tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/pablo-picasso-31031/articles
Pablo Picasso – The Conversation
2023-04-05T18:42:31Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203172
2023-04-05T18:42:31Z
2023-04-05T18:42:31Z
How even the young Pablo Picasso was already foreshadowing cubism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519038/original/file-20230403-14-jld931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C35%2C1894%2C1393&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon', by Pablo Picasso, 1907.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Les_Demoiselles_d%27Avignon.jpg">MoMA / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the end of the 19th century, long before starting to speak, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) was already drawing – and he grew up “capturing” everything he saw with a pencil. </p>
<p>Through several of the drawings and sketches in pencil made by the young man from Malaga during his formative years in A Coruña (1891-1895), in the North of Spain, we can see clear foreshadowing of what became a revolution that spanned the arts, the limits of perception, communication and expression. The young Picasso’s work was an early form of cubism, an artistic and stylistic movement that officially began in 1907 with the famous painting <a href="https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766">Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</a> (The Young Ladies of Avignon – in reference to an old and well-known street in Barcelona with brothels), painted by Picasso. </p>
<h2>The fourth dimension (and beyond)</h2>
<p>Picasso made cubism official in 1907, but it was something that he had already been able to imagine and begin to represent in some drawings from his time and apprenticeship in A Coruña: the ability to create a new style, a new artistic way of seeing and representing reality.</p>
<p>This made it possible to go beyond the creative limit set by the painters of the Italian Renaissance. They had managed to represent the perfectly consolidated third dimension in a scientific way in Italian Quattrocento paintings – with the first dimension being height, the second width, and the third depth (thanks to the geometric rules of perspective).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473606/original/file-20220712-31783-2dk0zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, by Perugino (1481-1482), it is perfectly clear how the third dimension is achieved through perspective (the piece’s correct depth).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrega_de_las_llaves_a_San_Pedro_(Perugino).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Picasso went further and achieved the representation of another three dimensions. He depicted a fourth dimenson – the ability to represent the back – or what is not perceived but what we know is there, for example, the face and the nape of a single character in the same plane.</p>
<p>The fifth dimension (or “depth” dimension) is, for example, the representation of a bare chest with a heart, normally invisible under the epidermis, or the lung. This, in the Renaissance, would have been unthinkable – what was not seen was not represented.</p>
<p>The sixth dimension is the imagined or “dreamlike” dimension. This is what is not there or cannot be seen but what we know exists in the imagination or we have seen in a dream (thus, Picasso was also several years ahead of surrealism).</p>
<h2>Cubism before a mirror</h2>
<p>A good example of these dimensions is the painting Girl before a Mirror, from 1932, which is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473604/original/file-20220712-27-wqtohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Girl before a Mirror, by Pablo Picasso, held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neil R / Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In this portrait of his muse and lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, we can see the fourth dimension thanks to the face in profile view and the same face in frontal-view. The horizontal black stripes on the left are Marie-Thérèse’s ribs and, therefore, they make reference to the fifth dimension, also present in the representation of a foreshadowed pregnancy in a circumference.</p>
<p>The imagined (or dreamt) vision of Picasso – the sixth dimension – is portrayed in the way in which the mirror reflects an image back at the model of an ugly and decrepit woman who gazes at death. Picasso thus creates an exciting cubist piece with brilliant polychromy.</p>
<p>All this exists and, according to Picasso, can be represented on a single canvas, board or two-dimensional paper.</p>
<h2>From the beginning</h2>
<p>Picasso was always talented and even unique. He never drew pictures like a child does – “not even when he was very young,” according to his own account. His viewpoint was always adult in nature.</p>
<p>That is why it is so important to revisit Picasso’s drawings from his time in A Coruña (1891-1895). At first glance, they seem just children’s drawings like any others… but they are a lot more than that.</p>
<p>It is necessary to examine them very carefully to truly notice how the birth of a genius came about and how the revolution that was cubism was born. How, from this point on, reality would be represented not always in a hyper-realistic way, as had more or less happened until then, but segmented into geometric, cubic, abstract planes. An incredible turn.</p>
<h2>Indicative details</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472574/original/file-20220705-24-89bmh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Doble estudio de perfil de un hombre barbudo (Double Profile Study of a Bearded Man), 1892-1893, private collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, in Double Profile Study of a Bearded Man, the geometric framing of the face is an analytical dissection that surpasses conventional academic work. At first glance, this is an ordinary exercise in the geometric composition of a male face, but the forcefulness of the lines used to mark proportions and the resolute manner of the dark spots (eyebrow, nose, and mouth) foreshadow elements that Picasso will explore further in later cubism.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472573/original/file-20220705-22-8ebrmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Personaje con pipa (Person with a Pipe), 1894-1895, A Coruña.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cataleg.museupicasso.bcn.cat/fitxa/museu_picasso/H567957/?lang=es&resultsetnav=62c45541b94f2">Picasso Museum, Barcelona</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Personaje con pipa (Person with a Pipe), the young Picasso incorporates the subtle white chalk technique to artistically accentuate the clothing of the character, as the crossing stripes on the lapel show. Pablo Ruiz was beginning to guide and lead his conceptual way of working towards the adult Picasso.</p>
<p>The geometric compositional structure in Caserío gallego (Galician Homestead), elaborated with simple abstraction of space, is related with the rationalist exploration of forms that Picasso would undertake in the 20th century.</p>
<p>In Houses on the Hill of Horta de Ebro, it becomes evident that the geometric and shadow play of this piece had already been foreshadowed in the previous homestead piece.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Comparison of an early drawing of Picasso and a latter painting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519059/original/file-20230403-28-50k32m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On the left, Caserío gallego (Galician Homestead), painted in A Coruña. On the right, Houses on the Hill of Horta de Ebro, 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Picasso Museum, Barcelona/MOMA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Obviously, it cannot be said that there are glimpses of forms that point towards the Cubist revolution in all the drawings from A Coruña. </p>
<p>But, if the previous pieces and some others are observed, we will see that something of what was to come was beginning to <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/73016">take shape in the Galician city</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ximo Company i Climent no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.</span></em></p>
In various sketches and pencil sketches that Picasso made during his formative years, the most important plastic, perceptive, communicative and expressive revolution of the 20th century was being foreshadowed with absolute clarity: Cubism.
Ximo Company i Climent, Catedrático de Historia del Arte Moderno; director del Centre d'Art d'Època Moderna (CAEM) de la UdL, Universitat de Lleida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197101
2023-01-04T16:44:57Z
2023-01-04T16:44:57Z
Dora Maar: a great photographer hidden behind the master of painting
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502755/original/file-20221230-24-9tczh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C4%2C1448%2C1528&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso on the beach, summer 1937. Photograph by Eileen Agar. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-8927-8-9/agar-photograph-of-dora-maar-and-pablo-picasso-on-the-beach">© Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the inevitable tide of recognition of so many women artists of the past 20th century who passed simply as muses, lovers, wives or companions, when their work was truly as strong, beautiful and original as that of their partner, Dora Maar, for many reasons, occupies a special place. </p>
<p>Maar was born Henriette Théodora Markovitch in Paris in 1907 and died on 16 July 1997. Her mother was a provincial, Catholic Frenchwoman and her father was an exiled Croatian architect who carried out important works in Argentina — where they ended up living for 20 years — but who never succeeded financially.</p>
<h2>Maar finds photography</h2>
<p>When the family returned to Paris, Maar studied painting and decorative arts before making the camera her means of livelihood and artistic expression. Fashion photography, unusual portraits – her output was so wide-ranging that in 1931, before she was even 25, Maar already had a successful studio alongside the set designer Pierre Kéfer.</p>
<p>Maar then opened a solo studio where she created some of her most famous and delirious photomontages. The best known is perhaps Ubu Roi (1936), the representation of a strange, non-human creature, a kind of armadillo fetus — she never wanted to indicate which animal it was so as not to lose its mystery — which André Breton considered a perfect example of <em>objet trouvé</em> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_object">readymade</a>).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474103/original/file-20220714-32349-3jbmzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Portrait d'Ubu</em>, by Dora Maar, 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.centrepompidou.fr/es/ressources/oeuvre/cgbG8k">Adagp, Paris / Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also <a href="https://www.centrepompidou.fr/es/ressources/oeuvre/c5jpBx">29 rue d'Astorg</a> (1936) is a clear example of surrealist photography, in which elements of different size, location and reality are mixed, as is <a href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/dora-maar/untitled-1936">Star Mannequin</a> (1936). Other photomontages of children and women lost in endless labyrinths or of bourgeois rooms invaded by mud and rain are also to her credit.</p>
<p>In the first half of the 1930s, Maar, like fellow photographers such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Cartier-Bresson">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>, alternated her depictions of the rich and famous, fashion and luxury, with depictions of the squalor and poverty that existed in Paris at the time. The difference between Maar’s photographs at that time and those of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brassai">Brassai</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-Atget">Eugène Atget</a> and others is that the objective or documentary aspect does not prevail in them, but rather a search for symbolism and freakishness that we would later find in the work of photographers such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Diane-Arbus">Diane Arbus</a>.</p>
<p>In 1932, <a href="https://www.europapress.es/catalunya/noticia-arxiu-nacional-catalunya-adquiere-35-fotografias-dora-maar-realizadas-catalunya-1933-20220707191737.html">Maar traveled to Barcelona</a> and photographed street life in the city. She also took crude portraits of poor people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474110/original/file-20220714-32298-g1of2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Montage of several photographs taken by Dora Maar in Barcelona in 1933, recently acquired by the Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://anc.gencat.cat/ca/detall/noticia/Dora-Maar-entra-a-lArxiu-Nacional">Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya</a></span>
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<p>Her work attracted the attention of the society of the time. She was soon invited to join the most advanced and modern circle in Paris: the surrealists. In this environment, she was a lover of the writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Bataille">Georges Bataille</a>, friend of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Henri-Marie-Prevert">Jacques Prévert</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Eluard">Paul Éluard</a>, and a close friend of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andre-Breton">André Breton</a>’s second wife, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Lamba">Jacqueline Lamba</a>. In fact, Lamba and Breton probably met through Maar.</p>
<p>Surrealism freed Maar from the tyranny of appearances in photography and allowed her to express a wild spirit that mocked everything, including, and perhaps above all, her own fears.</p>
<h2>Enter Picasso</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.todostuslibros.com/libros/picasso-y-dora_978-84-8428-328-7">Maar met Picasso in 1935</a>, a year before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In addition to her physical and intellectual splendour, the Malaga-born artist was undoubtedly attracted by the fact that she spoke perfect Spanish. </p>
<p>Married to Olga Jojlova and also paired with a young lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso fell madly in love with Maar. She had caught his eye by playing at cutting herself with a knife in a café and the painter stole the bloody glove she was wearing at the time. This, no doubt, was the beginning of a relationship with dark omens.</p>
<p>When she became part of Picasso’s strange circle, his circus of valuable but submissive women, her career ventured down a dangerous path.</p>
<p>She spent eight years with Picasso. It was undoubtedly an extraordinary period for the artist, during which he painted many of his best works, <a href="http://www.bcn.cat/museupicasso/es/exposiciones/picasso-retratos/personatge/dora-maar/">including portraits of Maar</a>. She performed an extraordinary act by <a href="https://www.museoreinasofia.es/coleccion/autor/maar-dora-markovitch-henriette-theodora">photographically recording the constructive “process” of Guernica</a>. This was totally innovative at the time, and would give rise to many other works by photographers such as <a href="https://npg.si.edu/exh/namuth/pol3nam.htm">Hans Namuth with Pollock</a>, or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049531/">Clouzot with Picasso himself</a>, but Maar’s originality remains unrecognised.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473931/original/file-20220713-8982-yjdltf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Part of Dora Maar’s reportage on the creation of Guernica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://static1.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/obras/DE01331-007.jpg">Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía</a></span>
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<p>Picasso also worked painting on negatives with Maar, but later insisted that she abandon photography to devote herself to painting – in his view the “great art”. At the end, Picasso led Maar into the terrain he absolutely dominated.</p>
<p>It must be said that she struggled to make personal pieces and some of her works, despite the influence of Picasso’s art, are interesting in their own (e.g. <a href="https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/dora-maar-the-conversation.jpg">The Conversation</a>, from 1937). But to compete in a terrain in which Picasso was the master was an almost impossible challenge. </p>
<p>In 1945 Maar produced still life paintings in the style of Picasso and later some portraits, mainly of women, reminiscent of other surrealist artists such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonor-Fini">Leonor Fini</a>.</p>
<p>As always with Picasso, it was a new love affair, this time with the young painter Françoise Gilot, that ended a relationship that had become extraordinarily toxic, with Maar bordering on madness and Picasso abusing her appallingly.</p>
<h2>Third act</h2>
<p>Maar was confined to a mental hospital, received electroshocks and suffered the terrible psychological treatments of the time, which was as good for schizophrenia as it was for broken hearts or depression. Thanks to the poet Paul Éluard, who asked Picasso for help, Maar managed to leave the institution. She underwent therapy with Jacques Lacan, then went into seclusion, devoted herself to painting and sought relief in a Catholic mysticism. Thus her famous phrase was born: “After Picasso, only God.”</p>
<p>From the 1950s onwards her painting moved towards abstraction, albeit closely linked to landscapes, highly impastoed works that are a complete departure from Picasso’s art but not formally very interesting.</p>
<p>Maar’s tremendous emotional dependence on Picasso, the extreme aspect of her despair, meant that her figure, for a long time, was deprived of the brilliance that accompanied her early success and the complexity of her work.</p>
<p>Notable historians such as <a href="https://www.maryanncaws.com/">Mary Ann Caws</a> and <a href="https://victoriacombalia.com/">Victoria Combalía</a>, who knew her personally, brought her out of anonymity with their writings. And little by little, exhibitions, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/dora-maar">such as the 2019 show at the Tate</a>, have recovered her name and her legacy for the history of art. The third act is underway.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L_VLDL1omaI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Video of the Tate Modern’s retrospective on Dora Maar.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amparo Serrano de Haro no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.</span></em></p>
Dora Maar was an outstanding photographer but her work has been overshadowed by the fact that she was Pablo Picasso’s partner.
Amparo Serrano de Haro, Profesora Titular de Historia del Arte, UNED - Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190750
2022-09-26T20:03:02Z
2022-09-26T20:03:02Z
Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot were much more than Picasso’s muses or lovers. They are important artists in their own right
<p>Among Picasso’s partners were two formidable female artists: Dora Maar (1907–97) and Françoise Gilot (1921-). </p>
<p>For a long time, these women were known primarily as his muse or lover, but further scrutiny of their extensive careers reveals that they were also his collaborators and innovative artists in their own right. </p>
<p>Both women profoundly influenced Picasso, and both were exceptional talents. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/the-picasso-century/">The Picasso Century</a>, currently at the National Gallery of Victoria, offers a rare opportunity to see their work in Australia. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pablo-picasso-was-not-a-lone-genius-creator-he-was-at-the-centre-of-several-creative-hubs-and-changed-the-course-of-western-art-181329">Pablo Picasso was not a lone genius creator – he was at the centre of several creative hubs, and changed the course of western art</a>
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<h2>Charismatic and unconventional Dora Maar</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="On the beach" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486439/original/file-20220926-50607-mcwwzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Eileen Agar, Photograph of Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso on the beach, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-8927-8-9/agar-photograph-of-dora-maar-and-pablo-picasso-on-the-beach">© Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>In <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Dora_Maar_with_Without_Picasso.html?id=NR10QgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Dora Maar, with and without Picasso: a biography</a> (2000), Mary Ann Caws writes that Picasso first saw Dora Maar in <em>Cafe les Deux Magots</em>. Sitting alone, she was using a penknife to stab the tabletop between her gloved fingers, staining the white flowers of her gloves with blood. </p>
<p>The pair were later introduced when Maar worked as the set photographer on Jean Renoir’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_of_Monsieur_Lange">The Crime of Monsieur Lange</a> (1936). They soon began a relationship.</p>
<p>By all accounts, Maar was intelligent, charismatic and unconventional. When she met Picasso she had a successful and established career as a photographer. </p>
<p>Surrealists had been dismissive of photography until Maar demonstrated its potential, creating some of the movement’s most powerful and important works. </p>
<p>According to NGV’s Meg Slater, Gilot’s centrality to Surrealism arose through experimentation in her commercial photography, as well as her commitment to radical left-wing politics. She was remarkable for a woman at that time. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485160/original/file-20220918-23485-4y10mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dora Maar Untitled (Hand - shell) 1934 Tireur Tirage de Daniel Valet Epreuve gélatino - argentique 56,6 x 38 cm / 23,4 x 17,5 cm (hors marge)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne - Centre de création industrielle Acquisition</span></span>
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<p>Maar has been identified with the nine “<a href="https://useum.org/artwork/Weeping-Woman-Femme-en-pleurs-Pablo-Picasso-1937">Weeping Woman</a>” canvases, which depict how Picasso saw her, profoundly impacted by Guernica’s bombing during the Spanish Civil War. </p>
<p>But these portraits have reductively characterised her as a volatile and emotional woman. Maar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/15/dora-maar-picassos-weeping-woman">said</a> “all [of Picasso’s] portraits of me are lies”.</p>
<p>Maar often photographed Picasso during their relationship, most notably in creating his 1937 anti-war work Guernica. She was represented within the painting as a figure holding a light. </p>
<p><a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dora-maar-revealed-picassos-muse-guernica-show-1244849">According to</a> Musée Picasso-Paris’ curator Emilie Bouvard, Maar “did not simply document Picasso painting the great mural. In fact, her Surrealist photography influenced the work itself”.</p>
<p>Renowned for moving from one lover to another, Picasso left Maar for Françoise Gilot – notoriously the only woman to leave him.</p>
<h2>Critically reflective Françoise Gilot</h2>
<p>Gilot had an extraordinary life. <a href="https://www.scrippscollege.edu/news/arts-and-culture/an-artist-in-her-own-right-francoise-gilot-turns-99">Before 25</a> she had lived through the Nazi occupation of Paris, studied dance under Isadora Duncan’s protégée and taken “morning walks with Gertrude Stein”.</p>
<p>She achieved expertise in ceramics well before she met Picasso. It was during their almost 10-year relationship that he took an interest in ceramics, eventually producing <a href="http://ceramic-studio.net/ceramic/pottery/francoise-gilot/">3,500</a> works.</p>
<p>Gilot was physically and psychologically abused by Picasso and lived with very little autonomy throughout their relationship. Many of her works testify to this.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/519039925785327682/">The Earthenware</a> (1951) shows a window with bars. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/t-magazine/francoise-gilot-picasso.html">Paloma asleep in her crib</a> (1950) depicts windows without views. <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/impressionist-and-modern-art-online-2/francoise-gilot-adam-forcing-eve-to-eat-an-apple-i">Adam forcing Eve to Eat an Apple</a> (1946) is an image of coercion with a disturbing likeness to Picasso and Gilot.</p>
<p>In 1953 she left with their children, Claude and Paloma. Outraged, Picasso began to sabotage her artistic career. In 1964 she published a memoir, <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/products/life-with-picasso?variant=9511301382196">Life with Picasso</a>, following his three legal challenges to stop it.</p>
<p>She is unusual for writing critically reflective pieces on her own work, situating her as well ahead of her time.</p>
<h2>The female gaze</h2>
<p>The “<a href="http://femalegaze.com.au/reviews-2/">female gaze</a>” refers to the way female artists express their own unique experience of living in the world as women. Gendered experiences are only one influence among many, but they profoundly impact any creative work. </p>
<p>My first impression of Gilot’s female gaze is that she takes a micro view of the world around her. </p>
<p>Her 1940s still life works take the domestic and emphasise her seclusion at that time (Picasso had isolated her from family and friends). </p>
<p>She finds inspiration in the small things, the domestic, rather than racing to the monumental or heroic.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485161/original/file-20220918-34763-9oryx9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Françoise Gilot Plat de cerises et couteau espagnol 1948 gouache, pencil, charcoal and coloured pencil on cardboard 49.5 x 67.0 cm , 63.5 x 78.6 cm (framed)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle</span></span>
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<p>According to Gilot in an interview in <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/life-after-picasso-franoise-gilot">Vogue</a>, she met Picasso in 1943 when he brought a bowl of cherries to her table. </p>
<p>This may be referenced in Plate of cherries and a Spanish knife (1948). Gilot described this painting as “the most ordinary, mundane and non-poetic of things” and offers that she chose the domestic deliberately in an act of resistance to expectations that she be a housewife. </p>
<p>From this painting we can glimpse her her feminism and her female perspective.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485162/original/file-20220918-48449-2t01r9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Françoise Gilot Sink and tomatoes ( Evier et tomates ) 1951 Oil on plywood 91.8 x 72.8 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Acquired by the French State in 1952; accessioned in 1953 Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle</span></span>
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<p>Maar’s portraits and advertising images resist objectifying the female figure, directing viewers with the subject’s gaze to something just out of sight. </p>
<p>While often erotic, they don’t present women as objects. The shadow in <a href="https://artblart.com/tag/dora-maar-assia/">Assia</a> (1934) emphasises and celebrates both her form and power. </p>
<p>Maar’s iconography emphasises the female. She incorporates wavy locks of hair, spiders and manicured nails in hair oil advertising images such as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-voraciousness-and-oddity-of-dora-maars-pictures">Publicity Study</a> (Pétrole Hahn) (1934-1935), face cream advertisement <em>Les années vous guettent</em> (The Years are Waiting for You) (1932) and surrealist images such as Untitled (Hand-Shell) (1934).</p>
<p>Maar and Gilot were creative collaborators, not just muses of Picasso. </p>
<p>Before and after him, their artistic achievements – and exceptional volumes of creative work – locate them as important artists. These include Maar’s retrospective at the <a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Les-annees-vous-guettent/FD4C9067B246F7CF">Tate</a> (2019-20), and Gilot’s many <a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Francoise-Gilot/BE82663B3D59B3C5/Exhibitions">exhibitions</a>. </p>
<p>Across their long careers their output straddled a variety of media and styles, each with her own female gaze.</p>
<p><em>The Picasso Century is at the NGV until October 9.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/male-artists-dominate-galleries-our-research-explored-if-its-because-women-dont-paint-very-well-or-just-discrimination-189221">Male artists dominate galleries. Our research explored if it’s because ‘women don’t paint very well’ – or just discrimination</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190750/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article was based on a discussion as part of the National Gallery of Victoria's public program 'Perspectives on Picasso', an event that ran as part of The Picasso Century exhibition. This discussion was between Meg Slater, Assistant Curator, International Exhibition Projects, and academic Lisa French, who has recently written a book about the 'female gaze'.</span></em></p>
These women were intelligent, charismatic and unconventional – far more than just muses.
Lisa French, Professor & Dean, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181329
2022-06-10T04:53:08Z
2022-06-10T04:53:08Z
Pablo Picasso was not a lone genius creator – he was at the centre of several creative hubs, and changed the course of western art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468137/original/file-20220610-25216-fwa0vz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C2982%2C2002&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881–1973
Figures by the sea (Figures au bord de la mer) 12 January 193, oil on canvas 130.0 x 195.0 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris Donated in lieu of tax, 1979
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition 2022: The Picasso Century, NGV International.</em> </p>
<p>The Picasso Century exhibition presents Picasso as we have never seen him before. </p>
<p>Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is not presented as the lone genius creator – a mythology promoted by the artist himself – but as being at the centre of several creative hubs. He was surrounded by groups of brilliant creative men and women and his influence was a powerful presence for the whole 20th century. </p>
<p>In his life, Picasso rarely acknowledged his creative collaborators, this exhibition sets out to redress this omission. </p>
<p>The great French poet, critic and art collector Guillaume Apollinaire, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/275509.Apollinaire_on_Art">wrote of his friend</a> Picasso:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His insistence of the pursuit of beauty has changed everything in art […] The great revolution of the arts, which he has achieved almost unaided, was to make the world his new representation of it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leo Stein, another of Picasso’s friends and patrons, <a href="https://vdoc.pub/documents/a-life-of-picasso-volume-i-1881-1906-1e5bgrkhr5ko">when writing</a> on the rivalry between Picasso and Matisse observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Matisse saw himself in relation to others and Picasso stood apart, alone. He recognised others, of course, but as belonging to another system, there was no fusion. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some people may not like the phallocentric persona of Picasso but he did effectively change the course of western art and, in the process, changed the way in which we see the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468138/original/file-20220610-28319-7sdug2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso Spanish 1881-1973. Weeping woman 1937, oil on canvas, 55.2 x 46.2 cm. National Gallery of Victoria. Purchased by donors of The Art Foundation of Victoria, with the assistance of the Jack and Genia Liberman family, Founder Benefactor, 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo: NGV</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Picasso and his contemporaries</h2>
<p>Picasso affected the art of his friends and contemporaries, as well as that of those who never met him. </p>
<p>Although Apollinaire described him as achieving a revolution in the arts “almost unaided” and for Stein “Picasso stood apart”, in reality Picasso also reflected the cultural and intellectual milieu that surrounded him. </p>
<p>This very ambitious multifaceted exhibition sets out to define “Picasso’s voice” during his long career through a selection of over 80 of his works, many quite major and never previously seen in this country. It also investigates his interactions with his surrounding cultural milieu. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2354%2C2995&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2354%2C2995&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468136/original/file-20220610-20-oazey6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso Spanish 1881-1973. Portrait of a woman (Portrait de femme) 1938 oil on canvas, 98.0 x 77.5 cm. 116.5 x 96.3 cm (framed) Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle Gift of the artist, 1947.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Picasso paintings, graphics, sculptures and ceramics are accompanied by about 100 works by more than 50 of his contemporaries to create a context through which his significance can be assessed. </p>
<p>Apart from Apollinaire, the contemporaries considered include Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Dorothea Tanning, Natalia Goncharova, Julio González, Wifredo Lam, Suzanne Valadon and Joan Miró. </p>
<p>A large, curious and little-known painting hanging near the entrance of the exhibition, Marie Laurencin’s Apollinaire and his friends (2nd version) (1909) from the Centre Pompidou.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468129/original/file-20220610-18-6hjdww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Laurencin, French 1883-1956. Apollinaire and his friends (2nd version) (Apollinaire et ses amis [2ème version]) 1909 oil on canvas. 130.0 x 194.0 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle. Donated in lieu of tax, 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Fondation Foujita/ADAGP. Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Audrey Laurans/Dist. RMN-GP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The painting shows Apollinaire with Picasso looking over his shoulder and surrounded by a number of figures including Gertrude Stein, Fernande Olivier, Marguerite Gillot, Maurice Cremnitz as well as Laurencin herself in the foreground in a pale blue dress. Stein, on the left, appears in the role of one of the three inspirational graces or Muses. </p>
<p>Apollinaire admired this painting and had it positioned over the head of his bed for much of his life. </p>
<p>Picasso was to paint portraits of many in this grouping, including that of Apollinaire who was amongst the first to recognise the significance of cubism and collected Picasso’s work. Picasso <a href="https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/picasso/apollinaire-as-the-pope-of-cubism-1911/nomedium/asset/1734996">was to refer</a> to Apollinaire in jest as “the pope of cubism”. </p>
<h2>Traversing artistic eras</h2>
<p>In the exhibition, there are a number of iconic Picasso paintings, including his Portrait of a man (1902-03), a classic work from his so-called “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-exhibition-reveals-the-hidden-images-under-picasso-blue-period-paintings-180979875/">blue period</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468130/original/file-20220610-18-2t6oaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881-1973. Portrait of a man (Portrait d’homme) winter 1902-03, oil on canvas, 93.0 x 78.0 cm/ Musée national Picasso-Paris Donated in lieu of tax, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a brooding and introspective image where the tone defined an epoch. </p>
<p>Dated a few year later is the memorable Mother and child oil painting from the summer of 1907 that already speaks of <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/glossary-terms/primitivism">primitivism</a> and the radical formal transformation evident in the <a href="https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766">Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</a> (1907) that was to become a defining moment in the course of western art.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468131/original/file-20220610-18093-lwq1rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881-1973. Mother and child (Mère et enfant) summer 1907, oil on canvas, 81.0 x 60.0 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris Donated in lieu of tax, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition has a number of significant cubist paintings, Picasso’s The violin (1914) and Georges Braque’s <a href="https://www.georgesbraque.org/woman-with-a-guitar.jsp">Woman with a guitar</a> (1913) both from the collection of the <a href="https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/">Centre Pompidou</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468132/original/file-20220610-15-idh6xn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881-1973. The violin (Le violon) 1914, oil on canvas 81.0 x 75.0 cm, 92.7 x 87.0 cm (framed). Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national.
d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle Gift of M. Raoul La Roche, 1953</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Audrey Laurans/Dist. RMN-GP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This chronologically is followed by the artist’s return to order with <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/glossary-terms/neoclassicism">neoclassicism</a> with Picasso’s stunning portrait of his wife Olga (1918).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=881&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468133/original/file-20220610-16487-msscaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1107&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso Spanish 1881-1973. Portrait of Olga in an armchair (Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil) spring 1918. Oil on canvas 130.0 x 88.8 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris Donated in lieu of tax, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/glossary-terms/Surrealism">Surrealism</a>, at least in part a response to the violence of the 1930s, is particularly well represented in this exhibition with numerous examples from the artist and his contemporaries as well as a section on Picasso’s political engagement when, as a member of the communist party, he stood up to fascism and later to US imperialism in all of its guises.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468139/original/file-20220610-27901-am4w3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881-1973. Cat seizing a bird (Chat saisissant un oiseau) 22 April 1939. Oil on canvas, 81.0 x 100.0 cm/ Musée national Picasso-Paris. Donated in lieu of tax, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/surrealists-at-sea-dusan-and-voitre-marek-finally-receive-their-place-in-the-pantheon-of-australian-surrealism-163249">Surrealists at Sea: Dušan and Voitre Marek finally receive their place in the pantheon of Australian surrealism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A remarkable exhibition</h2>
<p>This is a huge exhibition of over 180 pieces that explores neat niches, such as Picasso’s engagement with sculpture in the context of González and Giacometti, or his excursion into ceramics, as well as his mainstream developments. </p>
<p>Whereas in many exhibitions one despairs over padding with inferior and irrelevant pieces, here the works have been carefully selected and are frequently of exceptional calibre. For example, the wondrous <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre_Bonnard_Portrait_of_the_Artist_in_the_Bathroom_Mirror.jpg">Pierre Bonnard Self-portrait in the bathroom mirror</a> (1939-45), or the Francis Bacon Picasso inspired painted heads.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468140/original/file-20220610-27912-r665l2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, Spanish 1881-1973. Reclining woman (Femme couchée) 19 June 1932, oil on canvas, 38.0 x 46.0 cm, 55.6 x 63.0 cm (framed) Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle Donated by Louise and Michel Leiris, 1984.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM- CCI/Bertrand Prévost/Dist. RMN-GP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition was curated over about a decade by Didier Ottinger, deputy director of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_National_d%27Art_Moderne">Musée national d’art moderne</a>, Centre Pompidou, Paris and is a triumph of visual intelligence. </p>
<p>No matter how well you think you know Picasso and the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the <a href="https://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/collection">Musée national Picasso-Paris</a>, in this exhibition you are guaranteed to be surprised, amazed and delighted.</p>
<p>The Picasso Century is a remarkable exhibition that may change the way you will view Picasso. </p>
<p><em>The Picasso Century is on at the NGV International until October 9.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sasha Grishin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Picasso Century at the National Gallery of Victoria is a remarkable exhibition that may change the way you will view Picasso.
Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111225
2019-02-06T09:44:56Z
2019-02-06T09:44:56Z
BBC Icons: Alan Turing was a worthy winner – but where were the women?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257448/original/file-20190206-174851-ppm020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let us now praise famous men.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/72 Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who was the greatest icon of the 20th century? The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/TftBcdwzpP4y7qlzXmXRTy/about-the-show">BBC2 Icons</a> show reminded us of people who had struggled against adversity to fight for a better, fairer, more inclusive world. But whatever you thought of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3Tk2LpLg755Js0LQF7t3TQ2/the-finalists">line up</a> for the grand final on February 5, one thing was striking – there were no women on the list. Not one. The most iconic leader, activist, artist or writer, explorer, entertainer, scientist and sports star were all deemed to be men.</p>
<p>So what happened to the women? How could it be that not one woman ended up in the final? Usually in these situations we would blame the programme makers. However, to do so in this case would be rather unfair. I speak with some experience here, as I sat on the shortlisting panel in two of the categories (leaders and activists). </p>
<p>The production company was aware of diversity and was careful to include balance both in the longlists that we were given to consider, and the composition of the panels that considered them.</p>
<p>This is further evidenced in the shortlists that emerged from those panels, and upon which the public voted to produce the final (all-male) line up. There were outstanding women on every single one of those shortlists. Women who achieved great things, changed the world, reached the very zenith of their careers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257451/original/file-20190206-174870-zg3ogq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What would Emmeline Pankhurst have said?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/72 Films/Alamy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women such as Marie Curie or Helen Keller, without whom the world would be a much poorer place. Women such as Billie Jean King or Tanni Grey-Thompson who dominated their field. Brilliant women such as Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, Enid Blyton, Ella Fitzgerald, Tina Turner, Rosa Parks, and many many more who didn’t even make it to the shortlists.</p>
<h2>Social prejudice</h2>
<p>So why, in the face of so many iconic women, did the final feature only men?</p>
<p>To answer this, we have to move beyond the shortlists and think more broadly about our collective attitudes. As a society, we do not always reward merit when we see it, sometimes blinded by our own prejudice. </p>
<p>The declaration of Alan Turing as the overall winner came as recognition both of his outstanding achievement and of the failure of society to acknowledge his contribution in his own lifetime, due to attitudes at that time towards autism and homosexuality. While many of us are now able to see past such prejudice, other forms of bias endure.</p>
<p>For example, while we rightly celebrate Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr for standing up to racial discrimination, we have seen recent evidence from other televised contests such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/16/black-strictly-come-dancing">Strictly Come Dancing</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/30/the-disturbing-racial-bias-of-the-greatest-dancer">The Greatest Dancer</a> that racial bias still influences public voting. But for the Icons show, the voting public comprised at least as many women as men. So why were men preferred systematically over women?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2c9sCWlQbk4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There is some truth to the claim made by presenter Clare Balding that women were not given as much opportunity as men to flourish in the 20th century. For example, on the leaders panel, we shortlisted more men than women for the simple reason that there were few female world leaders. But many of the women who did make it onto the various shortlists did so in spite of the restrictions placed upon them and the barriers that they encountered, and their stories of triumph over adversity were at least as inspiring as those of the men who were chosen over them.</p>
<h2>Everyday sexism</h2>
<p>So we need to dig deeper and consider how we, as a society, still treat people differently depending on whether they are male or female. Both historically and today, we are more likely to praise, celebrate and remember men’s achievements. In contrast, many of the achievements of women – even when, as was the case for many of the women who did not make the Icons final, those achievements were spectacular – are more likely to be downplayed, overlooked, and ultimately forgotten. In a show that asks the public to vote based on our collective awareness and memory of achievement, it is perhaps not so surprising after all that we more easily accord iconic status to men than to women.</p>
<p>And this inequality really matters. It matters symbolically – every girl and young woman who watched that final will be left with the false impression that all of the most important figures of recent history were men. This might curtail their own ambition and sense of self-worth.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257452/original/file-20190206-174887-44ulh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alan Turing: also a victim of prejudice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/72 Films/Elliott & Fry/NPG</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it also matters substantively. There is repeated evidence that people rate men more highly than women on things like <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698">job applications</a>, <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2012/09/24/scientists-not-immune-gender-bias-yale-study-shows">salary evaluations</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00781.x">political candidate evaluations</a>. This is the case even when fictional examples are used where the candidates are identical in everything except assigned gender. In other words, where all other things really are equal, we are still more likely to think that men are worth employing, promoting, even electing, rather than women.</p>
<p>It doesn’t end there. The <a href="https://everydaysexism.com/">#EverydaySexism</a> project documents thousands of testimonies of women being patronised, insulted, harassed and even assaulted in routine, everyday contexts. From the summit of achievement to daily lived experience, women are accorded less worth and status than men. The incidences of everyday sexism are so common as to be perceived as banal – and yet they are very real in the way that they undermine women, silence them or render them invisible.</p>
<p>What can we learn from all this? First, that it is not women’s lack of achievement, but our collective inability to give adequate recognition to that achievement, that is at fault. Second, that we are not yet as meritocratic a society as we might imagine ourselves to be. Third, that we need to do all that we can to acknowledge the true contribution of women, past, present and future, because one of the most important lessons of a historical show is to ensure that the errors of the past are not repeated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rainbow Murray was an advisor to the BBC series, The Icons.</span></em></p>
Several outstanding women were nominated, but Rainbow Murray, an adviser to the series, says the public vote showed how we’re still more inclined to recognise male achievement.
Rainbow Murray, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86578
2017-10-31T14:08:49Z
2017-10-31T14:08:49Z
The Mary, Queen of Scots cover up – and why hidden paintings keep being found
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192482/original/file-20171030-18720-1ehljr2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Behind the mask. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Galleries of Scotland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An exciting discovery for British history buffs: an unfinished portrait believed to be of Mary, Queen of Scots <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/press-office">has been</a> revealed under a 16th-century painting using X-ray photography. The hidden portrait is a special find by painting conservator <a href="http://courtauld.ac.uk/people/caroline-rae">Caroline Rae</a>, yet it is not unique. In having her features painted over, Scotland’s doomed queen finds herself in excellent company. </p>
<p>The portrait in question is of Sir John Maitland, the first Lord Maitland of Thirlestane (1543-1595), and normally hangs in a gallery in London. At the time it was painted in 1589, two years after Mary’s death, Maitland was one of the most powerful men in Scotland, having attained the office of Lord Chancellor. The work is attributed to <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/adrian-vanson">Adrian Vanson</a> (or Van Son), an artist from the Low Countries who later became court painter to James VI, Mary’s son. </p>
<p>The X-ray revealed that Vanson originally had very different plans for this portrait. Instead of Maitland’s face with its characteristic moustache and goatee, we can see the face of a woman, slightly tilted and turned in the opposite direction. The outlines of a square-necked gown and a wired lace ruff are clearly visible; the ghostlike appearance of someone who perhaps needed to be forgotten. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192485/original/file-20171030-18735-e2xtwa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can you tell what it is yet?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Galleries of Scotland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mary Stuart <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/mary_queen_of_scots/">was executed</a> for plotting the murder of Elizabeth I of England. Her image was identified from the few authentic portraits in existence, including <a href="http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O62538/portrait-miniature-hilliard-nicholas/">two miniatures</a> by the English painter Nicholas Hilliard. </p>
<p>If it is Mary, the painting may well have been begun around the time of her execution. This would be surprising but not unlikely: it is easy to imagine portraits of her still being in demand in Scotland but at some point being judged too dangerous. Whether asked to do so by a patron or at his own initiative, Vanson would have been reusing the panel to cover up the politically sensitive evidence. </p>
<h2>Cover ups and more cover ups</h2>
<p>The history of art is full of examples of covered up or destroyed portraits. Often politically motivated, they are sometimes known by the Latin expression <em>damnatio memoriae</em> – the condemnation of memory. In ancient Rome the senate sometimes sanctioned the destruction of the images of previous emperors on coins and life-size sculptures, whereby often only the heads would be replaced – a cheap solution. </p>
<p>There are other good examples from around Mary’s time. The Italian bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi commissioned a painting of the Madonna and Child that included his own portrait, having recently survived an attempt on his life. But at a later date his family had his image painted over in favour of an infant St John the Baptist. No one looking at the painting nowadays would guess that it once contained the bishop. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192479/original/file-20171030-18735-4os3v3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Madonna and Child (1503), Lorenzo Lotto.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in the 16th century Bianca Capello, grand duchess of Tuscany, fell victim to a campaign of <em>damnatio memoriae</em>: after her premature and possibly violent death her brother in law, Ferdinando de’ Medici, saw many of her portraits destroyed.</p>
<p>There are also more recent examples. The Soviet Union <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-were-erased-from-history-2013-12?IR=T">was notorious</a> for erasing unwanted figures from the photographic record, long before the existence of Photoshop. Stalin had the head of his secret police, Nikolai Yezhov, airbrushed after his execution in 1940, for instance. The Nazis and Chinese communists also have form in this respect. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192480/original/file-20171030-18683-f3lut0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nikolai Yezhov vanishes from Stalin’s left …</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Artists sometimes covered up initial compositions for more mundane reasons than politics, of course. Vincent van Gogh is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/two-for-the-price-of-one-van-gogh-confirmed-with-another-underneath-7578001.html">well known</a> for having recycled canvases to save money. Three years ago, researchers ascribed similar motivations to Pablo Picasso after finding a portrait of a man with a bow tie underneath his famous <a>Blue Room</a>. No less spectacular was the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/aug/04/x-ray-reveals-mysterious-face-hidden-beneath-degas-portrait-of-a-woman">discovery</a> last year of Edgar Degas’s favourite model under his Portrait of a Woman. </p>
<p>While art historians have been using X-rays to analyse the authorship of paintings for over a hundred years, it has always been limited by the fact that, depending on the chemical composition of the paint, it does not make everything visible, and only results in the characteristic black-and-white image. </p>
<p>This makes the results difficult to interpret, although it can still produce important results, as we see with this latest discovery. Yet recent advances in X-ray technology have helped to overcome this problem in certain cases: a technique called <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep29594">X-ray fluorescence</a> makes it possible to see under-paintings in high-resolution full colour. This is what was used to uncover the image in the Degas painting, for example. </p>
<p>While specialised knowledge and highly costly equipment are required, it is probably only a matter of time before more fascinating discoveries are offered up by old masters. Who knows what else might be revealed from the Maitland painting if it was subjected to similar techniques. A tantalising prospect, especially for what such finds may tell us about artistic process and changing historical fortunes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elsje van Kessel receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>
An old Scottish master has revealed its secret after 430 years. What next from art detectives?
Elsje van Kessel, Lecturer in Art History, University of St Andrews
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82567
2017-08-18T02:17:36Z
2017-08-18T02:17:36Z
Is Ryan Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph an American ‘Guernica’?
<p>On Aug. 12, 2017, Charlottesville Daily Progress photographer <a href="http://www.newsjs.com/url.php?p=https://www.cjr.org/first_person/charlottesville-protest-photographer-photo.php">Ryan M. Kelly captured the moment</a> that Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters, injuring 19 and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. It’s probably the most enduring image to emerge from the weekend of “Unite the Right” rallies in Charlottesville, Va.</p>
<p>Eight months later, Kelly’s iconic photograph from that tragic day has earned him <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/image-of-tragic-moment-in-charlottesville-leads-to-pulitzer/">the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography</a>.</p>
<p>At first glance, the photograph is nearly impossible to make sense of visually or politically. Cars are not supposed to drive into pedestrians; fellow citizens are not supposed to kill each other over political differences. And there’s so much in the frame of the image – so many figures and forms crowded together, most only partially visible – that you can’t take it in all at once. </p>
<p>Pablo Picasso’s 1937 iconic mural “Guernica” might teach us how to interpret this image more closely, and why it is important to do so. Like Kelly’s photograph, “Guernica” conveys a moment of terror through a jumble of forms and fragments that seem to make no sense.</p>
<p>In April 1937, a different sort of “Unite the Right” moment took place in fascist Europe during the destruction of Guernica. At the request of General Franco, the leader of nationalist insurgents in the Spanish Civil War, German and Italian warplanes bombarded the Basque town in northern Spain. Terror rained from the sky: Hundreds of civilians were killed, while military targets were left unscathed. </p>
<p>Days later, as May Day protesters filled the streets of Paris, Pablo Picasso began what would become an anti-war masterpiece.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182351/original/file-20170817-16241-a4a8m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pablo Picasso, ‘Guernica’ (1937).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reina Sofia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are uncanny echoes of Picasso’s “<a href="http://www.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/salas/informacion/206_6_eng.pdf">Guernica</a>” in Kelly’s photograph. Picasso used the Cubist techniques of fragmentation and collage to create a visual cry of anguish at the destruction wrought by men at the controls of war machines. </p>
<p>To make sense of the painting, you must do the work of reassembling what has been rendered apart. Yet you will never make sense of such destruction. You cannot merely glance at this massive painting or take it in all at once; you must stand and look and witness. There is nothing beautiful about it. It refuses to console. However, in the painting’s abstraction – its matte shades of gray, its distorted figures that stand in for the wounded and the dead – there is a kind of mercy toward its viewers and these victims. </p>
<p>If there is any mercy of abstraction in Kelly’s photograph, it is that of time. The image captures the moment in medias res – when the bodies of the men near its center still evoke the beauty of the human form in its wholeness.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182352/original/file-20170817-16219-pkw1ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet we know the victims are not whole; that is why it hurts to look. The contorted positions of the man in red and white sneakers and the man somersaulting above him make sense only in the realm of sports photography. But this is not a game. </p>
<p>Elsewhere the photograph captures only fragments: arms and hands, legs and feet, heads and faces. Empty shoes on the ground. Sunglasses. A cellphone in midair. </p>
<p>You will never make sense of this image because it makes no sense. (Or, rather, it makes as much sense as racism itself.) Yet to look away risks turning away from the truths it tells. A heavy aspect of our national tragedy is that we seem to lack a president – such as Abraham Lincoln – whose heart might break to see such carnage. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/glevel_1/gtimeline.html">As he kept reworking</a> “Guernica,” Picasso painted over a raised fist he had initially drawn near the center of the canvas. Then – as now – the raised fist is a symbol of solidarity against fascism. It makes an eerie reappearance on two posters in the top third of Kelly’s photograph. </p>
<p>“Guernica” includes small lines resembling newsprint. The Charlottesville photojournalist’s image is also crowded with text; some of it implicates the driver, while other words are a call to action.</p>
<p>Clear as day, there’s the incriminating license plate. No one can deny that this car drove into this crowd, as the colluding European fascists did when they <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F05E3DC103AE23ABC4051DFB266838C629EDE">claimed</a> that Guernica had been bombed by Spanish Republican forces. </p>
<p>Then there’s the collage of protest signs and street signs that the neo-Nazi at the wheel didn’t heed: Peace/Black Lives Matter. Solidarity. STOP. LOVE. BLACK LIVES. STOP.</p>
<p>Kelly’s photograph redirects these injunctions to the viewer, who’s left to wonder whether this is what our democracy – or the state of our union – looks like.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Aug. 17, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Wenzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ryan Kelly’s iconic photograph from Charlottesville evokes a ‘Unite the Right’ moment from 1937 – and the anti-war masterpiece by Picasso that emerged from it.
Jennifer Wenzel, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76238
2017-04-26T11:33:34Z
2017-04-26T11:33:34Z
80 years on from the Guernica bombing and Spain is still struggling to honour historical memory
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166636/original/file-20170425-27254-1lgamaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guernica-after-series-bombings-by-nationalists-249574147?src=MCREZ4fHHQkb2lVmH45Yqg-1-11">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The morning of April 26, 1937 dawned like any other in Guernica, northern Spain. It was market day, and as the sun rose, 10,000 locals, refugees and peasants came to gather in the traditional Basque town’s centre.</p>
<p>But this was not the typical day of trading that they may have expected. The country was in the midst of civil war and by 4.30pm chaos had descended.</p>
<p>For more than three hours, in support of the insurgent Francoist cause, the Nazi Condor Legion and fascist Italian Legionary Air Force dropped 31 tons of munitions onto Guernica. The aerial bombing made <a href="http://www.museodelapaz.org/es/docu_bombardeo.php">ruins of 85.22% of the buildings</a>. And, though the <a href="http://www.euskonews.com/0621zbk/ebooks62103eu.html">figure is now disputed</a>, the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1R304lcSa4kC&pg=PA359&lpg=PA359&dq=889+wounded+guernica&source=bl&ots=9u9AaZJwb3&sig=zGcY0kCbNY_2Q7sjKJGQ_w2VotM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw2_63zb_TAhVlDMAKHbyZCM4Q6AEIKjAB">Basque government said</a> it killed 1,654 people and wounded a further 889.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166635/original/file-20170425-12629-1b0x4w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ruins of Guernica, shortly after the bombing in 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/spanish-civil-war-1936-1939-destruction-238061041?src=MCREZ4fHHQkb2lVmH45Yqg-1-16">Everrett Historical/www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1936, a failed coup by a group of fascist military generals against the legitimate Spanish Republican government had triggered what would become a bloody three-year civil war in Spain, leading to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34844939">36 years of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco</a>. By the time of the attack, Guernica was host to Republican civilian refugees, and a provisional war hospital had been set up. But neither made it a key military target – so why the bombing? </p>
<h2>Guernica, the symbol</h2>
<p>The town was not a major centre like Madrid or Barcelona. But after a <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/clm/Guadalajara-batalla-clave-Guerra-Civil_0_625387729.html">defeat in Guadalajara</a> while trying to take Madrid, the insurgent Francoists learnt the importance of modest but symbolically powerful victories. Since the nearby city of Bilbao was still resisting their attacks, these fascists saw in Guernica a guaranteed victory.</p>
<p>In similar fashion, Nazi Germany never perceived Spain as a strategic ally, and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674728851">was not particularly interested in the Spanish war</a>. Instead, it used it as <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/es/article.php?ModuleId=10008214">a field in which to experiment with new strategies</a> before World War II. The Nazis justified the Guernica attack as one of strategic importance in the support of the francoist advance on Bilbao. But the truth is that as the bombing came to an end, the Rentería Bridge, the strategic main access route to the town, <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/norte/euskadi/ataque-concentrado-gran-exito_0_635886764.html">remained untouched</a>.</p>
<p>For the Francoists, Guernica was a symbol of Basque resistance and a plurinational Spain threatening their project of a totalitarian regime. As General Emilio Mola, in charge of the insurgent military campaign in the north, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9115701/The-Spanish-Holocaust-by-Paul-Preston-review.html">would say</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For each party involved in the attack, Guernica was symbolic. But what they couldn’t expect was that it would come to represent far more than just what happened on 26 April, 1937.</p>
<h2>Guernica memorialised</h2>
<p>The Paris World Fair, due to open in May 1937, was the perfect pretext for the legitimate Republican government to tell the world of the horrors of the undemocratic fascist uprising in Spain, and the growing power of fascism in Europe. Spanish authorities commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a mural portraying the situation. He accepted, but warned he might not be able to fulfil the assignment. </p>
<p>His canvas was blank until the bombing of Guernica. Then, in little more than a month, the piece – a striking depiction of the fascist attack on the town – was ready.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166634/original/file-20170425-25594-135cqaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Guernica, by Pablo Picasso.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guernica-spain-october-10-2015-tiled-337184516?src=QIqluh3eS2F8DXNN3P2Oow-1-1">tichr/www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was more than just a symbol of the horrors of war in Spain: from World War II until the present day, Picasso’s Guernica has become a reminder of the atrocities of all global wars, which has made it an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-escalona/75-years-of-picassos-guernica-_b_1538776.html">inconvenient masterpiece</a> for those trying to ignore the past or justify it, when it has no justification.</p>
<h2>Forgetting history</h2>
<p>To commemorate the painting’s 80th year, Spain’s national museum of 20th century art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, has organised a <a href="http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/pity-and-terror-picasso">temporary exhibition</a>, which quickly garnered criticism from the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory for <a href="http://www.elespanol.com/cultura/arte/20170403/205729766_0.html">its lack of historical context</a>. </p>
<p>It presents a thorough evolution of Picasso’s personal aesthetic, but in a shockingly ahistorical fashion. The word “Francoism” does not appear once, and there seems to be a reluctance to use terms such as “civil war” or “fascism”. It is said that the Condor Legion bombed the town but the role Franco and the insurgents played remains unexplained. <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/cultura/Reina-Sofia-doloroso-Picasso-Guernica_0_629237797.html">Exhibition curators stated</a> that “the political context is not as present as one would expect but many have already done so and this is not going to disappear”. </p>
<p>However, this lack of contextual memory may lead to an unhistorical interpretation of the world. Spain is still struggling to apply <a href="http://leymemoria.mjusticia.gob.es/cs/Satellite/LeyMemoria/es/memoria-historica-522007">legislation on historical memory</a> passed in 2007, aimed at recognising the rights of the victims of the civil war and Franco’s dictatorship. </p>
<p>The law enables families to apply to restore the honour of anyone convicted of a political crime during Franco’s rule. It also requires that symbols including plaques, street names and statues, honouring Franco and his regime are removed. However, a UN report has found that this rule has been <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/29/un-tells-spanish-government-it-must-atone-francos-crimes-265603.html">deprived of funding</a> since 2012, and in some places ignored altogether. </p>
<p>Spain turning its back on history is already <a href="https://theconversation.com/spains-freedom-of-speech-repression-is-no-joke-75889">having dreadful consequences</a>, giving clear proof of <a href="http://www.eldiario.es/contrapoder/Carrero-Blanco-franquismo-sociologico_6_628597138.html">how alive “sociological Francoism” is</a> – even now that Spain is a democratic state, Francoist social practices are still around. It is not a crime to be a Franco apologist but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/mar/05/dictators-fridges-artist-franco-eugenio-merino">mocking Franco</a> <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/television/2017/04/06/58e613a5268e3ec8348b462a.html">or the fascist symbols</a> can be. The real terrorism, the policy of terror that the Franco regime practised, is still unpunished, and Francoism is continuing to victimise people in present-day Spain.</p>
<p>80 years on from the Guernica bombing, Spain should be using this anniversary to remember its past and honour the victims of war. Now both painting and town should more than ever stand for the fundamental importance of human rights, and against repression. The symbolic value of these places of memory cannot be ignored any longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Federico López-Terra received a PhD scholarship (2008-2011) from the Spanish National Research Council. </span></em></p>
Spain has specific laws on protecting historical memory, and yet some would rather forget about them altogether.
Federico López-Terra, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65011
2016-09-07T19:20:07Z
2016-09-07T19:20:07Z
Under the influence of … Dumile Feni’s ‘African Guernica’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136886/original/image-20160907-16611-16gemxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dumile Feni's 'African Guernica' - charcoal on paper.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>In our regular series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, artist/academic Sharlene Khan explains why she finds South African artist Dumile Feni’s “African Guernica” (ca 1967) hugely influential.</em></p>
<h2>My relationship with the work</h2>
<p>Standing in front of South African visual artist <a href="http://www.revisions.co.za/biographies/dumile-feni/#.V8_3Qfl97IU">Dumile Feni</a>’s “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/dumile-feni-biography-sophia-reuss">African Guernica</a>” when I was 19 years old at the University of Fort Hare Gallery in 1996 felt like something between hero-worship and a pilgrimage. At high school, Feni was one of my “favourite” artists, in the way one speaks of favourites in one’s youth. </p>
<p>I loved seemingly tortured “expressionistic” artists like <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/honore_daumier">Honoré Daumier</a>, <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/vincent_van_gogh">Vincent Van Gogh</a>, <a href="http://www.franciscogoya.com/">Francisco Goya</a>, <a href="http://honolulumuseum.org/art/exhibitions/15899-k_kollwitz/">Käthe Kollwitz</a>, <a href="http://www.revisions.co.za/biographies/cyprian-shilakoe/#.V8_7sPl97IU">Cyprien Shilakoe</a> and Feni. They seemed to understand the depth of human suffering. Their commentary undercut politics to question the very soul of human beings. </p>
<p>“African Guernica” – often spoken in relation to Spaniard Pablo Picasso’s equally haunting work <a href="http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp">commentary</a> on the plight of war in his country – surpassed this for me.</p>
<h2>Why it is/was influential</h2>
<p>In recent years, the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern">Tate Modern Gallery</a> in London has a room with the two massive pieces of Leon Golub’s <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/golub-vietnam-ii-t13702">“Vietnam II”</a> (1973) and Dia al-Azzawi’s <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/al-azzawi-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-t14116">“Sabra and Shatila Massacre”</a> (1983). Both pieces, like Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937), deal with the trauma and devastation of conflict and war in very different contexts. Golub’s concerns the American invasion of Vietnam and Azzawi’s the murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in Lebanon. </p>
<p>Looking at these works, I often thought about how Feni’s work was part of the dialogue of political unrest and human suffering on display. But while Golub, Azzawi and Picasso’s works all communicate feelings of chaos, conflict and trauma, Feni’s work has always stood out for the feeling of insanity that he visualises metaphorically.</p>
<p>In Feni’s painting we see a scene dominated by various animal and pseudo-human figures. A double-headed cow turns its back on us while it suckles a child at its teats. A grotesque naked squealing human figure, head a-kilter, seems to be splitting from itself with a third leg. Two groping figures seem to see each other and are alarmed. Another strange-armed figure is seated at a table as if awaiting a meal, while he seems to be begging at the same time. Yet another of these figures seems to be the harbinger of doom – perhaps one of the four biblical horsemen except his steed seems to be more of a comical cow. </p>
<p>Other animals (cows, ducks, cat, fowl) roam the landscape. These figures are stark white against a darkened background which contains repetitions of this maddened scene (as well as wandering figures). It is a visualisation perhaps of the seven deadly biblical sins, except there is no god to judge or save. Can this abyss be likened to our unconscious, the residual in which we seem to be a chaotic folk, a scene in which rational actions are furthered into the insane? </p>
<p>Human beings make art. We reason. We have evolved beyond the basic needs of survival. But in Feni’s “African Guernica” we see exactly the tensions of an artist commenting on the insanity of reason which results in the oppression of one human being by another. </p>
<p>It was done in 1967 when the world was contesting race, gender, sexuality and neo-colonialisms. One assumes that Feni is commenting on colonial racism that by this time has become institutionalised as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-and-reactions-it">apartheid</a> in South Africa. European colonial-modernist racist propaganda functioned on the rationalisation that certain groups of human beings were lower down the evolutionary chain. It operated on the “fact” of these groups’ proximity to animals, that could therefore be regarded as animals, as devoid of human thinking and feeling. </p>
<h2>Almost-but-not-right</h2>
<p>Primitives were almost-but-not quite, almost-but-not-white, almost-but-not-right. Postcolonial theorist <a href="https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/mimicry.html">Homi K Bhabha</a> reminds us that the slippage of this “almost-but-not-quiteness” was not merely justification that allowed the denigration and economic exploitation of certain bodies. But that it was a desire, an imagination that allowed a distinction between a higher order and the lower order, gave a group of people’s its idea of itself through a “not-quiteness” of the Other. </p>
<p>This was a cultural supremacy that could enslave men and women and treat them as animals. It could create complex systems of colonial order across the globe in order to claim and access natural resources, including bodies. This supremacy could systematically control, segregate and annihilate millions of people. </p>
<p>It is not just the heinousness of the act of war and the resultant trauma that is atrocious for Feni living in a legislated system of human degradation. It is also the very mindsets and societal values that lead to a warped society where we no longer can separate human from animals. A society where animals may seem more humane than the folks they are meant to serve.</p>
<p>The stark whitened figures which are visually disjunctive with their background should read as “positive” images – white against black. And yet one wonders if they are rather voids, an outline of a thing that has become distorted in its “thing-ness”? </p>
<p>And what to say of the darkened figures in the abyss? Are they the colonised man that repeats at a distance actions which are not his own as psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon eulogises in “<a href="http://abahlali.org/files/__Black_Skin__White_Masks__Pluto_Classics_.pdf">Black Skin, White Masks</a>”?</p>
<h2>Why it is still relevant</h2>
<p>In a darkened Rhodes University Theatre in July 2016 a <a href="https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/events/animal-farm/">new staging</a> of “<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011h.html">Animal Farm</a>” directed by Neil Coppen, features a cast of six young black South African women (Mpume Mthombeni, Tshego Khutoane, MoMo Matsunyane, Mandisa Nduana, Khutjo Bakunzi-Green and Zesuliwe Hadebe). <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml">George Orwell</a>’s 1945 story has become a classic, prophetic of the manner in which communist ideals devolve into capitalistic nightmares. The cast is utterly brilliant in their multiple roles – in the manner in which their bodies enact the animal characters and slide into present day critiques of democratic capitalistic governing models, in particular but certainly not limited to South Africa. </p>
<p>Several times during the play Feni’s “African Guernica” comes to mind as exploitation and human abasement, first as tragedy, then, in its repetition, turns to farce. Great for comedy, for theatre, for visual art metaphors, much less funny in reality.</p>
<p>The power of Feni’s “African Guernica” is not simply that he blatantly recognised the insanity of white colonial racist rule. Nor is it that he recognised how everyone in a warped system loses their “humanity”. It is also not only that he visualised local conditions of human oppression, nor that, even like Orwell’s text, it seems prophetic of days to come.</p>
<p>But rather, it is like the Goyas, Daumiers, Orwells and many other insightful creative intellectuals throughout time and in various societies, sensing the power and chaos that lurks in all of us to rationalise our ways as the next oppressors, the next supremacists, harbingers of truths, civilisation and order, even when madness unfolds before our very eyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharlene Khan receives funding from National Research Foundation, National Arts Council. </span></em></p>
‘African Guernica’ is an incredibly powerful work of art in many ways, importantly filling that space between the visible and the visible.
Sharlene Khan, Senior Lecturer of Art History and Visual Culture, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.