‘All portraits are caricatures.’ Picasso
Somewhere in the Royal Academy’s massive show of American Abstract Expressionism, there’s a quote from Jackson Pollock sometime in the 1950s yelling, ‘That **** bastard Picasso, he’s done everything.’
Picasso’s longevity (1881 to 1973) and prolific output (50,000 works – comprising 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs) and feverish changes of style and vision from early Fauvism through cubism to postwar neo-classicism and on and on – presented a massive challenge to his contemporaries, to up-and-comers in the 50s and 60s, and even to modern-day artists. He did so much, he tried so many things, he invented so many styles.
This exhibition presents a rich cross-section of Picasso’s styles and approaches by bringing together an impressive 80 portraits by the artist in all media. It is the largest exhibition of Picasso’s portraits in a generation, and it is full of riches, treasures and insights.
Self-portrait by Pablo Picasso ( 1896) Museu Picasso, Barcelona © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
The works are arranged in chronological order but are grouped into themes. Thus there is a room devoted to depictions of his first wife, the Ballets Russes dancer, Olga Khokhlova – a room of photographs he had taken of himself in his Paris studio – or of his earliest caricatures of the gang of Bohemians, artists and poets who assembled at the El Quatre Gats café in Barcelona.
Caricatures
This early emphasis on the cartoons and caricatures he drew of fellow artists in the cafe at first seems a bit eccentric or of historical interest only – but in fact as the exhibition proceeds you come to realise that there was something of caricature – the quick, impressionistic throwing off of outlines, the exaggeration of features – which in fact endures throughout his entire career. Compare the early caricature of art critic Maurice Utrillo with the caricatures he knocked off of poets and composers in Paris after the war, and then again in another wave of line drawing caricatures in the 1950s.
- Miguel Utrillo by Picasso (1900)
- Stravinsky by Picasso (1917)
- Poulenc by Picasso
The famous peace doves are just the most famous of the hundreds of later prints, etchings and lithographs he did, many of which use the lightest of lines, for example the famous Vollard Suite of images produced from 1930 to 1937.
Much later, in the 1950s, Picasso knocked off a series of ‘humorous compositions’ where he took pinups of glamour girl movie stars and quickly sketched onto them the figure of his friend, the poet and writer Jaime Sabartés – in reality, apparently, a fairly chaste and happily married man – as a short, tubby, bespectacled buffoon, hopelessly making up to these impossibly burnished screen idols.
Humorous Composition: Jaimes Sabartes and Esther Williams by Pablo Picasso (1957) Museu Picasso, Barcelona © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
Note the schoolboy crudity of the hair drawn under her arms and crotch. There are three or four of these ‘humorous compositions’ in the show, a selection of the scores Picasso apparently knocked off. They bring together several features of his approach:
- Humour – obviously they’re for fun.
- Caricature – exaggerating the serious bespectacled intellectual Sabartes into a ludicrous parody.
- It’s a close friend, one of the gang, a member of his circle.
- It’s rude i.e. sexual in broad outline and in pubic detail.
- It’s subversive of an ‘official’ image.
- It’s quick quick quick, a hastily knocked-off jeu d’esprit.
By starting with a selection of Picasso’s caricatures, and showing their recurrence throughout his career, the exhibition suggests that speed, and exaggeration, are a kind of fundamental approach which underlay many works which superficially appear so very different in style.
Self portraits
The exhibition tells us that his first ten years or so featured the most self portraits, as Picasso used himself as subject matter, restlessly trying out styles. The one above was done when he was just 16. 10 years later comes the amazing Self-portrait with a palette, with its use of a primitive mask-like face, its emphasis on the image of the artist as working man, with brawny bulging muscles. But it is the tan-and-grey colour palette which also impresses. The commentary points out the debt to Cezanne, who died when Picasso was 25, and of whom he later said, ‘We are all his children’.
Self-Portrait with Palette by Pablo Picasso (1906) Philadelphia Museum of Art: A. E. Gallatin Collection 1950 © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2016
Individuals
Unlike most painters in history, Picasso didn’t paint from commissions. He painted who he wanted to, generally friends, fellow artists or patrons. In a sense he created ‘circles’ like that original circle in the cafe in Barcelona, wherever he went, and then subjected them to intense investigations through the style of the moment.
Thus, only four years after the primitivism of the Self-portrait with a palette, comes this high point of analytical cubism, a portrait of the German art historian and collector, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Apparently the poor man sat for it on over 20 occasions. On reflection, this suggests the effort Picasso put into his cubist compositions. Later works don’t often match this amount of labour.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, autumn 1910 by Pablo Picasso (1910) Art Institute of Chicago © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
Olga Khokhlova
It’s a very good idea to have grouped the works into themes; it brings structure to what sometimes threatens to become an overwhelming inundation of images. Even in the final, very big room, containing maybe thirty-plus works, they have been carefully arranged into pairs or trios which the (excellently informative) audioguide compares and contrasts, to bring out Picasso’s use of different approaches for different subjects. I think the show has been excellently curated, arranged and displayed.
An obvious place where this grouping pays dividends is in the room devoted to Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s first wife. She was a dancer with the Ballets Russes when Picasso met her in Rome in 1917, on a commission to create the set and designs for a production of Eric Satie’s ballet, Parade. (It is fascinating to learn that dwelling among Italian architecture for a few months had a classicising effect on Picasso’s style and that this was well-suited to Olga’s own classical, symmetrical good looks and her litheness and elegance as a trained dancer.)
The room contains several busts of her, as well as photos. In a darkened side room 4 minutes of silent black and white home movies of Pablo, Olga and their dogs play on a loop. But it is three major paintings which dominate.
My favourite is Olga in an Armchair, painted in 1917. In fact it was based on a photo (in the show). I like the way it is realistic but unfinished. I like her doll-like expression. Five years later, this portrait of Olga in a brown dress is recognisably the same person, but with something of the blankness of the eyes from the 1906 self-portrait.
Portrait of Olga Picasso by Pablo Picasso (1923) Private Collection © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
None of these pretty traditional depictions prepare you for the leap to this 1935 portrait. The commentary goes heavy on a biographical interpretation, pointing out that by this stage the marriage was on the rocks and Olga had become withdrawn and depressed, anxious not only about her philandering husband but about her family who were suffering badly in Stalin’s Russia.
Woman in a Hat (Olga) by Pablo Picasso (1935) Musée national d’art moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
Just as interesting or valid, is to see it through the prism of Picasso’s attempts to find a semi-abstract style adequate to the troubled times, with Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin in power. The following year the Spanish Civil war would break out and the strangely childish, half-abstract depiction of the human (and animal) figures would reach its apotheosis in the famous political painting, Guernica.
The very first wall label explains that Picasso’s main subject for most of his career was the human figure and that the majority of portraits are of single figures, not groups.
Women as muse
The big room at the end of the exhibition contains works from the 1930s to the 1970s and is a bit overwhelming. the grouping methodology works well to introduce and compare works on a similar theme or of the same person.
Most if not all the portraits in this final room are of women. The internet supplies a handy list of the main women in his colourful love life, and the dates of their involvement:
- Fernande Olivier (1904 to 1911)
- Eva Gouel (1912 to her death in 1915)
- Olga Khokhlova (married 1918, to her death in 1955, mother of Paulo)
- Marie-Thérèse Walter (1927 to 1935, mother of Maya)
- Dora Maar (1936 to 1944)
- Françoise Gilot (1944 to 1953, mother of Claude and Paloma)
- Geneviève Laporte (during the 1950s)
Marie-Thérèse was ‘the first blonde’ he’d had an affair with and his works of her are full of a golden yellow. This last room opens with
- Woman in a yellow armchair (1932)
Having closely inspected a dozen or more caricatures, cartoons and comic sketches tends to bring out the cartoonish elements in this painting: the cartoon eye and face, the half-hearted attempt at the hands (more like cats paws), the two breasts thrown in, just in case. As the commentary says this is one of countless brightly coloured works which draw comparison for its emphasis in colour and design with his great contemporary and rival, Matisse.
Dora Maar and the war
But, in this selection at any rate, it’s Dora Maar who makes more of an impression. She was his inspiration from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936) to the Liberation of France (1944) and the images of her accentuate nerviness, worry and anguish. She is represented in many works of the time which show a woman weeping.
- La femme qui pleure (1937)
I assume there’s a word for this style – the style of weeping woman and Guernica, but I don’t know what it is. Here is Dora with her face contorted into a corkscrew of anguish, and the brilliant detail of her blood red nails gripping the chair rests like a harpy.
Woman in a Hat, 9 June 1941 by Pablo Picasso (1941) Musée Picasso, Paris. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2016 © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée Picasso de Paris) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016
In the creative and thought-provoking manner of this exhibition, this painting is hung next to a contemporaneous one of Nusch Éluard, performer, model and wife of the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard.
Apparently she was thin and lithe to begin with v she had at one time been a street performer. But the commentary emphasises that the grey palette and flat chest are emphasising the grim atmosphere and privations of wartime Paris under the Nazis, a time of collaboration, fear and torture. The commentary compares the expressionist angst of the first image with the more romantic pathos of the second; but neither word really seems adequate to describe the mood of each painting.
Again, the ideas of caricature and simplification, so firmly established at the start of the exhibition, seem more useful reference points.
Dialogue with tradition
Towards the end the exhibition focuses on works in which the ageing Picasso consciously engaged with the tradition of Western art. There’s a series of painting based on the Las meninas of Spain’s greatest artist, Velasquez, and etchings which evoke or depict Raphael, and Rembrandt.
Raphael is referenced in cartoonish spoofs of Ingres’ painting Raphael and La Fornarina (1814). This shows the great Renaissance painter Raphael (well known, apparently, for his love affairs) with his mistress on his lap. In 1968, at the age of 87, Pablo Picasso created a series of twenty five pornographic etchings inspired by the legend of Raphael and La Fornarina.
We know from his biography that Picasso was a virile, highly sexed man, with a string of wives and mistresses, strongly inspired, in fact almost exclusively devoted to depictions of the human body in countless styles and ways. But only in his old age did he either feel confident enough, or was society finally ‘liberated’ enough, for him to create images of the penis, and they abound in these etchings.
- Raphaël et la Fornarina. XVI: Pope Contemplating on Toilet while Viewing Couple Making Love
- Raphael et la Fornarina. IV: With the Pope pulling the curtain
An embarrassment of riches
This is a brilliant, well organised, informative and beautiful exhibition. Everywhere you turn there is something new to laugh at or marvel at. What a giant! With a subject as rich as this there are numerous ways to slice through it, to analyse it, countless threads to follow:
- to go chronologically and watch him evolve through his styles
- to take each piece in its own right and judge them on their use of colour, composition, lines and angles
- to dwell on the biographical context – on the soap opera of his numerous lovers and muses
- to catch references to earlier painters who Picasso revered such as Velázquez and Rembrandt, and enjoy the jokes and variations on themes
- to focus on the self-portrait as a distinct genre, with reference to the traditions’ great masters and how Picasso twisted it out of recognition – Picasso self portraits aged 18, 25 and 90
Sex and style
At several moments the commentary mentioned the ‘mystery’ of a work and its impact. Although I appreciated the breath-taking brilliance of many of the works here, I wasn’t moved by many. In fact I think the mystery of Picasso’s art is the way there is no mystery about it. Because it is so rooted on the human figure and on private individuals there is little or nothing to say about the depiction of history or politics in them, there are no landscapes and little or no wildlife or plants or flowers. All these really is is his biography, which often boils down to an account of the women in his life, pretty logically, since so many of his works are portraits of the current woman in his life.
And sex. One of the earliest private caricatures is a pretty explicit depiction of one of his Barcelona friends and a courtesan, and the notion of virility and masculinity runs beneath all these depictions of women until it emerges in the pornographic etchings late in life. It’s not difficult to associate the sexual act with the creative act, or the sexual urge with the creative urge.
Since the post-structuralist turn in critical theory around 1970 (in the work of French writers like Roland Barthes or Michel Foucault) sex – and especially its academically respectable form, ‘desire’ – have invaded large parts of critical and aesthetic thought. And feminist theory’s focus on the wrongs of men and the injustices suffered by women have given rise to plenty of ‘revisionist’ accounts of Picasso’s often brutal and manipulative relationships with women. Fine.
These are just some of the ways critics attempt to give a meaning to Picasso’s work, to kind of ground or root it in something apart from itself. But although I think this is a major and very successful exhibition, and confirms the extraordinary breadth and range of Picasso’s styles and visions, for me, ultimately, it confirmed the sense that there is no ‘mystery’ about Picasso’s art because there is no depth.
It is pure art in the sense that it is about the style itself. The restless moving from one style to another, the countless variations and iterations of new methods and approaches – and the hurried lack of completion of so many of the works, particularly the slapdash late works – these all bespeak a lack of concern about ‘truth’, or ‘finish’ or ‘completeness’ or ‘depth’ or ‘meaning’.
The art works may well be, at a superficial level, ‘about’ this or that man or woman in this or that mood or setting – and scholars can flesh out each piece with background information, biographical context and so on. But these works seem to me to be much more ‘about’ the act of creation, about being an artist, about ‘arting’. More than any other artist I know Picasso’s art is ‘about’ the act of creating art, it rejoices in the endless fecundity of its own creativity.
Videos
The National Portrait Gallery has produced some useful introductory videos:
In this one critic Sarfraz Manzoor picks his five highlights from the show.
Related links
- Picasso’s Portraits continues at the National Portrait Gallery until 5 February 2017
- Guardian review by Jonathan Jones
- Guardian review by Laura Cumming
- Telegraph review by Mark Hudson
More Picasso reviews
- Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy @ Tate Modern (August 2018)
- In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900 to 1910 by Sue Roe (2014)
- Picasso Museum @ Barcelona (July 2017)
- Picasso and Modern British Art @ Tate Britain (July 2012)
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