballet com-
cal cubist style. Portraits of Fernande
(Woman with Pears, p. 69). Moves to 11.
pany. Works on decor for Parade. Meets
Igor Stravinsky and the Russian dancer
Boulevard de Clichy, near Place Pigalle in
Olga Koklova. Visits Naples and Pompeii.
September, next door to Braque. Sculpture
Accompanies ballet group to Madrid and
of Fernande (p. 61); still-lifes. First exhibi-
Barcelona because of Olga. Olga stays with
tion in Germany (Galerie Thannhauser,
him. Back to Montrouge in November.
Munich).
Paints "pointillist" pictures.
raits of the art dealers Vollard (p. 77) and 1918 Contacts with high society through
Kahnweiler (Chicago, The Art Institute of the ballet result in a change of lifestyle.
Picasso with his son Paul in Dinard. 1922
Chicago) as well as the art critic Fritz Uhde Paul Rosenberg becomes his new agent.
(private collection). Spends summer with Marries Olga. Honeymoon in Biarritz. Apol-
Fernande in Cadaques near Barcelona, from a thief. Crisis in his relationship with linaire"s death. The Picassos occupy two
where they are joined by Derain and his Fernande; enters a liaison with Eva Gouel floors at 23, Rue La Boetie.
(Pyrenees). Introduces printed letters into 1912 First construction in sheet metal and decor for Le Tricorne; drawings of the
his pictures for the first time. Has to hand wire. First collage (Still Life with Chair Can- dancers. Spends summer in Saint-Raphael
two Iberian sculptures back to the Louvre, ing, p. 81 ), with a piece of oil-cloth imitat- on the Riviera with Olga. Paints Sleeping
because he has unwittingly bought them ing a cane pattern. Takes Eva to Ceret, Avig- Peasants (p. 102) and cubist still-lifes.
235
1 925 Accompanies ballet company and old friends. Tries in vain to prevent a book
Olga and Paul to Monte Carlo in spring. of memoirs by Fernande Olivier from being
Paints The Dance (p. 115), reflecting the published, for fear of Olga's jealousy.
first signs of tension in his marriage. Sum-
mer in Juan-les-Pins, where he paints Stu- 1 934 More etchings. Sculptures at Bois-
geloup. Trip to Spain with Olga and Paul to
dio with Plaster Head (p. 1 16), a composi-
see bull-fights in San Sebastian, Madrid.
tion built around Paul's puppet theatre. Con-
Toledo and Barcelona. Numerous works on
tributes to first surrealist exhibition in No-
vember. the bull-fight theme in various media.
1928 First sculpture since 1914. Meets 1936 Touring exhibition of his pictures
sculptor Julio Gonzalez. Summer in Dinard in Barcelona. Bilbao, Madrid. Travels se-
1 920 Begins to work on decor for Stravin- with Paul and Olga. Meeting Marie-Therese cretly to Juan-les-Pins with Marie Therese
sky's ballet Pulcinella. Kahnweiler returns secretly. Small paintings with intense and Maya. Works on the Minotaur theme.
from exile. Spends summer in Saint-Ra- colours and schematic forms. Several wire 18 July: beginning of Spanish civil war.
phael and Juan-les-Pins with Olga. constructions as studies for Apollinaire Opposes Franco: Republicans recognize
Gouaches with themes from the Commedia monument (p. 118). his support and nominate him director of
dell 'arte. the Prado. Spends August in Mougins.
1 929 Works on sculptures and wire con- near Cannes. Meets Dora Maar. Yugosla-
1 92 1 Birth of his son Paul (Paolo). Recur- structions with Gonzalez. Series of ag-
vian photographer. Makes over Boisgeloup
rent Mother and Child theme. Further sket- gressive paintings with women's heads sig-
to Olga in autumn and moves into Vol-
ches for ballet decors. Uhde's and Kahn- nals marriage crisis. Summer in Dinard. lard's house. Marie-Therese follows with
weiler "s collections, which were confiscated Maya.
by the French during the war. are sold at
1930 Metal sculptures in Gonzalez's stu-
dio. Paints Crucifixion (p. 132), after Mat- 937 Etches The Dream and Lie of
auction. Spends summer at Fontainebleau 1
thias Griinewald. Buys Chateau Boisgeloup Franco. Moves into new studio Rue
with Olga. Paints Three Musicians at 7.
near Gisors, north of Paris. Holiday in Juan-
(p. 1 14) and several compositions with
les-Pins. 30 etchings to illustrate Ovid's
monumental figures.
Picasso in his studio at the Rue des Grands Augustus,
Metamorphoses. Installs Marie-Therese in
1944
1 922 The collector Doucet buys the De- flat at 44, Rue la Boetie.
des Grands Augustins. Following the Ger- concentration camp. Large sculpture Man
Picasso at the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in
man air raid on Guernica on 26 April he with Sheep (p. 167). Readings*are held of Wroclaw. August 1948
paints his gigantic mural for the Spanish pa- Desire Caught by the Tail, with Albert
vilion at the Paris world exhibition: Guer- Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sar-
nica (pp. 148/149). In summer portrait of tre. Raymond Queneau et al. taking part. with a still life. Begins working with litho-
Dora Maar at Mougins. Meets Paul Klee in Joins Communist Party after liberation of graphy at Fernand Mourlot's Paris studio,
Berne. The Museum of Modem An in New Paris. Contributes 74 paintings to the Salon producing 200 works by 1949.
1 938 Paints several pictures of Maya as a pendant to Guernica. Series of still- moves in with him. Makes paintings .and li-
with toys (pp. 158, 159). Makes a wallsize lifes. Spends July in Antibes with Dora. thographs of her. Takes her to Menerbes in
collage Women at Their Toilet (pp. Rents room for Francoise in the vicinity, July, where they stay at Dora's house. Fran-
162/163). Spends summer in Mougins with but she goes to Brittany. Buys Dora a house coise is pregnant. Picasso is given per-
Dora. Severe attack of sciatica in winter. in the village of Menerbes and pays for it mission to work at the museum of Antibes
and after four months donates numerous pic-
1 939 Death of Picasso's mother in Bar- tures to it. The museum is soon renamed
The master's left hand. 1947
celona. Paints Marie-Therese and Dora in Musee Picasso. First brief visit to Vallauris.
the same pose and on the same day. Spends
July in Antibes with Dora and Sabartes. 1947 Lithographs at Mourlot's workshop.
Death of Vollard. Paints Night Fishing at Gives ten pictures to the Musee National
Antibes (p. 157). then Dora with bicycle d'Art Moderne in Paris. On 15 May Fran-
and ice-cream. Takes Dora and Sabartes to coise gives birth to Claude, Picasso's third
Royan on the outbreak of the Second World child. Begins to make ceramics at the Ma-
War, where Marie-Therese and Maya join doura pottery, the workshop of the Ramies
them. Stays there, with interruptions, until and creates about 2000 pieces between
August 1940. Major retrospective at the 1947 and 1948 (pp. 174. 175).
Museum of Modern Art in New York, with
344 works, including Guernica. 1 948 Moves to La Galloise, a villa in Val-
lauris, with Francoise and Claude. Takes
1 940 Commutes between Royan and part in Congress of Intellectuals for Peace
Paris. In Royan he Nude Dressing
paints in Wroclaw, Poland, where he also visits
Her Hair (p. 156). German troops invade Cracow and Auschwitz. Ceramics exhibi-
Belgium and France, occupying Royan in tion in Paris. Portrait of Fran90i.se.
June. Returns to Paris. Gives up flat in Rue
La Boetie and moves into studio at Rue des 1 949 Dove lithograph becomes motif for
Grands Augustins. Hands out photos of poster announcing World Peace Congress in
237
Paris. 19 April: birth of Picasso's fourth 1 958 Completes UNESCO mural. The
child. Paloma (Spanish word for "'dove'", Fall of Icarus (p. 205). Buys Chateau Vauve-
named after the poster motif). Rents old per- nargues near Aix-en-Provence. w here he
fume factory in Vallauris as a studio and works occasionally between 1959 and 1961.
store-room for ceramics. More sculptures.
1 959 Paints at Chateau Vauvenargues.
1950 Paints Young Women on the Banks Works on variations of Edouard Manet's Le
of the Seine, after Gustave Courbet (pp. Dejeuner sur I'herbe (p. 208). First experi-
182/183). Sculptures The Nanny-Goat and ments with lino-cuts.
Woman with Baby Carriage, made from
junk and cast in bronze (p. 179). Travels to 1 960 Retrospective at Tate Gallery. Lon-
World Peace Conference in Sheffield. Re- don, with 270 works. Designs large-scale
ceives Lenin Peace Prize. Given the free- sheet-metal sculpture, constructing ma-
sion. Gives up flat in Rue La Boetie and near Cannes. Celebrates 80th birthday in
moves to 9. Rue Gay-Lussac. Ceramics in Vallauris. Works w ith painted and corru-
1 952 Two large mural paintings called Awarded Lenin Peace Prize for second
Pablo Picasso. 1 955
War and Peace (pp. 164. 165) for the new time. Designs decor for Paris ballet.
Pans.
tueen him and their children Claude and Pa- 1969 Numerous paintings: faces, couples, the opening of the Museum of Modern Art.
loma. Exhibitions in Canada and Japan. still-lifes. nude figures, smokers (p. 89). New York.
Completes model for giant sculpture Head
of a Woman to appear in Chicago's new 1 970 Picasso family in Barcelona do- 1 985 Opening of the Musee Picasso at
Civic Centre in 1967. nates all paintings and sculptures in its pos- the Hotel Sale in Paris, w ith 203 paintings.
session to Museu Picasso. Barcelona (early 191 sculptures. 85 ceramics, and over 3000
1 965 Series of paintings on the theme of works from Barcelona and La Coruna). draw ings and prints.
Picasso in the garden of La Californie. with the 1936 sculpture Head of a Woman. Picasso holding the sun in his hand.
Photograph: Jacqueline Picasso Photograph: Jacqueline Picasso
239
Acknowledgement and Picture Credits
The editor anil publisher wish to express their gratitude Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Graz: 144. 30. 34 a. 41. 54 I. 57. 80. 81. 82. S3. S6. SS. S9. 94. 96.
to the museums, public collections, galleries and pri- 146 till. 15. 37). - Archiv Andre Held. Ecublens: 63, 101 a. 103. 104a. 108. 111. 112. 117. 119a. Il9bl.
vate collectors, the archivists and photographers, and S4. 105. 136 a. 136 b. 155. 160. 161. - Archives 119br. 122. 123. 125. 127. 132 a. 133. 135. 137 a.
all those involved in this work. The editor and pub- d'l NESCO. Paris: 205. - Artothek. Peissenberg: 137 b. 13Sb. 141. 151. 152. 159. 162 163. 16" r. 168 a.
lisher have at all times endeavoured to observe the 148/149. - Bildarchiv Alexander Koch. Munich: 29. 176. 178. 179. 185, 186/187. 1SS. 194, 208 a, 210, 211,
legal regulations on the copyright and also to obtain 189,218.- Cahiers d'Art - Zervos, Pans: 7, 11, 31. 65 226. - Museu Picasso. Barcelone: 1 1. 12 1. 12 r. 13 1.
permission to reproduce photographic winks and reim- a I. 65 a m. 65 a r. 72 1. 72 m. 72 r. 76. 97 1. 97 r. 100 I. 13 r. 14. 16/17. 20. 36. 37. 214 a. - National Gallery of
In such a case will the copyright owner or representa- 51 r. -Collection Angela Rosengart. Galerie Rosengarl adelphia Museum ol' Art. Philadelphia: 66 b. - Photo-
lease make application to the publisher. and Archive Rosengarl. Lucerne: 85, I5S. 181, 200. graphic Giraudon, Paris: 1 1 HI a r. 150. 154. - Pushkin
I he Kk ations and names of Owners ot the works are 224. 229. 231. -Galerie Louise Leu is and Archives Museum. Moscow: 24. 50. 51 I. 58, "0 a 1.71.- Rapho,
.p. en in the captions to the illustrations unless other- Photographiques Louise Leu is. Paris: 120. 124. 192. Paris: 2. - Sammlung Beveler. Galerie Beveler and
wise requested 01 unknown to the publisher. Ik-low is a 196. 198, 207. 221. 222. 223. - Hermitage. St. Peters Archive Beveler. Basel: 131. 173, 184. - Staatsgalene
list ol itl ilders who have given burg: 32. 33, 56 I. 59. 68, 70 b r, 74 a. 75 I. 75 r. - Cath- Stuttgart, Stuttgart: 202 203.
us i hen support Inform ition on any missing 01 erro- erine Hurin-Blay, Paris: 239. - Musee d'Art Moderne The remaining illustrations used belong to the collec-
nil") ned In the publisher de la Ville de Pans. Pans: 35. - Musee National d'Art tions mentioned in the captions or to the editor's
I
the book, the Moderne. Centre Georges Pompidou. Pans: S7. 98/99, archive, the archive of the former Walthci ,V Waliher
abbrev iations i
left, m = 113. 220. Musee Picasso. Pans i Photo: Service Pholo- Verlag, Ailing and the archive of Benedikt Lichen
middle graphique de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux): 9. 15. Verlag, Cologne.