Picasso's Demoiselles: The Untold Origins of a Modern Masterpiece 9781478002048

Citation preview

Picasso’s Demoiselles

The Untold Origins of a Modern Masterpiece

Picasso’s Demoiselles Su z a n n e P r e s t o n B l i e r

Duke University Press  Durham and London  2019

© 2019 Suzanne Preston Blier All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper ∞ Cover designed by Drew Sisk. Text designed by Mindy Basinger Hill. Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro and The Sans by BW&A Books Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Blier, Suzanne Preston, author. Title: Picasso’s Demoiselles, the untold origins of a modern masterpiece / Suzanne Preston Blier. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2018047262 (print) LCCN 2019005715 (ebook) ISBN 9781478002048 (ebook) ISBN 9781478000051 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 9781478000198 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Picasso, Pablo, 1881–1973. Demoiselles d’Avignon. | Picasso, Pablo, 1881–1973—Criticism and interpretation. | Women in art. | Prostitution in art. | Cubism—France. Classification: LCC ND553.P5 (ebook) | LCC ND553.P5 A635 2019 (print) | DDC 759.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047262   Cover art: (top to bottom): Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, detail, March 26, 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York (Online Picasso Project) opp.07:001 | Anonymous artist, Adouma mask (Gabon), detail, before 1820. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013 | Postcard of people in the Bamako market (Mali), detail, 1906. François-Edmond Fortier postcard. Types de Femmes series | Anonymous artists, Republic of the Congo and Gabon masks, detail, 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate II. Illustrator: E. Hugelshofer. Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the History of Art and Architecture Department, The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, and the Dean of Social Science at Harvard University, all of which provided funds toward the publication of this book.

F O R J O C E LYN

This page intentionally left blank

Contents ix Preface 1 Introduction 19 O N E   Setting, Sources, Titles, and Time 52 T W O   The Making of a Painting 81 T H R E E   Art in the Flesh 111 F O U R   The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 152 F I V E   L’Oiseau du Bénin 185 S I X   The Global Brothel 222 S E V E N   Le Bordel Philosophique 264 C O N C L U S I O N S   The Creative Nexus 297 Acknowledgments 300 Sketchbooks: New Dating 305 Chronology 312 List of Illustrations 333 Notes 365 References 415 Index

This page intentionally left blank

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in Tomás R. Villasante,

Las ciudades hablan, 264

Preface Mysteries of the Canvas It is hard to imagine that much more could be written about Pablo Picasso’s iconic painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (plate 1). The work has been the focus of dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and several films; the canvas’s centennial anniversary in 2007 heralded new interest and writing as well.1 One of the world’s most famous and complex paintings, Les Demoiselles still remains ­elusive — a work that beacons fresh engagement. Generations of scholarly writings have left the canvas rich in academic patina, but the viewer and reader often dissatisfied and hungry for more. Over a century of artistic explanation of Les Demoiselles has failed to answer key questions about the work. Who and what does it depict? When precisely was it painted? Why did Picasso incorporate so many disparate styles? Why did he introduce African masks? Did he repaint key figures? Whatever the reasons for the lacunae, few would disagree with one Picasso scholar, who asks, “What is the modern art-­historical equivalent of the Greatest Story Ever Told? What else but the monumental Demoiselles d’Avignon? . . .” 2 What “makes” Les Demoiselles so important in art history is not an easy question to answer. The views of scholars range from celebrating the work as

the “first truly twentieth-­century painting” to decrying it as “a ruthless assault on the past,” describing it as everything from a canvas that “anticipates the end of painting” to an act of “patricide against the Western tradition.” 3 Consistent with these statements, art critic (and Picasso’s secretary) Christian Zervos recalled hearing Picasso boldly state, “With me, a painting is a sum of destructions.” 4 While some critics have seen Les Demoiselles as “a backwards-­looking, unoriginal work of art, a recycling of the 19th century’s biggest clichés,” others have identified it as an act of social provocation reflecting Picasso’s deep concern about the social conditions of the era (Belgian colonial activities in Congo among these).5 In some respects all these descriptors, as diverse as they are, have certain merit, but none gets us any closer to understanding why the painting was envisioned as it was and what makes it so transformative. For these, as well as myriad other reasons, it is clear that “despite the wealth of research that has now been placed at our disposal, the picture itself remains something of an enigma.” 6 Picasso’s first known engagement on the Demoiselles project began in October 1906, just before he turned twenty-­five. The canvas was likely painted during a relatively short period of time, evidence suggests on the evening of March 26, 1907 (see chapter 2). It was created in his tiny, rather grimy studio in a rambling and drafty wooden former piano factory colloquially known to the artist’s friends as the Bateau-­Lavoir (the laundry boat). The entry stood adjacent to a small tree-­shaded square at the summit of Mont-­Sacré-­Coeur. The bevy of tiny broad-­windowed studios inside this structure unfolded, accordion style, down the back of the steep slope opposite rue Ravignan. Most of the residents (many of whom were artists) occupied spaces on the level immediately below the entry or on the lower floor beneath it. Max Jacob and André Salmon, who also lived here, were among Picasso’s closest friends. The massive Sacré-­Coeur Cathedral nearby was still under construction, and parts of the steep slopes of the butte were given to small agricultural plots and grazing sheep.7 Set atop Paris’s somewhat seedy Montmartre neighborhood in the eighteenth arrondissement, the Bateau-­Lavoir remained a sizable distance from the life and main attractions of the city below. This setting provided a degree of seclusion, although Picasso and his friends made regular trips to cafés and other spots in the city center. We know that in October 1906 Picasso was already making drawings for the work, inspired in part by an African sculpture owned by Henri Matisse (chapter 3). Most likely Picasso acquired the large canvas around the same time. If, as I have discovered Picasso first applied pigment to the canvas on March x

preface

26, 1907 (chapter 2), the process of conceiving and creating Les Demoiselles was a relatively long one. Of the roughly five months, most were spent on sketches or studies although the amount of actual time painting was quite curtailed. As Seckel wrote, “For many long days and nights, he drew, concretizing the abstract and reducing the concrete to essentials. Never was labor less rewarded with joy, and without his former youthful enthusiasm Picasso undertook a large canvas that was intended to be the first fruit of his experiments.” 8 By this time Picasso had been living off and on in Paris for six years and had begun to earn a reputation as a bold artist. As noted in a 1901 catalog of the Galerie Berthe Weill, “Picasso is all nerve, all verve, all impetuosity . . . he constructs brilliant, solid works which are the delight of those who have a taste for dazzling painting in colours that are sometimes crudely brutal, sometimes intentionally unusual.” 9 These qualities can also be seen in Les Demoiselles. It was an ambitious project from the outset. As Leo Stein later told Alfred Barr about a fall 1906 visit to Picasso’s studio and the “huge” empty canvas that awaited him, “Before he had painted a stroke, the artist had had [it] expensively lined as if it were already a classic work.” 10 Since an expensive lining is usually added only after the painting is complete and is rarely done by the artist, most likely Picasso mentioned this to impress his patron and encourage the latter’s continued interest. Picasso’s efforts at this time convinced the Steins to rent a second studio for him in the lower level of the Bateau­-­Lavoir, where he could work on this larger-­scale work in greater privacy.11 Questions of meaning are more complex. In a letter that André Breton penned to Jacques Doucet in 1924, some seventeen years after the work’s completion, imploring him to acquire Les Demoiselles, which had up until then remained rolled up in Picasso’s studio, Breton wrote, “Perhaps you were hoping I would talk about it more directly, but it is so difficult. And would it not be lowering it to submit it to rational critique, when what we are dealing with is, for me, a sacred image?” 12 Aura enriches and complicates our understanding of the work, thus adding not only to its sizable mystical charge but also to the thick legacy of scholarship and engagement that has accrued to it over the years. As Picasso would note, “Pictures live only by their legends — ​­by what men differently think and say as they look at them, now or later.” 13 And since this canvas was probably the most influential work of Picasso’s career, one whose core elements he returned to over the course of his long life, this statement carries even more weight. For Michael Duffy, the conservator who helped to clean the painting for its preface

xi

2007 centennial celebration at the Museum of Modern Art, “There’s something about it that gives you a jolt every time you get near it. . . . When you get up close you sort of lose yourself in the way the paint is applied, but when you step back you say, ‘Wow! Look at this painting I’m next to!’ It’s always a shock.” 14 Many art lovers today still join daily pilgrimages to the Museum of Modern Art’s fifth-­ floor galleries, waiting for the swell of crowds to dissipate before them, staring with curiosity and awe at the canvas, adding to its patina-­like accretion of visual and cultural power. In some ways, considering the work’s unique aura, other aspects of meaning are irrelevant, but the new materials I have discovered and explore in this volume offer new and important insights into the very nature and significance of the canvas as well. Early on I accorded each of the demoiselles a name for easy identification purposes. From left to right these female subjects include the Egyptian/Asian; the half-­standing Caucasian; the central ­Caucasian/ central figure; the standing African; and the crouching African/crouching figure. Their identities help inform our understanding of the canvas.

My Engagement with the Project I never anticipated writing about Picasso, much less this most famous of his paintings. My main research subject is African art, yet against the odds, various materials related to Les Demoiselles kept falling into my lap as I investigated other projects. At a certain point it seemed as if the painting challenged me to pick up the diverse pieces of its puzzle to try to make sense of it all. Over time I felt that I had little choice but to follow the trail. Eventually I came to realize that I was particularly well positioned to take up this monumental canvas anew. My expertise in African art allowed me to explore the canvas with fresh eyes, using new lines of investigation and notably different source materials. For me it was not primarily about the complexity of the composition or technique or questions of prostitution or meaning. Instead it was the variety of newly discovered (or previously undiscussed) historical sources that offered me additional clues into the painting and its many mysteries. With these materials, decoding the canvas in more complex ways became a key goal. While some of these new sources comprise illustrated books that Picasso studied closely in this era, others include a studio receipt illuminating Picasso’s favorable financial situation and ability to devote five months to this project, along with two photographs that Picasso scholars have long overlooked. One photo (figure 27) allows us to date the work more securely and also offers clues xii

preface

as to the painting’s meaning; a second photo (figure 151) presents Picasso’s African family ties in Cuba. Other sources I have discovered that Picasso was exploring in this era range from plaster casts of important sculptural arts (figures 52–53, 62–68) to a popular American cartoon series (plate 8), and from women’s fashion (figures 164–169) to colonial lithographs (figures 144–146). Each in its own way informs the canvas and what Picasso was thinking about as he worked on it. This volume is in some ways the story of my discovery of these new Picasso sources, and particularly the sources that propelled me to take up this research subject, as well as my own journey as an art historian addressing this material. As such, there is something at once professional and personal in my quest. In this investigation I returned to fundamentals, to look at the canvas and the vast array of studies associated with it as if for the first time. I reread and reviewed what had been written. I relooked at Picasso’s own statements, as well as the writings and artworks of fellow artists and friends. I explored the array of published sources that frame this era, as well as the various sites where Picasso lived and worked. I engaged with the canvas on its own terms and through the various pathways that it opened up. The reading I offer reflects as well the methodologies I have developed over my career as an African art scholar. I use an African art specialist’s eye to find insights into both the canvas and the myriad related evidence. Equally important, after many decades in which Les Demoiselles has been largely denuded of African imprint, I centrally reintegrate Africa, along with other influences, into the discussion. In this 1906–7 era, while the term art nègre (black art) may also reference Oceanic art, the key sources known to have been employed by Picasso are African works. In my exploration of this theme, I draw on a long career of engaging racially pejorative depictions and subject framing of African culture in my teaching and writing. While Picasso’s engagement with African art was a largely celebratory one, the artist included an array of negative racial elements common in caricatures of the era. In a similarly paradoxical way he mockingly employs simian features in both some African renderings and his own self-­portraits (figure 291). Contradictions also abound in both Picasso’s treatment of women, and in his later lifestyle and political activities, in which he cojoined a wealthy Riviera life on the Côte d’Azur with membership in the French Communist party and ongoing financial support for its charities and newspaper. Paradoxes of striking complexity also enrich Les Demoiselles. My engagement with Les Demoiselles has also been affected by my being a preface

xiii

female scholar. In some ways my approach is a feminist one in so far as it broadens the canvas from a simple brothel setting depicting sex workers standing before a client to a representation of women of multiple periods and contexts who not only have sex but also give birth, and through this act help populate the world. The rather subdued treatment of these women, with their genitalia covered, is consistent with this, as are the diverse global artworks — ​­Egyptian, classical European, African, and others — ​­on which the women in this canvas are modeled. This complexity around gender is all the more salient in light of recent discussions of misogyny regarding Picasso and the Demoiselles canvas specifically. While my book is not the venue to address larger misogynistic critiques of Picasso or the painting, with its perceived brothel and sex worker theme,15 it is worth noting that the more complex female subject matter and setting discussed here make the canvas a notably different one than many have seen to date. And whereas the painting’s gaze was long assumed to be male (specifically the brothel patron, or “john”), broadening the identities of the female subjects to be lovers, mothers, sisters, and daughters not only enriches the painting but also coincides with the person that Picasso most likely envisioned to be its owner and principal viewer: Gertrude Stein. A traditional brothel scene would have had far less appeal to Stein as a woman, a lesbian, and a leading art patron. My approach more largely is an ethnographic one, a methodology framed in part around processes of artistic engagement, in which I focus my attention on the events and peoples identified with this canvas (ethno-­, “people,” and -­graphy, “writing”).16 And, in the end, the larger narrative makes itself complete only through the reassembling of its diverse parts and the “thick description” that reveals how the research and its narrative affect the whole.17 Consistent with this I have sought to highlight the context of my research and my role in it in the various chapters that follow. In many ways, as one scholar explains, “The story of the canvas is . . . a product of how the story is told, no less than the Demoiselles is a product of how it became what it is.” 18 In October 2013, I visited the now famous Bateau-­Lavoir, more than a century after Picasso had painted Les Demoiselles there. While the building burned down in the 1970s, it was replaced with a facsimile, and the setting still carries a decided aura. On this trip I followed Picasso’s shadow to other places visited while he created the painting. Some of the places he frequented no longer exist; however, many do, and still offer insight. At the modest wooden bench and table setting of the nearby Au Lapin Agile on rue Saint-­Vincent (figures 4 and 5), I experienced the larger-­than-­life plaster sculptures that then, as now, frame the xiv

preface

cramped seating area as well as an ominous human skull posed above the rear corner fireplace, which recalls the tavern’s earlier name, Cabaret des Assassins. This is still a site of rich conversation and aesthetic engagement. I traversed Picasso’s pathways from the Bateau-­Lavoir to Matisse’s apartment overlooking the Seine on quai Saint-­Michel, across from Notre-­Dame Cathedral, to the café Le Départ around the corner on the boulevard Saint-­Michel. I stopped at the Cluny Museum (now Musée national du Moyen Âge) and took in the grotesque face of a figure with a wide screaming mouth guarding the courtyard well (figure 8). For Picasso, who was fascinated with medieval art in this era, this kind of sculpture carried an appeal similar to other “primitive” works. I traveled up the boulevard Saint-­Michel from the Seine to see Gertrude Stein’s apartment at 7 rue de Fleurus. Continuing on this very elegant narrow street, I turned onto the busy rue de Rennes, where Père Sauvage once sold African art to Matisse and others. I had lunch not far away at La Closerie des Lilas on boulevard du Montparnasse (figures 6 and 7). Here Picasso first met Leo Stein. It was at this brasserie that Picasso and his “gang” of artists, poets, and intellectual friends also met every Tuesday night for wide-­ranging discussions about issues of the day.19 It was likely after one such evening discussion that Picasso began to apply paint to Les Demoiselles’ canvas. After lunch, when I stepped outside the Lilas, a sculpture across the street beckoned me from its perch at the edge of Jardin du Luxembourg (figure 280)— ​­the Fontaine de l’Observatoire (1874) by Jean-­Baptiste Carpeaux. This sculptural group includes four women representing distinct races and regions of the world who lift their arms to hold a giant celestial globe. The work’s striking racial diversity has a similarity to Picasso’s rendering of the various women in Les Demoiselles. I made additional visits, on this and other trips, to cemeteries and Picasso’s memorial for his friend Guillaume Apollinaire near the church of Saint-­ Germain-­des-­Prés, to the plaster cast collections at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine (figures 52, 53, and 62) that once were part of the Trocadéro museum. I visited the Petit Palais, where a fall 1906 exhibition took place that was important for Cézanne, and where Picasso’s two main competitors, Matisse and André Derain, exhibited at the 1906 Salon d’Automne. Across the street from Le Petit Palais stands the even larger Grand Palais, where in 1966 the large Picasso retrospective was held. Here I explored a stunning retrospective of Georges Braque as I contemplated Picasso’s changed world in the months and years following his completion of Les Demoiselles. From here I walked down to the Seine to the original site of the Salon des Indépendents at the Grandes Serres preface

xv

de la Ville de Paris (Cours-­la-­Reine — ​­also called Grande Serre de l’Alma), built for the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Picasso attended the Salon during or soon after its opening on March 20, 1907, and saw the revolutionary new paintings of Derain (Bathers; figure 20) and Matisse (Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra); figure 19). In the days after this visit he put brush to his large canvas, giving life to his five women. These experiences brought me a deeper understanding of the history of the painting. Nearly every place where I walked or ate as I was shadowing Picasso in Paris inspired me to think about the canvas in a new way. On the choice of chapter epigraphs: These statements, all of which are credited to Picasso, are intended to serve as individual guideposts to reflect the specific chapter aims and as part of the larger whole. Each of them sets out in pithy shorthand some underlying truth about the way in which Picasso worked, or the way in which he viewed and utilized his own art and that of others—his work philosophy, if you will—that helps us understand how and why Picasso looked to the past, and to the future, as he created Les Demoiselles. Rather than addressing each singly in the initial pages of each chapter, or as a footnote therein, I have chosen instead to integrate these together as part of the conclusions, in the final pages of the conclusion. This placement of the discussion will serve to further concretize the content and impact of these epigraphs not only for each chapter but also for the painting itself, as well as for this volume. I hope that each reader, when setting out to take the journey through this volume’s co-joined visual narrative and written narratives, will also turn to these epigraphs as part of the larger experience of core signal points that complement and enhance the rich image—and reading—engagement that this book offers. A note on images: Selecting and publishing artworks involves its own complexities. Together with Duke University Press, a decision was made to include eight pages of larger color plates — ​­reserved for works most dependent on color — ​­while the remaining works would appear as black-­and-­white images. Most images are shown as smaller thumbnails, similar to those now common in Google searches and elsewhere. These images function in part as indexical references to works that can be examined closely elsewhere, for example, in the online Picasso Project.20

xvi

preface

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was. P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in Ingo F. Walther, Pablo Picasso,

1883–1973, 24

Introduction Most scholars today see Pablo Picasso’s iconic painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (plate 1) as a work about five prostitutes who boldly stare down their male bidders, a theory rooted in part in Picasso’s purported discomfort with women. The latter tensions are thought to be reflected in the strange African masks that several of the figures wear. It is hard to imagine that a work of this complexity, one that Picasso labored on for more than five months, had such a porous and, indeed, insecure foundation. In this book I reveal instead that the painting is richly layered, multivalent, and far more interesting. My reading sees these figures not only as sexual beings but also as mothers, grandmothers, lovers, sisters, and both family and race progenitors — ​­in short as women more broadly defined in their myriad roles. This is based in large part on an array of new evidence that has escaped scholars to date, materials that inspire new questions about the painting. Through these sources I have broadened the painting’s purview considerably, expanding it from its narrow brothel setting and transforming the five occupants into global women of multiple eras and identities. This reading is consistent with the larger colonial world Picasso and his friends inhabited, as well as core interests of the period in terms of both evolution and ideas of origin. Early writers on the canvas sometimes viewed it as unfinished or as a painting that reflects several distinctive phases (generally seen as divided between

the right and left side of the canvas, the “African” figures and the others).1 Two different artistic periods also have been proposed, whose stylistic contradictions remain unresolved.2 Another view is that it marks within its own history the shift from narrative to allegorical painting.3 These vantages draw their edge from the sharply angular features of the right-­hand women and, even more, from the diversity of the styles with which each is rendered. We now know that the different styles were included from the outset, and the canvas changed relatively little over its history (chapter 2). Nonetheless, it was in part for this reason that many saw the painting as a transitional work.4 This was Barr’s principal framing of the canvas in the first major study of it, published in 1936, just before it came to the United States. To Alfred Barr, Les Demoiselles might “be called the first cubist picture for the breaking up of natural forms . . . into a semiabstract all over design of tilting shifting planes,” 5 and he identified it as “an invaluable lexicon for the early phase of Cubism.” 6 Not surprisingly, African art figured prominently in the shaping of Barr’s Les Demoiselles lexicon. While later scholars have debated the work’s primacy in cubism’s development, what also must be emphasized is that Barr’s exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art in 1936 displayed a number of Picasso’s works from this early period (figure 338), alongside African sculptures (figure 99). This was one of several vital turning points in the way that African art was understood in the West. And for this reason, Barr’s perspective is also critical to understanding the larger development of the field of art history during the last century.7 Both Robert Goldwater’s seminal book Primitivism in Modern Art (1938) and the recent exhibition Picasso Primitif at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2017, under director Yves Le Fur, are framed along lines of engagement that complement those earlier introduced by Barr. Summarizing Barr’s perspective, Picasso biographer John Richardson notes that the quintet of women was seen to constitute little more than “a rite of passage: what he called an ‘exorcism.’ The Demoiselles d’Avignon cleared the way for Cubism.” 8 In this sense the painting assumed qualities of a “signal,” evidencing where art had been and where it was going (the future); the work became something out of which something else was born. Regardless of whether the painting represents a step on the road to cubism, this vantage offers little insight into the canvas itself, or into what Picasso was thinking as he worked on it. While the artist rarely commented directly on interpretations of this or other canvases, he later insisted, “Arts of transition do not exist,” and noted that “if we are to apply the law of evolution and transformation to art, then we have to admit that all art is transitory.” Picasso’s paradoxical statement says a lot and very little.9 2

introduction

What many researchers today identify as the most groundbreaking study on Les Demoiselles is a lengthy 1972 essay by Leo Steinberg, edited and republished in 1988. To Steinberg, the shock and seeming violence of this painting stemmed from the work’s power of displacement, such that the beholder in assessing — ​ ­like a john — ​­the relative physical merits of women in a brothel discovers the shock of being stared at and evaluated in turn by them. The thick slashing, staccato brushstrokes and eliding forms add to the disquiet and terror of this encounter. Steinberg’s powerful and thickly illustrated essay refocused attention to other aspects of the painting: “No modern painting engages you with such brutal immediacy. . . . The unity of the picture, famous for its internal stylistic disruptions, resides above all in the startled consciousness of a viewer who sees himself seen.” 10 The essay was published before the trove of preliminary studies for the canvas were brought to light, but when they were, Steinberg considered them to pose little challenge to this thesis. In the end, for Steinberg, the “performative” nature of the painting is especially important — ​­its ability to move us as viewers. Steinberg’s tightly argued essay dropped Barr’s cubism argument entirely (as well as questions of its African art precedents). Instead it led us at once to engage the painting’s perceived subject matter (prostitutes, sex) and its reception — ​­in particular the ways in which we experience the reverse gaze of the women’s staring eyes. In the end, the argument is essentially about the spectators instead of the strangely staring women; we give the painting meaning through our responses to it. Metaphors of eroticism, penetration, palpitation, touching, throbbing, sucking, discharging, and voyeurism fill Steinberg’s text and, perforce, his reading of the painting. The fact that the five women simultaneously draw us into their space and propel us away reflects a vision deeply contradictory and paradoxical (something compared to the act of coitus itself) but also adds to the aura.11 The article is so dense and tightly argued that it leaves us almost breathless, gulping for space in which to engage alternate evidence and viewpoints. Yet in the end it is hard to see that the stares of Picasso’s demoiselles are that much different than those of the courtesans of Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia, among others. Whatever the problems of this theory, it has remained a dominant one, and other scholars have amplified on it: Picasso biographer Pierre Daix accordingly identified the work with Picasso’s “obsessive fear of the destructive power of women.” 12 Biographical interpretations added autobiographical details that seem to convey “a crisis of a personal, psychological order.” 13 Not surprisingly, feminist scholars countered. One pointed out that the work had been transintroduction

3

formed into “a narrative of exclusion, . . . a story told by a heterosexual white male . . . for an audience answering to the same description.” 14 Significantly, Steinberg later stepped back significantly from his highly sexualized reading, pointing out in a footnote, “Now, sixteen years later, with formalism in full retreat, my argument for the sexual charge of the picture seems almost embarrassingly banal.” 15 Yet one could say without the dominant sexual charge of this argument, it is not clear what remains. Indeed, the more one thinks about Steinberg’s framing, the more problematic it becomes. Steinberg believed, like others before him (falsely, as it turns out — ​­chapter 2), that Picasso had significantly repainted the canvas, adding African masks to several of Caucasian figures only later. For Steinberg, “the assimilation of African forms was but the final step in the continuing realization of an idea — ​­the trauma of sexual encounter experienced as an animalistic clash, a stripping away even of personal love.” 16 This theory is today as strange as it is pejorative and, indeed, rather racially perverse. This view also is notably different from an array of statements that Picasso made not only about Africans but also their arts, and in addition, his use of diverse sources, only now coming to light. These and Picasso’s many studies and array of artworks from this and latter periods tell a very different story. William Rubin, the cocurator of MoMA’s “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art exhibition in 1984, expanded Steinberg’s two-­pronged focus on sex and beholding by furthering the exploration of personal trauma and describing the painting as a “terrifying night journey of the soul.” For Rubin, Picasso’s trauma had been exacerbated by the breakup with his lover, Fernande Olivier, in the summer of 1907 (an event that actually occurred several months after the canvas was completed). Rubin insisted, “For me, the final picture is less a Dionysian orgy than a sexual battleground and more a project addressing oppositional values of ‘beauty and ugliness, age and youth, human and animal.’” 17 A somewhat related theory by Yve-­A lain Bois evokes deeper castration fears, attributed to Picasso in a Freudian reading concomitant with the artist’s shared concerns and ambitions for not only artistic success but also progeny.18 The presence of African masks and culture here became further grist for derision. As Rubin explained, “To the extent that the ‘fetishes’ of tribal peoples were known at all, they were not even considered art, but extravagant artifacts of untutored ‘barbarians.’” 19 Hal Foster took the Steinberg, Rubin, and Bois narratives further while shifting them in a different direction. He addressed Picasso’s canvas as “an extraordinary psycho-­aesthetic move by which otherness was used to ward away 4

introduction

others (woman, death, the primitive).” 20 He writes that Les Demoiselles is only the most extreme instance of this “perfect image of the savagery that lurks in the midst of civilization.” 21 For Foster, the work “coded” a “set of oppositions light/ dark, r­ ational/irrational, savage, despite its obvious prejudice.” 22 The painting becomes one of Western and/or male “fear of loss,” the “animalistic nature” of women, “gender subjugation,” and “excessive black sexuality.” 23 While Picasso, consistent with many in his era, likely held views that today we would see as problematic with respect to Africa, and to other issues as well, the more recent dialectical framing seems strangely out of place for the earlier period; it is a notably postcolonial vision of Western guilt that does not fit with ideas and events in 1906–7. Moreover, terms such as “animalistic nature” and “excessive black sexuality” make the demoiselles canvas little more than a thick gloss of racial and gender prejudice.24 Walter Benjamin once observed, “There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” 25 For Les Demoiselles this necessarily not only must enfold the violent colonial legacy of Picasso’s era but also the rather barbaric readings that some scholars later proposed for this canvas.26 Discussions of primitivism in relation to Picasso’s engagement with African art are rich and varied;27 no discussion here will do justice to this complex topic, or heated discourses around it. The Picasso Primitif exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2017 is one of the latest. Picasso holds an uneasy position in regard to primitivist discussions as both the genius “discoverer” of African art in the West and the one who appropriated (stole) its key forms to promote his own advancement. Working in the complex and often deeply problematic era of the brutal colonial era, to say nothing of Picasso’s own difficult, sexist frisson, has charged the canvas with unique discursive and theoretical interest as well — ​­leaving the work, according to some academics, a highly problematic canvas.28 These concerns are often voiced in the context of the painting’s purported theme of sex workers being evaluated by a client. I argue here, however, that the canvas is not a literal reference to a brothel (with prostitutes) but rather le bordel  — ​­“a mess” or “a complex situation” in its more common French ­translation — ​­recalling the mess that the world itself represents, particularly vis-­ à-­vis issues of race, evolution, migration, and generational identity. In key ways the canvas also references the strikingly potent, almost paradoxical complexity (mess) of women as both sex objects and mothers (bearers of children), vaginas being vital for both. Understood in this is that a woman by her very nature often encapsulates the idioms of both virgin and whore. introduction

5

In the same way that the personal, sociopolitical, and economic background in which Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was created cannot be overlooked, we also cannot lose sight of the ethical morass in which so many African sculptures that Picasso sought to elevate to the status of “art” were collected in this era, artworks whose Western museum contexts still challenge today.29 Picasso’s extensive use of illustrated books in this canvas’s preparation is interesting here too, in part because it complicates and enriches the oft-­cited dualism evinced in Picasso’s portrayal of brothel prostitutes on the one hand and his visit to the Trocadéro to examine African art on the other. As we will see, both issues are framed differently in this volume. In short, this is a very different “primal” or primitivizing scene than has long been suggested,30 incorporating as central figures Africans, certainly, but also Europeans and Asians. Moreover, I see no distinct dualism around which idioms of aggression and narcissism are engaged. Nor is the canvas necessarily about the conflict evinced around male brothel client power expressions vis-­à-­vis largely disempowered sexualized others (female prostitutes). While it is important not to limit the work to a simple brothel scene, defined in large measure by male privilege in fantasizing and exploitating women, what I am arguing here is for a richer, broader way to look at this canvas (not only about sex acts) that is not a simple displacement of one meaning (or reading) for a different one. Instead, the work is shaped around more complex ideas of women as mothers (grandmothers, sisters, or friends) as much as women exclusively as sexual objects. The masks donned by the African women in turn are less of interest as literal weapons or protection than as reflections of the art styles each demoiselle “wears” to distinguish her specific region and era. This vantage also counters long-­standing binary views of primitive-­modern, or other, since all five women represent a very different (and often earlier) place and time, Europe among these. Moreover, Africa here is not isolated from the West but is a central part of the global whole. And in some ways, this is one of the most important things to recall about this canvas. We cannot overlook the fact that in the highly racialized colonial era in which Picasso and his contemporaries were working, Western forms of segregation were also being exported to the newly colonialized lands in Africa and elsewhere alongside European languages, religion, and infrastructure. The fact that Picasso has positioned African women here adjacent to their European comrades, in the same tightly constricted space — ​­indeed at the very front of the canvas — ​­is a powerful statement in any work, much less a canvas of this scale. Consistent with this, the work speaks to the imperative of 6

introduction

cultural, political, and artistic reintegration, whether we are talking about museum displays, art collecting practices, sources that artists use, or other arenas. In each context, what stands out is the focus on arts (and cultures) the world over stripped bare (of ritual and other superficial differences) and bridging, rather than reifying, long-­standing and notably patronizing hierarchies between socalled “civilized” and “tribal,” “illuminated” and “savage,” rational-­minded and fetish ­bound — ​­advanced not only in the Enlightenment and colonial era but also in some current theoretical vantages on the canvas. In this work, in brief, we can begin to see primitivism as neither a modernist trope nor a colonial “primitivizing” one (in this era, ancient, Byzantine, medieval, and Asian works were also considered “primitive” art) but rather as something deeply embedded in the very fabric of human identity, as a referent to all societies and all times. In addressing these questions of where we come from and where we are going, this issue, in large measure, is what makes Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon so revolutionary.

L’Art nègre There have long been questions about the importance of African art in Les Demoiselles, a subject that has engendered heated debates. Early on, many in Picasso’s circle identified this period as his art nègre era (a term then referring to both African and Oceanic art) — ​­among these Salmon, Jacob, Gertrude Stein, and Wilhelm Uhde.31 Accordingly, in Barr’s 1936 catalog, he simultaneously identified the painting as “the first cubist painting” and “the masterpiece of Picasso’s Negro period.” 32 André Malraux, in an interview with the artist in 1937, elaborated further on African art complexity, stating that such works “promulgated . . . the right to be arbitrary.” 33 Various scholars have explored the undercurrents of primitivism taken up by Picasso and others in this period — ​­Yve-­A lain Bois, Jack Flam, Patricia Leighten, and Ellen McBreen, among them. Primitivist tropes helped to reconnect one with the enduring legacy of the past (the primeval origins of humans) while also offering a way into the future that was unfolding.34 Related beliefs also maintained that African works had the power to carry Europeans back to “the origins” of Europe itself.35 Ellen McBreen notes of Matisse’s work in this same era that his “precise formal borrowings were shaped by . . . larger racial and cultural fantasies, transforming African sculpture into mythic objects promising both renewal and repression. This temporal dimension . . . is signaled by the introduction

7

deeply metaphoric language of time travel he would later use. . . . the principles that ‘go back,’ that restore life, that give us life.” 36 The primitivist impact was sizable, and Picasso’s engagement with its core tenets was somewhat unique, shaped around his own experiences with Africans in his hometown of coastal Málaga (figure 149) and his grandfather’s encounters during travels to Cuba (figure 151). For many, primitivism carried the “fantasy of a return to the primordial origins of man, to an earlier episode in his relationship to the objects he makes.” 37 This was true for Picasso, as well, but took a somewhat more complex vantage in Les Demoiselles. Africa features in this, but so too do other regions and periods,38 for Picasso features here five demoiselles from around the globe through the stylistic lens of selected artistic models from each of their respective regions. This is consistent with the framing of primitive art in this era to include not only African and Oceanic art but also pre-­Columbian, Egyptian, Asian, Greco-­Roman, and medieval works. The arts of children and the insane were generally included in this taxonomy as well. Gertrude Stein noted about Les Demoiselles that Picasso “tended to paint in blocks like a sculptor, or in profile, the way children paint.” 39 With Picasso, scientific racism was a factor, too, and the extended simian-­like prognathous jaw of the standing African demoiselle at the right of the canvas is consistent with this. In the decades ahead, opposition to the impact of African art on Picasso and his 1907 canvas grew through the scholarly efforts of many. Picasso’s contradictory claims on the subject didn’t help. One day Picasso extolled the beauty and power of African artworks, and on another insisted, “L’art negre? Connais pas!” (African art? Don’t know anything about it!).40 This latter comment was made long after Picasso had begun collecting African and Oceanic sculpture, so Picasso clearly knew these works well. Indeed, he insisted shortly after this comment that it was intended as a subterfuge — ​­a deception: “The fact is, it has become too familiar to me; the African statuettes scattered almost everywhere about my home are more like witness than examples. . . . I still have a big appetite for curios and charming objects.” 41 Some have seen this to mean Picasso’s opposition to the term art nègre because of its vagueness, or because it designated “art,” or even because he was claiming a new meaning for the latter term.42 Interestingly, in looking at Picasso’s statement in its original context, he appears to have meant something quite different. The artist had been invited by the art critic Florent Fels to write a few lines for a survey the latter was publishing called “Opinions sur l’art nègre” for the April 1920 issue of his journal, Action. In this context, Picasso’s response 8

introduction

comes across as decidedly jocular, even ironic, similar to the reply of Picasso’s close friend Jacques Cocteau, who wrote, “L’art nègre has become as boring as le japonisme Mallarméen.” 43 Moreover, in 1923, Picasso’s reframing of his statement was along the same lines as Cocteau: “The fact is, [art nègre] has become too familiar to me.” 4 4 To make the point even clearer, Picasso later insisted, “You must not always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.” 45 There are multiple witnesses of events involving African art and Picasso at this time, including the famous evening in October 1906, when, after handling Matisse’s African figure (figures 43 and 44), Picasso went home to produce the first of a group of drawings that became important for Les Demoiselles (see chapter 3; figures 45–49). He insisted that African sculptures are artworks — ​ ­important for their visual influence and power: “When I became interested, forty years ago, in Negro art and I made what they refer to as the Negro period in my painting, it was because at that time I was against what was called beauty in the museums. At that time, for most people a Negro mask was an ethnographic object.” 4 6 Barr recognized this early influence, yet for some scholars, African art served principally as a springboard to a different kind of aesthetic revolution. To Richardson, “Demoiselles was . . . an exorcism of traditional concepts of ‘ideal beauty.’” 47 Picasso’s art nègre statement has been cited by a number of scholars over the years to argue against the importance of African art to the artist. Moreover in 1942, Christian Zervos insisted, “The artist formally certified that in the era when he painted the Demoiselles d’Avignon, he ignored the art of black Africa.” 48 Daix wrote much the same thing in 1970 following a group of interviews with the artist, titling his article “There Is No Negro Art in the Demoiselles,” and therein “arguing against accepted theories” then in place about African art’s impact on Picasso, “which were rejected by the artist himself.” 49 Zervos and Daix, in rejecting African art’s impact on Les Demoiselles and related works, contradicted the commentary of an array of Picasso’s close friends (Stein, Salmon, Jacob, and Uhde) as well as several visitors to Picasso’s studio at the time, such as Augustus John in the summer of 1907, or Gelett Burgess in 1908, or Malraux — ​ ­all of whom noted Picasso’s interests in “l’art nègre.” 50 Why recent art scholars have tended to refute the importance of African art to Picasso’s work in this era leads to other questions. Some have felt that acknowledging the role of l’art nègre in his early oeuvre would diminish Picasso’s reputation, particularly with respect to his primary place as innovator. To introduction

9

Daix, the hypothesis of Picasso’s African roots would not only affect our views of Picasso’s “behavior” in this critical period but also would potentially decrease the value of his works.51 Picasso’s dealer, Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, was one of the growing group who insisted that any resemblance between Picasso’s work and African (or other “primitive” arts) was coincidental. As Kahnweiler wrote in 1948, “I must, once more, dispute the validity of the thesis of a direct influence of African art on Picasso and Braque. . . . The real question was one of convergence,” that is, “in Negro art, the Cubists rediscovered their own conception of the work of art as object.” 52 Convergence became the issue du jour, and in the aftermath of Malraux’s 1937 interview with Picasso, published in 1973, the idea of an emotional but not aesthetic imprint of African art on the artist began to gain a hold.53 For Daix, the question of African influence came down to the reading of one figure, the standing female on the right wearing an African-­style mask with “hatch lines” suggestive of incised facial markings. He writes, “The hypothesis of African origins of the hatch marks [on the African figure] . . . transforms the behavior of Picasso in this crucial year and in this moment. Not only are these hatch marks technically ‘fauves,’ but in African masks they always serve to accentuate symmetries. With Picasso, it is the inverse; they provoke the loud asymmetries, transforming the original Iberian distortions of the faces into an unsustainable barbarism.” 54 Significantly, not only are the facial marks on the African demoiselle both thicker and more deeply textured than the brushstrokes of the fauves, but facial asymmetries are an important part of the African masking traditions shown in Frobenius (see plate 2 and others). Some have argued that Picasso had already finished Les Demoiselles and his important visual transformation by the time he began to look seriously at African art; Paul Dermée and Pierre Reverdy have insisted that “Picasso had already completed his revolution when he first saw African sculptures.” 55 We know this is not true since Picasso’s engagement with Matisse’s Vili figure (figures 43 and 44) in the autumn of 1906 was seminal to the development of Les Demoiselles five months later. Others focused instead on issues of African art and cubism. Picasso’s photographer, Brassaï (pseudonym of Gyula Halász), wrote that, “The birth of Cubism owed nothing to African fetishes, that he himself had seen. African sculptures [came] only after he had completed the canvas. It is purely coincidental that what has wrongly been called his ‘Negro’ period corresponded to the time when he discovered African statues and masks.” 56 In the end, even Barr was forced to back step on African art in relation to cubism’s development, 10

introduction

which was increasingly seen as an exclusively Western-­derived modernist practice. As late as 1994, one Picasso scholar asked with respect to Les Demoiselles, “Where does Africa (or any other tribal source) fit morphologically into this crouching figure’s head? Nowhere, I am now convinced. . . . Yet nearly every historian willing to admit tribal influences in the Demoiselles at all has seen the squatter’s head as the epitome of ‘African’ influence.” 57 Any African art engagement was seen to derive essentially from Picasso’s desire for magical “protection” against various personal demons, and the objects themselves were seen to serve instead largely as “intercesseurs, mediators.” Even Stein insisted that African sculpture “consoled Picasso’s vision [rather] than aided it. . . . Picasso first took as a crutch African art and later other things.” 58 These and other comments by individuals close to him aside, art scholars more recently have often turned away from addressing Picasso’s use of African art sources in Les Demoiselles to focus instead on other issues, such as prostitution and Picasso’s interest in ancient Iberian sculptures (figures 70 and 71), the latter based in part on Picasso’s enduring interest in his Spanish homeland. For many scholars today, indeed, Les Demoiselles is in essence an “Iberian” painting, and related forms of abstraction come primarily from this source or, more generally, from the perceived “natural progression” in European art toward this end. In this development, key historical details have been left out. For example, Kahnweiler makes no mention of Iberian art in his discussion of Picasso’s sources and development in the critical 1906–7 era, and, as Barr explains, “nor apparently, does any other historian or artist, including Picasso himself, until 1939.” 59 Even with the notably controversial and in some ways problematically influential “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art exhibition at MoMA in 1984, the imprint of African art’s formal impact on Picasso has tended to be dismissed by many Picasso art scholars. To the curator William Rubin, African and other works, rather than offering new forms of artistic engagement, were simply seen to derive from “complementary” cultural mindsets of individuals living in strikingly different periods (a strange comingling of the “primitive” and “modern” that some see as “sanctioning” the path toward “radical progress” that Picasso was assumed to be moving toward in this era). In Rubin’s “Primitivism” exhibition, the focus was placed on natural “affinities” between modern art and “primitive” works, rather than direct influences.60 Rubin’s own writing focuses largely on Picasso’s purportedly troubled psychological state, arguing that the African works were little more than triggers. introduction

11

In this view he advances what can only be seen today as a highly pejorative racial construct in which African forms serve as tropes and stand-­ins for sexual trauma. For other scholars, such as Hal Foster, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon came to exemplify a similarly pejorative meme: a core “instance” of “savagery” at the root of “civilization.” 61 As framed by Foster, the canvas addresses an “ideological nightmare” inspired by “spoils” in “an artistic coup founded on military conquest” in the long legacy of Western imperial and colonial engagement.62 While this perspective draws on Picasso’s interest in African art, it leaves out how Picasso was meaningfully engaging with Africa in new ways within the dynamic of colonialism. Despite the violent and denigrating dimensions of colonialism, it brought an end to the slave trade and in some ways helped to unite the world in new and unexpected ways, despite considerable distances in terms of culture, history, and geography. It was this that was especially important to Picasso, since his interest in African art was not only genuine but also revolutionary for this era. Politically provocative as these ideas are, they stand outside the ways in which Picasso would engage with African art and other works as evidenced in the vast array of sketches and studies he undertook from October 1906 to March 1907 for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, to say nothing of the striking inventiveness of this canvas itself. And, unfortunately, many art historians who write about Picasso and African art convey a certain discomfort with addressing African art. Picasso’s work in this era was seen to follow largely in the footsteps of other European artists. To Daix, for example, “Gauguin, van Gogh, and Cézanne had already invented the Primitivist renewal.” 63 The reasons for undervaluing or denigrating the impact of African art on Les Demoiselles are many, but one, no doubt, is the fact that too few of these writers are comfortable with actually looking at and analyzing African objects. And there is the larger concern of some that a painting as important as this one, a European art movement as significant as cubism, and a shift as seminal as that of modern art should not be linked to sizable influences outside the West, much less to Africa, except by way of opposition. Modern art, in the resonant words of one scholar critical of this view, could not be “exposed as a black bastard.” 64 Today cubism is identified as a project (e.g., after Les Demoiselles) founded equally by Picasso and Braque in 1908.65 As a result, Les Demoiselles, as well as Picasso’s critical work on this canvas from fall 1906 to spring 1907, in which many of these ideas of African and other artistic influences are reflected, has largely been removed from a position of primacy. This revision is all the more striking since some of the most salient 12

introduction

innovations of both Les Demoiselles and cubism — ​­namely stylistic multiplicity, assemblage, and the arbitrariness of form — ​­came from Picasso’s seeing African sculpture and the “plurality of forms” at play in these works.66 If today the canvas is seen by many art scholars to carry little if any African import, it is also due in part to the extraordinary impact that Leo Steinberg’s article on this painting continues to have on the field. This important and in many ways canonical study leaves out Africa almost entirely. Steinberg observes, “‘Is the intrusion of art nègre the true content of the Demoiselles?’ I was recently asked by a Paris friend. I think not, because the picture’s ‘content’ is the sum (incommensurable) of its internal and outgoing relationships. So, in the Demoiselles, the remembered forms of stiff tribal effigies are naturalized in a furnished boudoir and galvanized into Baroque agitation. . . . Whereas the scouting for ‘lookalikes’ is a diverting sport, releasing us from the difficulty of holding a picture in focus. Perhaps it’s a question of no time to spare.” 67 Steinberg’s view conforms with a number of other mid-­twentieth-­century and later scholars. By insisting that African art played only a “residual role” for Picasso, and, similarly, no role on the development of Western modernism except by way of affinity or emotional crutch, this vantage conveniently allows one to avert any potential “embarrassment” to the Western canon in having some of its key sources come from outside Europe. The widely held view that forms such as assemblage (and related techniques; figures 122, 139, 331, and 336) come not from sources in Africa that Picasso was exploring and discussing at the time (figures 138, 142, 147, 148, and 330) but instead from roots entirely in the West is typical of this. So, too, the shifting of the origin of cubism from its early foothold in Les Demoiselles, as Barr maintained, to 1908, after Picasso had met Braque, speaks to the same issue in removing African art from this dialogue. Yet several 1907 and 1908 works reveal that Picasso was already exploring related cubist-­linked ideas in the period in which he worked on Les Demoiselles or in direct consequence of it.

Sources as Evidence Much of the meaning that has accrued to Les Demoiselles to date was not part of its early history and perception. For example, Kahnweiler made no mention of a title or that the painting represented a brothel.68 Breton had little to offer by way of subject explanation other than that the canvas “defies analysis, and the laws of its vast composition cannot in any way be formulated.” 69 Several scholars contacted the artist much later in an attempt to clarify the introduction

13

painting’s meaning, but to no avail. In the 1940s a very frustrated Barr wrote to Zervos, “Perhaps, as in the case of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon[,] I shall have to publish certain errors and speculations so that Picasso may be aroused to deny or clarify. It is indeed harder to discover the truth about Picasso’s early work than about the work of Manet, [Nicolas] Poussin, or [Diego] Velázquez.” 70 Picasso’s sometimes contradictory responses to questions about the painting also made things difficult: Much more striking — ​­and detrimental to scholarly investigation — ​­was the manner in which Picasso hamstrung Christian Zervos’ efforts to construct an accurate catalogue raisonné of the numerous preparatory drawings and painted sketches for the Demoiselles. The artist either failed altogether to disclose the existence of a great many of these works to Zervos until many years later, or he shared them with his cataloguer but explicitly forbade him to photograph and publish them at the time he catalogued the painting itself. As a result the original Zervos catalogue devoted to this canvas and its preparatory phase is woefully incomplete.71 In the end Picasso “preferred to make misleading statements rather than elucidate the Demoiselles.” 72 Similarly, Mary Mathews Gedo revealed, “Even as an elderly man, he remained especially prickly and defensive about his picture and never frankly discussed his sources, development and symbolism. In fact, his behavior went beyond mere lack of cooperation: He actively sabotaged attempts to reconstruct the exact history of the canvas. His refusal ever to acknowledge that he had repainted the right half of the picture under the initial impact of his response to African art constitutes merely the most celebrated of these actions.” 73 The latter is particularly interesting, since as we now know he did not significantly repaint the African demoiselles. Over the course of his life Picasso carefully dated and documented much of his work, and he was happy to reflect back on dates and other matters with Zervos and others. This was especially true with large and important projects. Yet Picasso was secretive and even intentionally misleading with respect to this painting. It was probably in part for this reason that Picasso kept many of his notebooks and studies for Les Demoiselles secret until the early 1970s, just prior to his death. Interestingly, in one of Picasso’s most important sketchbooks related to this work — ​­carnet 6 — ​­he removed pages from several separate sketchbooks and sewed the remaining sheets together into a single volume (see chap-

14

introduction

ter 7 and “Sketchbooks: New Dating”). Why did he take the time and effort to do this unless he was removing work he didn’t want others to see? Some of the reasons for Picasso’s defensiveness appear to lie in part in the role that illustrated books played in his work at the time. In 1908, American art critic Gelett Burgess visited Picasso in his studio and saw the canvas, after which he asked the painter about its “monstrous monolithic women,” inquiring where the artist had “found his ogrillions [ogresses]?” “Where would I get them?” was Picasso’s reply, accompanied by a wink.74 Picasso’s answer implies that they are from his own imagination. As Picasso explained to Daix, “I haven’t used models since Gósol [summer 1906]. And indeed, at this time [during work on Les Demoiselles] I worked completely outside of all models.” 75 While Picasso was no longer employing live models, he was using other kinds of sources, particularly books. Related book images not only shed new light on the 1907 painting and its development but also enable us to see different elements and relationships around it. In this period Picasso created images that reflect his engagement with these books and other sources, forms that engage idioms such as abstraction and assemblage that would become core tenets of cubism. In this light, these books are central to Picasso’s transformation as an artist. These volumes, together with Picasso’s sketchbooks and other images, enrich and complicate our understanding of the canvas; they also help to date a number of related works in this era. The finding of key books that Picasso apparently used during this period transforms our understanding of both the famous canvas and Picasso’s larger interests at play. He appeared to be already using some of these book sources in 1904 (see chapter 5), but it was between the summer of 1906 and the winter of 1907 that books became more central, shaping his experimentations for Les Demoiselles (chapter 6). These sources served in a very practical way to replace his use of live models, but more importantly they provided the artist with a treasure trove of new imagery, forms, and ideas, around which a wide range of visual experiments could be made that filled numerous sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings. These and other sources reveal his quest for pictorial reinvention. These books offer an entirely new perspective on the canvas’s meaning and subject matter. They reveal Picasso’s strikingly creative approach to form and how path-­forging he was at this point in his career. At the same time they enhance our understanding of how Les Demoiselles could also serve for him as a manifesto — ​­a pointed assault on art of the past that also charted pathways into the future — ​­to which he later returned for inspiration.76 With these books, and

introduction

15

several other sources, we see the array of visual materials that Picasso was using at this time, comprising not only the long-­acknowledged ancient Iberian head, likely important for the two Caucasian demoiselles (compare figures 70 and 71 with figure 72) and other forms. Additional sources for the Egyptian demoiselle include the small Louvre sculpture identified earlier (figures 73–76) as well as an Egyptian mask (figure 60; compare figure 61). For the standing African demoiselle, an Ijaw mask from Leo Frobenius stands out prominently (compare figures 94 and 95); for the crouching demoiselles, it is another mask from the Democratic Republic of Congo illustrated in Frobenius (compare figures 96 and 97) that is the most likely source. Taking in hand the array of new sources that came to my attention through my African art research, it became clear that this is a story that only I can tell. I began to see how uniquely positioned I was to appreciate some of the more difficult challenges (and opportunities) that these sources posed for the artist. Picasso likely did not want the fact that he was using book images to be known for fear they would harm his growing reputation. Even later, when his reputation as a revolutionary artist was secure, he likely made sure that none of these materials saw the light of day. Today, we know that Gauguin, Matisse, and other artists of the era used illustrated books, journals, and photographs as sources, yet until very recently the use of published works of this type was seen to be problematic. This legacy of disparagement no doubt made Picasso’s sources difficult to address, much less admit, and if this meant that basic questions went unanswered, so be it. Each of these richly illustrated books, although to date unexplored by scholars in relationship to Picasso or Les Demoiselles, had large readership among the Paris elite at the time — ​­among artists especially. Two volumes are German, one is English, and another is French. Several of Picasso’s close friends in this period were German nationals or German and English speakers who could have furnished the books or translated parts for the artist. While we have no direct evidence that Picasso saw or studied these books (e.g., the finding of actual volumes in his collection or notes indicating these specific titles), it is clear that he knew them well, as evidenced through his changing visual and intellectual engagement with them (chapters 4, 6, and 7). These books help to answer a number of questions about Les Demoiselles that have remained over the century since it was created — ​­questions of form, dating, and meaning. As with Picasso’s other sources, it is important to emphasize, however, that there is very little evidence in Les Demoiselles or its related studies that suggests that Picasso was engaged 16

introduction

in directly copying the images. They were springboards to thinking about new kinds of forms and relationships. Throughout my research, the striking mysteries of Les Demoiselles continued to pull at me, and the adventure that this project laid at my feet as I tracked and engaged new materials made this book an especially rewarding one to write. The bold women in this picture, now a century old, often remained foremost in my mind. At key junctures I made a point to let them tell their own stories through my findings. Throughout I also sought to open the canvas to new kinds of narratives and discursive elements that research brought to the foreground. Rather than arguing, as some have, that the picture is “recalcitrant [and] . . . eludes all of our attempts to capture and express it conceptually,” 77 I have found, thanks in large measure to these new sources and the paths they encouraged me to follow, that this painting is more transparent than it is often assumed to be, despite its rich opacities. The painting and other materials that Picasso brought together in conjunction with it served as a kind of Rosetta stone; they offered up parts of a template around which certain elements could be more readily deciphered and read. Consistent with this, I felt my role to be that of a detective exploring an unsolved case, willing the work to reveal itself more fully through the array of new evidence I was finding. In the end it was almost as if the new sources — ​­like the women on the canvas — ​­were goading me to follow this project through to the end. In turn, a twofold theoretical lens emerged and helped shape my exploration: ethnography, the writing of this project as a story about a set of individuals and conditions; and the pulse of creativity, those vital moments or sparks within Picasso’s creative process that made him think about this painting and art more generally in notably new and revolutionary ways. Steinberg’s narrative style in some ways affected my own, although the results are very different; there is an important autobiographical element to both that helps inform our work.78 Steinberg revealed to one of his former students, Robert Williams, that at around the age of sixteen, he was walking along a Parisian street and was approached by a prostitute whose skin looked almost blue in the nighttime light. This experience, during his first visit to the city, haunted him for years to come. Steinberg indicated that he had been “curious and had (at least at that time) no moral objection to patronizing a prostitute, but that he had a ‘terrible fear of disease.’” This incident left a strong emotional imprint on Steinberg, as well as a certain aesthetic jolt. The potent cojoining of otherworldly bluish skin, penetrating eyes, shock, and fear of illness and death are noteworthy. Here, as another author noted without this background information, “The introduction

17

Brothel was imprinted in Steinberg’s mind.” 79 In many ways, Steinberg’s interpretation of Les Demoiselles took a similar shape. The series of discoveries that led me on my journey helped shape what I have written in equally significant ways. While I never had anything equivalent to a frightful brothel encounter, anyone who has experienced the cojoined acts of sex and parturition (pleasure, pain, and regeneration) recognizes these as acts that in their own way seem like strange (if apt) bedfellows. In my many experiences in Africa, the sense of strangeness around these very roles, of women as objects of both unique sexual desire and unique untouchability are often in play. Addressing this strange paradox metaphorically, I heard myths of creation wherein the genitalia of deities are more modestly positioned within their armpits, or local languages wherein the vagina is accorded two different terms depending on the context and use. This, for me, was the world in which I began to see the powerful paradox of women as sex objects and mothers that Picasso appears also to be grappling with. It is this disquieting issue that also offers us a new lens of understanding.

18

introduction

P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake,

Life with Picasso: The Love Story of a Century, 244

Setting, Sources, Titles, and Time The Paris destiny for many art scholars is not the Musée du Louvre or the Galerie nationale Jeu de Paume, but Le Marais, the Right Bank center of Paris’s early aristocracy. The French National Archives are housed here on rue Vieille-­ du-­Temple, which takes its name from the nearby “temple” where French royal treasure was stored; the archives comprise a cultural wealth of equal import. Documents for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (plate 1) are located in the nearby majestic palace, built in 1705 and known as the Hôtel de Rohan, not far from the recently remodeled Picasso Museum. I studied here two mauve envelopes sent to Picasso at his 13 rue Ravignan apartment in 1906. While the original letters are now missing, the envelopes are addressed to the artist with both his father’s surname (Ruiz) and his mother’s (Picasso). The artist had recently begun signing his works with his mother’s family name, so these envelopes evoke this transitional period. Both envelopes were mailed from Barcelona, where his family and many of his friends still lived.1 The fact that Picasso kept these items reminds one of how vital Spain and his early acquaintances were for him. In another box in the Picasso Archives was the rent receipt for the artist’s apartment to cover the summer months of 1906.2 This document is a printed and numbered form labeled simply “Quittance de Loyer” (rent receipt). Neatly

Chapter one

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.

inscribed on it is the sum F. 125.10 and the following text (in French): “Received from Mr. Picasso the sum of one hundred twenty-­five francs, 10 centimes. For local rent occupying my house 13 Ravignon Street. Term until 1 September 1906 from 1 June 1906.” Delineated beneath this were the allocated charges (again in francs): Loyer [rent] Eau, gaz [water, gas] Timbre [stamp] Total

120 5 .10 125.10

The stamp fee represents a common taxation to cover state administrative costs. The water and gas charges seem rather extravagant, since the building’s single water source and toilet were located in the basement and shared by all the inhabitants. Similarly poor sanitary conditions were commonplace in working-­ class houses in Paris.3 Picasso’s high heat and light fees are also striking, since he employed a small coal furnace in the winter months, along with candles for late-­night work. The period for this rental contract coincides with the time preceding Picasso’s initial work on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, specifically the months when Picasso and his model and lover, Fernande Olivier, were in the small Pyrenees mountain town of Gósol in Catalonia, Spain. This was a critical timespan for the development of his 1907 canvas. The monthly rent of 41.7 francs offers insight into Picasso’s financial obligations in this period. The average monthly Paris workers’ rent in 1906 was 90 to 120 francs;4 a laborer’s average wages were 6.8 to 7.6 francs per day.5 Picasso’s rent (just above that of an average worker) was roughly the equivalent of six or seven days’ labor for a Paris manual worker. Picasso’s rental price was somewhat below the housing prices that most Parisian workers could afford. For Picasso and many other artists at this time, rents were contingent on their art sales. The rental fee also adds economic perspective to Picasso’s sale of twenty-­seven paintings for two thousand francs to the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard (figure 136) in April 1906.6 This was a staggering price — ​­roughly a year’s expenses — ​ ­for the then little-­known twenty-­five-­year-­old artist. The freedom that Vollard’s spring 1906 commission provided Picasso was critical, and not only removed the artist from financial constraints for the near future but also provided the opportunity to undertake the risky project that Les Demoiselles would become. This money also powered the long fall and winter months of preparatory draw-

20

chapter one

ings and experiments, which freed Picasso from the need to plan and create paintings to put food on the table. The Vollard commission also constituted a huge ego boost to the young struggling Spanish émigré. A few weeks earlier, Vollard had paid the much more established Henri Matisse 2,200 francs for a group of his paintings.7 When the Vollard sale went through, Picasso was a relative neophyte. Around this time he had approached Gertrude Stein with an offer to paint her portrait (figure 123) and soon began work on it. This helped to further her interest in his work. She and her brother Leo Stein learned of the Vollard sale, and in May, Leo Stein wrote to Matisse about Picasso’s commission.8 The Steins were not above fostering competition between the two artists. Indeed, they hung their recent acquisition of Matisse’s important Bonheur de vivre (1905–6; figure 18) in the same room with Picasso’s striking canvas Boy Leading a Horse (1906).9 The battle lines were being drawn; a showdown between the two artists would soon come. Les Demoiselles was not the first Picasso work to portray a scene of women on view in a potentially compromising situation. His 1904 and 1905 caricatures of a bordello (figure 1) similarly depict women of various shapes, heights, ages, and races, and genders. In figure 1, the women are posed on a raised rectilinear stage. In the caricature, an elderly madam accompanies a paunchy middle-­aged man in a suit and hat to help him make his selection. Picasso explored a similar setting in another work conveying the discomfort of formal exhibition openings (le vernissage). When an artist’s oeuvre is presented to the public, it faces scrutiny similar to that of a brothel worker. In the vernissage study, a group of naked hat-­wearing men and women of various shapes explore the paintings and sculptures on view while the artist scrutinizes them. In some ways Les Demoiselles presents a similar situation in which the individuals being judged turn the tables on their judges. The enormous scale of the women in Les Demoiselles, some standing well over six feet tall on a canvas that reaches eight feet high and is just four inches shorter in width (96 in. × 92 in.; 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm), accords them enormous power. This is significant in light of not only the expense of such a large canvas but also Picasso’s rather modest physical stature; Picasso, at five feet two, was clearly dwarfed by them.10 A disquietingly different perspective delimits each figure within the strangely compressed space. No matter where one stands to view them, one can’t take in all their faces and stares within a single glance. Each woman is distinguished from the other — ​­through style, brushstroke, and color choice, to say nothing of coiffure, attire, gesture, posture, and body paint S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

21

or masks. The range of positions (standing, walking, crouching) and attitudes (distant, cool, assertive, and aggressive) is striking.11 Who are these women? What story are they trying to tell? Why did Picasso render one so differently from the other? If these females had names and places of birth, what would they be? Posing these questions transforms the way I see the work. Little of this strange setting suggests to me a standard bordello or group of brothel workers, and nothing about these women identifies them as prostitutes a priori. Moreover, the generic bowl of fruit in the foreground could enliven any interior — ​­and in Picasso’s oeuvre similar forms have assumed a myriad of roles. The work, in its cavelike setting, begins to take on a kind of geographical countenance; I seek to map it in terms of both location and composition.

Five Women: The Issue of Title Picasso often declined to give titles to his paintings.12 When Les Demoiselles was first published by Gelett Burgess in 1910, no specific title was given other than “Study by Picasso.” 13 So, too, Picasso’s dealer, Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, provided no title for this painting in his 1920 overview of cubism and its sources. Olivier similarly made no mention of the canvas or its name in her 1931 memoir. Over time, nonetheless, an array of names has been affixed to the work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon being the most recent. The painting’s initial studio label is said to have been Mon Bordel (My Bordello), expanded into Le Bordel philosophique by Picasso’s friends.14 The latter referent appears in André Salmon’s volume La Jeune peintre française (1912), in which the author notes that a friend of the artist had “spontaneously baptized” the painting “the Philosophical B” as a “studio joke.” Salmon later wrote that the title was “proposed, revised, and adopted” by Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and “myself,” suggesting that each person’s importance is conveyed in order.15 Leo Stein, who didn’t think much of the painting when he first saw it, referred to the work as a “horrible mess.” 16 The same term, bordel (French for “mess”), is at play here, and it is possible that it was this description that Jacob jocularly hoisted onto the canvas. The name Le Bordel philosophique speaks to core issues that Picasso scholars have left largely unexplored. The term “philosophy,” I suggest, reflects a range of important discussions that occurred in Picasso’s circle as he worked on the painting (see chapter 7). In French, the word bordel is rooted etymologically in the German term for “small house.” Bord, is often used figuratively to mean a chaotic or disorganized place, as in “ta chambre c’est le bordel” (your room is a 22

chapter one

mess) or “le bordel dans la tête” (the mess [of ideas] in one’s head). This connection to a chaotic or messy place began to appear in French literature around 1880; in the following decades, bordel also assumed the meaning of a “complex situation.” 17 Today it is often this latter meaning of bordel that is used. In the early 1900s, when Parisians were exploring cultural differences in the aftermath of colonial-­era global engagements, this meaning was apt. The early title Mon Bordel emphasizes the “mess” or “complex situation” that Picasso was grappling with, as much as, if not more than, a traditional bordello. Most likely the name change from Mon Bordel or Le Bordel philosophique to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon came around the time of the work’s first public showing, in the July 1916 Salon d’Antin. Around this time the title shifted to Les Filles d’Avignon.18 Within the decade, however, this title too was replaced by the current one. Initially the term filles was dropped; the reference to young girls (or worse, daughters) was dicey, particularly in a brothel context. What Picasso thought of these titles and their changes we do not know, but in trying to sell the canvas in the years that followed, the early names were likely seen as problematic. Shortly after fashion mogul Jacques Doucet acquired the painting, the title Les Demoiselles (“Maidens” or “Ladies”) d’Avignon appeared in print for the first time in André Breton’s journal La Révolution surréaliste, in July 1925. Since it was Breton who had convinced Doucet to acquire the painting, the name change was likely part of this effort. Breton, however, later insisted he had no knowledge of how the change happened or by whom.19 Picasso provided few clues to the name change. He is said to have found Le Bordel philosophique too “evasive and genteel.” And as he explained to Kahnweiler in 1933 about the name Les Demoiselles, “How irritating that name is to me sometimes! It was Salmon who came up with it. I used to live just a stone’s throw from the calle d’Avignon [in Barcelona]. That is where I used to buy my paper and watercolors. And as you know Max’s grandmother was originally from Avignon. We used to make a lot of jokes about that painting. One of the women was Max’s grandmother, another was Fernande, another Marie Laurencin — ​­all in an Avignon brothel.” 20 Avignon, as Picasso explained, evokes Carrer d’Avinyó, a street near his 1899 studio in Barcelona. It was close to the docks and the city’s red light district, hence its resonance with the historical brothel framing. Picasso maintained, however, that the bordello connection of this name is a false one, since no such enterprises were located on the broad commercial Avinyó, a “respectable street.” While the narrow Escudellers Blancs alley opening onto the Carrer d’Avinyó S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

23

where his studio was located sometimes had this reputation, Picasso insisted that any brothel connection was “an invented story.” 21 He also suggested somewhat later with respect to the bordello associations of the title, “The worst thing is that, when asked about this matter and I say it is not true, people go on saying that the chicas [chicks] are from a brothel in the carrer d’Avinyó. In fact, as everybody once knew, Jacob or Salmon or someone else in our group invented the story.” 22 How much of this is true is unclear, yet Picasso no doubt is correct in his insisting, “My characters are imaginary characters.” 23 Nonetheless, as Picasso stated to Kahnweiler, and as noted by Picasso’s friend and scholar Pierre Daix, in “the picture he kept finding resemblances between the women of his imaginary bordello and actual women of his acquaintance.” And it was not just the women who were close to the inner circle who were being addressed by Picasso in the painting, as Kahnweiler revealed: “When overly tiresome art lovers visiting him became too solemn, he would kindle identity-­g uessing of the women — ​­Madame De Gaulle, Gina Lollobrigida, and so on, suggesting in retrospect that the women in the brothel were not specific to 1907.” 24 It is clear that for Picasso this was not simply a work about a brothel nor exclusively about sex but rather a work intended to address the identities of women more generally — ​­girlfriends, sisters, grandmothers, politician’s wives, actresses, and so forth. Scholars’ focus on the work as a bordello runs counter to the artist’s statement as well as to considerable evidence in the work itself and in the many preparatory studies associated with it. Salmon and Apollinaire’s proposed name of Bordel d’Avignon in some ways sidetracked other aspects of the work’s significance, including questions of family and origins.25 The striking array of races, dress, postures, and styles of the five demoiselles reveals that Picasso intended to represent these women in ways that have little to do with prostitution.26 We could easily be looking at women from some mythic or multitemporal period, in a setting that suggests both a vagina and a cave — ​ ­the latter being the home of women, men, and humanity more broadly, the kind of “primitive” home we all once shared. Picasso has brought these women together from multiple ages and sites for a strange event or encounter. The canvas, in this sense, evokes a strikingly complex and chaotic bordel of the mind as much as of the body. These women suggest simultaneously quite generic figures and temporally and spatially specific female prototypes, global referents to a kind of “every woman.” Birth and motherhood (and sex) also figure in the painting more generally. Gertrude Stein recalled that one night, “Picasso, just a little drunk . . . persisted 24

chapter one

in sitting beside me and finding for me in a Spanish album of photographs the exact spot where he was born.” Salmon wrote negatively about his “female-­ dominated household,” under his mother, maternal aunt, and sister,27 and in some ways Picasso’s home life was similar — ​­dominated by women of multiple generations and relationships. While Picasso later told his lover Françoise Gilot that he fled Spain in part as a response to his “tyrannical mother,” 28 that he chose his mother’s last name over his father’s suggests a more complex situation, one in which women (his mother, grandmother, sister, and aunts) featured in different ways. The circumstances surrounding the introduction of Avignon to the title has nourished considerable scholarly interest and debate. As Picasso himself specified, Avignon is linked to the practice of art and to ideas of shared friendship, ancestry, and fame. For Apollinaire, one of Picasso’s closest and most influential friends, Avignon was linked to his own major literary work in this period on the Marquis de Sade, whose family estate was located near Avignon. De Sade and his text La Philosophie dans le boudoir had an important impact on Apollinaire and Picasso. Apollinaire not only owned the original 1795 edition of this volume but also published an anthology of the text in 1909, as L’Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade. While certainly about sex (and promoting pleasure in diverse forms), de Sade’s work was also a sociopolitical treatise that pressed its readers to sideline religion in favor of a more libertine life. The heroine, a fifteen-­year-­old virgin (Eugénie), is invited to experience a broader sexual education by way of an older woman and her brother, who introduce her to a thirty-­six-­year-­old teacher (Dolmancé). De Sade invites his female readers to follow Eugénie’s example and throw off prudish ways; for male readers, he suggests they emulate her educator for their enhanced enjoyment.29 Picasso’s and Apollinaire’s expansive sexual interests likely reflected some of this libertine’s views; Picasso purportedly insisted that his lovers read his own volume of the text.30 The original titles of Picasso’s work — ​­Mon Bordel, Le Bordel philosophique, and Les Filles d’Avignon  — ​­were fashioned in part by Salmon, a man with similarly broad libertarian and sexual interests. Le Bordel, in addition to referencing a “mess,” also carries rich associations with the kind of sex life and relationships many have only as a fantasy. Apollinaire’s other texts of this era include a pornographic novel, Les Onze mille verges ou Les Amours d’un hospodar (The Eleven Thousand Rods, or the Loves of a Lord; 1907). This volume appeared under the initials “G.  A.” the same year that Les Demoiselles was painted. Les Onze mille verges is the story of a Catholic saint (Ursula) and her virgin companions. The term verges (rods) S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

25

left Picasso, Apollinaire as Pope, 1905.

fig 2

below Gaudí, Dragon Fountain, c. 1903. Photo by Isiwal, 2013.

fig 3

fig 1

Picasso, The Twins (Brothel Scene), 1905.

evokes at once sadism — the use of birch canes — and the penis; the word also hints at virgins (vierges).31 Apollinaire’s 1907 novel has been described as a “pornographic tour de force” that is said to have become one of Picasso’s most “treasured possessions.”32 This was one of two pornographic works written by Apollinaire that year, the other being Les Exploits d’un jeune Don Juan, another of Picasso’s favorites.33 Clearly, part of the inspiration for Apollinaire comes from de Sade; indeed, in his anthology Apollinaire suggested that de Sade could become a dominant inspiration of the new century. The close connection between Apollinaire’s 1907 pornographic work and de Sade’s family home in Avignon is suggested in a cartoon drawing by Picasso showing Apollinaire as the Avignon Pope seated next to a sprawling nude holding a bottle aloft (figure 2). Another possible source for the Avignon reference is Théodore Aubanel’s poem Les Filles d’Avignon, published first in 1891, and another of his poems, The Venus of Avi26

chapTer one

gnon, a classically themed work framed around an ancient sculpture, itself an icon of beauty.34 Avignon is also the name of a historic French song of childhood fame, “[Sous] le pont d’Avignon.” Young people danced under (sous) this bridge to meet potential lovers with whom to spend the night. Thus, like the scene in Les Demoiselles, it was a historical meeting place of women and their lovers. Consider too the enduring legacy of the well-­k nown medieval dictum “One cannot cross Avignon bridge without meeting two monks, two donkeys, and two prostitutes.” Avignon, in short, is a setting long linked to sex and related outcomes. The term Avignon in Picasso’s canvas likely suggests a mix of elements — ​­the locale of Picasso’s art purchases, a site in French history, and a site richly associated with various forms of sexual encounter. As a place of creativity, life, pleasure, and regeneration, Avignon is in some ways an imaginary “everywhere.” Without losing these diverse aspects of the Avignon referent, it is interesting also to recall Jacob’s comments about Picasso’s October 1906 studies that became part of Les Demoiselles: “Picasso started some large figures . . . with noses attached to the eyes. He became absorbed in a profound mediation, simplifying animals and things and arriving at a single stroke at drawings of a sort that recall prehistoric cave drawings.” 35 Highlighted here is the art of early humans, suggesting that Picasso was thinking at the outset about the earliest of human arts.36 The southwest of France has long been identified with prehistoric sites (see chapter 7).37 In this context, one of the canvas’s early names, Le Bordel d’Avignon, links Picasso’s painting to the origins of humankind, giving importance to the painting’s history and broader meaning. Rather than referencing a traditional brothel, though, this work suggests something far more complex. Since Picasso himself never named the canvas, this makes various questions concerning the identities (and locations) of the women included all the more interesting. It is important to note in this light that Picasso was by no means the first to discover the visual complexity and importance of African or other forms of “primitive” engagement. Towering over the streets of Barcelona where Picasso lived as a young artist just prior to his move to Paris were the strange and boldly primitive towers of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia cathedral as well as the brightly colored childlike and similarly primitivizing mosaic dragon fountain at the entrance to his remarkable Park Güell (figure 3). Some of Picasso’s Barcelona-­ based artist friends had worked on these and other Gaudí projects.38 Gaudí’s vision, in its primitive yet modern vocabularies, is a testament to the radical impact that this unique site of Picasso’s youth likely had. While Picasso rarely S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

27

left Au Lapin Agile, Paris, 2013.

Fig 4 

F i g 5   right Au Lapin Agile, Paris, 2013.

left Closerie des Lilas, Paris, 2013.

fig 6 

F i g 7   right Closerie des Lilas, Paris, 2013.

Fig 8

Cluny fountain, Paris, 2013.

fig 9

fig 10

Picasso, sevenfigure study, 1907.

Picasso, study of four women, 1906.

mentioned Gaudí, Brassaï recounted that in the 1930s Picasso had an envelope of photographs of the Sagrada Familia’s “gigantic graffiti” and “four strange towers.”39 In a way, Sagrada Familia necessarily also looms large over Picasso’s project because Les Demoiselles is a work that is strikingly revolutionary in nature as well, one in which the “modern” and the “primitive” are equally engaged. In addition, both projects mark a transformation in the way of making and seeing art that left a profound legacy not only for Picasso’s own career but also for those of generations of artists that followed. These engagements and the sites and arts Picasso was exploring in Paris during this period (figures 4–8) give a sense of the complex set of forms and contexts affecting the artist.

Picasso’s Compositional Studies and Sketchbooks Little about Les Demoiselles is easy, including our understanding of Picasso’s initial engagement with it. Daix, who is generally considered the most reliable source on Picasso’s work, dated the canvas to July 1907 and possibly later; others have dated it to June or July 1907.40 A photograph of Les Demoiselles taken soon after Picasso began work on the canvas (figure 27) provides evidence that the painting was initiated considerably earlier, at the end of March 1907 (see chapter 2). Other sources allow us to possibly date the start of the work to the night of March 26, although Picasso began his first studies for the canvas much earlier, seT Ting, soUrces, TiTles, and TiMe

29

in October 1906, the night after engaging with an African sculpture owned by Matisse (figures 43 and 44). This kind of deliberation was relatively unusual for Picasso, who was known occasionally, even as early as 1901, to complete as many as twenty-­three paintings a day.41 Why did it take Picasso so long to commence this work? Why did he use so many sketchbooks for its preparation, in addition to a large number of separate studies? The financial resources provided by Vollard allowed Picasso to take his time in rethinking both his work to date and the direction he wanted to explore with this canvas. The many compositional and other studies Picasso completed before applying pigment are as important to understanding the painting as related commentaries on it. A late 1906 study (figure 10) for both Two Women (figure 183) and Les Demoiselles suggests that Picasso originally imagined this work as a curtained setting with two to four women. Like later studies for the canvas (including figures 9 and 285), each of these drawings reveals the diversity of elements that Picasso was beginning to engage. Another important early compositional study, likely from October 1906, features two females of different races in a curtained space (plate 9; see also figure 46). While the figure on the left might be understood to remain in shadow, as we will see in chapter 6, black women and white women are shown together in several related works, indicating that Picasso was already thinking about a setting where women of different races come together. This multiracial study is closely related to several other key Demoiselles studies he created throughout the process that show figures of multiple races within the same larger setting (figure 32). At the outset, Picasso was likely envisioning a composition with women from various geographic areas. The array of preparatory compositional studies that Picasso made for this canvas is significant (there were at least nineteen).42 The number of women (and sometimes men) in the composition shifted over the period from October to March: early on, there are groups of two or four (plate 9; figure 10); later, the numbers increase to six or seven (including one or two men; figures 9, 102, and 285; plate 4); and toward the end, the numbers decline again to three or five (figures 24 and 176). Leo Steinberg and Rubin proposed a precise temporal ordering of the compositional drawings, based in part on each study’s closeness to the final canvas rendering, suggesting Picasso’s shift in thinking from a narrative to a more iconic identity for the canvas.43 However, these compositional studies cannot reliably be ordered chronologically and offer greater insight when addressed outside of this unsupported sequential context. Moreover, Picasso may well have created some of the studies after his canvas was completed. While 30

chapter one

none of these studies can be firmly dated, they offer answers to other equally important questions, such as meaning. In their own right they suggest a different approach to storytelling and to how the duration of time is experienced in other ways in this visual story. As noted above, in several of the compositional studies (for example, figure 9), the group includes one or two men; a dark-­suited man sometimes stands in profile on the left holding a book or skull, and near the center of several of these works, a seated man faces the viewer. The former is generally identified as a doctor, the latter a sailor.44 In the end, Picasso removed these men and achieved a far stronger composition by using fewer figures and a more compressed space. The excision of the male “witnesses” to this strange female scene also adds emotional power to the work. Scholarly discussions of these male figures tend to focus on the men’s assumed associations with a traditional brothel setting: the sailor as a frequenter of port brothels, and the doctor evoking fears of potentially fatal diseases linked to brothel activities in this pre-­penicillin era, or even as a witness to death, a theme also explored in Picasso’s Science and Charity (1897).45 These men could, I suggest, also refer to individuals that Picasso engaged while at work on the painting. The doctor possibly relates to the gynecologist and race scientist Carl Heinrich Stratz, who authored several of the books with illustrations of skulls that Picasso may have used (figure 179, among others; see chapter 6). The sailor, who in part may portray Picasso himself,46 also suggests anthropologists and others traveling by boat to exotic places, among these Leo Frobenius and Richard Burton, both of whom published volumes with imagery that Picasso engaged (see chapters 4 and 5; plate 2; figure 156, among others). A large number of Picasso’s sketchbooks in which many of these compositional studies were included came to light around the time of the artist’s death in 1973. The notebooks contain some four hundred drawings that relate to the era of Les Demoiselles (see “Sketchbooks: New Dating”). Most of these were unknown to scholars until they were given to the Picasso Museum in 1985. Only in 1988 were these taken up by scholars seeking to mine them for additional insights on the canvas, and in 1996 an exhibition focused on Les Demoiselles exhibited a grouping of the sketchbooks. Photographs of related pages were published at this time as well.47 Picasso’s photographer and friend, Brassaï, offered hints about these notebooks and Picasso’s special concerns with them. As Brassaï would write of his engagement with the artist in the 1930s, “Picasso drags Paul Éluard and me into his little adjoining apartment and, with an enigmatic smile, says: ‘I’m going to S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

31

show you something.’ And from a drawer he takes out his ‘private’ notebook. To it he confides the very first bursts of inspiration, and especially, his sexual obsessions. No doubt his male preoccupations rise to the surface throughout his work, under the sign of eros. . . . A small notebook is always within reach to receive his most immediate and intimate confidences.” 48 Sometimes these sketchbooks help clarify the chronology. One notebook indicates that Picasso’s explorations for the canvas were well under way in 1906.49 Like the various compositional studies discussed above, however, the Demoiselles sketchbooks can also be difficult to use in delineating a broader canvas chronology or the artist’s changing ideas for it. This is because Picasso likely used several notebooks at the same time (putting aside one only when its pages were filled). Moreover, Picasso probably did not work consecutively through a given notebook’s pages or even start with the first page. In some cases, including his separate sketches, Picasso is thought to have added images after the canvas had been completed, as a kind of postscript or documentation of what he was thinking at the time.50 Indeed, a well-­known watercolor compositional study — ​­one scholar suggests — ​­was not a “preparatory study” at all “but a subsequent footnote to it, a record of what the picture looked like before.” 51 (For an overview and dating of these sketchbooks, see “Sketchbooks: New Dating.”) Sometimes these sketchbooks, like the painting itself, present further problems. Unique among the Picasso sketchbooks, apparently, carnet 6 (part 2, most likely dating from March to April 1907) takes the form of three “separate notebooks.” Picasso removed various sketches from all three volumes and joined the remaining notebook pages together into a single work (see the preface). This composite sketchbook includes sixty-­t wo images: nine pages in the first part, twenty pages in the second (of which two were at some time also removed), and seventeen pages in the third. Each of these notebooks is described as having been “taken apart then resewn, no doubt by Picasso himself. . . . The three sections then were fixed together with a yellow thread sewn onto a white cloth in turn affixed a cardboard cover with glue.” 52 The array of sketches appearing within this three-­part compilation volume make little sense from the vantage of style or theme, except that the images generally relate to the period of Les Demoiselles. Some of the missing sketches were likely sold or given away to friends; others were conceivably destroyed. It is hard to imagine Picasso caring enough to “repair” and reposition the three notebooks by uniting them together except perhaps to cover up the page removals. What the missing pages held as images

32

chapter one

we will likely never know, but their very removal is one more “clue” that Picasso has left about the importance of this painting to him, and the degree to which he was concerned with its reception. Picasso likely felt uncomfortable with certain studies that were found in these sketchbooks. Could they have revealed evidence of the artist’s use of book sources for this painting? Picasso’s sketchbooks also offer important information into the kinds of issues and ideas he explored while working on Les Demoiselles.53 As one scholar noted, “The notebook drawings . . . constitute a kind of visual diary. . . . [and] given the private manner in which Picasso always treated the Demoiselles  — ​­its ‘telltale’ studies were never sold”;54 and the “quantity of preparatory work is unique not only in Picasso’s career, but without parallel, for a single picture, in the entire history of art.” 55 Clearly Picasso had set out to do something important, indeed revolutionary, in Les Demoiselles. A number of these sketchbook illustrations are addressed in the pages ahead (see chapters 4, 6, 7, and “Sketchbooks: New Dating”), but what is important to emphasize here is that they reveal a far more complex set of engagements than either Alfred Barr or Steinberg saw in terms of the painting’s significance, whether in regard to sources, early cubist efforts, or sex. What we see here are Picasso’s keen interest in African and other “primitive” artistic forms (medieval among these); the complexity of roles that women in society share; global variations in women’s bodies; androgyny; and two-­and three-­dimensional relationships between bodies and other forms. Some of these sketches also suggest the relationship between front, back, and sides and the ways that two different forms converge to create a more complete image (see figures 234–38, 270, 271, and 318), as well as Picasso’s exploration in this era of new source materials, specifically illustrated books.

Books and Other Image Sources Book sources reveal how deep and far reaching Picasso’s quest for pictorial reinvention was, and how innovative he was in seeking every available means to create the project, even though such sources were seen as problematic for elite artists. These works show the ways in which Picasso thought of not only the canvas but also the larger issue of pictorial engagement that would come into play for the artist for many years. By 1905 Picasso was already using books as image sources (figures 155 and 156; see chapter 5), but during his preparation for Les

S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

33

Demoiselles, this search reached entirely new levels and spurred a whole new set of experiments that affected the canvas. These books offer an array of evidence on the development of the canvas and its possible meanings. While not considered by most scholars to be an intellectual, Picasso had a broad knowledge and sought to associate himself with highly literate and intellectual friends. Their reflections interested him, and his interest in books was clearly as deep. As Brassaï explained, “Ever since I’ve known him, his books, have always been in piles. So, from time to time to get rid of them he puts them in crates. He has crates of books everywhere in Paris, in Cannes, in Vauvenargues. Picasso claims he knows everything that’s in the crates, that it’s easy for him to find the book or object he wants.” 56 While none of the books I have discovered as sources for the 1906–7 period of Picasso’s work has been documented in his own collection, or those of his friends, some of the books that were known to be in his collection are lost today, thus exhibiting a gap in documentation. It is also important to know that sometimes for Picasso, “the more crucial the source, the more determined he was to divert attention from it.” 57 In this light it is interesting to consider the writings of the celebrated French poet Charles Baudelaire. According to Daix, “Whenever Baudelaire’s name came up in conversation, Picasso would switch the subject to Matisse, as if the poet were his rival’s private property.” 58 This was in part, Daix suggests, to hide the fact “that Picasso was familiar with” Baudelaire’s poem “The Voyage to Cythera (The Vision of Venus),” a work that depicts the Greek island where Venus was born. Jean-­Auguste-­Dominique Ingres’s painting of this, Venus Anadyomene (figure 13), played a role in Picasso’s fashioning of the second demoiselle from the left — ​­a figure whose compositional position in many ways reflects his own interest in origins (see chapter 7). Themes of birth, death, artifice, and immortality feature prominently in Baudelaire’s poem, as they do in Les Demoiselles. This is in part where the various book sources are most important, yet Picasso’s use of them has yet to be addressed, largely because he sought to subvert or hide these sources through his non-reference to them in his comments about the canvas.

Art Histories In Les Demoiselles Picasso reengaged a wide range of well-­known art historical works, sources that have turned the canvas into a virtual treasure hunt for scholars seeking to illuminate them. The artist is often seen to be “a great pirate in

34

chapter one

the History of Art,” someone whose “sublime plagiarisms” move “in more than one direction at once and almost always avoiding the exact copy.” 59 While these searches have offered relatively little insight into more meaningful features of the canvas, when considered in light of Picasso’s other sources, these sources can help one to read the canvas in new ways. For example, Les Demoiselles can be compared to the bordello portrayals of other artists, most closely those of Edgar Degas (figure 11). Degas’s brothel monotypes, while rich in caricature, have a documentary feel, addressing female “types” and their relationships within this setting. In some of the prints, the women’s stares seem almost to penetrate the visiting male client, a feature also evoked in Picasso’s Demoiselles. It is quite likely that Picasso knew of these prints in this period (see chapter 6). Other engagements with historic artworks can also be seen in Les Demoiselles, although generally these works are without brothel referents. Among these is Édouard Manet’s controversial Le Dejeuner sur l’ herbe (1862–63), in which a naked female stares provocatively at the viewer.60 Manet’s Olympia (1863), in which a naked female protagonist focuses her gaze outward, was clearly an important model; a black servant bearing flowers accompanies her. This work was frequently parodied in part due to its racial theme (figures 21 and 23). When Picasso was living in Madrid as a student, he frequently copied museum works, including those by El Greco, Francisco Goya, and Diego Velázquez.61 Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) is a strikingly powerful painting of the Spanish royal family. Picasso’s crouching lower-­right demoiselle recalls the positioning and distorted anatomy of an outward-­staring dwarf near the right front corner of Velázquez’s painting. In both cases the figures are compressed into a small space, and they not only signal bodily difference but also play key roles in the overall structure and power of the composition. Similarly, each painting features a mystery-­laden interior with an array of openings that lead to other places. While Picasso’s Les Demoiselles is a very different work in subject matter and style, the enduring legacy of this striking Spanish masterpiece was clearly important to Picasso as he began to think about a work that would feature prominently in his own legacy. Among the other important art historical sources for Les Demoiselles are various orientalist or Islamic harem and bathing paintings, most importantly Eugène Delacroix’s Women of Algiers (1834; figure 12). In some respects, Les Demoiselles recalls an updated vision of these traditional harem gatherings and bathing genres.62 Algiers features four women of different races in an oriental-

S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

35

Fig 11

Degas, Madam’s Festival Day, c. 1877–79. Fig 12

Delacroix, Women of Algiers, 1834.

36

izing harem setting. In 1970 Picasso explained to Daix with respect to Les Demoiselles that he had thought of Édouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’ herbe, but had had Delacroix’s Algiers in his sights.63 In Algiers, a semisitting, semireclining Caucasian woman stares out at the viewer on the left. In the middle of the canvas we see two women. One, seated cross-­legged, has olive skin; the other, shown half-­squatting, has what may be Asian features, set within a strongly profiled face, balanced by a ponytail that drapes over her shoulder, and is suggestive of Picasso’s crouching demoiselle. At the far right of the canvas, walking away from this group toward an exit, is a woman of African descent. Like the left-­hand Egyptian/Asian figure in Picasso’s canvas, she is positioned near an exit and adjacent red curtains. We see her actively moving, one arm raised above her head, fingers spread wide on a nearby wall. Like the crouching woman in Les Demoiselles, we see her almost three-­ dimensionally — ​­rear, profile, and nearly frontal. In 1839, Ingres painted a similarly multiracial harem scene, Odalisque with Slave; this painting was in a private collection in Paris during the period in which Picasso was working on his canvas. Another Ingres work, Turkish Bath (1862), was on view in Paris in the October 1905 Salon, less than a year before Picasso commenced his own initial work for Les Demoiselles, and prior to his clearly related bathing scene in The Harem of the summer of 1906 (figure 218).64 An equally important painting for Les Demoiselles was Ingres’s canvas Venus Anadyomene — ​­shown rising from the sea (1848; figure 13), a smaller copy of which was in the Louvre. Both were modeled in part on Botticelli’s Birth of Ve-

chapter one

fig 13

Ingres, Venus Anadyomene, 1848. fig 14

Cézanne, Five Bathers, 1885–87.

nus (figure 217) and address a subject of known interest to Picasso. The striking raised arm of Ingres’s Venus, her hand resting across her head, is seen in the second demoiselle from the left, a figure that appears to identify with Picasso’s own origins as well as larger ideas of creation, transformation, and immortality (see chapter 7). As an earthly goddess who urged humans to take up physical love, or even as a heavenly deity whose love was deemed to be intellectually inspired, Venus is an apt model for this canvas. A number of compositional studies for Les Demoiselles featured a curtained setting reminiscent of the Delacroix. Another artwork clearly important to Picasso in this era was El Greco’s canvas The Vision of Saint John (1608–14; figure 16).65 The connections between Les seT Ting, soUrces, TiTles, and TiMe

fig 15

Cézanne, Three Bathers, 1879–82. fig 16

El Greco, The Vision of Saint John, 1608–14.

37

Demoiselles and this painting are noteworthy not only in the rendering of the three-­dimensional background but also in a sense of spirituality.66 Significant, too, for Picasso was El Greco’s radical compositional vision, one that engages Byzantine icons from Giotto’s native Greece (figure 25) and draws the viewer directly into the canvas through eye contact and the gestures of foreground figures. In addition, El Greco joined disparate elements of space and time within a highly compressed composition and addressed the surrounding landscape through the artifice of rocky outcroppings and caverns. Bold contrasts in color and jarring shifts in perspective add to the painting’s power, as does its large scale and nearly square shape. Significantly, both paintings are almost exactly the same width and height.67 Historically, El Greco’s canvas was thought to depict the contrast between divine and profane love as played out in contrasts between the clothed and naked figures on the right and left sides of this large painting. Similar contrasts enliven Picasso’s canvas. While it is highly unlikely that Picasso sought to moralize in this way in Les Demoiselles, it is possible that he attempted to “harness” some of the spiritual energy of El Greco’s work. Similar contrasts of pure and horrible beauty appear in Baudelaire’s essay “Le Peintre de la vie modern,” a work that focused on a prostitute who subverts ideas of civilization.68 Equally importantly, El Greco’s painting addresses not love (pure, profane, or otherwise) but the Apocalypse of John and the Book of Revelations. What Picasso researchers to date have overlooked in addressing the likely impact of this painting on Les Demoiselles is how the story of Revelations may be linked to Picasso’s canvas, particularly vis-­à-­vis ideas about time, rebirth, the beginning of one age as another ends, and immortality. As such, El Greco’s work suggests the broader “ages of man” theme that was of interest to several in Picasso’s circle in the 1905–7 era. Picasso’s friend and fellow Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga owned El Greco’s canvas, increasing the likelihood that Picasso saw it at this time.69 We know too that “when a friend later mentioned to him the decisive influences of El Greco and Cézanne in the pre-­cubist years, Picasso replied, ‘Of course, a painter always has a father and a mother.’” 70 Other works significant to Picasso at this time, that show similar subject matter, include several of Gauguin’s works, such as L’Univers est créé (1893–94; figure 289) and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–98). The memorial exhibition for Gauguin at the Salon d’Automne in October 1906 showcased not only paintings and works on paper but also a number of wood and ceramic sculptures. Picasso was inspired in this period to create 38

chapter one

figural woodcarvings in response to these examples (figure 118) and to African art. Picasso’s Egyptian curtain-­holding figure and crouching demoiselle in some ways also recall the watching figure in Gauguin’s Manao Tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch; 1892).71 Gauguin’s statue Oviri (Savage; 1894) depicts the Tahitian goddess of life and death and likely had an impact. Picasso had known of Gauguin’s work quite early through his Paris-­based Spanish friend and sculptor Paco Durrio, who then served occasionally as Gauguin’s agent. Through Durrio, Picasso acquired a copy of Gauguin’s book Noa Noa (1897), an illustrated autobiography to which Picasso added margin sketches (this book is now lost). Aspects of Gauguin’s primitivist project likely interested Picasso, particularly those works that explored “a temporal voyage, a retreat to purer origins.” In 1895 Gauguin told an interviewer, “In order to produce something new you have to go back to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.” 72 As with Gauguin, Picasso was also interested in the “childhood of humanity” framed in part around ideas of world origins and the enduring legacy of “primitive” art. Consistent with this, African art was seen by some as the means to return Europeans to “the origins” of their own culture.73 Modernization tropes were often framed around similar evolutionary ideas, idioms that simultaneously reconnected one to the past and pointed to the future.74 The powerful images of ancestral women in Les Demoiselles are consistent with these broader ideas of time transition, evolution, the human ages, origins, and links to modernity and immortality. In portraying a group of racially diverse women, Picasso also pointed to the inherent connection between sex and progeny, and cojoined the often separate idioms of lover, mother, generation, and time, here framed in a global vantage. Picasso later revealed to Malraux such a philosophical complexity as an appropriate subject for important works of art: “What he [Picasso] considered [viable] themes . . . were birth, pregnancy, suffering, murder, the couple, death, rebellion, and, perhaps, the kiss. Although such themes are generally embodied in forms characteristic of the times, one encounters them in almost every period. Nobody could be ordered to express them, but when any great painter encountered them, he was inspired by them.” 75 Picasso’s engagement with larger issues of origins and world change is visible in many of the artworks important to him in developing this canvas. These included several works by Michelangelo, among these the sculpture Aurore (Dawn; figure 66; 1523), which was a partial model for the centermost demoiselle (the so-­called gisante), and the importance of gesture (splayed fingers versus touching indices) in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco (figure 324; 1512). ThematiS e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

39

cally, Picasso’s canvas also reveals similarities to Gustave Courbet’s provocative painting The Origin of the World (figure 307; 1866). But for Picasso, it is five racially distinct women who play the role of human progenitors, addressing sex in a way that is far richer and more complex (see chapter 7).

Time Travel and Origins In Les Demoiselles, with its five women from different places and periods, Picasso has created a scene of art historical time travel. Similar kinds of imaginative encounters across space and time were of interest to many in this era. Jules Verne’s widely read novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine (1895) are but two of the better-­known examples. Apollinaire, Jacob, Olivier, Salmon, and Gertrude Stein were among those knowledgeable about related themes. Related to the then prominent “ages of man” art historical theme, the subject of time travel through a fictive means imagines a world in which ordinary constraints of time and space are overcome as humans gain the ability to transcend both. Time travel was explored in a well-­read book from this period — ​­Art by the Mad, by Marcel Réja (pseudonym for the psychiatrist Paul Meunier) — ​­that addressed aesthetic questions and the mentally ill. The volume was featured in the bimonthly literary journal Mercure de France, which published quasiscientific articles and was followed by Apollinaire, Jacob, and Salmon.76 Addressing the then common pejorative view that “primitive” populations and children share key characteristics (factors of mental “functioning”) with each other and with the mentally ill, these three groups were believed to offer insight into the enhancement of artistic creativity. In many ways Picasso’s fascination with African art (and other “primitive” cultures that included European medieval, Egyptian, and Asian works) is consistent with this time travel theme, since these works were seen not only to exist outside of historical change but also to have been fashioned in “a kind of temporal vacuum.” 77 Les Demoiselles, like a pictorial time machine, brings together women of different periods, places, and styles. The woman positioned on the left seems to have walked straight out of an Egyptian tomb painting or sculpture (figures 60, 61, 64, and 73–76) with her dead eyes reopened, although still without real sight. The two European figures, with their classical Venus de Milo poses (figure 63) and attire, are reminiscent of Greco-­Roman gods or antiquities brought back to life (figure 65). This same idea of an “enlivened” sculpture from another place is also part of the power and 40

chapter one

challenge of the two Africanized figures on the right. Their forms appear to be at once in the present and part of the past. It is not just the individual features of these figures that are important but also the ways in which they have each been brought together in this canvas. Picasso has obliterated historical European visual standards that a painting constitutes a stylistic whole. Indeed, a key part of Les Demoiselles’ visual complexity is its lack of stylistic cohesiveness. As one scholar observed, “For all the violence of the heads at the right-­hand side, [it] is disturbing primarily because of its stylistic inconsistencies.” 78 Like Derain’s Golden Age (1905), Matisse’s Bonheur, and the Byzantine icons that were important to El Greco’s early development, each demoiselles is separated into her own space. Period criticism of Matisse’s Bonheur is informative in this regard, for, according to one critic, Bonheur was “a fractured schematized synthesis of ‘pure theoretical figures.’” 79 Somewhat the same critique could have been applied to Les Demoiselles.80 Picasso not only narrowed and sharpened the roles of his female protagonists but also invested them with the far more unusual styles of the places and periods these women represent — ​­Africa, Europe, Egypt, and Asia. Aspects of this reframing recall the illustrated books that appear to have affected the artist (most importantly those by Frobenius and Stratz). Picasso broke down the arbitrary barriers between the figures and positioned them in a much more compressed and disorienting space, one that is entered only by accessing it through multiple yet separate perspectives. Part of what makes Les Demoiselles so powerful is that “for the first time, Picasso reunites in one single image many views of the same object taken under different angles.” 81 The uneven, variegated surfaces and highly unusual cavelike features of the space within Les Demoiselles d’Avignon also evoke human origins. It is a strange setting even for an imaginative house of prostitution, and one that is notably different from Picasso’s earlier “classic” brothel renderings (figure 1). The empowered space, in the evocative words of Steinberg, “closes in like a fist . . . [the whole shaped by] the conflicts between crush and expansion.” 82 The compression of figures in this simultaneously constricting and expanding interior suggests at once the strangely paradoxical qualities of the sex act and the birth canal of the same now fecund woman, a scene in which the five females are shown emerging from the same womblike space (compare figure 302). The pulsating walls speak to core themes of the canvas — ​­sexual penetration certainly, but also creation, progeny, and time travel. At the same time, this background suggests a curtain-­delimited space, a feaS e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

41

ture found in Picasso’s painting Two Women (1906; figure 183), as well as in various related studies (plate 9) and early compositional studies for Les Demoiselles (figure 10). This highly theatrical (almost Baroque) curtain frame calls to mind the thick dark red draperies that separate the stagelike café interior of one of Picasso’s favorite haunts, Au Lapin Agile. The setting also delimits a kind of geographic framing in its background colors: earthen reds, stone grays, sandlike beiges, and deep ocean blues. If indeed this canvas was meant to evoke a specific place, it would recall a three-­dimensional map. These same tones identify the sites and surrounds of the places the five demoiselles themselves seem to suggest. Les Demoiselles in some ways also engages Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel fresco, The Creation of Adam (figure 324). Picasso’s canvas includes a half-­recumbent demoiselle (second from left) that recalls the half-­prone Adam. Picasso’s left-­hand Egyptian/Asian demoiselle, with her strangely disjunctured skyward reaching hand and its energized splay of fingers, is interesting too. In Creation, Adam is about to receive the life-­spurring touch of God’s rigid phallic-­ like index finger. In Picasso’s work, the sky-­reaching splayed fingers suggest instead the kind of nervous searching for contact. The outward-­spread fingers thus resonate with and stand in striking contrast to Michelangelo’s single-­digit focus. In Michelangelo’s work, creation is direct and well ordered, thanks to God’s direct intervention; with Picasso, human origins and spatial divisions are fraught, consistent with evolutionary theories of the era and of the “mess” of the world in which different groups of humans developed and now live. It is also not entirely clear whose hand it is, since it is positioned in an incongruous way. This also adds to the complexity of the figure. Like many of the details in Les Demoiselles, the raised arm and splayed gesture of the Egyptian/Asian demoiselle draws on multiple art historical sources, yet it is also unique. As noted above, one possible source is Michelangelo’s Creation scene. Another suggestion, by Steinberg, is that the painting evokes a different figure of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, namely, Isaiah, whose similar gesture is seen to be one that “bespeaks awareness or self-­recognition.” 83 A more likely source is the African woman in Delacroix’s Women of Algiers (figure 12), discussed above. The same hand also has roots in El Greco’s The Vision of St. John (figure 16), where it is read in part as appealing for help. There are other, more unusual sources, too. Among these is the enormous hand created for the Arc de triomphe in Paris, a plaster cast on view in the sculpture galleries of the Trocadéro (figure 53). Like El Greco’s Vision, Les Demoiselles, too, suggests a plea or appeal for help. A similar raised arm and hand with widespread fingers can be 42

chapter one

seen in the photograph of a South Asian woman that was published in various editions of Stratz’s volumes (figure 202), which Picasso likely had seen. In this single gesture we see how Picasso was employing a multiplicity of sources in the creation of the figures on his canvas. In some cases, different meanings may have been part of this distinctive gestural legacy as well.

“Ages of Humankind”: Derain, Matisse, and Picasso The “ages of humankind” is a theme rich in interest within the long trajectory of European art and literature. The key issue of the era, modernity and its myriad attendant societal and technological changes, was on the minds of many in the first decade after 1900, when an array of new innovations were coming into use and being explored by artists, writers, and others. The theme extends back to Greek mythology, most notably the writings of Hesiod and Ovid. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the poet identifies five ages, four of which are associated with a metal (gold, silver, bronze, and iron).84 Ovid draws on Hesiod’s account, but for him there are only four ages. These notably distinct eras offered the potential for modern artists to explore what one scholar called “the beginnings of things . . . with certain primal sources and principles of inspiration and creation.” 85 In 1905 André Derain painted a rather startling work called L’Age d’or (The Golden Age; figure 17), which predates and clearly influences Matisse’s Bonheur de vivre (Joy of Life; figure 18), also of the same theme.86 Unlike Matisse, whose painting is filled with joy (hence its name) effectuated through an energy driven by pulsing colors, bright hues, and notable stylistic disjunctures, Derain’s portrayal is bleak in its dissonant color choices, juxtapositions, and stylistic variants. Whereas Matisse’s evocation of pleasure and well-­being is achieved through warm pastels verging on acidic tones, Derain’s painting contains notably disquieting and jarring shifts in color and subject matter. Both works pointed the way for Picasso to make even more revolutionary marks on the theme. Derain and Picasso became very close in the fall 1906, shortly after Derain had traveled to Marseille, where the colonial fair was in full swing and had moved onto rue Tourlaque, near the Bateau-­Lavoir.87 Like Derain, Picasso in Les Demoiselles used a greatly compressed and simplified composition to bring his figures into close contact, and he used color, gesture, and expression to mark key differences. Derain laid out the narrative quite clearly for viewers. We can almost see the seated golden woman on the right coming to life from the brightly lit shadow-­silhouetted ground and the three blue-­and red-­hued women in the S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

43

foreground as they fade into the darker shadows. Picasso instead let each figure identify herself through details of race and era. In the same way that Derain and Matisse imbued the Golden Age setting with rich yellow hues, hints of this color are found in Picasso’s canvas, specifically near the crouching demoiselle’s head. In another of Derain’s important works, his The Dance (1906), he foregrounds the circle of dancers in the center of Matisse’s Bonheur (derived from Lucas Cranach’s painting The Golden Age [c. 1530]). Derain winnows the dancers down to three, enlarges them, and transforms their previously Caucasian bodies into women from around the world — ​­Asian, European, and other. This scene is more in keeping with the new era, serving as a kind of global temporal referent. Derain, even earlier than Matisse and Picasso, had been interested in African and Oceanic works, and the bold hues and conceptualization of the body through more volumetric forms reflect this.88 Some of Derain’s dancers wear masks; however, they are notably different from those of Picasso’s Demoiselles, and recall instead theatrical masks from historic European settings.89 Matisse’s provocative Bonheur painting was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1906, reinforcing his identity with the honorific title “King of the Fauves” (King of the Wild Beasts) and acclaim as the artistic leader of the Paris avant-­garde.90 Leo Stein purchased the work a few weeks after the Salon opened and featured it in the dining room of the 27 rue de Fleurus apartment in which he and Gertrude Stein held their weekly salon for artists and ­intellectuals — ​ ­Picasso and Matisse key among them. In many ways, Les Demoiselles was in part Picasso’s response to this work and to Derain’s Golden Age canvas, which Matisse had engaged. Matisse presented humanity’s Golden Age in Bonheur in a remote and fantasy-­evoking lyrical style. Matisse gives witness to a time of notable resplendence, plentitude, and joy, linked to quasireligious ideals of happiness and nostalgia.91 If in Bonheur “the past enters its present,” 92 the same also can be said for Les Demoiselles. As Salmon noted of Picasso, he “is trying . . . to give us a total representation of man and things.” 93 Matisse acknowledged that Bonheur was “made by the juxtaposition of things conceived independently from each other, but arranged together.” 94 One is invited to move “from one figure to . . . another . . . [in a] temporal sequence rather than spatial transition,” in part, following the “‘ages of man,’ from the womb to maturity,” taking in the pastoral ages and the ages of art, “from prehistory to antiquity, to the Renaissance, and on the 19th century, up to the present.” 95 Similar ideas seem to have interested Picasso as he worked on Les Demoiselles. 44

chapter one

Several of the postures and gestures of the five demoiselles have direct corollaries with the women in Bonheur; however, Picasso veered away from Matisse’s mythical elements and the idea of fixed temporality. Moreover, as one scholar notes, in many ways “Les Demoiselles is also a ferocious critique of Matisse’s Le Bonheur de vivre, which for the past year Picasso had seen every time he visited Leo and Gertrude’s apartment. . . . In Les Demoiselles, Picasso seems quite literally to deconstruct Le Bonheur, in almost every way possible. Le Bonheur is curvilinear, exuberant, and brightly colored; Les Demoiselles is angular, harsh, and monochromatic.” 96 The rawness of the colors employed by Picasso and the brut slashing quality of the application of pigment are also very different from those in the work of the fauves — ​­led at the time by Matisse, and including Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.97 Recalling Cézanne’s Bathers, which Matisse then owned, Les Demoiselles bring together for scrutiny a disparate group of nudes. Picasso’s angular, sharp, and rather disconsonant nudes offer little of the soft pleasure seen in Cézanne’s and Matisse’s nudes. Like Bonheur, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles is filled with ruptures in scale and perspective that are intentionally disorienting; yet in the Picasso, they are even more so because of the sheer size of the figures and the cramped space they inhabit. Both works force viewers to deal with each figure differently, but in Les Demoiselles this relationship is more powerful and deeply personal. The highly competitive Picasso also introduced far more radical shifts in composition, perspective, figuration, and style. In essence he turned the “ages of humankind” subject on its head. In Les Demoiselles, the women are from various ages, periods, and civilizations but also exhibit key features of disparate global art and the cultural spheres they inhabit; the women, suggests Jacob, “are masks, almost entirely freed from humanity. Yet these people are not gods, nor are they Titans or heroes; not even allegorical or symbolic figures.” 98 Jacob here signals one of the five classic “ages of man,” specifically the Golden Age credited to the Titan Cronus. Picasso’s painting hides the demoiselles’ real identity by way of the masks; as Jacob insists, the demoiselles can be anyone. In this canvas, the “human ages” is no longer exclusively a subject of classical European figuration; Picasso has reframed it as an engagement with a far more complex global reach, one more viable in the newly colonized world of 1906–7. In contrast to Matisse and Derain, Picasso’s canvas is one of self-­discovery; each participant encounters herself and the others — ​­as do the viewers. Picasso did not need (or perhaps even want) a traditional bordello setting to tell this story. S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

45

Fig 17

Derain, The Golden Age, 1905. Fig 18

Matisse, Bonheur de vivre, 1905–6.

Fig 19

Matisse, Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), 1907. Fig 20

What he offers instead is a means to introduce the issue of sexual engagement as part of the larger legacy of human history, renewal, and immortality.

Response to the 1907 Salon des Indépendants

Derain, The Bathers, 1907.

Among the arts on view at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, which opened on March 20, 1907, were two revolutionary contributions by Derain and Matisse. Both works were conceived as new explorations on the same Golden Age subjects that the artists had investigated previously. Both paintings had an important impact on Picasso, who, after nearly five months of careful study and experimentation, was about to start painting Les Demoiselles. Derain’s contribution was a three-­figure canvas titled The Bathers (figure 20). The figures seem to derive in part from Derain’s earlier Dancers, and in part from Matisse’s Bonheur as well as Cézanne’s Three Bathers (figure 15) and Five Bathers (figure 14). Derain’s Bathers, completed in 1907, shows three frightened women seemingly lost and trying to escape the dark and ominous setting of a swamp and

46

chapter one

an adjacent jungle. Each woman appears to be in considerable pain. The work transports the subjects of this “ages of humankind” reprise to a new and decidedly more dangerous age and setting. Derain accords the scene a notably disquieting tenor, the women’s faces and gestures filled with fear and foreboding. In many ways these women suggest the challenge and pain of self-­discovery that accompanies a new era. Depicted from both the front and the rear, they share a decidedly volumetric power, recalling the striking sculptural contrasts of the African figures that Derain, Matisse, and Picasso admired at that time. Matisse exhibited at this same spring Salon an equally powerful and difficult work, Tableau no. III (also known as Blue Nude and, later, Memory of Biskra; 1907; figure 19).99 Here Matisse extracted Derain’s earlier semireclining figure from her time-­linked Golden Age setting and repositioned her as the sole subject of the canvas. She bears within her own body the deep color contrasts that Derain had used to mark the separate temporal zones of his Golden Age canvas. Of Matisse’s new work, Paris art critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote, “I admit to not understanding [it]. An ugly nude woman is stretched out upon grass of an opaque blue under the palm trees. . . . This is an artistic effect tending toward the abstract that escapes me completely.” 100 The voluptuous yet deeply chiseled features of Matisse’s female subject in Blue Nude are similar to the striking plasticity of African sculptures (including Matisse’s own sculpture, which Picasso had handled the previous October; figures 43 and 44).101 The painting fits within a long tradition of odalisques featured in European harem paintings. The later name, Souvenir de Biskra, derives from a Saharan oasis in southern Algeria (figure 22); Biskra oasis odalisques in this era were well-­known photographic subjects. How Matisse imagined or sought to engage issues of race in Blue Nude is not clear, but since he had recently traveled to North Africa and was using African sculptures in this period as well as photographs of sub-­Saharan African women that appeared in image-­rich journals and books (figures 188–93, among others), Matisse’s nude carries similar associations. The woman’s positioning as part of the landscape, as if she were growing directly from it, is noteworthy as well, reflecting a reference to Derain and to an African Venus.102 At the same time, Blue Nude was painted to evoke and replace an African-­ inspired sculpture that Matisse had been working on at the time called Nu couché I. The face of Matisse’s Blue Nude is deeply shaded with dark blue and purple hues, in notable contrast to the luminescence of her ashen body. Picasso employed a similar feature of body-­face contrast (and indeed contradiction) S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

47

fig 21

Picasso, Parody of Olympia with Junyer, 1901. fig 22

Anon., Woman of the Ouled Nail Tribe, c. 1907.

48

in several of his demoiselles (particularly those wearing masks). The face of Matisse’s reclining female is also fashioned in the distinctive shape of a mask, like those commonly worn at European masquerade balls. Picasso took this theme further in Les Demoiselles by using African and other non-Western mask forms. In November 1906, Matisse, on his way to Collioure, stopped to see Derain, who was then staying in L’Estaque. Part of their conversation focused on a competition the two were then undertaking in their art: “Th is was an occasion, apparently, when the two artists discussed ‘who would paint the most beautiful blue woman.’”103 By “beautiful” they most likely mean “ugly”; by “blue,” perhaps, they are referencing a Cézannian palette or something triste (sad). Derain’s and Matisse’s paintings at the Salon that depict what many would construe to be “ugly blue women” left a seminal imprint on Picasso as he began to fashion the canvas he had been conceptualizing since October. The works by Matisse and Derain were probably as shocking to Picasso as they were to others. Picasso used this event to reimagine his own canvas into one that would top the canvases of Matisse and Derain. In many ways Picasso won. As Salmon later noted, it was “the ugliness of the [demoiselles’] faces that froze with horror the half-converted.”104 We need look no further than Picasso’s own earlier 1902 parody portrayal of a black nude in hues of bright blue (figure 21), fashioned after Manet’s 1865 Olympia, to see how the young Spanish artist had initially imagined a similar subject. Here Picasso employed bright blue pigment to represent black skin. Picasso’s large 1907 canvas also recalls the bold stare at the viewer of Manet’s reclining Olympia. The latter work Picasso likely saw at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, and chapTer one

top | left to right fig 23

Aduma ceremony (Gabon), n.d. fig 24

Picasso, Three Nudes, 1906. bottom | left to right fig 25

perhaps again in early 1907, when the canvas was moved from the Musée du Luxembourg to the Louvre. It is not clear if Picasso mentioned his parody of Olympia to Derain or Matisse, but the works share a certain similarity; other race-linked parodies (figure 23) were also circulating in this era. Picasso most likely first applied pigment to his new canvas in late March 1907, probably soon after the opening of the Salon (see chapter 2). The palpable shock of Matisse’s and Derain’s boldness of approach and engagement had left a mark. Picasso’s Demoiselles canvas responds to both and moves beyond them. Although clearly drawn from Picasso’s own recent studies and compositional drawings (figure 32 and many others) and an array of earlier artist engagements (figures 11–12, 14–16), the challenge was to create an even bolder and more shocking “blue beauty” than Derain or Matisse had achieved. There is little doubt but that this was foremost on Picasso’s mind as he began to paint. This competition, of course, was only one small part of the project that Picasso seT Ting, soUrces, TiTles, and TiMe

Anon., Icon of the Nativity, 15th century. fig 26

Degas, Two Dancers in the Studio (Dance School ), 1875.

49

had been working on since October, but the new challenge likely pressed him to rethink the manner in which he would render the women in it. In Picasso’s engagement with the works on view at the Salon, he chose to battle with France’s two leading avant-­garde artists. Up to this point Matisse and Derain had primarily led the chess game of serial one-­upmanship. With Picasso’s canvas, the still relatively little-­known twenty-­five-year-­old Spanish nouveau arrivé made it clear that he wanted to overtake both rivals. It is hard to imagine Les Demoiselles’ unique form and boldness of contrasting styles, color, technique, and masks without this Derain and Matisse “battle” charge. Picasso gambled that his bold move would launch him to the very top of Paris’s avant-­garde painters, and it did. Through this revolutionary intervention on his massive canvas, Picasso simultaneously established himself as leader of the Paris contemporary art scene and eventually positioned himself within the celestial pantheon of renowned artists of European art history — ​­Velázquez, El Greco, Michelangelo, Delacroix, Ingres, and Cézanne, among these.105 Picasso continued this reengagement with the present and the past throughout his life, attesting to his deep commitment to shaping his own place in history and coupling it with a desire to “own” this past in his unique and highly creative way.106 Consistent with this, the striking paintings presented by Derain and Matisse in the March 1907 Salon provided Picasso with potent visual weapons that enabled him to push the boundaries even further in his own contribution to the competitive foray. Picasso’s more radical vision lifted him above contention. As Picasso himself is widely known to have insisted, “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” Les Demoiselles clearly is one of these. Picasso researchers have paid much attention to the impact on the artist of several bathing canvases by Paul Cézanne, particularly the Three Bathers (1879– 82; figure 15).107 An early three-­figure study for Les Demoiselles (figure 24) and several of the demoiselle poses on the large canvas draw inspiration from this work as well as from Cézanne’s later Five Bathers (1885–87; figure 14). The death of Cézanne on October 22, 1906, and the special exhibition of ten of his paintings in the Salon d’Automne from October 6 to November 4, 1906, left a strong impact on Picasso, and clearly Cézanne’s bathers were among the most important of Picasso’s referents as he began to contemplate his large canvas. Moreover, for Picasso, the challenge in Les Demoiselles was clearly less one of depicting specific women, or presenting them as part of a narrative in which each figure has her own distinct geographic niche (as in Byzantine icons; fig50

chapter one

ure 25), than of generating an idea of womanhood that filled multiple roles. One scholar suggests, “Standing before the Brothel of Avignon as before a distorting mirror, viewers recognized grossly exaggerated, often trivial reflections of themselves. Picasso recaptured this context when he recalled how he and his friends used the painting to mock each other by locating their loved ones in the Brothel of Avignon.” 108 This same scholar points out how we might see the canvas as a distorting mirror, reflecting back what is seen but in a manner that is simultaneously familiar and very different. A similar framing, also related to Picasso’s masks, was deployed in Alfred Jarry’s Père Ubu, who is seen to reveal within himself a distorted reflection of the colonial effort.109 The brothel referent, although largely reflecting a later reading of this canvas, is an important part of the painting’s history. Many of the most intriguing theories about the canvas emerged around this theme, proposals that helped to define and advance Picasso’s reputation as a brilliant, sometimes troubled, and notably subversive figure — ​­the paradigmatic genius and modern artist extraordinaire. This enhanced the status and economic potential of Picasso and his works — ​­both prior and subsequent to this singular canvas. Picasso also knew that the brothel framing would reinforce his push for a break from the kind of frothy pastel ballet dancers of Degas that were still popular (figure 26), works that stand in direct contrast to how Picasso would conceive his own works in this era, including his bold Africanized dancer (figure 338), which he insisted on mounting in the same frame that Degas commissioned just to make the point. Significantly, the Museum of Modern Art would have to sell a Degas painting to acquire the necessary funds to purchase Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1939. Had Picasso known, he would have been pleased, even if he would have preferred that the painting had remained in Paris and eventually enter the Louvre.110

S e tt i n g , S o u r c e s , T i t l e s , a n d T i m e

51

Chapter two

“What is a painter?” he once asked, and then answered, “He is someone who founds his art collection by painting it himself.” ​­P A B L O P I C A S S O ,

quoted in Janet Flanner, “Pablo Picasso,”

in The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose, 180

The Making of a Painting Rich hues of coral, puce, lavender, and pale sepia wash across the female bodies and background of one of Picasso’s most important color oil studies (plate 4) for his 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I stare at this image, exploring the sketch closely not only for what additional insights it might offer to my understanding of the painting but also to try to understand how it has led Picasso scholars so far astray. It was a warm sun-­fi lled Friday morning in late March 2014, and I was about to meet with painting conservator Michael Duffy at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was close to the date in 1907 that Picasso had applied his first brushstrokes to the now famous canvas, although studies for this painting began in October 1906, five months earlier. Duffy had been part of a 2003–4 team that conserved and cleaned the work. He brought out for my examination X-­rays and infrared studies of the most debated figures in the ­composition — ​­the two females on the right wearing African-­like masks. I had come to show Duffy a photograph of Les Demoiselles that had been taken in Picasso’s studio soon after the artist had begun work on the canvas (figure 27). The photo features the wife and daughter of fellow Bateau-­Lavoir artist and resident Kees van Dongen standing in front of the canvas in fashionable attire. With a copy of the print in view, Duffy and I looked more closely at the X-­rays and at a series of related studies with colored markings to highlight likely

fig 27

Picasso, Guus and Dolly van Dongen, 1907.

changes made by Picasso to the canvas. We discussed the recent conservation process and what additional information it had revealed, since the photograph and X-rays do not show color. Duff y indicated that beneath and adjacent to the head of the crouching woman in the right foreground were found patches of yellow: “If you look closely at the painting downstairs you can see some of it still,” he informed me. After my meeting with Duff y in the conservation lab, I went to the fifth-floor Painting and Sculpture gallery to examine Les Demoiselles anew. Waiting until a large group of onlookers moved on to another masterpiece, I got as close as I could without bringing a reprimand from the gallery guard. I looked for hints of yellow around the figure of the crouching female, and sure enough, although hard to discern in the darkened interior, there were traces. The ochre yellow areas framing the left side of the head may offer clues to the symbolic grounding of this canvas, evoking a sun-bathed dawn and the temporal change (new beginnings, dawn, the ages of humanity) that these women in part seem to invoke. The M aking of a painTing

53

With the image of the precleaned canvas still fresh in my mind, I took in the stunning “newness” of the colors now visible in the painting that had reemerged with its recent cleaning. Without the dark cast I had long associated with it, the work seemed almost joyful, the colors more reminiscent of the fauvist paintings of André Derain and Henri Matisse in the adjacent gallery.1 This striking change in the canvas’s coloring and tone coincided with the painting’s new subject. Les Demoiselles remains a painting of unique power, freshness, complexity, and “charge.” Its fresh face and new sources add to its interest and enduring appeal, to which questions of color and subject matter are important. Duffy had had a dream. The details of this dream were described in a New Yorker article that accompanied the announcement of the painting’s reemergence from its cleaning in time for its 2007 centennial.2 Duffy had dreamed that one day he had arrived in his lab to see a corner of the large eight-­foot-­by-­ seven-­foot-­eight canvas magically peeled back to reveal the layers of pigment that lay beneath the surface: “It was as if the figures were trying to come to life,” he explained to journalist Calvin Tomkins. He is not the only person to be haunted by Les Demoiselles. MoMA curator Kirk Varnedoe revealed that this work “had given him shivers.” 3 Picasso’s photographer, Brassaï, noted similarly that on one occasion “Les Demoiselles [gave] me the eye. What are these women looking for here?” 4 Contemporary artists such as Fred Wilson (Picasso Whose Rules, 1991) and Armando Mariño (The Secret Entrance II, 1999) have reimagined the canvas from the vantage of seeing or stepping inside the work to explore it more fully. For Wilson this comes by way of an African Songye mask positioned over the crouching demoiselle’s face, whose eyes can be peered through to look into the canvas. With Mariño’s engagement, we see the figure of a barefoot black man wearing red shorts and African beads, lifting up the lower right corner of the canvas to climb inside. I don’t recall experiencing any specific dream while researching Les Demoiselles, but my encounter with this painting often occurred in equally subversive ways. As noted in the introduction, for me, the five women populating the work have come back to life in unique ways. Insights often arrived in the form of “gifts” of knowledge that were seemingly laid before me in a series of clues that challenged me to pursue them directly to the canvas. Most importantly they included an array of new sources for the work — ​­one book, then another, then two more, then the 1907 photograph (figure 27). In my work as an Africanist I am accustomed to dealing with the notion of ghosts, artful and nonartful apparitions that are part of the broad sweep of inventive cultural practices.5 Moreover, 54

chapter t wo

in the case of Les Demoiselles, as with art in general, I believe that the created work itself holds key insights into the processes of its creation and its meaning. It is up to us, as scholars and viewers, to discover what these women mean. In the end, whatever the culture or period in play, it is imperative that we look closely at and behind the image to see the work on its own terms. In my case, it was not only a question of closer examination of the painting but also of throwing out most everything that had been written about it in order to engage it anew. In some ways this was a challenge, since Les Demoiselles and the hundreds of studies and related works associated with it have been meticulously examined over the last century — ​­scrutinized, analyzed, researched, and then reexamined by scores of scholars — ​­art historians, curators, popular writers, scientists, and others. Rarely did Picasso provide overt spoken or written clues about his artworks, much less so for this most iconic of paintings. However, as with the photograph of Les Demoiselles that was taken soon after Picasso began the canvas in his studio, photography sometimes plays an important role in our understanding of his works. A seemingly off-­the-­cuff comment by Picasso to Brassaï in the 1930s, when the latter was working with the artist to photograph his sculptural oeuvre, offers one such clue. This comment, revealed in Brassaï’s diary, has largely been overlooked by scholars of Picasso’s early period, and, much like Duffy’s dream, Brassaï’s description of the engagement is rife with drama. As the two were looking at the piles of materials amassed in Picasso’s studio, Picasso revealed to Brassaï a “secret of Les Demoiselles.” According to Brassaï, Picasso stated, “Come and look closely at it. It’s a tapestry. A fellow from Toulon got it into his head to make that after a common postcard. Many of my visitors find it horrible and talk of sacrilege. They don’t recognize my colors. But that’s precisely what appeals to me. The colors of the painting were already completely different on the [postcard] reproduction [used as a model], and the weekend painter invented new ones. It’s almost a different picture, even though it reminds you of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” 6 In short, for Picasso, color was at the heart of what this painting was about. I see this most clearly in the choice of earth tone reds, sand hues, and ocean gray blues in a manner suggestive of map forms (see chapter 7). Gertrude Stein’s 1908 description of Les Demoiselles soon after its completion reveals much the same thing. For her, it is a work distinguished at once by its huge scale, strangeness, and striking shifting color palette: “Against the wall was an enormous picture, a strange picture of light and dark colours, that is all I can say, of a group, an enormous group.” 7 In the various scholarly theories that have been suggested for this canvas, The M aking of a Painting

55

relatively little attention has focused on its color. One of the few scholars that does discuss color is Picasso’s trusted friend and cataloger, Christian Zervos, who notes that color adds to the intensity of emotion and sense of invention. The canvas contains tones of color that are “bolder” than in Picasso’s rose period, with a small number of nuances. In Les Demoiselles, Zervos adds, color connects to design, a “cohesion that is between this [color] and the form, conveying the expression of the nature of the subject, the entirety together make the foundation and . . . style of the Demoiselles d’Avignon.” 8 Rubin notes, “Not only are the . . . [colors] more saturated, but the chromatic intervals separating adjoining colors have a brutal dissonance that is entirely anti-­decorative.” 9 The colors anticipate the palette of German Die Brücke (The Bridge) school painters that were coming into play in this period as well, Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner among them.10 Picasso’s familiarity with the work of a German illustrator of African masks, E. Hugelshofer, may have played a role in this more German palette (see chapter 4). While today many see the rawness of the oranges and blues in Les Demoiselles as being based in Oceanic sculptures from the New Hebrides and elsewhere, African works from Dahomey known to have interested the artist are another likely source (see figure 54, an enormous royal sculpture painted with a dark acidic green surface and orange eyes and mouth). If the use of monochrome hues in Picasso’s preceding rose and blue periods helped to situate these works in an indeterminate region and time as “suffering souls rather than individual” players,11 then the rich array of colors employed in Les Demoiselles serves to bring these women to life in new ways. From the vantage of sensorial complexity and identity I want to return to Picasso’s comment to Brassaï about the importance of color in Les Demoiselles. Let’s fix our eyes on the marked contrasts between the five figures and their faces. We see that Picasso has applied hues to the physiognomies and bodies of the three women wearing masks (the Egyptian/Asian persona and the two African figures) that are different from those of the two central demoiselles. Note the sharp blue lines on the Egyptian female’s forward-­thrust leg and the face, hair, shoulder, side, and breast of the crouching woman. Equally striking, all the women have light tones juxtaposed with darker ones to convey features in relief, as if we were meant to read them as sculptures. Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso’s early dealer and critic, notes that Picasso’s means of applying the pigments was important to the artist’s vision: “He applied the colors in threadlike fashion to serve as lines of direction, and to build up, in conjunction with the drawing, the plastic effect.” 12 56

chapter t wo

The shading of details also conveys a greater sense of three-­dimensionality and shape. In the bold pigments of these forms, Picasso builds the pictorial composition in new ways, in which figural modeling through paint strokes and color (for example, the masklike face of the Egyptian demoiselle [figure 30; compare figures 28, 29, and 31]) replaces the shadows emitted from a single organizing light source to convey spatial depth. This feature was noted early on by Picasso’s good friend and fellow Bateau-­Lavoir occupant André Salmon, who writes that the painting is “devoid” of light play. This quality, when coupled with the austere figures of the women, makes the enclosing space of the scene difficult to comprehend, much less visually penetrate, overwhelming one physically and emotionally.13 It is largely through color that Picasso differentiates the background spaces in which these women appear. He defines these in contrasting hues of deep sepia on the left, light to dark teal hues in the center, and a combination of putty and deep brown colors for the two figures on the right. In some ways these background colors call up ideas of site-­specific geographies Picasso created for the notably different women. The undulating burnt red wall adjacent to the Egyptian/Asian woman on the left is suggestive of the rich red earth carried by the Nile, flooded with rain and soil from the south; it also suggests the entry stairs of a pyramidal tomb. Similar colors permeate the ground of Gauguin’s Tahitian landscapes. Running along the opposite edge of the canvas are sandy hues shifting to warm browns, turning to deeper, brown-­ black pigments that successively frame the two African figures. We can almost read these as referencing the geographic sweep of Sahara sand as it shifts to the dark loam-­rich soils of the African forest. The lighter and darker blues that surround the two Caucasian women, enfolding them at the same time as if in rumpled bed sheets, suggest in turn the seas and oceans of water that both join and separate Europe from the rest of the world.14 The bold hints of yellow that can still be seen near the head of the crouching figure perhaps evokes a setting (or rising) sun, or the firelight in a cavelike setting. In some ways this kind of geographic play also recalls Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (figure 217; 1486). Not coincidentally, here, blue is historically the Virgin Mary’s color, the penultimate icon of women and motherhood in the West. Whatever this setting depicts, it is clearly “a space peculiar to Picasso’s imagination.” 15 The divergent spatial attributes, perspectival vantages, fractured surfaces, and variant stylistic elements not only challenge historical pictorial conventions but also position Picasso in the forefront of a battle to counter and replace key legacies of Western art historical engagement, pressing him on a The M aking of a Painting

57

fig 28

X-ray, demoiselle (second from left), 2016. fig 29

X-ray, standing African demoiselle, 2016.

fig 30

X-ray, Egyptian demoiselle (in profi le on left), 2016. fig 31

X-ray, crouching demoiselle (on bottom right), 2016.

course toward transformations that would come to dominate much of the twentieth century — ​­cubism, abstraction, and surrealism, among them. In many ways the vertical bands of blues, tans, and rusts (sea, beach, and earth) also recall color zones shown in Romanesque murals that may have interested the artist, or Byzantine paintings (figure 25) that were a strong influence on El Greco (figure 16). As we think more about the question of color, let us return to the pink hues found in one study for this work. The small, dominantly pink oil sketch discussed above (plate 4) is one of several extant color studies of Les Demoiselles. This work (and others like it) has long been seen to hold important clues to the history of the canvas. In this sketch, consistent with many of the other early compositional studies (figure 9), we see a group of seven figures, rather than the five now inhabiting the painting, delimited principally in tones of pink. Shown at left is a man in a brown suit carrying a book. This figure was identified later by Picasso as a medical student.16 By the time Picasso sketched out the actual composition on the canvas, this male had been transformed into the Egyptian/ Asian-­resembling woman shown in profile on the left. Seated facing the viewer in the middle of this pink study is another male, a sailor, his body partially obfuscated by a small table piled high with fruit and flowers. Like the doctor in the preparatory sketch, he too was removed from the final work. The positioning of the remaining figures (all female) is otherwise largely commensurate with the painting as we know it today. Even with the two men present, it is the dominant pink that stands out most strikingly. The very flushness of the hues almost washes out other details of the work. Indeed, as Picasso’s good friend, writer, critic, and bibliophile Guillaume Apollinaire writes in a February 27, 1907, notebook entry, “Evening, dinner with Picasso, saw his new painting: even colors, pinks of flowers, of flesh, etc. women’s heads similar and simple heads of men too. Wonderful language that no literature can express, for our words are already made. Alas.” 17 The date of this entry is as important as is the lack of clarity as to whether Apollinaire had seen the canvas itself or the above pink study for it. Most likely, as we will see, he had seen the latter. Based in large measure on Apollinaire’s comment and the sizable number of studies Picasso completed for Les Demoiselles in which the women appear to be “European,” scholars have long assumed that Picasso’s plan for his large canvas was to depict five women whose features and skin hues resembled those of the two somewhat more naturalistically rendered Caucasian women at the center.

The M aking of a Painting

59

At some point, this argument goes, Picasso chose to dramatically alter the two figures on the right by affixing African-­like mask features to their faces. The surmised reasons for this shocking “change” have nourished many still widely accepted theories about the painting and its meaning. These theories call up deep crises that the artist was thought to have been experiencing at the time: fear of women, of syphilis, of sterility, and of death. Most of these concerns are believed to have derived in part from Picasso’s lifestyle or contemporary issues, such as the dangers of having sex with prostitutes in this pre-­antibiotics era. Although in 1988 Leo Steinberg would reject his earlier 1972 argument “for the sexual charge of the picture” as “banal,” 18 this framing of the canvas, predicated on key changes in Picasso’s rendering of the right-­hand women, is still widely held. This and other scenarios created by scholars are based on the assumption that the artist repainted the faces of the two figures on the right as a response to some internal crisis. While “Picasso never did say he redid the two right-­hand faces of the picture basing them on Negro masks,” 19 these early theories about the painting became a trap that scholars had a difficult time escaping. This, along with the new sources I have found, make it clear why related views need to be reexamined.

A 1907 Studio Photograph So familiar are we now with Les Demoiselles that it is hard to reimagine it with fresh eyes. In this massive canvas,20 Picasso has introduced us to a quintet of nude and minimally attired women. Among the significant details unveiled in the studio photograph (figure 27) is the fact that the two figures on the right may have been the first to be worked on in detail and not, as many until now have believed, the result of later alterations. The two African mask–wearing demoiselles were a key part of the work from the very beginning of Picasso’s application of pigments to the canvas.21 While this photograph was first published over forty years ago, in 1975,22 and has been republished several times since then, no one to date has noticed the glaring discrepancy between the evidence found in this image and the various theories put forward by Picasso scholars who have insisted, seemingly without exception, that Picasso repainted the canvas at some later point, effacing the two figures on the right and repainting them with African-­like masks. Seeing the photographic evidence, we have little choice but to throw out the various theories for the canvas based on the belief that Picasso dramatically repainted 60

chapter t wo

the faces of these women. Where does this leave us? Here, too, the studio photograph offers more clues. It was in large measure this photograph that brought me to MoMA to discuss the painting with Duffy. In it, we see the still relatively incomplete canvas that includes parts of the faces of all five of its female protagonists. We can also see here, posed directly in front of Picasso’s canvas, Kees van Dongen’s daughter, the young Augusta (“Dolly”) van Dongen (b. April 18, 1905). She stands on a chair balanced by the arm of her mother, August (“Guus”) van Dongen. Picasso may well have taken this photograph;23 he certainly would have been there when it was made. He also likely played a critical role in arranging Guus and posing Dolly on the chair in the middle of the canvas in such a way that they frame but do not entirely obscure the faces of the five demoiselles. When I first studied the photograph, it was the subject of the image — ​ ­mothers and daughters, women as progenitors — ​­that spoke to me. It was as if, by this very image, the artist was offering one of many clues into the meaning of this painting. Picasso, who was very reticent to talk about his oeuvre later, sometimes used other canvases, drawings as well as photography, in ways that offer insight (a coda). Over his lifetime, Picasso left a number of clues that help illuminate the canvas’s meaning, and this photograph appears to be one of the earliest and most important. Based on this photographic document, we see hints that the subject of women in his iconic painting is intended to explore not only seductive sex objects but also — ​­and by extension the consequences of these ­encounters — ​­motherhood and children. This may be part of the reason that Picasso so very carefully composed the photograph of Guus and Dolly in front of the canvas so that the faces of the five demoiselles could also be read. All seven in some ways are part of the same project. While I address this issue in greater detail in chapter 7, what is important here is a different issue, that of artistic process. The question of why Picasso chose to create this photograph so early in his engagement with the painting brings up further questions. The artist clearly had been talking with friends about the work as he was preparing drawings for the canvas. As noted above, he had shown a compositional sketch to Apollinaire. It may have been difficult for these friends to comprehend what Picasso was doing in this large canvas. This was equally true for those who saw the painting in the many months following its completion, as well as in the decades and the century that followed. Cognizant that this was an issue that likely would imperil the reception of the work, it seems that Picasso chose to create another artwork (this photograph) to serve as both evidence and commentary on the canvas. In short, The M aking of a Painting

61

the decision to create this photograph seems to have been made in large measure around concerns for the canvas’s reception and comprehension. It is predicated in part on Picasso’s close relationship with the two sitters, Guus and Dolly (and likely a sense of competitiveness with Kees at this time). There is also the issue of Picasso’s own desire for fatherhood (see chapter 7). In the end, as we will see, in examining Picasso’s notebook studies for Les Demoiselles and the books that served in part as models for this painting, what the artist seems to have been addressing on the canvas that is the central subject of this photograph is not so much (or rather not only) the sexual power of the five demoiselles but rather the complex roles with which women are more generally tied through sex — ​ ­reproduction, motherhood, nourishing progeny, and advancing regeneration within the lineage. These themes are also shaped around the complementary issues of origins and evolution, coupled with broader questions of race, culture change, and the transformation of eras. All these concerns are closely linked and are addressed below and in succeeding chapters. Another photograph taken in Picasso’s Bateau-­Lavoir studio, in 1908, shows Dolly in summer attire (including sandals, a light-­colored dress, and flowered hat; figure 34) in front of Picasso’s Three Women (1908). This photo also seems to have served in part as witness to and commentary on Les Demoiselles. Co­ incidently and significantly, in the photograph of Three Women, Les Demoiselles’ canvas rests against the wall, covered with a cloth (cropped out in figure 34). Many factors help explain why Guus and Dolly were positioned by Picasso in front of the two paintings for these photographs. Among these, as Gertrude Stein explains, “Van Dongen broke into notoriety by a [seminude] portrait he did [in 1905] of Fernande [Olivier].” 24 Around this same time, Olivier became Picasso’s model and lover. Stein continues, “Of course Van Dongen did not admit that this picture was a portrait of Fernande, although she had sat for it and there was in consequence much bitterness.” 25 In a way, by posing Kees’s wife and child in front of Les Demoiselles and Three Women, Picasso is playing this in reverse, as a jocular game of appropriation. He is symbolically appropriating Kees’s wife and child, visually framing them within his own painting’s portrait. This kind of contestation, whether through sex, art exchange (see “Conclusions”), or references in paintings and photographs, has long been a part of Picasso’s combative, humor-­rich mode of engagement with key competitors. Was his photograph intended, like some portraits undertaken by Picasso, as a statement of a more personal engagement with the attractive Dutch woman — ​­a gesture of challenge to her husband and competitor that “she is also mine”? Yet if the 62

chapter t wo

photograph was simply intended as evidence meant to bring into sharper view Kees’s earlier affair with Olivier, why did Picasso position Guus so precisely between the faces of the five women? This photograph offers still more insight into understanding Picasso’s Les Demoiselles and the array of formal, intellectual, and personal issues at play as he was working on this canvas. St a g i n g a P h o t o g r a p h

The 1907 photograph serves as the backdrop for a carefully staged artistic engagement with the canvas. While the identity of the photographer is unknown, there is no doubt that Picasso was involved in the arranging and making of it. As one scholar explains, photographs from Picasso’s archive at the Musée Picasso that “date back to 1901 demonstrated Picasso’s skill in taking pictures as well as manipulating negatives and prints. In this way Picasso discovered a new space of engagement, pictorial space, which he used not only for paintings but to test prototypes of new visual approaches such as papier collé and collage.” 26 Olivier revealed that during their relationship Picasso was using a camera, and that “when Picasso declared that he had discovered photography, he was revealing the most profound nature of his eye.” 27 Whether or not Picasso was the photographer of this remarkable triple portrait of a mother, child, and painting, he likely helped set it up. As Olivier noted, Picasso generally kept his work space locked when he was out, so no one would have been able to access it without his being there. Further, the van Dongens had moved into the Bateau-­Lavoir in December 1906, and Dolly spent considerable time in Picasso’s studio; he in turn was very fond of her.28 In the photo, Dolly is hoisted up on a chair seat in the center of the canvas and photograph. The strategic positioning of Dolly atop this seat may have served partially as a pun, since “tablo” was the name the two-­year-­old mistakenly called the artist,29 a term that in its French spelling, tableau, means “tablet.” As one scholar argues of this very photograph, this may have been in part Picasso’s intent.30 Care was needed in setting up and maintaining the scene long enough for a successful photograph, and it would have been difficult for Dolly to hold the pose — ​­teetering on the precarious chair and potentially falling into the canvas behind her — ​­for the period necessary for the long shutter time. While the photograph holds risks, it also contains vital additional information. Shot from below and at an angle, it is clear how meticulously Dolly and her mother had been positioned in alignment with the faces of the various women on the canvas. The M aking of a Painting

63

What is highlighted through their positioning as well are the breasts and genitals of the centermost demoiselle, an area that also appears to be a pivot point for Picasso’s carefully worked out composition of crossed diagonals (figure 306). Guus and the young Dolly are positioned in the center of the canvas in such a way that the crouching figure’s gnarled face almost nuzzles the mother’s shoulder at the same time that each of the other women’s faces on the canvas peer around them, as if these painted faces complete the composition of seven women posing for the camera. Guus and Dolly, posing in fashionable attire, certainly are not part of a brothel scene. There is something decidedly familial about the group. From this vantage, the crouching female at the lower right suggests a family matriarch, her posture linked historically to mothers giving birth (see chapter 7). Guus, as the mother of Dolly, evokes the same thing. In short, this scene of five women is not only concerned with sexual fantasy, desire, pleasure, power, and even fear. It is also “about” an array of related factors and relationships. In nature, fornication is linked to procreation, to birth (or the potential of birth), to regeneration, and to the succession of generations, as well as to origins and the future. It is also very much about the present and providing one means for a person’s identity to endure through time. As a therapist once insisted to me, sex and children, while not necessarily cojoined, are often a closely linked mental taxonomy. For Picasso, as we will see, the related issue of progeny was very much at play in the period in which he was working on this canvas. In this photograph we also see how Picasso’s postpainting use of living models adds another layer of insight to the canvas. Picasso seems to have offered clues such as this photograph both as a document of the painting and as a seeming challenge to his friends and others to discover the canvas in new ways without requiring direct discussion.31 As Picasso would explain: “A painting, for me, speaks by itself, what good does it do, after all, to impart explanations? A painter has only one language, as for the rest . . .” and he shrugged his shoulders.32 From this vantage Picasso’s comment to Brassaï about color in Les Demoiselles was an exception, because it involved a copy (a tapestry) of a copy (a postcard) of the painting that proves the rule. With another artist, Brassaï, perhaps such rules did not apply. Differences and Core Changes

The Dolly van Dongen photograph offers critical insight not only into the painting’s possible meaning and the very process of its creation but also to its 64

chapter t wo

composition and dating. Let us again look at the five demoiselles and the two living women positioned in front of them. Unfortunately, the canvas captured in this image has been cropped so closely and carefully — ​­either before it was photographed or after it was taken, during its development — ​­that the painting’s borders and the larger setting of the five demoiselles is missing. Based on the photograph we have no way of knowing if, at this early stage, Picasso had selected a specific setting in which these women would appear. Early compositional studies suggest a curtained space, but in this photograph it is not clear if this or some other background is in play. This photograph also may offer insight into the order in which the women were painted. It appears, indeed, that the right-­hand figures (the African demoiselles) were fleshed out by the artist prior to the women on the left (the Egyptian and Caucasian), since the latter women are only lightly delineated. This suggests that the artist had only begun to render them fully when the photograph was taken. If this ordering of Picasso’s painting of the women is correct, it would further challenge the prevalent view that Picasso repainted and transformed the right-­hand figures by adding African masks. Turning now to each of the five female figures, we have key evidence of what appear to be important changes that occurred between this stage of the canvas and the finished painting. These alterations involve several of the women (and particularly the eyes and other facial details). On the whole, Picasso appears to have softened their features after the photograph was taken. Initially all of the women, but especially the two Africans, look more alien, like members of species that are not entirely human. As we look at this photograph more closely we can see that Picasso’s rendering of the five demoiselles is not only different from the pink oil sketch discussed above (and other compositional studies of the canvas) but also from what Picasso scholars have long assumed to have been the “state” of the canvas at this stage. The photograph contains other vital clues as well, potential insight into the canvas’s earliest history, since Picasso’s engagement with the canvas had just begun when this photograph was taken. The composition has been sketched, and all five demoiselles are present. With this photograph not only must we toss out recent theories but also over a century’s worth of writing about the painting.33 To give but one example, in 1912, a mere five years after the canvas’s completion, Salmon would note that at one point during the creation of the painting, “Picasso felt uneasy. He turned his pictures to the wall and threw down his brushes.” 34 Implied by this is that notable changes came about to the canvas beThe M aking of a Painting

65

cause of the artist’s frustration with the work. Yet if the African figures were included from the outset — ​­as were the others — ​­it is not likely that his frustration surrounding the changes that he sought to incorporate were that different from those linked to the myriad questions and studies he was addressing along the way. In another statement Salmon notes, “The large canvas . . . did not remain for long in its original form. Picasso soon went to work on the faces, whose noses were mostly depicted frontally in the shape of an isosceles triangle. The sorcerer’s apprentice was still consulting Oceanic and African magicians.” 35 What this statement suggests is that at some point between the preliminary compositional drawings and his engagement with the stretched canvas, Picasso had made his mind up to create a very different canvas than he had once envisaged. What changed his mind? This question is in part addressed in chapter 7. Already, at the stage of the canvas captured in the photograph, we see that, rather than later transforming the right-­hand women, Picasso had begun his engagement of them as linked to Africa. Whatever Les Demoiselles was intended to signify, Africa was clearly at the center of it. Over the course of Picasso’s campaign on this canvas, he changed these demoiselles’ faces in ways that made them less violent (strange, unworldly), not more so.36 The importance of these changes is clear in related X-­rays that MoMA conservator Michael Duffy brought out for me to see. We discern this most notably in the heavily repainted face of the crouching demoiselle, seen here in the thick white pigment on the cheek and mouth area (partially cropped in figure 31), and the repainting of the nose, mouth, and eye of the standing African demoiselle (figure 29). Seen in these X-­rays, too, are the striking brushstrokes of the Egyptian (figure 30) and Caucasian faces (figure 28) that suggest Picasso was using his brush to almost carve out the faces as he pulled the brush through the thick pigment, each stroke also conveying a three-­dimensional rhythmic complexity to the various facial features. Let us turn once again to the crouching figure at the bottom right. We see in the photograph that her face is notably darker than in the final painting; her eyes are also lighter (yellow?), giving the demoiselle in the photograph an even more grisly appearance. In the photograph, too, it appears that her dramatically curving nose is somewhat shorter than it is in the finished canvas (and has a thicker bridge). More importantly, the eye on the left is much larger at this stage, and it is canted at a diagonal, giving the woman an almost reptilian personification; her other eye is positioned at a similarly sharp angle. It is unclear if her mouth has been significantly changed, but in this photograph it seems possible that originally it was on the other side of her face from where we see it today 66

chapter t wo

(e.g., below the nose). Unfortunately, Guus’s clothing covers a key area of the face in the photograph. Nonetheless the traces of cadmium yellow seen still today adjacent to the face in the outer paint layer would have contrasted powerfully with the figure’s dark-­hued visage, making this demoiselle even more disquieting than she is now. Picasso’s alteration of the color in this squatting demoiselle’s face from dark hues to its current pinkish orange also softened the rendering to a more humanlike form, in line with the others shown on the canvas. With the standing African figure, we also discern what appear to be important changes. Her left eye is somewhat larger in the photograph than in the completed canvas; like that of her crouching canvasmate, her eye is also positioned at a sharp angle. Her nose also seems to be somewhat shorter, with a wider bridge than is visible in the finished canvas. Another key change can be seen in her mouth. In the photograph this is positioned midway between the nose and chin, in contrast to the final painting, where her mouth has been shifted closer to the edge of the lower jaw. In some ways, while the eyes of this figure have been made more “human” (less reptilian), while the repositioning of the mouth is suggestive of animal and avian forms in which the muzzle or beak often is found near the lower terminus of the face. In short, Picasso went out of his way to make the figures on the right in certain ways more nuanced — ​­less abstract and severe — ​­as he continued work on the canvas. Yet in their early features, the two women suggest that Picasso was engaging questions of evolution (transitions from reptile to human), and the origins of the world’s populations, time (temporal transformations), ancestry (generations, here through women), and the role sex played in all of this. Stein’s perceptions regarding the canvas are important here. As Pierre Daix notes, “Gertrude Stein was the first to understand that the true subject of the Demoiselles was their composition — ​­the shift of vision that composition imposed. ‘Picasso said look at that face, all faces are as old as the world.’” 37 This context, explored further in chapter 7, also helps us to address the pink compositional study and the array of other preparatory studies for this painting that depict the women (and men) as Caucasians. In the canvas each of the women becomes part of the larger human family. The three figures on the left are only summarily sketched out here. Vital changes between this stage of the painting and the final version also can be discerned. With the profile figure on the left, the photograph seems to indicate a somewhat larger eye than in the finished work, and one that is angled upward at a diagonal rather than being horizontal. The dark patch in this area of the The M aking of a Painting

67

photograph may represent that the eye was once larger, or it could be a flaw introduced in the photo development process. In this early rendering, the head of this same leftmost demoiselle seems to be a bit shorter than in the final state, wherein the forehead has become somewhat longer. The woman who is standing second from the left is also only minimally sketched out at this time. As with the woman on the left, her eye appears to be slightly larger than in the final painting and more angled than in the later rendering. As to the centermost woman, again only sketched here, her left eye (that closest to the standing African figure) appears to be somewhat smaller than in the final version, but the remaining features are consistent with what they eventually became. Skin tones shaded to pinks suggest that originally Picasso had envisioned the women as sharing a core ancestral identity, as suggested in many of his compositional drawings. Almost frothy, and certainly seductive, the pink study for Les Demoiselles holds out the promise of a glistening quintet of female nudes about to engage with the tan-­suited man who has just arrived in their curtained salon. There is little doubt that Picasso’s work on the canvas in late 1906 and early 1907 included many changes to his vision. Yet it is important to remember that the distinctive masks introduced here transform the faces of women whose bodies nonetheless remain essentially “pink” (olive, mauve, and complementary flesh tones) — ​­adhering to one of Picasso’s seminal ideas at the time (and later) that women are at their core pretty much the same. The compositional study in pink (plate 4), whatever its visual interest, offers little insight into Picasso’s thinking at the time he applied pigment to the canvas. Not only was this an (early) seven-­ figure composition in which men still figure prominently, but the two women on the right of the canvas display African elements.

A Scene in Paris Picasso’s 1906 sketch of a Parisian fashion plate alongside an Egyptian and African woman (figure 32) is indicative of Picasso’s idea that these women (and all women) share the same basic core even if on the surface they look quite different. On the canvas, the color of the crouching female’s upward-­tilted eyes is noteworthy. One eye is blue; the other is white. In scientific terms this evokes a form of heterochromia iridis (from Greek heteros, “different,” plus chroma, “color”). While quite common in animals — ​­dogs, cats, and horses — ​­it is very rare in humans, particularly with color differences as notable as that shown here. The condition can result from an excess or dearth of melanin (due to genetics 68

chapter t wo

fig 32

Picasso, La Parisienne et figures exotiques, 1906.

fig 33

Parisian woman, Stratz 1902.

and related congenital conditions), as well as from trauma and certain diseases. Why Picasso would have chosen to render the crouching demoiselle this way is unknown. On the one hand, the condition clearly complements the overall emphasis on the eyes and other disequilibrating features of the painting; on the other hand, because it is the result of melanin variables, it is likely that this feature also carries racial significance, consistent with the painting as a whole. Picasso may have intended us to see this woman as a chimera-­like being, conjoining the properties or forces of two different taxonomic frames. The notable eye color differences suggest someone linked simultaneously to several different races, places, eras, or conceptual realms. In many ways, this is consistent with the portrayal of a person intended to evoke the founding ancestress of humans, the mother not only of the other women of the canvas but of all women and men. Creating this crouching woman’s features likely posed a challenge and unique creative opportunity for the artist. As Picasso would later explain to André Malraux about prehistoric figures, “Why do I love my prehistoric Venus? Because nobody knows anything about her.” 38 As we will see in chapter 3, Picasso was already exploring the theme of African art in October 1906, immediately following his engagement with a Vili figure belonging to Matisse (figures 43 and 44). Themes of masking and transformation had interested him even earlier. Several of Picasso’s compositional studies linked to Les Demoiselles included women of different races or figures wearing masks. Picasso appears to be suggesting in part that each of us carries in our core certain similarities, among these attributes of other populations that at the time were still seen to be in some way archaic (see chapters 6 and 7). Picasso’s 1906–7 pen and ink sketch La Parisienne et figures exotiques (figure 32), brings together a fashionably dressed Parisian woman, a naked African elderly female, and an Egyptian-­style woman, as if to suggest that each, beneath all of her cultural accouterments, shares vital features with the others. Not only is this drawing closely related to Les Demoiselles, but it also complements key compositional studies for the large canvas. Factors of fashion (hats, coiffures, dress, and body-marking practices) tell a story of the societal shaping of core identity markers. It is interesting to compare this image with the photograph of a “typical” Parisian woman in street attire published by Stratz in 1902 in a richly illustrated comparative volume on the “beauty of women” that Picasso appears to have examined (figure 33; see chapter 6). This is also true with respect to the rendering of societal norms with respect to African women. One of the prominent colonial tropes in this era ridiculed African women (and men) 70

chapter t wo

both for their historical “nakedness” and for their presumptive wearing of elite European attire. There is an empty space between the Parisian fashion plate on the left and the African figures on the right. Like the fancily attired Parisian, each of the women on the right is accorded her unique framing void, a compositional device very similar to the separate envelopment and division of the five women in Les Demoiselles. On the left of this ink sketch we see a well-­dressed woman with an elegant, feather-­enhanced hat, spotted fur muff, and similarly pelted scarf. The woman is shown on a Paris avenue, the Eiffel Tower at some distance behind her. She is quite possibly strolling near the Trocadéro, which overlooked the Seine River, the Eiffel Tower, and the surrounding gardens of L’École Militaire. The young woman’s long thick hair is piled high on her head in an elegant swirl. This hairstyle recalls that often worn by Olivier (see figures 77 and 127). As Stein observed, Olivier was a fashion plate,39 who one day, after the acquisition of a new dress, made the generally very prompt Picasso late for a dinner party. In the months after Picasso painted her famous portrait (figure 123), Stein had hired Olivier to give her French lessons. These classes, Stein tells us, focused on three main subjects that also underscore the likelihood that this drawing portrays Oli­ vier: “Hats, perfumes . . . [and] the categories of furs. There were three categories of furs, there were first category, sables, second category ermine and chinchilla, third category martin fox and squirrel. . . . Our only other conversation was the description and names of the dogs that were then fashionable.” 40 Picasso’s lively drawing, like Stein’s word sketch, depicts Olivier as a boulevard beauty, distinguished not only by her stylish hair and flamboyant hat but also by the luxurious fur scarf that trails behind her like an animal tail, with her thick round muff functioning like a warm protective bumper as she strikes across the city in the cold winter air. On the right of this sketch, we see a strikingly different group, one that is devoid of all associated finery (and the expense and warmth) of fashion. Here, Picasso presents us with two women (both naked) and the head of a third, all shown with masklike faces. The rightmost female wears facial and body cicatrization marks similar to those found on many African figures and masks. The Egyptian-­like woman sports the characteristic nemes crown depicted on male and female pharaohs, a coiffure that extends down the back of the head, its flaps falling in front to the shoulders. A nearby frontal head looks to be a rendering of the same Egyptian figure.

The M aking of a Painting

71

Tuesday Night, March 26, 1907: A Possible Date for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon As I continued to explore the 1907 photograph (figure 27), I soon recognized that it also furnishes us with key insight into the canvas’s dating. Picasso clearly knew this would be an important painting — ​­one that he hoped would rocket him to fame and fortune. Documenting each stage was important. However, if the photograph was simply a question of “documentation,” it is curious that Picasso decided to obscure key parts of the work (the features at the very center) by the inclusion of Guus and Dolly. Their presence informs the work in other ways, too. Picasso himself cites Max Jacob’s grandmother, his own lover (Olivier), and Apollinaire’s lover (Marie Laurencin) as the demoiselles referred to in the canvas (see more below).41 This comment is generally seen to be a studio joke.42 Yet this meaning is consistent with the two living sitters (a mother, lover, and child) that Picasso positions in front of the canvas for the photograph. Looking at the young Dolly, I soon realized her age also offers clues. She was born on April 18, 1905, and the photograph is said to date to around her second birthday. I forwarded the photograph to a pediatric surgeon. She confirmed Dolly’s likely age in this photograph (“unless she’s naturally taller than average”) as around two; but she added that Dolly “definitely couldn’t be younger than eighteen months,” and has a possible age range of “twenty-­one to twenty-­six months.” 43 Based on Dolly’s birth date, this age range fixes the photograph to sometime between January 18 and June 18, 1907. When combined with Apollinaire’s notebook entry of February 27 and the winter dresses, hats, and shoes worn by Dolly and her mother, we can narrow the date still further. Dolly is pictured in a dark dress with three-­quarter-­length sleeves, dark shoes, and tall socks of equally somber hue. Guus is in a long-­sleeved dark dress and a dark hat. The attire of both is in notable contrast to the summer clothing (sandals, light-­colored dress, and hat) that Dolly, now three, wears in the photograph taken in the summer of 1908 in which she is standing in front of Three Women (figure 34). In the later photograph, her hair is dark and curly, whereas earlier it was short and fair. Assuming that Dolly is the child in both photos, as appears to be the case, she has changed quite a bit. We can compare Guus’s attire to seasonal fashions from this era, in particular a 1907 illustration for winter garments, Toilette d’après-­midi, featured by Paris fashion house Bechoff-­David. While Guus’s dress is somewhat simpler than that shown in this advertisement, the resemblance is clear. 72

chapter t wo

fig 34

Picasso, Dolly van Dongen, 1908.

Fashion in 1907, as true until relatively recently, had an important seasonal cycle. Women and girls changed their attire from winter to summer garments during annual spring cleaning (compare figure 34), which historically coincided with Easter. In 1907, Easter fell on March 31, indicating that the photograph in front of Les Demoiselles was likely taken at some point in the week or so leading up to March 31.44 While Olivier had little, if anything, to say about the dating of the canvas, or about this period of Picasso’s life, what she did write is important. In a section delimiting the period of late August 1906 to March 1907, she writes, “Pablo is again absorbed in his work. . . . I think Pablo is pleased to be back in his studio and with his friends. However, he doesn’t like to be disturbed and won’t open the door unless he knows that his visitors are close friend[s].”45 It is likely that in this brief entry she is addressing the period when Picasso was at work on studies for Les Demoiselles and the canvas itself. Considering Picasso’s insistence that Olivier not write about his art, this may have been all that she felt comfortable divulging. We may now be able to narrow the photograph (and canvas) date some more. If, as I believe, Picasso saw Matisse’s Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra) (figure 19) and Derain’s Bathers (figure 20) at the Salon des Indépendants (which ran from March 20 to April 30, 1907) prior to embarking on the actual painting of this canvas, the photograph in question was likely taken after the Salon’s opening date. It seems clear that the shocking canvases presented by Matisse and Derain on this occasion, when forms drawn from African art were prominently on view, pressed the young, ambitious, and risk-taking artist to change his plans for his The M aking of a painTing

73

painting from a group of predominantly European women (evidenced in his earlier compositional studies) to individuals referencing not only Caucasian but also African and other races. Indeed, it is hard not to see Les Demoiselles as born directly from the same gritty primeval environs as Derain’s frightened Bathers, lost in a thicket at the beginning of time. The same could be said of Matisse’s Blue Nude, emerging from the ground. Whereas Matisse has employed a ball mask to shield his subject’s face, Picasso would employ masks related to the various global areas each of his women represents. It seems almost as if Picasso, having experienced the “trauma” (brilliant revolution) of the Derain and Matisse works at the Salon, felt he had to respond immediately to the transformative visual shockwave and chose the largest canvas he could find that would fit into his studio space, then stretched and primed it to begin work. There was a sense of emotional and physical rush. After months and months of hard work and radical study, he was ready to undertake his own revolution. Based on this photograph, we also may be closer to suggesting a date for the canvas, potentially between March 20 (the opening date of the Salon) and March 31 (Easter).46 While it is possible that Picasso saw the Derain painting earlier, we have no evidence of this. It is even more unlikely that Picasso saw Matisse’s painting prior to this, since in late autumn and early winter 1906, Matisse was in Collioure in the south of France, and it was there that he painted the work, returning to Paris a few days before the Salon opening.47 The late March 1907 date can be narrowed even further. On Tuesdays, Picasso and his friends regularly met with other artists and writers at the Closerie des Lilas bistro (figures 6 and 7) for an evening of discourse and debate organized by the director of the review Vers et prose, Paul Fort (see chapter 7).48 One night, Salmon reveals, Picasso deserted his friends, who were “deep in intellectual discussion,” to return home to begin the large canvas that for a month had remained untouched in his studio.49 If this discussion took place during one of the regular Tuesday night meetings at Lilas, March 26 is a conceivable start time for the work, since it is the only Tuesday in 1907 that fell between March 20 and 31. While I don’t want to make this date an overdetermined one, the photograph does make clear that the work shown at this juncture dates to a period prior to Easter. If Picasso undertook “two campaigns” on the canvas, as he later suggested to Kahnweiler,50 both probably happened within a relatively short time. Moreover, as MoMA conservator Michael Duffy pointed out to me, the artist could well have painted the major part of the canvas within a single night or at 74

chapter t wo

most a few days.51 The use of heavy lead white pigment in the repainting of areas of the crouching demoiselle’s face (figure 31) enabled Picasso to repaint this part of the figure shortly after. Duffy sees the cracking of this part of the painting to have been a likely result of this quick reapplication of pigments. A late March 1907 date for Les Demoiselles is corroborated by Wilhelm Uhde’s observation that he had “received a desperate note from Picasso asking me to come see him at once. He was troubled about the new work. [Ambroise] Vollard and [Félix] Fénéon had paid him a visit but had left without understanding a thing.” 52 Kahnweiler dates this visit to the same period, observing, “In March 1907 my good friend Wilhelm Uhde . . . told me he had seen in Picasso’s studio a recent, large painting that he found astonishing.” 53 While the precise date in March is not indicated, the Italian painter Ardengo Soffici, in a letter dated late March 1907, indicates that he had both seen Picasso and attended the Salon in Paris. In Soffici’s later memoirs, he points out that he saw Les Demoiselles during this late March visit.54 Picasso’s various sketchbooks also support this time frame and provide additional insights. Most important is the cahier 4 sketchbook that includes a six-­figure compositional sketch for Les Demoiselles (among other drawings) and incorporates the notation “Salle II” (Room 2, likely referencing the Salon) on the inside front cover.55 Both here and on the back cover of this same notebook appears the name of Eugène Rouart, who owned a set of Edgar Degas’s brothel-­ themed monotypes; in 1958 Picasso would purchase a copy of this set (figure 11). At the time he was working on Les Demoiselles, Picasso was likely familiar with this material.56 Indeed, there is evidence that Picasso and Rouart saw each other before March 30, since letters indicate they were planning to lunch together.57 On the final page of this same cahier, Picasso has written “Escribir a Braque / Stein estara en su casa / today la semana promima / menos el lunes ye el martes” (Write to Braque / Stein will be at home / Today the weekly promenade / Not Monday or Tuesday).58 On April 27, a month after Easter, Picasso sent the Steins an Easter egg–themed postcard invitation to visit his studio (figure 284; see chapter 7). It is likely that he made his additional canvas changes between March 26 and this April 27, 1907, invitation. Near the end of March, Picasso thus was thinking not only about the Salon but also about Georges Braque and Gertrude and Leo Stein and inviting them to his studio. This later notation indicates not only that Braque and the Steins were in Paris at this time but also that Picasso was trying to figure out how best to engage them around his new canvas. Picasso seems to have put off inviting GerThe M aking of a Painting

75

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907.

trude and Leo Stein to see the canvas until a month later. The Easter postcard invitation (figure 284), featuring a putto holding a ribbon-festooned egg above the words “Joyeuses Paques” (Happy Easter), dated April 27, 1907, and addressed to “Mes chers amis,” invites the Steins to come over the next evening (a Sunday). Beneath this he writes, “le tableau [the painting] Picasso.”59 While scholars have debated which painting this note refers to, it probably was Les Demoiselles.60 Picasso’s selection of an illustrated Easter postcard for the Steins’ invitation is very interesting. Picasso, knowing that they were Jewish, likely saw this as humorous and a further grab for their attention (the card was a month late for Passover, which that year ran from March 17 to 23). Yet the card also seems expressly linked to one of the core subthemes of Les Demoiselles, that is, new beginnings, a new age, as well as his own interests in immortality (see chapter 7). Other telling details on this canvas are found in what is likely the last sketchbook Picasso was using (carnet 14) before applying pigment to the canvas rendering seen in the Dolly photograph (figure 27). In these sketches he is working out the style and postures of the demoiselles he is about to paint as well as the curtain-like surround in which he will position them. In one of these sketches we see the undulating edges of the curtains that will frame the left and right of Les Demoiselles (figure 35). In the middle of this he neatly prints, “1 Ravignan” (his address) three times, suggesting that the dramatic encounter of five women from different ages will be taking place right here within his studio. On another of these sketchbook pages (figure 36; compare my delineation in figure 37), he writes on the horizontal a series of words: Ma / Málaga / Madrid / Ravignan / Monsieur / A [crossed out] A R R R R; on the perpendicular at the top: Barcelona / france Fa[crossed out]; and at the bottom: 12.

76

chapTer T wo

fig 35

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 36

fig 37

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907.

fig 38

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 39

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 40

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 41

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 42

Picasso, sketch for Les Demoiselles, 1907.

Picasso clearly knew this canvas would be a defining one for his reputation and legacy; here he mapped out his own remarkable trajectory — ​­from his mother (ma — ​­la mamá), to his place of birth (Málaga), and from here, to Madrid, where at sixteen he was accepted into his country’s most prestigious art school, and where he would study and copy the famous El Greco, Goya, and Velázquez paintings in the Prado Museum. From here his word journey takes us to his own Paris studio, a building he shares with key members of the Paris avant-­ garde. Soon he would be greeted with the French honorific title “Monsieur.” The slurred “Arrrrr” may evoke the historic polyglot Spanish-­French-­English-­ Italian sailors’ curse used as a slang for victory when one has triumphed against a tough opponent. Barely visible behind this bold lettering is the faint drawing of a Degas-like figure in a dancing pose, standing firmly on one leg with the other raised high. Picasso signaled a new age. The terms “Barcelona,” “France,” and “12” (Ravignan Street, the Bateau-­Lavoir address) add emphasis to the whole. Reinforcing this spatial primacy is the writing on the back cover of the sketchbook: “1907 Paris” and “Ravignan.” Included in this same sketchbook near to these drawings are what appear to be the final sketches for four of the five demoiselles. In the verso of the curtain-­framed Ravignan sketch we see a study for one of the two Caucasian demoiselles: the demoiselle shown second from the left (figure 39). In this sketch one can discern Picasso’s engagement of elementary form consistent with imagery found in the 1906 edition of Villard de Honnecourt’s medieval manuscript (figure 275). Also clearer in this rendering than in the canvas is how much the demoiselle’s raised arm gesture and strikingly asymmetrical breasts owe to a photograph and musculature study of a woman shown in several volumes of Stratz (see chapter 6; figure 196; plate 10). The woman shown in this study would be taken up by Picasso not only in the second figure on the left of Les Demoiselles but also in his painting The Dance of the Veils (1907). Other drawings in this sketchbook offer additional clues. In rendering the Egyptian/Asian at the left of the canvas, Picasso is working out the final angle of her forward-moving knee and leg (figure 40; via an Egyptian figure in the Louvre [figures 73 and 74] and Stratz [figure 265]). Equally important here are the enormous flat feet (that would shock critics). In this sketch one also notes this demoiselle’s missing raised arm, which in the final painting is added almost as an afterthought and with little connection to her body. In some of Picasso’s earlier compositional and related studies for this figure, a long and raised arm is included to open or hold back the curtain. The Egyptian wooden sculpture from the Louvre with a pot atop her head has a somewhat similar 78

chapter t wo

raised arm posture (figures 73–76). Whatever the source, or time of its inclusion, the heavily foreshortened arm and anxious, energized splayed fingers of the Egyptian demoiselle add to the figure’s power. The addition of this arm and hand conveys broader meaning to the canvas (see chapter 7). Both of the sketches of the standing African demoiselle (figures 40 and 42) and the crouching woman at the corner (figures 41 and 42) offer further insight. In the weeks ahead Picasso would modify this demoiselle’s physiognomy so that the size of her left eye and eyebrow curve would become less prominent. Her personification also suggests similarities with a work in the Leo Frobenius drawing series showing the development from an African mask to the physiognomy of a living human (figure 93, based in part on a specific Ijaw mask [figure 94]). Notable in this sketch as well is the muscular treatment of the torso, a vantage that Picasso was exploring in some of his more androgynous studies in this era by way of Stratz (figure 237). We see here as well that in the final painting he initially enhanced her breast size from what the sketch shows, and later diminished her left breast so it could be read also as her shoulder. In Picasso’s sketch of the couching demoiselle we see reflections of several African masks depicted in Leo Frobenius’s 1898 volume on this subject, most notably masks with dramatically curving noses, among these a watercolor of a Kongo work (plate 2, bottom left, and figure 96; compare figure 97) and a photograph of a quite different Makonde mask (figure 119, top right). This demoiselle’s unusual crouching posture has a legacy in many forms in Western art as well as in earlier Picasso examples. Yet among these we could add not only the bodies suggested in Kota reliquary figures from Gabon (figures 99 and 100) but also the crouching amazon from Dahomey (figure 156) that Picasso would use in his earlier portrayal of Salomé. We can locate in the crouching demoiselle sketch, too, a remarkable change from this rendering to when Picasso finally applies pigment to the canvas. As he is painting her, he dramatically repositions her facial features so that the bridge of her nose now curves toward the left and middle of the painting, rather than away from this group. This not only makes her face more readable but also brings her into both worlds, that of the canvas and the one we inhabit. This in turn necessitated reconfiguring her eyes, which Picasso would also change considerably between the photographed version and the final painting. As part of this process, her ponytail becomes a separate form that, like the breast, can now be read in several ways, not only as hair but also as a strangely large ancillary ear. That he renders this in flesh tones adds to its multivalency. Further insight into the nature and importance of documentary evidence in The M aking of a Painting

79

Picasso’s work can be seen in comments proffered by Brassaï, who recounts an incident in his diary entry for Monday, December 6, 1943.61 Here he recalls that while he was photographing the vestibule of Picasso’s apartment, he was struck by the artist’s portrait of his housekeeper, Inès, placed on an easel. Nearby was an armchair piled high with papers, on top of which was balanced Picasso’s preparatory study for Man with Lamb. On the floor near the chair’s legs were Picasso’s slippers, the whole creating “a kind of personage” — ​­with head, body, and feet. Brassaï proceeded to reposition the slippers slightly, angling them to make the photographic image clearer, when Picasso came into the room and proceeded to chastise him: It’ll be an amusing photo, but it won’t be a “document.” Do you know why? Because you moved my slippers. I never place them that way. It’s your arrangement, not mine. The way an artist arranges the objects around him is as revealing as his artworks. I like your photos precisely because they are truthful. The ones you took on rue La Boétie were like a blood sample that allows you to analyze and diagnose what I was at those moments. Why do you think I date everything I make? Because it’s not enough to know an artist’s works. One must also know when he made them, why, how, under what circumstances. No doubt there will some day be a science, called “the science of man,” perhaps, which will seek above all to get a deeper understanding of man via man — ​­the creator. I often think of that science, and I want the documentation I leave to posterity to be as complete as possible. That’s why I date everything I make.62 This statement, although made nearly four decades after Les Demoiselles, offers further evidence to support the importance of the photograph of Guus and Dolly positioned in front of this canvas as “document.” The comments that Brassaï adds at the end of his recounting of Picasso’s statement make this even clearer: “Given what Picasso has just revealed to me, his meticulous dating is neither a caprice nor a mania, but a premeditated, reflective act. He wants to confer to his every movement a historical value within his history of man-­as-­ creator. He wants personally to place each of his acts within the great annals of his phenomenal life, before other people do it.” 63 The short time that Picasso engaged with the canvas is consistent with the artist’s history of working very quickly on a canvas, particularly once the various compositional and other studies had been completed. He knew that the painting was one of great importance. Documenting it was essential. 80

chapter t wo

quoted in Herschel

Browning Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, 271

Art in the Flesh The story of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon begins, in many ways, with a small Vili sculpture from the Congo (figures 43 and 44). This sculpture was of special interest to me as an African art historian. Although some details of its discovery by Picasso have been forgotten, there is no doubt that this African figure left an indelible impression on the artist. The artist’s encounter with the work is described in detail by several close acquaintances of the era, each offering a different vantage. While scholars have paid relatively little attention to this event in terms of Picasso’s famous canvas,1 the artist’s acquaintances felt it so important that they would return to it in later years, adding both detail and significance. The event took place in the fall of 1906, most likely in October soon after Picasso completed Gertrude Stein’s portrait (figure 123).2 The setting, André Salmon notes, was a Thursday dinner at the home of Paris’s most celebrated painter, Henri Matisse. Guillaume Apollinaire was also present. According to Salmon, “At some point, Matisse picked up from a piece of furniture a statuette in black wood and showed it to Picasso; this was the first African sculpture. . . . Picasso held it in his hand the entire evening. The next morning when I arrived at the studio, the floor was strewn with sheets of . . . paper. On each sheet was a large drawing, each very similar to the other: a woman’s face with but a single eye, a too long nose confounded with the mouth, a lock of hair on the shoulder.

Chapter three

In painting, as in life, you must act directly. ​­P A B L O P I C A S S O ,

Fig 43

Anon., Vili figure (Congo), 19th century. Fig 44

Anon., Vili figure (Congo), 19th century.

Cubism was born.” Perhaps what is being referenced here are Picasso’s various drawings of a woman with canted head (figure 45; see also figures 46–49, which are closely linked to studies for his fall 1906 painting Two Women (figure 183) and associated studies (Plate 9). Similar to the latter, figure 46 pairs a woman in black and white in a curtained setting — ​­a key theme of Les Demoiselles (see also figure 182). Like the Vili sculpture, figures 47 and 48 display a powerful jawline, prominent neck, and large ear, as well as this sculpture’s unusual pupil-less all-seeing and nonseeing eyes. Here the reflective mirror inserts of the Vili work are replaced with dark hollow, pupil-missing eyes. Another friend, Max Jacob, recounts this same incident, but more dramatically, here through a conversation with Roland Dorgelès: The historic scene took place at Matisse’s studio. The doyen of Fauvism had for some time already been in possession of a black idol that he made much of. One evening, when Picasso came to dinner, he caught sight of the statue on a chest of drawers and was lost in admiration; he picked it up and held it in his hands for the duration of the evening. The following 82

chapter three

fig 45

fig 46

Picasso, Study of Woman, 1906.

Picasso, Study of Two Nudes, 1906.

fig 47

Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1906.

fig 48

Picassso, Study of the Head of a Woman, 1906. fig 49

Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1906.

morning, when Max arrived at Bateau-­Lavoir as usual, he surprised the Spaniard drawing the figure of a woman with only one eye in the middle of her forehead, four ears round her head, a diamond-­shaped mouth, a pentagonal nose and a square neck. The floor was strewn with pieces of drawing paper on which one could recognize the same monster in various guises. . . . Fascinated by the black idol, he had worked right through the night. Cubism had been born.3 Jacob adds other details on this evening in a 1931 essay,4 explaining that the following morning when he arrived at Picasso’s studio, he saw the floor covered with drawings of the one-­eyed woman with a strangely elongated nose-­mouth and a lock of hair: “This same woman appears in canvases where she is completed by a line or a triangle for the breast, the belly. Instead of a single woman, there were two or three” (in some ways recalling the study likely done several months later [figure 299]).5 Equally important, that same morning Picasso made it clear to Jacob how transformative this African sculpture had been, insisting to his visitors that he didn’t want to be bothered so that he could focus on his work. Jacob recalls that when he and Apollinaire entered the studio, “Picasso became somber. He had rented one of the dark rooms under the wood floor of the loft, had bought a table around which we often ate, and used to have fun, but now he would tell Guillaume and me, ‘Go play, my children!’” 6 While neither Salmon nor Jacob was at the event at which Picasso first handled the Vili artwork, Matisse notes that this was Picasso’s first encounter with African art. He added that the transformative meeting took place at the home of their shared patron, Gertrude Stein.7 As Matisse recalls, I frequently walked through the Rue de Rennes past a curio shop owned by a merchant of curiosities called “chez le Père Sauvage” and saw a variety of things in the window. There was a whole corner of little wooden statues, of Negro origin. . . . and then one fine day I went in and bought one for fifty francs. I went to Gertrude Stein’s apartment on the Rue de Fleurus. I showed her the statue, then Picasso came by, and we chatted. That was when Picasso became aware of African sculpture. That’s why Gertrude Stein speaks of it.8 Stein also wrote of the transformative soiree, confirming its existence in the simplest of terms, in accordance with her own new lean modernist style: “It was Matisse who drew Picasso’s attention to [African sculpture in 1906] just 84

chapter three

after Picasso had finished painting Gertrude Stein’s portrait.” 9 Although it is not clear whether this evening venture took place at the Matisse or Stein apartment,10 it is known that Matisse and others in their circle had already shown an interest in African works. Matisse notes accordingly that from this same rue de Rennes shop (owned by Emile Heymann), “[André] Derain bought a large [Fang, Gabon] mask. It became something of interest for the group of advanced painters.” 11 When Heymann opened his rue de Rennes shop in 1896, he was one of the earliest “primitive” art dealers in Paris, with works brought by sailors and a growing number of French colonials.12 Among those who purchased African art from Heymann were Picasso’s friends Apollinaire and Maurice de Vlaminck.13 André Derain is known to have already been interested in “tribal” art. During his trip to London in March 1906 he visited the anthropological collection now housed in the British Museum, noting in a letter to Vlaminck not only their “disquieting . . . expression” but also the relationship between volume and light conveyed in them.14 Even earlier, in 1905, Georges Braque had acquired a Tsogo mask (Gabon) from a Normandy sailor.15 While Stein equivocates on which artist was the first to “discover” African art and the potential these objects held for their work, it matters little; whatever the source and date, Picasso, like these others, was soon collecting African art.16 The many works of art that interested Picasso at this time — ​­among these African figures and masks, medieval sculptures, and prehistoric art — ​­were seen by his generation to be closely linked to supernatural forces imbued by ritual and the spiritual aura therein. As noted by Guillaume Apollinaire, “I had my most intense aesthetic experience when I was suddenly exposed to the sublime beauty of the sculpture executed by anonymous African artists. These religious works of art, imbued with passion and rigorously logical, are the most powerful and beautiful products of the human imagination. I hasten to add that I never­ theless detest exoticism.” 17 For Apollinaire, as for Picasso, African art carried elements of religious primacy, emotional engagement, intellect, and aesthetic power. African art clearly carried a certain aura that was enhanced by touch. Aura is often described in pseudosupernatural and extrasensorial terms, as in the luminous aureole.18 The perceived aura of the ancestral Vili figure (figures 43 and 44), and other African works, likely drew Picasso to look more closely at the work’s features, including its enormous ears. The Vili figure that Picasso encountered in 1906 is a striking sculpture, a work of internal contrasts that display a potent interplay of volumes and voids. Art in the Flesh

85

fig 50

Matisse, Still Life with Afr ican Statue, 1907.

Picasso’s eyes — and hands — would have readily discovered this, along with the powerful visual and tactile contrasts of smooth and rough surfaces, the rectilinear torso and the angled arms and legs. He would have discerned the notable juxtapositions between the rigid trunk and almost rubbery legs, the deep black sheen of the wooden surface (historically enhanced by oil), and the whitish luminosity of the larger-than-life elliptical mirror eyes embedded in the face. Picasso appears to have taken up this unusual eye shape in the rendering of the two African demoiselles of his 1907 canvas. The Vili figure’s upward-tilted head make its eyes all the more piercing, while adding a unique sense of engagement and animation; a similar slight upward head cant is seen in Matisse’s rendering of this work (figure 50). This same quality is also present in Picasso’s crouching demoiselle, although he had used it in earlier contexts. The diminutive size (9 3/8 inches) of the Vili sculpture and its relative lightness made the very act of handling it more intimate. One can almost imagine Picasso as he encouraged his fingers to explore the rough surfaces of the belly, the sharp angling of the arms, the swelling of the calves, the rim of 86

chapTer Three

the figure’s tight cap, the curves of the thick bracelets, and the crisp articulations of the toes and fingers, as well as the rhythmic lines of the bobbin-­like stool. Picasso would also have been cognizant of the remarkable skill of the sculpture’s artist — ​­which would become even clearer to him when he took up wood carving in the months ahead (figure 118) — ​­and a number of his drawings from this period would relate specifically to this new art form. Picasso also would have noticed how different this figure was from French academic sculpture. There was no musculature defining the legs, arms, or stomach, and the face shows little resemblance to any living human, although it had all the physiognomic markers. Despite — ​­or perhaps because of — ​­these very traits, the sculpture has a unique power and hold of its own. Grasping the solid yet fragile figure, Picasso might have discovered how the arms function as handles and how certain features can play multiple roles. He would have seen the powerful architectonic qualities of the internal geometries — ​­the dominant triangles, rectangles, and ovals, as well as the wonderful harmonies of their repetition within the composition, qualities that give to the work its striking monumentality. Perhaps Picasso puzzled over the strange gesture of the figure, the hands angled up to the chin, where the large tongue protrudes. Whatever these features signaled to him, they clearly added to the sense that this work was engaged in doing something that would have an impact on the world, consistent with the general view of how idols were seen to perform.19 The active, tactile experience of a sculpture (volumes that can be felt as well as seen) and the emotional power it imparts reinforced the unique iconic power of this small African figure for Picasso. Tristan Tzara notes that following Matisse’s purchase of African art in 1906, “Picasso and Derain . . . found in the conceptions of African sculpture the beginnings of a solution to the architectural problems of composition, as well as synthesizing real forms in their painting.” 20 For each artist the works represented something different. As Stein explains, whereas for Matisse these sculptures were “naïve and exotic,” in Picasso’s eye, they were “a thing that was natural, direct and civilized.” 21 It was natural that this reinforced Picasso’s vision and helped him to realize it, resulting in the studies that brought him to create Les Demoiselles. As one Picasso and Matisse scholar notes, “Sometime around 1906 a number of young artists — ​­mostly French, but also some German — ​­began for the first time to look seriously at sculptural objects . . . made in Africa. . . . Up until then, such objects had not been considered art, but were treated rather as curiosities.” 22 It was in large measure what these works offered in visual terms that Art in the Flesh

87

was important. As Vlaminck later explains, “It was Picasso who first understood the lessons one could learn from the sculptural conceptions of African and Oceanic art and progressively incorporated these into his painting. He stretched the forms, lengthened, flattened and recomposed them on his canvas. He colored assemblages with red, ochre, black or yellow ochre, just as the Negroes did for their idols and fetishes. . . . Picasso thereby started the movement whose novelty made people think of him as a revolutionary: Cubism.” 23 African art clearly challenged artists to think in new ways. In his volume Primitive Negro Sculpture, Paul Guillaume insists that in this era “the plastic arts were exhausted”; in Opportunity, he asserts that European art has “exhausted its energies, and was dying a slow anemia.” 24 Part of the freshness of African art, Matisse insists, was its sculptural language, which he saw as complementing that of Egyptian art.25 He began to explore the visual potential of these forms in sculptural terms in 1906, around the same time as Picasso.26 Picasso (like Matisse) probably knew little about the meaning of the Vili power figure (in Kongo-­linked cultures called nkisi; pl. minkisi). Power objects of this sort are said to address the concept of reciprocating universes and the ongoing interchange between the visible world of the living and the invisible realm of the dead. Picasso nonetheless may have felt the potent timelessness of the figure’s gaze, one that transported viewers to both the past and the future. In Congo, the metal eyes take in the events surrounding the work and add strength by reflecting back any danger. Community members used large minkisi (some stand over a meter high) in collective contexts; smaller ones such as this were part of an individual’s or family’s ritual equipment. Regardless of size, these works effectuate an imprint that is meant to stir one at the deepest psychological levels.27 In many ways, such sculptures address concerns Picasso raised in relationship to his transformative 1907 painting. They were a focus of rituals that helped promote community and individual well-­being. Not only could they chase away witches and other dangers, but they helped ward off disease and other misfortunes and heal related illnesses.28 These figures, once activated by the medicinal specialist (nganga), also served as witnesses. The duller surface of the stomach and chest of this work reveals the place where powerful medicines (bilongo) would have been secured. In some cases, as here, these materials are removed from the work before it is sold. The face is sometimes intentionally frightening, even threatening, with the mouth pressed open as if warning of eminent harm. The hands-­to-­mouth gesture in turn may reflect the practice of chewing bitter88

chapter three

root (munkwiza) in witchcraft trials and other occasions. While Picasso seems not to have used this unusual gesture in his own work, Matisse did so in his 1907–8 Bathers with a Turtle painting (figure 316), created in partial response to Picasso’s large 1907 canvas. This evening of tactile engagement coupled with close visual scrutiny and the emotional power of this work carried for Picasso a certain power that left an enduring imprint on him. It matters little whether this event took place at the home of Stein or Matisse, although I trust the latter’s recollections more, since he owned and proudly presented the sculpture that evening and discussed it with Picasso in detail. What is important is how Picasso engaged with the work and its central place in his relationship with Matisse. As the latter points out in his elaboration of the story, “I was astonished to see how [African sculptures] were conceived from the point of view of sculptural language; [their] . . . departure from musculature . . . these Negro statues were made in terms of their material, according to invented planes and proportions.” 29 The words of Matisse, master of color and line, evoke elements that Matisse had rarely explored until just before the night in question; he did so in a series of African-­inspired sculptures.30 To Salmon these elements were also central to Picasso’s conceptualization of Les Demoiselles. As Salmon would state, African artworks were “objects that we could experience from all sides.” 31 Picasso appears to be addressing this transformative evening in his later discussion of “tribal” artworks with André Malraux: “Everyone always talks about the influence of the Negroes on me. . . . We all loved fetishes.” 32 He adds, “For us it was the Negroes. . . . Their forms had no more influence on me than they had on Matisse.” For them the masks were just like any other kinds of sculpture. In Picasso’s view, these African works were about more than simply “form.” The sculptures held emotional power and were “meant to be used rather than merely looked at”; it was the related magic and power associations that were of particular primacy.33

Art at the Trocadéro Many Picasso scholars focus their attention on the artist’s emotionally charged 1907 spring visit to the Trocadéro museum, which he mentioned several times with respect to African works.34 Despite its acknowledged importance to Picasso, the date of his visit here (and his obfuscation of it) as well as the African works he saw while in these galleries remain some of the great mysteries in the literature on Les Demoiselles.35 In late March 1907 Picasso had begun to work Art in the Flesh

89

on his canvas in earnest.36 Most likely he made his visit with Derain, who was also interested in these forms around this time. This event is described in considerable detail by André Malraux,37 but was clearly neither Picasso’s earliest nor most important experience with African works prior to painting Les Demoiselles.38 While Picasso’s deep engagement with African art came from a variety of sources, the Trocadéro visit left a seminal imprint on him. The strange massive edifice with winglike curving extensions (figure 51), known as both the Palais du Trocadéro and the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, was constructed in 1878 for the third Exposition Universelle by architect Jean-­A ntoine-­Gabriel Davioud and engineer Jules Bourdais. The building — ​­like Picasso’s large 1907 painting — ​­evoked a unique stylistic eclecticism, described variously as Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, Renaissance, Hispanic-­Moorish, and, surprisingly, modern.39 The Trocadéro, as it was popularly known, contained a vast catchall collection of works from around the world.40 The ornate building sat atop high ground, directly opposite the École Militaire and the Eiffel Tower, which had also been erected for the Exposition Universelle on the opposite side of the Seine. It is likely near the massive winged Trocadéro that Picasso stood when contemplating the setting of La Parisienne et figures exotique (figure 32). This structure had featured prominently in the 1900 Exposition Universelle and was built to address the growing colonial agenda of the artifact collections that were being showcased there. As such, the museum, which opened officially on January 23, 1878, as the Musée ethnographique des missions scientifiques, both passively and actively engaged in the colonial intervention. On the terrace in front of the building stood six gilded-­bronze sculptures representing Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania (complementing the geographic range of art works inside such as figures 52–57 and 62).41 Beneath the terrace, a large cascade gushed toward an immense basin delimited by four bronze animals also representative of these four areas: bull, horse, elephant, and rhinoceros. The Trocadéro at the time housed a broad collection of objects, ranging from African, Oceanic, and Asian works to European sculpture and folklife, each showcased in its own area and in many cases addressing broader human concerns such as shelter, food, communication, and religion.42 Baedeker’s Paris 1907 tour guide provides us with some insight on the likely scenario of Picasso’s visit. The structure is described as “a huge building in the Oriental style,” with a central domed core flanked by two “minarets” and “two curved wings furnished with 90

chapter three

above Plan of the Trocadéro, post1903.

fig 51

left Cast from Arc de triomphe, Paris, 2013.

fig 52

f i g 5 3 right Cast from Arc de triomphe, Paris, 2013.

galleries . . . presenting the appearance of an imposing crescent.” 43 Within this larger “Palace” space, one wing (and part of the other) contained the Musée de sculpture comparée (also called the Musée des moulages [casts]), and the second wing held principally the Musée d’ethnographie. Because of funding shortages in 1906–7, some sections of the museum were intermittently closed to visitors.44 At the top of the stairs, according to the 1907 Baedeker guide, the ethnographic gallery on the left housed the African works; highlights in this gallery included plans for an Algerian tomb and a Tunis palace as well as “curious statues of three kings of Dahomey and a deity of Whydah” (figures 54 and 80) whose bold, almost acidic greens and oranges are suggested in the two right-hand demoiselles and related studies. These Dahomey royal sculptures, shipped to Paris during colonial conquest, as well as the unique assemblage features of the Dahomey iron war god, Gu (figures 147 and 148), left a special imprint on Picasso (see chapter 5). Oceanic works on view in the Trocadéro were likely important as well. arT in The flesh

91

Fig 54

Sosa Adede, Dahomey king figure, 1889–93. Musée du quai Branly. Fig 55

Anon., Adouma mask (Gabon), late 19th century, Musée du quai Branly. Fig 56

Anon., Adouma mask (Gabon), before 1820. Musée du quai Branly.

92

Picasso’s descriptions of his visits to the Trocadéro are somewhat contradictory. William Rubin notes, “Though Picasso described himself as virtually stumbling upon the ethnological material, the configuration of the building was such that he had to exit entirely from one museum to enter the other. . . . He describes his first visit to the Musée d’Ethnographie [as] virtually the result of pushing the wrong door, yet he elsewhere alluded to Derain’s having advised him to visit that museum.” 45 Since scholars have long viewed African artworks as critical to Picasso’s revolutionary vision (a theme that featured in MoMA’s “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art exhibition of 1984), the hunt for works that most closely parallel the faces in Picasso’s famous 1907 canvas led many to explore the Trocadéro collections. In addition to the Dahomey sculptures discussed above, a number of other African sculptures, specifically works by Kota artists from Gabon (figures 99 and 100), as well as Grebo (Krou; figure 57) and Baga masks from the Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea (figure 114), were on view in the Trocadéro in 1906–7.46 The latter work Picasso could also have seen at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.47 Adouma and related masks from the Ogowe River area of Gabon (figures 55 and 56) were on view in the Trocadéro as well, with bold contrasting red and white coloring, geometric facial planes, and volumes that included a protruding forehead brow line and flattened lower facial rendering.48 Similar features are seen in several Picasso works from this period (figure 58). Despite these examples, the African artworks that most closely complement chapter three

fig 57

Anon., Grebo (Krou) mask (Liberia), 19th century, Musée du quai Branly. fig 58

Picasso, Bust of Woman, 1907.

the forms in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles were absent from the Trocadéro — and elsewhere in Paris — when he commenced the canvas.49 As Rubin points out, “Indeed, not one of the types of masks that art historians have through the years proposed as possible models for Picasso could, in fact, have been seen in the Trocadéro or — experts insist — found on the Parisian market as early as 1907.”50 Most important among these absences are such visually powerful African forms as Pende (Congo) sickness masks, which seem almost to freeze the physiognomy of a stroke victim into a permanent C-curve, and the beautiful white heart-shaped masks of the Punu (Gabon; figure 109; plate 2, middle row left), among others. However, all of these mask types that Picasso likely used have close complements in African masks published in a book by the anthropologist Leo Frobenius (plate 2, among others), which I discuss in chapter 4. The general lack in the Trocadéro of masks that seem to have specifically inspired Picasso as he worked on Les Demoiselles has encouraged generations of Picasso scholars to continue the search, even while acknowledging that for an artist of Picasso’s path-forging brilliance, the question of actual sources is not especially germane. Rather, these works are largely seen to have served for him more as “points of departure” or “witnesses” for his explorations.51 The Trocadéro experience was nonetheless important and clearly left a mark on him; Picasso never forgot it. As he told Malraux in 1937, he found the Trocadéro an awful smelly grab bag of objects that affected him emotionally rather than visually or intellectually, hence he forced himself to stay to better understand arT in The flesh

93

what was happening to him.52 Picasso told Françoise Gilot much the same thing in the mid-­1940s: When I went for the first time, at Derain’s urging, to the Trocadéro museum, the smell of dampness and rot there stuck in my throat. It depressed me so much I wanted to get out fast, but I stayed and studied. Men had made those masks and other objects for a sacred purpose, a magic purpose, as a kind of mediation between themselves and the unknown hostile forces that surrounded them, in order to overcome their fear and horror by giving it a form and an image. At that moment I realized that this was what painting was all about. Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. When I came to that realization, I knew I had found my way.53 In 1960 Picasso reaffirmed his earlier recollections to Romuald Dor de la Souchère, “When I went to the Trocadéro, it was deserted. There was an old guard there; it was very cold; no fire. I was alone. Everything was moth-­eaten, mangy, with Turke-­red cotton fabric on the walls! That’s where I found my defenders. I thought that very beautiful. It’s always like that.” 54 It was not the forms he saw in the Trocadéro that had the most profound impact but their effect on his imagination, a point also made by Stein.55

Casts: Medieval Art and Beyond Picasso’s Trocadéro experience certainly had an impact on his famous 1907 painting, yet his initial visit was to examine the medieval sculpture casts in plaster that were on exhibit in the Musée de sculpture comparée, housed in the wing opposite the Musée d’ethnographie. These casts (figure 62) are critical to understanding Picasso’s work on Les Demoiselles.56 The medieval sculpture exhibit was intended to be educational. As Baedeker points out, “The casts illustrate different phases of sculpture, from Romanesque to Gothic, developed by French art, and are arranged chronologically. Explanatory labels are attached to each cast.” The specific organization of the artworks was important, and helps underpin the issue of artistic and cultural evolution that Picasso was addressing in Les Demoiselles. A Musée de sculpture comparée catalog from 1910 provides both a diagram and an overview.57 Medieval sculptures were exhibited in Room H and were identified in this catalog as “Style 94

chapter three

Gothique Primitif,” meaning that, like African artworks (and, in some ways, all the works in the ethnographic collections), the casts of medieval Christian art were classified with the same “Primitive” moniker. This early French sculpture museum had been proposed by Eugène Violletle-Duc in 1879 to the then minister of public instruction, Jules Ferry. The organization of the exhibits had a clear pedagogical aim. As Camille Enlart and Jules Roussel note in their 1929 introduction to the collection, “Viollet le Duc had agreed to establish a parallel series of medieval and antique art, to break down the idea of the supposed inferiority of the latter, and to show how medieval art is part of a completely analogous evolution, going from a hierarchical archaism to a mediated naturalism, from intentional simplicity, to exaggerated elegance. This similarity in evolution and equivalence of merit was shown from the start, and so eloquently, that it alas, was unnecessary to insist on it.”58 Violletle-Duc would also undertake a collaboration with sculptor Victor Pyanet to add medieval-style gargoyles to Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris (figure 59). There is left Gargoyle, NotreDame Cathedral, Paris, 19th century.

fig 59

left Anon., Egyptian mask, 1400–1300 bce, Louvre. fig 60

arT in The flesh

f i g 6 1 below Picasso, det. of Les Demoiselles, 1906.

below Cast, Reims Annunciation group, c. 1211.

fig 62

95

a certain complementarity between one of the outward-­staring gargoyles and the crouching demoiselle, a figure that in its protective liminal position also shares much in common with the gargoyle. It is clear that medieval art in this era was generally considered to be both early and primitive. Like African art, these works had long been denigrated in France as lacking in artistic merit in comparison with the antiquities of Greece and Rome. While the new medieval sculpture exhibit represented a certain degree of French chauvinism (showcasing a period of unique French artistic brilliance), it also highlighted this tradition’s specific and documentable evolution over time. There was an array of architectural and other works in plaster (casts of originals) from this period and later housed in the Trocadéro. Some of these have been reinstalled in the architectural museum that opened on the site in 2007, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. Among the works at the Cité that seem particularly striking in terms of Les Demoiselles are casts of sculptures and details from other medieval churches (figures 62 and 303). The bird-­crested human head caught in midscream from the Arc de triomphe (figure 52) shows attributes of anger or fear that seems related to the crouching demoiselle. Interesting is the fragmentary human hand with outstretched fingers (figure 53) that is in part evoked in the hand gesture of the leftmost demoiselle (the Egyptian/ Asian figure). Similarly powerful exemplars were visible to Picasso in key museum and architectural contexts in Paris, including a wooden Egyptian mask and figure in the Louvre (figures 60, 73, and 74) that likely influenced his Egyptian demoiselle (figure 61) and several medieval works. Key among these sites were the cloisters of the medieval Cluny Abbey (figure 8) and the Notre-­Dame Cathedral. The sculptures seen at these sites, like the crouching figure in Les Demoiselles, evince characteristics intended to both frighten and thwart harm (see chapter 7). Casts from Reims Cathedral (figure 62) were among the many medieval casts on view in this museum that were likely important to Picasso, among these the four striking female sculptures that ornamented the west portal. These thirteenth-century works depict figures from the Annunciation and Visitation (Mary and Elizabeth) and are of special interest because, as with Picasso’s figures in Les Demoiselles, each of these women is depicted in a different style expressive of her identity. Interestingly, Reims also featured in the celebrated medieval-­era album of Villard de Honnecourt (figures 275 and 277) that Picasso seems to have studied with care. The combination of medieval plaster casts in the Trocadéro and diagrammatic drawings of medieval sculptures and architectural ornamen96

chapter three

tation in this volume suggest that Picasso was exploring not only the evolution of artistic form (from “primitive” models onward) but also the interconnection between three-­dimensional sculpture and two-­dimensional form (drawing, painting, photography). When we add to these interests the ways that medieval sculpture was used to convey expressive distinctions through aspects of stylistic difference, we come closer to understanding the kinds of complex issues that Picasso was grappling with in his large canvas. Many artists of Picasso’s generation trained through close visual study of plaster casts. Picasso’s beloved uncle, Canon Pablo, used casts in his own work, and it is thought that one of Picasso’s early drawings, Study of a Torso (1893–94), was based on one such cast.59 There also were various private companies in this period that sold plaster casts of important artworks for art schools and other establishments. In art schools, including some today, these casts served the role of stationary artist models, as well as symbolic witnesses to activities underway. Beginning in the 1860s, art cast–making firms included well-­known London emporiums such as Giovanni Franchi and Domenico Brucciani, as well as an array of French, German, and Italian companies. The highly successful Boston Fig 63

Cast, Venus de Milo, 130–100 bce, Louvre. Fig 64

Cast, Egyptian Pharaoh Psamtik II, 595–593 bce, Louvre. Fig 65

Cast, wounded amazon, after Polykleitos, 1st–2nd century.

Art in the Flesh

97

fig 66

Cast, Michelangelo, “Dawn,” 1519–24. Lorenzo de’ Medici tomb. fig 67

Cast, Michelangelo, Dying Slave, 1513.

fig 68

Cast, Greco-Roman torsos, 480 bce

company of P. P. Caproni and Brothers, established in 1892, also published a richly illustrated catalog of available casts, among these a 1901 edition (figures 63–68) that featured works based on an array of historic sculptures, including the Venus de Milo (figure 63), a wounded amazon (figure 65), and Michelangelo’s figure Dusk from the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici (figure 66), and his Dying Slave (figure 67), and Dawn. Photographs of art casts were perhaps important to Picasso in his rendering of the two European women in Les Demoiselles. Richly illustrated art-­cast catalogs became a vital ancillary resource for artists, since the cost of a plaster cast was often prohibitive. Also seen in the Caproni catalog are casts of sculptures featuring striking breast asymmetry (figure 68). These poses are also included in Carl Heinrich Stratz’s publications (plate 10; figure 197), underscoring the fluidity between historic art forms, illustrated plaster cast volumes, posed models in photograph-­rich books, later photographs and diagrams, and various Picasso studies for Les Demoiselles. The asymmetrical pose is prominently depicted in the second demoiselle on the left.

Au Lapin Agile From as early as 1904 a frequent place of respite and conversation for Picasso and his circle was the Au Lapin Agile café and cabaret (figure 69; see also figure 5), located a few steps down the hill from the Bateau-­Lavoir residence he shared with other artists on the Montmartre plateau. While the ramshackle multistory apartments and studios where Picasso lived in this era have long since been destroyed (and replaced by a modern reengagement of the artist-­studio model), Lapin is still in operation and hosts an array of artworks from the past. Originally called Le Cabaret des Assassins, the dark cellar once showcased (and still does today) works of art on its walls and beams — ​­including a painting by Picasso (later sold) featuring its owner, Frédé. Frédé had had a plaster fireplace constructed in the rear corner, on top of which sits a skull, an apt referent to the era of gangsters in which the establishment was founded and first populated.60 Several life-­size plaster casts are part of the “stage set” of this cramped chamber of the Lapin. A photograph of the café’s interior (figure 69) from circa 1900 shows three huge sculptures delimiting the corners and center of the wall. On the left is a copy of the Vatican’s Roman Apollo with a Lyre (c. 200 ce). At the center rear is a cast of a Crucifixion, a work executed by Jean-­A ntoine Injalbert for Reims in 1898. On the right is a cast of a relief that appears to be an eighth-­ century Cambodian or Vietnamese sculpture (the latter work was possibly a Art in the Flesh

99

Fig 69

Au Lapin Agile interior, c. 1900. Photographer unknown.

100

source for Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse [1906]).61 The plaster heads affixed to the ceiling beam are noteworthy as well. As a sculptural group, the main Lapin casts represent three very different art traditions: ancient European, late Victorian, and South Asian. Similarly, diverse geographic and historical referents are found in Les Demoiselles. The cabaret’s sculpture-­framed setting thus offers potentially important insight into the canvas, which similarly features a group of gigantic figures positioned in a cramped interior. Moreover, the draped cloth wrapper of Picasso’s central chignon-­coiffed European figure are reminiscent of the Lapin’s Apollo, as are the heavy dark red curtains that close near the entry. Like the Vili figure (figures 43 and 44) that so interested Picasso, these con­texts suggest some of the more unusual works and issues in which Picasso was engaging. Many of these global works may have played a role in Picasso’s changing vision of the world and the arts therein — ​­African art certainly, but also medieval and Southeast Asian sculpture. In its own way, Injalbert’s highly emotional and muscular Crucifixion dominating this interior also left a mark (a negative one), exemplifying much of what Picasso wanted to distance himself from as he pressed to invent art anew. These sculptures, whether on view at the

chapter three

Trocadéro or in popular gathering places such as the Lapin, dwarfed those who viewed them, being exhibited in spaces far more intimate than the enormous temples and cathedrals in which they were originally housed. My own experience here during one late-­night cabaret revealed the striking claustrophobia of the space, one that very much resembles that of Les Demoiselles. The quality of being physically overwhelmed by larger-­than-­life-­size figures in a constricted space is part of what makes Picasso’s painting so powerful. The Lapin experience had left an imprint on Picasso, witnessed through the frozen gaze of enormous plaster cast gods enhanced not only by ample wine, food, and conversation with good friends but also the equally real anxiety of his deep hunger for acclaim. There is another element of this painting concerning the Lapin setting that is of interest to us: in 1907 Apollinaire penned a short story called “La Serviette des poètes,” which features a napkin referred to as “a Cubist Sainte-­Véronique.” 62 This story is set in Bateau-­Lavoir and focuses on four poets who represent fictional versions of four members of this group, Max Jacob, André Salmon, Mécislas Goldberg, and Apollinaire himself. The four young people head off to have their dinner. Alas, due to the extreme poverty of their host, Picasso (who was there with Fernande Olivier), they had to share the same napkin, each getting one of the corners. The result of this lapse in sanitation resulted in them all dying from tuberculosis, and the portrait of each man is transposed onto the napkin, a miraculous sign identifying them all now as saints. This tale, the Lapin setting, the grouping of global statuary giants, and the unusual portrait of Picasso and others discussed above suggests how vital this scene was to Picasso at the time he was painting Les Demoiselles. What Apollinaire’s narrative reveals more than anything, however, is how much personal sacrifice Picasso was enduring in this period and how hungry he was, both literally and in terms of his desire for success. The artistic risk necessary to achieve these ends seems to have been part of this as well.

Egyptian and Iberian Antiquities at the Louvre Picasso’s hunger for new ideas and sources in the early months of 1907 took him to many sites of visual inquiry, among these the Louvre. Important in this context were Egyptian works of the sort that also clearly interested Matisse. Picasso and his circle saw in Egyptian art close complements with African art. Salmon points out in this light, “In Picasso’s studio pride of place was given to several

Art in the Flesh

101

fig 70

Anon., Iberian head, 5th–3rd century bce. fig 71

Anon., Iberian head, 5th–3rd century bce. fig 72

Picasso, det. of Les Demoiselles, 1907.

ancient Egyptian marvels. . . . Picasso . . . , with that surprising certitude [appreciated the] undisputed wonders of the Egyptian art but also . . . Greek Art. And so the old studio in Montmartre saw the beginning of all those investigations and passionate discussions that were to lead to the birth of Cubism.”63 Egyptian figures also appear prominently in Picasso’s drawings during this period (figures 75 and 76). Egyptian details inform the leftmost demoiselle (the Egyptian/Asian figure) in a particularly striking way. Her masklike facial rendering seems to owe key details to a stunning Egyptian mask I discovered on view in the Louvre galleries (figure 60; compare figure 61) that was in the collection by this time; the posture, attire, and profi le of this demoiselle owe much to the Egyptian figural work Picasso was exploring (figures 73 and 74; compare figures 75 and 76).64 Shown in rigid profi le, the figure marches across the canvas with a steady stride, suggesting the march of both time and humanity. Her identity as a woman of seeming mixed heritage (Egyptian and Southeast Asian) is also in keeping with the broader focus on eugenics in this era and on issues of multiracial identity. For these and other reasons, this figure may have been one of the more difficult of the females for Picasso to achieve on this canvas. Salmon would insist in a postscript to his 1920 publication Negro Art “that African art definitely influenced Egyptian art.” He also maintained that “Negro art preceded all other arts.”65 In a sense, like the chronology of medieval art that was featured in the Musée de sculpture comparée, here too beliefs about the evolution of art seem to have been important to Picasso and his circle. In many ways they saw links between Egyptian and other African art forms. In addressing the context in which he acquired the Vili figure, Matisse explains, One day, I notice in the window a small black head, carved in wood, which reminded me of the enormous heads of red porphyry in the

102

chapTer Three

fig 73

Anon., Egyptian figure, 2050–1652 bce, Louvre. fig 74

Anon., Egyptian figure, 2050–1652 bce, Louvre.

fig 75

Picasso, study of Egyptian figure, 1907. fig 76

Picasso, study of Egyptian figure, 1907.

Egyptian collection in the Louvre. I had the impression that the two civilizations used identical approaches for rendering form, even though they differed so much from each other in other respects. So I bought that carved head for a few francs and took it with me to Gertrude Stein. I found Picasso there, and he was very impressed by it. We had a long discussion about it, and that was when our interest in African art began — ​­an interest we have displayed to a greater or lesser degree in our paintings.66 Matisse explains African works in much the same way: “I was astonished to see how they were conceived from the point of view of sculptural language; how it was close to the Egyptians.” 67 In addition to ancient Greco-­Roman sculpture, medieval French art, and Egyptian works, Picasso was keenly interested in other ancient sculptural forms, including those linked specifically to his Spanish homeland, several examples of which were in the Louvre (figures 70 and 71; compare figure 72). In March 1907, around the time when he began work on Les Demoiselles, Picasso came into the possession of several Roman-­era Iberian stone heads from the sites at Cerro de los Santos and Osuna (some eighty kilometers from Málaga, his birthplace) in southern Spain. For Picasso the works carried important associations with both his homeland and history. The sculptures, a male and female head, were from the excavated sixth-­to fifth-­century bce Andalusian region and had recently been put on view. As John Golding notes, the life-­size head of the male represented what was then referred to as the “primitive period” of Spanish art, a term that in this era also included African and Oceanic forms, among others.68 Golding describes the limestone sculpture, now in the Musée des antiquités nationales, as very rudimentary in style: “Half the head has been virtually obliterated by erosion; the other half displays an enormous scroll-­shaped ear, a sharp wedge-­ shaped nose, and a great bulging eye. These features are echoed in the heads of the two central ‘demoiselles.’” 69 Moreover, as Picasso’s biographer John Richardson points out, “In addition to their atavistic spell, their brutality and lack of distinction commended them to someone who was anxious to demolish traditional canons of beauty.” 70 Richardson goes on to explain that to the artist, “They were hallowed by virtue of being one of Spain’s few contributions to the art of the ancient world; hallowed too because they represented his roots. They had been carved by people of mixed race who — ​­like the artist’s own family — ​­had migrated to Andalusia before moving northward.” 71 While I disagree with Richardson and others that the 104

chapter three

huge ears, thick jaw, and immense bulging (sometimes damaged) eyes of these ancient Spanish heads played a more seminal role as “catalyst” for Picasso’s Les Demoiselles than an array of African and other works explored here (and in other chapters), it is clear that they were among the many early art forms that helped to reshape his thinking on artistic form and visual and magical power.72 Although many artworks were available to Picasso through casts, photography, and books, it was also important to experience these arts in the flesh — ​ ­tactilely as well as visually. The two Iberian heads (figures 70 and 71) that Picasso acquired had been stolen by the Belgian avant-­garde poet and political actor Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret, who served as occasional roommate and secretary to Apollinaire.73 Picasso purchased the stolen works from Pieret in March 1907, the same month he began to paint Les Demoiselles.74 Salmon recalls a conversation between Pieret and another member of their circle, Apollinaire’s lover, the artist Marie Laurencin. According to this story, Pieret informed Laurencin, “I’m off to the Louvre . . . is there anything you need?” 75 The crime likely took place in the days or weeks following a February 27, 1907, dinner in which Picasso and Apollinaire (among others) appear to have been present. Regardless of the exact details of this theft, it is likely that at one point Picasso had conveyed an interest in the objects, and Apollinaire had sought to oblige.76 Despite appeals from Olivier to return the works, Picasso was not inclined to do so. Several years later, the stolen works became the subject of a very public police investigation. On August 23, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the L ­ ouvre — ​­ then, as now, its most famous denizen. Pieret, working out of Belgium, published an anonymous account in the Paris Journal on August 29 indicating how easy such thefts could be and offering as proof an earlier statue stolen from the Louvre and a discussion of his earlier thefts of two Iberian heads. Under the heading “A Thief Brings Us a Statue Stolen from the Louvre,” he stated, “I sold the statue to a Parisian painter friend of mine. He gave me a little money — ​­fi fty francs, I think. . . . The very next day I took a man’s head with enormous ears — ​­a detail that fascinated me. And three days later a plaster fragment covered with hieroglyphs.” 77 In the days that followed his article, there were discussions of art “restitutions” in which the journal office would serve as the site at which the stolen Louvre works could be returned. Salmon, who was an art critic at the journal, knew not only the key individuals and works but also the legal problems the men faced; he took a lead role in helping to rectify the situation for Picasso. After Pieret’s article appeared, Apollinaire, keenly aware of the danger that the anonymous statements had created, contacted Picasso. The two sought to get Art in the Flesh

105

rid of the heads but, fearful of being seen in the act, decided to return the works by way of the journal.78 Pieret (who also falsely claimed to have stolen the Mona Lisa) published another note in the September 6, 1911, Paris Journal stating that he had sold the male head because of its enormous ear. On September 7, someone gave Apollinaire’s name to the police, and he was brought in as a suspect. On September 8, Picasso was summoned to appear before the magistrate, having been implicated by Apollinaire. In the end, both were let off and the stolen heads were collected from the back of Picasso’s cupboard and returned anonymously to the journal offices and then to the Louvre.79 Throughout the affair, Olivier insisted on Picasso’s innocence: “Géry [gave Picasso] two quite beautiful little stone heads, without revealing where he had got them from. He only said that they should not be exhibited too conspicuously.” 80 Whether Picasso had a priori knowledge of Pieret’s Louvre theft is uncertain, but as Richardson makes clear, Picasso’s stated interest in early Spanish antiquities likely inspired the theft. Richardson explains another significance of this theft, namely that “Pieret would have jumped at any pretext to demonstrate his romantic belief that theft was a noble métier. He would obtain one of these sculptures for the artist. Deny it though he might, Picasso must have been privy to the project, even if he failed to take it seriously.” 81 Richardson believed that there may have been reasons for this. Perhaps Picasso felt that the presence of the sculptures in the Louvre represented a theft of Spain’s artistic heritage. In any case, these works’ “clunky primitivism” and magical power had an impact on Picasso’s canvas, and appear to have been particularly important in the fashioning of the two Caucasian demoiselles (figure 72). Picasso would recall to Souchère much later, by way of a question, “Do you remember that business I was involved in, when Apollinaire stole those statuettes from the Louvre? Those were Iberian statuettes. . . . Well, if you look at the ears of the Demoiselles d’Avignon, you will recognize the ears of those sculptures! In any case, it’s only the finished product that matters. In this respect, it’s true that Cubism has Spanish origins.” 82 In revealing this, Picasso is telling only part of the story. Clearly, despite the importance of the ancient Iberian works, Picasso’s later statement that African art had no influence on him needs clarification.83 As Picasso later insisted, “You must not always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.” 84 Richardson suggests that this was likely why “he kept most of his preliminary material secret; why he preferred to make misleading statements rather than elucidate the Demoiselles.” 85 For Malraux, Picasso’s “deep probing into his own spirit of rebellion” 106

chapter three

was an ongoing factor in his art.86 The French novelist Michel Tournier noted, “[Picasso] took in everything, assimilated everything, and surpassed it all.” 87 Indeed, as important as the Iberian, sub-Saharan African, Egyptian, and medieval influences may have been on him, they were only part of the revolution that took place in Les Demoiselles. The act of theft (of various types) seems to have been part of this process: “Picasso took it upon himself to steal from the African, as he had already stolen from the Egyptian and the Phoenician [Spanish].” 88 Picasso would state much the same thing when he famously said, “I do not seek. I find” (meaning that he painted what he found and not what he intentionally sought out).89 There was something in this act of “theft” that added to the psychic power of the work. Richardson suggests with respect to the stolen Iberian heads, “Their atavistic power was a major, though by no means unique, source of the energy with which the artist . . . would galvanize his Demoiselles into life. Once he had extracted the magic from these stolen heads, Picasso reburied them under a lot of junk in the bottom of a cupboard.” 90

Stylistic Hybridity in the Trocadéro and Canvas One of the most striking changes that Picasso introduced to Les Demoiselles and one that few scholars today have addressed in depth is that of its stylistic hybridity. The fact that each of the demoiselles is shown in a different style is one of the most distinctive features of this painting. Not only does Picasso break with the long-­standing tradition of stylistic uniformity within the canvas, but he does so in a way that further enriches and informs the painting. While, as we will see, much of Picasso’s artistic focus is on diverse artistic styles themselves, these factors also carried other attributes. Like decoration, each style can be seen to bring into play other associations. They help to synthesize values that are expressed within the various details as well as by other objects sharing the same style. With Matisse as well decoration is seen to be part of “a larger philosophical effort to synthesize that intangible universe of ‘natural instincts,’” artistic values that, as evoked by Derain, are “informed by emotion.” 91 One scholar describes the shifts in the women portrayed in the canvas as an intentional shift “from gentle melancholy to . . . vehement stupefaction.” 92 There is a lot more to this. This diverse stylistic charge within the same oeuvre is consistent with the medieval sculptures from Reims that Picasso had likely seen at the Trocadéro (figure 62). Even greater sculptural diversity was found in the corpus of Southeast Asian and European plaster casts on display at the Lapin (figure 69) and in the Art in the Flesh

107

fig 77

Photo, Picasso and Fernande Olivier, c. 1906. Photographer unknown.

fig 78

Corpus Christi festival, Barcelona, 1902. Photo by Arxiu Mas, 1902.

fig 79

Alma-Tadema, A Sculptor’s Model, 1877. fig 80

Sosa Adede, Dahomey figures, late 19th century, Musée du quai Branly.

various illustrated books of plaster models (figures 63–68) and African masks and sculptures (figures, 43, 44, 54–57, 99, 114, and 147) that Picasso explored in this era. To some degree this interest also reflects the eclectic artistic interests of Picasso and his circle. In 1908, for example, we know that Matisse’s studio was home to not only “wooden figures carved by African natives” and “fragments of Egyptian sculpture” but also his own “cross-­legged” sculpture, a work described as integrating the “poignant aloofness of Chinese hieratic sculpture and something also of the plastic stability, yet nervous calm, of an Egyptian statue.” 93 Similar endeavors in stylistic diversity in Dahomey art have long interested me as well, as markers of societal assemblage, related to eras and societies in which particularly diverse populations and arts are brought into engagement with each other.94

The Gigantesque Scale is important when engaging with objects (and people) in the flesh. Visual referents to the gigantic were a core part of Les Demoiselles, as well as of Picasso’s life, past experience, and ongoing desires. These range from the beautiful Olivier (figure 77), whose height and build clearly dwarfed the much shorter (and thinner) young artist, to the religious gegant sculptures that appeared in the annual Corpus Christi celebration in Barcelona, the home of the artist’s youth (figure 78). The space-dominating, gigantesque figures of a regal couple clothed in elaborate attire and headdresses paraded during this festival dwarfed the participating public, creating an enriched sensory dynamic. In this photograph, the photographer has captured and emphasized this element of contrasting size, speaking to monumentality and spatial hierarchy in conveying core idioms of power. Yet another exemplar significant to Picasso as an artist and as a Spaniard was El Greco’s large oil painting The Vision of St. John (1608–14; figure 16). When Picasso started his 1907 canvas, this painting was located in Paris and was about to celebrate its three-­hundred-­year anniversary. The Vision of St. John depicts a group of martyrs calling out to God asking that justice be brought to their persecutors. The immense scale and square shape of this canvas, along with its compositional elements, striking angularity, expressive qualities, and spiritual power, are seen to have been important to Picasso’s work, though framed less around ideas of profane and divine love and more about Picasso’s own deep concerns with persecution and revenge.95 In El Greco’s painting Saint John is enormous; he dwarfs everyone else on the Art in the Flesh

109

canvas, as well as viewers. The use of John as a compositional device, his angled, torsion-­fi lled body drawing the viewer into the canvas from the lower left corner, would not have been lost on Picasso, and the figure of the crouching, twisted-­ head Africanized demoiselle in his own canvas fulfills much the same function. Saint John’s skyward-­stretched fingers, marking the anguish of his appeal, may have been a source for the unusual displaced upward-­reaching hand of the leftmost demoiselle. What is important is that Picasso experienced each gigantesque “in the flesh,” as real-­life encounters, creating a uniquely sensorial bodily response and immediacy. These qualities can be felt in Les Demoiselles as well. There were several examples of the aesthetic power of the gigantesque in the museum exhibitions Picasso visited (figure 80), as well as in the images Picasso likely saw in the books and journals of this era — ​­from the Baga D’mba mask drawing published by Frobenius (figure 115) to the painting A Sculptor’s Model (by German artist Lawrence Alma-­Tadema; 1877) published by Carl Heinrich Stratz (figure 79). In the latter work, the artist is dwarfed by his model. There were also striking examples of the gigantesque in artworks from various eras that Picasso experienced in his daily life, whether in the Lapin Agile (figure 69) or in sculptural programs around the city, such as the ferocious gargoyles guarding the spires of Notre-­Dame (figure 59), across the street and in direct view of Matisse’s studio. The crouching demoiselle assumes a similar cornerstone reference as “guardian” of the canvas. She seems almost to bark out a warning with her sharp animal-­like proboscis and hyperalert bird/reptile-­like eyes that stare back at the viewer as if in fear or in search of prey. From Picasso’s tactile exploration of Matisse’s African figure, through his night of drawing strange-faced women, we see how Picasso engaged “in the flesh,” so to speak, preparing his new canvas. In the Vili sculpture and Iberian heads he appears to have explored deeply with both his hands and his eyes, challenging himself to think anew about the three- and two-dimensional form. This interplay of two and three dimensionality was also important in Picasso’s exploration of book imagery. While wooden figures from Africa and ancient stone heads from Spain were key, so too were plaster casts — ​­both those referencing the medieval sculptures decorating France’s historic cathedrals that Picasso would have found in the galleries of the Trocadéro (figure 62) and sculptures referencing objects from different periods and places around the globe that stood guard atop Notre-­Dame Cathedral and behind the informal stage of the Lapin. In his large 1906–7 canvas, Picasso would explore scales similar to those of these various works, as well as ideas of geographic and historic diversity. 110

chapter three

quoted in Caroline Roodenburg-Schadd, Pablo Picasso: I Don’t Seek, I Find

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice The late afternoon sun raked across the mosaic of oversized books aligned neatly on Harvard University’s lower-­level Tozzer Library shelving, a warm spring pirouette against the ribbon of book spines, each, like a chorus line, unique in height, girth, hue, and age. I searched among the volumes and within minutes found Leo Frobenius’s Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (African Masks and Secret Societies; 1898). I had not read the richly illustrated text since graduate school and hoped it might offer additional clues into the author’s perspectives on early Nigerian art at Ife, my research site that year.1 The Nigerian center had brought the young German anthropologist fame, in part due to his later (albeit false) claims that he had discovered the mythical lost Atlantis.2 I had no expectations that the volume would be nearly as imaginative or controversial. Sliding into the adjacent library seat, the thin volume in hand, I opened its generic dark green library-­bound cover. It was clear from the tightness of the binding that the book had not been read a great deal. The pages fanned open, exposing thin calque sheets (figure 81) superimposed on illustrations of brightly colored African masks (plate 2) that immediately struck me in their similarity to Picasso’s works related to Les Demoiselles (plate 3; figures 82–84, among others). The semitransparent tracing paper sheets (calques) simultaneously covered and revealed the striking polychrome Frobenius images. I pulled the thin sheet back from one of the plates and gazed at the striking masks by Frobenius’s illustrator,

Chapter four

I don’t seek; I find. ​­P A B L O P I C A S S O ,

fig 81

Calque covering of African masks, Frobenius 1898.

fig 82

fig 83

Picasso, Bust of Man, 1907.

Picasso, Head, 1907.

E. Hugelshofer. The still-­fresh colors surprised me: deep orangey reds, teal blue greens, and various shades of ochre-­melon, spanning to earthy. I ran my fingers across the crisp black line drawings and numbers on the protective sheets that help identify each mask that lay beneath the paper veil. On other pages, black-­ and-­white photographs and additional drawings were carefully arranged and identified. After my eye had taken in the full sweep of illustration pages, I turned again to one of the color pages, looked closely at the variety of forms, and then repositioned the vegetal paper in its proper place above the page. I found myself again staring at the numbered silhouettes. I had seen these striking images before in connection with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and the myriad early studies that had been discovered after I had first read this book. Curious now, I closed the volume, proceeded to the checkout desk with it, and headed home, where I could quietly peruse the text again to see what insights Frobenius offered. While I knew relatively little about the painting then, this book, I soon realized, was key to solving an enduring mystery of the iconic work, specifically the sources Picasso used for his African mask forms. The dance masks found in Frobenius’s text had served — ​­as had other visual materials for Picasso — ​­as provocative muses, sorceresses that pressed the artist to think anew not only about image making but also about the world of art. As William Rubin notes with respect to African masks and other forms, “There is no drawing or painting by Picasso that is directly copied from any tribal object.” 3 But Frobenius’s mask portrayals had clearly had an impact on the artist and as such offer a striking sense of just how creative Picasso was in reengaging and reinventing the African forms. Despite a century of scholarship on Picasso and his famous painted “ladies of the night,” including work on their possible African mask similarities, no one has yet to point to the likely importance of Frobenius’s volume, a work of special salience in the early twentieth-­century era of growing European interest in related colonial encounters.4

A Doctor, a Sailor, and Illustrations of African Art Once I arrived home with the Frobenius masking volume, I arranged my small collection of Picasso books and articles on the dining room table and opened them to photographs of Les Demoiselles and the related preparatory drawings. Among the most striking resemblances between Picasso’s works and the Frobenius illustrations were the faces of the medical student and sailor who figured T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

113

Fig 84

Picasso, Head of a Man, 1908. Fig 85

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), 19th century, Frobenius 1898. Fig 86

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

114

prominently in the early compositional studies (plate 3; figure 82) but were left out of the final version of the canvas. As I turned the pages of Leo Steinberg’s well-­known 1972 essay on this painting and the 1984 catalog for MoMA’s exhibition “Primitivism” in Modern Art, both thickly illustrated with Picasso’s sketches for the painting, this relationship became all the clearer. Studies for one of the male figures (plate 3) reveal similarities with an African mask from the Congo illustrated in Frobenius (plate 2, top row left). This face shows prominent vertical linear marks that extend diagonally from the inner corner of the eye and fan down across the cheeks as well as black dots here and along the jaw. The complementary African mask is an angular, white form — ​­a square with a distinctively rounded crown and pointed chin — ​­speckled with red, gray, and black dots. Contrasting black and red lines curve down and outward from the eye and across the cheek toward the jawline. The delineation of this mask in both frontal and profile views within the Frobenius image conveys the visual power of the work in other ways, too — ​­particularly the force of the upward-­curving chin and striking juxtaposition of brow line, nose, and projecting lips. Another Congo work featured in Frobenius (plate 2, central row, second from left) is a white oval-­shaped mask, marked by crimson arching brows and thick swaths of pigment that extend from one eye down diagonally across the opposite cheek and brow line, the eye obfuscated in shadow. This wide uneven color band begins in a dark charcoal hue and ends in a deep red. Several of Picasso’s early compositional studies for the sailor incorporate the same bold facial rendering with diagonally patterned cheeks, thick eye socket shading, prominent arched eyebrows, and color bands that mark key facial planes (compare figures 82, 83, chapter four

fig 87

Anon., Mandingo mask (Senegal), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 88

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 89

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 90

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 91

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 92

Anon., Uelle mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

85, and 86). Particularly striking is how the cheek and brow areas have been transformed into a play of deep shadows and light. There is no doubt about the important connection between the two sets of images. Yet Picasso could not have seen the mask shown in plate 2 (center row, second from left), from Loango, Congo, in person, since it was housed in the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zürich. It is here where Frobenius had seen and studied it as part of his dissertation research on African masks in various anthropological collections in Europe. These and other works from the Frobenius volume (for example, figures 87– 92) were clearly important to Picasso’s early conception of Les Demoiselles. In the Congo mask shown in Frobenius (plate 2, top left). The diagonal cheek marks are seen to depict tears, and the dots around the mouth may indicate disease. These motifs have featured in earlier discussions of Picasso’s drawings as related to fears of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.5 The diagonal cheek marks on several kinds of African masks (plate 7; see also plate 2, masks at top right) are interesting for other reasons, since Picasso included this element in his later celebrated self-­portrait (plate 6), in which he added a diagonal mark of this type on his own cheek to evoke scarification. James Cuno recalls the drama with which, during a lecture on this artist, Leo Steinberg pointed to this bold cheek line, insisting that it was “the most important brush stroke Picasso ever made.” 6 In some ways it was. Through this self-­portrait detail, Picasso establishes his own close identity with African artworks as well as with the talented artists who made them.

Art and Origins: Picasso and Frobenius The rudimentary linear mask silhouettes and minimalist facial features of Frobenius’s calque tracings (figure 81) also likely left an imprint on Picasso. Like the watercolor illustrations and accompanying photographs, these simple line drawings offered visual interest as Picasso forged a path toward a deeper engagement with form and shape. One illustration in particular stands out — ​­a set of line drawings (figure 93) that shows two rows of masklike diagrams. The top row (A–E) portrays the evolution of abstract mask forms into a naturalistic facial rendering; the lower row (F–K) reveals the physiognomic devolution from a masklike rendering to core elemental features (coiffure line, ear, orifice). The top left mask depicted here, from the mixed Efik Ibibio and Ijaw region of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria (figure 94, right), was likely important in Picasso’s 116

chapter four

fig 93

Diagram, African masks, Frobenius 1898.

fig 94

Anon., Ijaw mask (Nigeria), 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 95

Picasso, det. of Les Demoiselles, 1907.

rendering of the standing African-­like figure at the right of Les Demoiselles (figure 95). This mask features an articulated, puppet-­like jaw that could be opened to suggest speech. A second Ijaw mask displays quite different features (figure 94, left; figure 112), which Frobenius perhaps included to show that artists from the same cultural area produced remarkably different typologies — ​­one almost planklike, created from largely flat surfaces, and the other more volumetric and rounded. In Ijaw masks, the intended viewers (deities in this case) observe facial features not from the front but from above (see also figure 111). The richness of form and representation in these works may have been the reason Picasso selected the former mask as a partial model for the standing African mask–­ wearing figure in Les Demoiselles. Like the latter’s masklike features, this Ijaw mask is distinguished by recessed flattened facial planes, a prominent brow, a long sharp-­edged nose (often described by scholars as shaped like a “slice of brie” in Picasso’s example), diagonal cheek marks incised into the surface, a small mouth at the lower extremity of the chin, and a slack jaw. The fact that Frobenius sometimes included both frontal and profile mask views (figures 94, 96, and 109) was important to Picasso’s study of the transformations of abstract three-­dimensional mask forms into the faces of seminaturalistic living humans (figure 93, albeit shown here two-­dimensionally). The kind of visual play — ​­between mask and living person, abstract image and naturalistic rendering, three-­dimensional and two-­dimensional form — ​­that permeates Frobenius’s volume would have interested Picasso as he began to explore these same issues in his own work. Frobenius, by showing these masks in both views, encourages his readers to address the perceptual issues of creating three-­dimensional objects in two dimensions, of the seemingly disconnected relationship between frontal and side vantages, and of the somewhat arbitrary nature of these formal relationships. The contrasts would not have been lost on Picasso and became critical in his later cubist explorations. It is significant therefore that the Ijaw mask displays close formal similarities with the face of Picasso’s standing African figure. Picasso’s standing African demoiselle has long prompted art historical interest. She likely has multiple visual sources, including not only Frobenius but also an array of European and African images, postcards from this era, and books rich in photographs of women from around the world (see chapter 6). One possible additional source of her gesture are the caryatid figures that appear in African art, including stools, which were beginning to be available in Paris in Picasso’s era. One such example is a Luba caryatid stool published by Friedrich 118

chapter four

Ratzel in his well-­known volume Völkerkunde (1888; figure 103). Whether Picasso saw Ratzel’s volume is unknown, but he appears to have incorporated the African figure’s three-­quarters view (reversed, as in many of his examples), with sharply pointed breasts, dramatic buttocks, and hip angle, along with color tone and grisaille background wash. Ratzel’s stool might have caught Picasso’s eye for its repetition of primary elements, sometimes seen in this era to mean “early.” One notes too that many of these same elements are common in an array of African sculptures, ranging from Matisse’s Vili figure (figures 43 and 44) to a Cameroon staff finial published in Frobenius (figure 104) and various African masks (figures 105 and 120, among others). Some of the African mask images formed part of a facial teleology for Frobenius, an evolution of form that in many ways could be said to suggest human evolution, a subject of increasing interest and significance in Paris in this era (see chapter 7). Religious views were also important. Frobenius discusses African conceptions of the world, including the local veneration of trees, skulls, and skull-­like masks (figures 281, 282, and 294), along with various animal and solar beliefs. For Frobenius, “African sculpture is not an object but a subject, it is not an expression of creative originality, but carries this force which separates men and pushes them in the work.” 7 Under the topic of African conceptions of the world, Frobenius gives special attention to the ritual notion of manism (from the Latin manes, “spirits of the dead”) and the importance of the deceased in the lives of the living as a basis of an ancestor cult. In this context, African and other “primitive” art forms were seen to constitute a reflection of and response to the mystery of death, with associated sculptures rendering the departed visible, “whether in the form of mysterious animals, a terrifying specter, or a European in a position of superiority.” 8 According to Frobenius, the African artist is comparable to the leader of a cult. In some ways Picasso saw his role to be similar. It was the shared aesthetic and ritual aspects of African art that interested both Frobenius and Picasso. Picasso later revealed to Françoise Gilot, “When I became interested in negro art . . . it was because at that time I was against what was called beauty in the museums.” 9 He sought in African art a different kind of aesthetic engagement. In the end “he saw that what seemed rational in another culture could result in a significantly different way of representing man and his emotions. Spiritual ideas as well as life experience — ​­for example, birth or death — ​­could emanate from the transformation of the materials themselves, some of them quite ordinary, in contrast to the traditional Western approach to art as imitation.” 10 T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

119

fig 96

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 97

Picasso, det. of Les Demoiselles, 1907. fig 98

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), 19th century, State Ethnographic Museum, Berlin. Photo by Claudia Obrocki, 1989.

120

Of Noses and Such Picasso would later claim to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that he chose the arched profi le nose on the crouching demoiselle because he “had to make them cockeyed so that they’d know they were noses.”11 The African mask evoked in this figure resembles several works illustrated in Frobenius’s volume. These too offer insight into Picasso’s studies for Les Demoiselles and the painting itself. One of the most striking of these examples is a Congo mask (plate 2, bottom row, second from left; figure 96; compare figures 97 and 98), a coastal Vili work from the same broader culture as Matisse’s figure that Picasso handled that fateful October evening of 1906 (figures 43 and 44; see chapter 3). Frobenius’s handsome watercolor image of this mask with a dramatically curving nose is shown in both three-quarters frontal and profi le views. The original mask is in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin (figure 98), whose form, though interesting, does not have the same kind of boldly asymmetrical visual impact as the watercolor rendering of the mask published by Frobenius. The museum’s photographer, Claudia Obracki, has captured this work in a directly frontal way that emphasizes the mask’s elegant eye shapes and deep black (empty) eye sockets by which the masker could see. She positioned the mask as one might both a European art work and an object of scientific interest, showing little of the drama and imagined lurking danger that earlier African mask photographers often sought to imbue in their imagery through angled lighting and deep shadows. Vili ritual experts (called nganga) used these masks for healing and divination intended to address the intersection of human and spirit worlds. The facial surfaces of these masks are often characterized by contrasting color fields. The counterbalanced black and white or red and white pigments evoke the balance chapTer foUr

between the living world (suggested by the black earth or the red of blood) and the world of the dead (the afterlife, a realm of light). The extended tongue is seen to signal the primacy of speech and, most importantly, oaths. It is not clear what, if anything, Picasso knew of the healing and spiritual associations of the mask, although some works from Congo on view at the Trocadéro at this time were understood by Europeans to be linked to healing.12 This Vili mask is significant with respect to Picasso for other reasons. If we compare the museum’s photograph of the mask with the watercolor illustration of it, key distinctions stand out. The actual work is strikingly different from the Hugelshofer illustration.13 One can see this in its tangle of orange red hair (now missing in its current state), and the illustrator, who was probably working from Frobenius’s black-­and-­white photographs rather than the actual object, took considerable liberty with the treatment of other features. The inner curves of the eyes are notably different from the original, the ears are at an angle, and the original’s extended tongue is missing. Plus the rectangularity of the mouth has been truncated. In the watercolor, we are given little sense of the bold forward-­ projecting, muzzle-­like shape of the jaw. Even more significantly, the artist has employed a very different color palette (light blues rather than whites, oranges rather than wood tones) that has been loosely streaked on the mask’s surface to suggest the texturing of the wood and the play of shadows and Vili pigment. We can see from this example that Picasso’s perception of African mask forms is often based more on Hugelshofer’s creative interpretation of photographs than on the objects themselves. In addition to core sculptural differences and the bold exaggerations of the outward-­curving nose, the colors employed by Frobenius’s illustrator left an imprint. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in Picasso’s Three Figures under a Tree, created perhaps in the fall of 1907 (plate 5). The three figures shown in this painting resonate significantly with Hugelshofer’s Vili mask in the shapes, asymmetries, and curving features of their faces. Equally significant similarities are the unusual blue-­gray, tan-­ochre, and warm gray color palette of this work and of the Vili mask watercolor rendering (plate 2, bottom row, second from left). The use of bright parallel linear forms of contrasting hues in the women’s faces as well as their bodies and tree-­rich background bring Hugelshofer’s mask to life anew in this modern version of the three graces. Vili beauty norms and Western aesthetic canons merge in the same elegant dance rite under the arching branch of a shaded copse. A different example illustrated in Frobenius, with a similarly curving nose as that of the Vili mask, is a Makonde work located in the Museum für Völker­ T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

121

kunde, Leipzig (figure 119, top right). These works are distinguished by a play of concave and convex features, curved nose and mouth lines, and the outward jutting ears that recall the flaplike ear of the backward-­staring, crouching de­ moiselle. While Rubin originally suggested that a likely source for the curving nose of the crouching figure was a Pende “sickness” mask from Congo, none of these works were in Paris at the time that Picasso could have seen them.14 That two works sharing this same curved nose are illustrated in Frobenius’s volume makes the importance of these works to Picasso even more likely. Although several mask forms would have been available to the artist in the Trocadéro at this time (figures 55–57), few of these are consistent with the form, style, and expressive qualities displayed by Picasso in his African figures in Les Demoiselles or in the many studies undertaken for this work. The African masks shown in Hugelhofer’s illustrations within Frobenius’s volume are far closer in style to both the 1907 canvas and the preliminary work for it. Hugelshofer, identified by Frobenius as a drawing teacher, features prominently in this story, for in many ways, this artist’s line drawings and watercolors of the masks are as important as the photographs. Despite my numerous efforts, I was able to learn very little about this artist.15 At some point we are sure to know more about the Frobenius illustrator, but for the moment it is important simply to note the illustrator’s likely effect on Picasso’s work at this time. The bold and diverse colors of Hugelshofer’s African mask illustrations are seen in the richness and variety of hues that Picasso began to explore in Les Demoiselles, a striking shift from his more monotone blue period (figure 301) and rose period (figures 183 and 218). Since Les Demoiselles’ color selection anticipates the “expressionist chromatics” of Die Brücke school painters such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde,16 it is likely that both Picasso and the German artists were drawing in part from the same visual wellspring that gave rise to the rich, densely saturated, and somewhat “raw” palette of Hugelshofer.

Facing Two Directions: The Importance of Kota In addition to African masks, Picasso specialists have long recognized the similarities between the crouching demoiselle and Kota reliquary figures (from Gabon). These Kota works were on view at the Trocadéro (figure 99) and illustrated in Frobenius (figures 100 and 101). The play of triangular forms, diagonal cheek striations, coffee bean eyes, and ear-­or winglike extensions at the sides are all evoked in the angled, raised arms of the crouching demoiselle and of Picasso’s 122

chapter four

various other renderings of this figure. The Kota copper-­sheathed wooden reliquaries, which to Rubin suggest a “daring” and “abstraction” similar to the masked demoiselles in Picasso’s iconic canvas, were also available in local Paris curio stores.17 Although Rubin maintains that in this period Picasso worked without models, and “conceptually” identified a form around a generalized memory of related images, the availability of these works through the Frobenius volume and other collections likely played a role. The similarities between the crouching demoiselle and the Kota figure also include elements of janiform “two-­sidedness” (the ability to see in two directions). Picasso positions this woman with her rear to the viewer yet simultaneously turning around to stare at us. Figural studies for Les Demoiselles reveal this same kind of complementarity and play with front and back. A drawing of a grouping of Kota figures in a local Gabon shrine, published in Frobenius (figure 101), in some ways suggests similarities to several sketches for Les Demoiselles (figure 102). The Kota figures sat atop (and protected) a basket or box containing the sacred remains, including the skulls, of Kota ancestors. Skulls such as these featured centrally in Frobenius’s theories of manism in Africa, the source of the spiritual force believed to be discharged through a priest into the natural and human worlds. Picasso later illustrated a somewhat complementary theme in his rendering of skulls from which plants emerge (figures 286 and 287). In an indexical and substitutional way, the Kota reliquaries assumed the identity of the skulls they safeguarded. The reflective copper surface of the Kota figures, like the powerful face of the crouching demoiselle, simultaneously draws our attention and repels it. In Picasso’s example this is done through the jarring asymmetrical features of the face, as well as the complex janiform position of the work, which is also intended to scare one not intended to see the work. In some ways the crouching demoiselle seems to be the oldest, most senior figure of the group — ​­evoking an aged grandmother or matriarch. She is the painting’s gatekeeper, translator, narrator, mediator, and soothsayer for the spiritual world these women inhabit as well as the earthly realm in which we as human travelers find ourselves. No one is able to enter the painting — ​­visually, compositionally, or conceptually — ​­without going through her. Facing both backward and forward, she evokes the full range of temporal engagements mediated through her position — ​­past, present, and future. She plays a key role in relation to the other figures, too, women who seem more remote compositionally and emotionally since we access them in part through her. T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

123

fig 99

Anon., Kota figure (Gabon), 19th century, Musée du quai Branly. Frobenius 1898.

fig 100

Kota figure (Gabon), Frobenius 1898.

fig 101

Kota shrine (Gabon), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 102

Picasso, seven-figure compositional study, 1907.

The various Kota-­linked features of Les Demoiselles enable us to see more clearly how the crouching figure functions within the larger composition as the painting’s main entry point and interlocutor. Consistent with this, she is the only one on eye level with the viewer — ​­and what powerful eyes she has. Picasso had employed this potent crouching, staring figure within a constricted space many times before. His large canvas The Harem (figure 218), which he completed at Gósol in the summer of 1906, just months before beginning work on Les Demoiselles, includes a similar-­aged squatting persona at the back right corner, her body pulled into a tight huddled mass. An isolated yet symbolically important presence, she evokes a celestina (figure 297), a sorcerer-­like person of unique spiritual engagement who suggests the powerful sight of aged women such as fortunetellers in Andalusian society. In Les Demoiselles, Picasso has pulled this potent figure to the front of the canvas, making her an even more powerful, almost towering presence despite her crouching pose. Like a sorcerer who transforms the elements and actions of the world at will, the crouching figure suggests Picasso’s role in transforming the world through his work. In this, she refers to Picasso himself and his role as the creator of this work. And Picasso assumes the identity of a sorcerer’s apprentice, someone whose own efforts also usher in key changes. It is through this demoiselle and the various African visual sources that she calls into play that the artist is able to bring alive his own new vision of the world. As Max Jacob said of Picasso in 1912, “The sorcerer’s apprentice continued to consult the Oceanic and African enchanters” through the course of his work.18 Part of the creative sorcery-­like engagement involved the appropriation of various African arts (figures 103) into entirely new forms.

Color and Heart-­Shaped Faces A group of African masks with striking white (skull-­like) heart-­shaped facial planes are illustrated in Frobenius (plate 2, middle row left; figures 106 and 109). These masks from the Kongo people (Republic of the Congo) and Punu population of Gabon would have interested Picasso. In addition to their unusual shapes and bold coloration, the masks embed core volumetric shifts framed within a larger play of competing convex and concave surfaces. Among the Picasso works in which such play is most evident is a beautiful 1907 gouache-­on-­paper study, Nude Woman with Raised Arms (figure 108). This female is shown with her hands folded atop her head in a gesture suggestive of a ubiquitous pose in art history, one also assumed by a model featured in several Stratz photographs (see T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

125

fig 103

Luba stool (Congo), Ratzel 1888.

fig 105

Anon., Ejagham mask (Nigeria), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 104

Duala staff (Cameroon), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 106

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 107

Anon., Ababoa mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

far left Picasso, Nude Woman with Raised Arms, 1907.

fig 108

f i g 1 0 9 above Anon., Punu mask (Gabon), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

left Matisse, Madame Matisse, 1913.

fig 110

chapter 6; figures 207 and 210). In Picasso’s Nude Woman with Raised Arms, he has created a voluptuous play of ovoid shapes — full breasts, belly, hips, thighs, and calves — that also distinguish many African figural works. Here, however, as in other Picasso renderings, he has made these elements very much his own. Indeed, this figure evinces the kind of self-presence that suggests the degree to which, after considerable experimentation, the artist came to truly grasp and internalize the African exemplars he studied. In some works (figures 45 and 49), Picasso grapples with the visual play of heart-shaped faces seen prominently in certain African masks. The rich pattern of coloring shown in figure 108 draws in some ways from masks seen at the Trocadéro at the time (see, for example, figure 56). However, the array of images in Frobenius’s book seems to be a particularly striking source of inspiration (figures 106 and 107), particularly the Ogowe River masks associated with the Punu and other groups in Gabon (figure 109). In this case it is important to note, as Rubin does, “When Picasso was inspired T he s o r cer er’s a p p r en T i ce

127

by motifs in tribal art, he extrapolated, metamorphosed and fused them — ​­in effect creating his own version of tribal art.” 19 This is somewhat different from the ways that Matisse employed African masking forms of the same type (figure 110). For Matisse the Punu mask remains a separate, almost alien element; for Picasso the Punu mask is a form around which he appears to be rethinking physiognomy itself. André Salmon describes the process Picasso employed in this era: “Through long days — ​­and the nights as well — ​­he drew, concretizing the abstract and reducing the concrete to its essentials”; Les Demoiselles “was intended to be the first application of his researches.” 20 Jacob writes, “He was experimenting with a way of drawing with only one stroke for the whole subject. It even became a game for [his] friends” (figures 276 and 322). This emphasis on the “return to elementals” was important not only in terms of imagery and techniques used to elicit the past (see chapter 7) but also beliefs about African ritual arts, or what Rubin calls “the inherent power of the visual arts, an effectiveness with which the Western tradition had somehow lost contact.” 21 In many ways these ideas conform to concerns addressed by Frobenius about societies that used art to counter harmful influences, above all witchcraft, although Rubin is more concerned with purely visual effectiveness, or impact, in the modernist sense. Many of Picasso’s works from 1907–8 incorporate an array of elements recognizable as African engagements that have Frobenius sources, among these the orange, red, and yellow hues and geometric patterns of the Loango masks from Congo (figures 85 and 86; compare figure 84). These suggest the striking ways that Picasso experimented with pattern and color in this era, among these the contrasting fields of pigment that distinguish the marking of facial planes into diagonally defined delineations (figures 88–91). It is not only the choice of colors and Picasso’s use of the face as a canvas for patterning different hues (reminiscent of body painting practices in Africa) that are noteworthy here but also the primacy of core geometries (figure 92). The frequent African-­redolent emphases on the visual power of asymmetries and contrasts also make the point clearly. In these works, Picasso has clearly come to engage and “own” the African aesthetic conveyed in the African mask photographs and Hugelshofer’s illustrations. Much has been written about the importance of color to Picasso in this era. While scholars have debated the source of his new emphasis in Les Demoiselles, what is called the artist’s “unprecedented brut coloring,” “rawness,” and “primary” hues “juxtaposed in brash — ​­even brutal — ​­combinations” (believed by some to derive from Oceanic artworks from the New Hebrides, among other 128

chapter four

possibilities), most likely these hues reflect the highly saturated color palette of oranges, blues, reds, yellows, whites, and greens from the remarkable illustrations of Hugelshofer.22 Picasso clearly internalized African art’s aesthetic complexity and carried it forward into a range of compositions in which color took on new attributes. In many ways the Frobenius volume served as a resource and wellspring for visual imagery (figures 111 and 112) through which Picasso could reenvisage nearly every aspect of human form, from physiognomic features and contrasting planes to the very nature of form and the key role of color.

Picasso’s Image Experiments Picasso likely found an array of other striking features in the images of African masks published by Frobenius, among these the seeming arbitrariness of form that appears in the shifting of facial features in the crouching demoiselle. Her nose and mouth are twisted around to the side so they that are visible in both frontal and profile views. One work from Frobenius shows the similarly playful inventiveness of Ibibio carvers from southeastern Nigeria (figure 113). In this mask, the artist took up the theme of facial dislocation. The forward-­jutting brow and perpendicular nose line stop in the forehead area well above the elliptical eyeholes located in the center of each cheek, which in turn are positioned so that the mask wearer can peer out during performances. The shape of these eyes is mirrored in the elliptical open mouth, as if to suggest the complementary nature of these two prominent facial orifices. Masks of this type, generally dark in color, fit within the larger genre of Idiokk masks used by members of the Ibibio Ekpo association to depict potentially aggressive “beastly” ancestral personas that can inspire fear in living family members and the communities in which they live. These masks frequently include facial asymmetries linked to devastating diseases such as syphilis, which leaves a face that bears little resemblance to its former integrity. The nose that Picasso integrates in his crouching demoiselle represents a similar kind of disjuncture, whether disease-­related or not. Picasso began to explore this strategy of disjuncture in various studies for this canvas. Such visual elements bring into play a certain arbitrariness as seen in key African works (figures 113 and 120).23 Additional studies from this period also suggest Picasso’s use of the Frobenius volume, and the ways it inspired him to think about form in new ways. One type of African mask particularly important in this process was a Baga D’mba (Nimba) shoulder headdress from the Republic of Guinea (figures 114, 115, and T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

129

fig 111

fig 112

Anon., Ijaw mask (Nigeria), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

Anon., Ijaw mask (Nigeria), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 113

Anon., Ibibio mask (Nigeria), 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 114

Anon., Baga mask (Guinea), late 19th century, Musée du quai Branly. fig 115

Anon., Baga mask (Guinea), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 116

Picasso, Face, 1907. fig 117

Picasso, Profile Head, 1907.

Fig 118

Picasso, Standing Male Figure, 1907. Fig 119

Anon., Makonde masks (Tanzania), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

173). This mask finds visual play in its reference to a female torso with a prominent chin; hooked, birdlike nose; and arching chest and breasts. Picasso would later purchase a Baga sculpture with related forms, a work that likely served for him as a key memento of this era. Like the Kota reliquary figure discussed earlier (figures 99 and 100), this mask type not only appeared in the Frobenius book but was also found in the Trocadéro, entering the collection in 1902. Considering how many variants of this work Picasso engaged in his sketches and paintings in various eras, it is likely that his access to both the Frobenius book and the physical object in the museum was important. In his studies Picasso expressly played with the connections between volume, line, and form, and, most importantly, the transposition of all three. One of Picasso’s Baga-­linked profile face sketches (figure 117; for a frontal view, see figure 116) is important because it bears a unique scalloped crest along the ridge of the top and back of the head. In the Trocadéro example (figure 114), the crescent is smooth; in the Frobenius example shown within a Baga performance (figure 115), the outer edge has a prominent series of semicircular scallop-­shaped elements. In short, Picasso’s sketch is related more to the latter, which supports the likelihood that Frobenius held particular significance for him. Whatever the source, these masks, like other African works, functioned as launch pads for the artist — ​­a means by which he propelled himself in new directions. The Frobenius volume offered Picasso another source for his experimental T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

131

agenda, a means by which to address the transformation of three-­dimensional form into two-­dimensional images (as seen in various photographs, line drawings, and watercolors). These Baga masks integrate convex and concave elements within the larger sculptural whole as well as through the rhythm of complementary curving silhouettes and the bold differences between profile and frontal views. Picasso explored similar features in his various engagements (compare figures 174 and 175). The Baga D’mba (Nimba), known at the time as the “goddess of fertility,” 24 was perhaps important to Picasso because of its symbolism. Rubin recalls, “Michel Leiris [a Paris-­based art historian and African sculpture specialist] told me that Picasso certainly knew that his [Baga D’mba] Nimba mask represented a goddess of fertility and in general, the Nimba-­headed: figures of the Baga were also — ​­though wrongly — ​­interpreted this way.” 25 The related theme of fertility also figured prominently in Les Demoiselles (see chapter 7), and Picasso later would purchase several Baga sculptures for his own collection.26 As part of Picasso’s experiments with African form, he took up traditional woodcarving (figure 118). Frontal, side, and rear images of the carved object were critical to this process, and the fact that Frobenius included profile and frontal illustrations of many of the African works likely relates to this. Picasso’s many related sketches suggest that he was grappling with variations of positioning and the play between two-­and three-­dimensionality. He intended to transfer key features of the “outline drawings” to the woodblock sculpture itself; crayon details on the wood reflect this.27 Picasso’s positioning of the figure’s hands in this carving such that they run along the front of the thighs is somewhat unusual in African figural traditions. This gesture and posture is notably different from Gauguin’s approach in his wood carving Oviri (1894). However, consistent with a novice wood carver, these details made Picasso’s carving somewhat easier to manage. The shape of the wooden sculpture’s head and its long thick nose, flap-­like ears, and other features suggest several works illustrated in Frobenius, including the Makonde face masks (figure 119). A similar engagement can be seen in the additional drawings Picasso made in preparation for his wood carving, which show striking similarities with Makonde works. The group of Picasso’s wood carvings from this era remain, for the most part, unfinished after the “roughing” out stage, a finding, suggests Rubin, that in some ways can be compared to the “brutalization” seen in Picasso’s approach to the standing African figure in Les Demoiselles.28 Equally important are the arduous nature of the carving process and Picasso’s decision to paint each demoiselle in a different style; in this case, the treatment of the standing African work is remi132

chapter four

niscent of a wooden sculpture, as if Picasso had cut the brush through the thick pigments in a manner similar to carving. It seems likely that, through his own experience, Picasso came to appreciate the extraordinary skill of African wood sculptors and how difficult this art form is to master. It can be quite dangerous, too, requiring simultaneously the use of brute force and careful incision with potentially dangerous cutting implements such as adze blades and sharp knives. Another particularly interesting and likely influential mask is an African masterpiece by a Grebo artist from the Sassandra River basin of the Côte d’Ivoire (figure 120) that appears to have been taken up in a 1954 portrait Picasso painted of his second wife, Jacqueline Roque (figure 121). In the portrait, Roque is seated on the ground, her head perched high above a long cylindrical neck, and her knees pulled tightly toward her chest by folded arms and interlocked fingers. Her posture closely resembles the Baga D’mba and Grebo masks. The architectonic quality of formal elements in the Grebo mask; the play of body features, with eyes that become breasts in the mask and hands and knees that evoke breasts in Roque’s portrait; and the complementary elegance of long necks and the volumetric rectilinear hair details are noteworthy. Picasso here powerfully translates the cylinders and curves of the mask into another kind of play with cylinders and angles.

On African Art and Cubism Picasso’s sketches drawn in part on Frobenius also sometimes served as a means of engaging two-­dimensional works to create a more fully three-­dimensional form, addressing mass and volume in a more fully sculptural engagement. Scholars have long credited a Grebo (Krou) mask in the Trocadéro (as in figure 57) as partial inspiration for the artist’s groundbreaking cubist work the cardboard Guitar (1912; figure 122). The stunning Grebo mask published by Frobenius (figure 120) is an equally likely source. Here, as with the Kota reliquary and Baga figures discussed above, Grebo masks were likely studied by Picasso in the Trocadéro and the Frobenius volume. The Grebo mask that Frobenius illustrates in both frontal and three-­quarter view (figure 120) employs the complex repositioning of body projections and orifices in playful and erotic ways. The tubular breasts of what at first glance appear to be the torso of a woman simultaneously read as the protruding eyes of a human head (with forehead, nose, mouth, and chin) that stare forcefully at the viewer. In like manner, the shoulders of the human torso also read as the bulging T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

133

fig 120

Anon., Grebo mask (Côte d’Ivoire), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 121

Picasso, Jacqueline with Crossed Hands, 1954.

fig 122

Picasso, Guitar, 1912.

forehead. This striking work, housed in the ethnological and natural science collection of the Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai, unfortunately appears to have been destroyed in the bombings of August 11, 1944. As we look at the Grebo masks and Picasso’s Guitar together, it is p­ articularly striking how, in the latter work and in several of the more sculpturally powerful Grebo masks, erotic coding is advanced through bold cojoined convex and concave elements that call up the two sexes and reposition these forms in seemingly arbitrary ways that visually confound figural and compositional norms.29 If female breasts can become eyes, and shoulders can become a forehead, is any sign based on underlying formal attributes a priori safe from the kind of visual play of any element’s potential? While Picasso’s engagement with the full potential of arbitrary signs is assumed to have taken place only circa 1912, if Picasso knew of this Grebo work as early as 1906 or 1907, when he was working on Les Demoiselles, it likely had a much earlier impact. The complex, contradictory, and in some ways arbitrary features of the crouching demoiselle convey a similarly striking engagement of features — ​­her profile nose seen from the otherwise frontal view, for example. Their shared play of sexual details — ​­the phallic ­projections — ​­are also interesting. For example, the long pointed nose evokes a penis and the two circular eye extensions the paired testes. In Les Demoiselles and his papier collé of 1912, Picasso integrated core visual contradictions, which in their own way were as provocative as several of the Frobenius masks from Africa — ​­the placement of eyes at the center of cheeks in the Ibibio mask (figure 113), the scroll-­like ear motifs on the cheeks of the Ijaw mask (figures 112 and 94, left ), or the eyes at the center of breasts in the Grebo mask (figure 120). The interchangeability of features and forms of representation became a particularly important factor in the creative endeavors of Picasso as well as others in his circle — ​­among these Apollinaire, Jacob, and Stein.30 As the Spanish cubist painter and sculptor Juan Gris later stated, “Anything can be anything else anywhere.” 31 Considering how important (and strange) the large curving ear set at the cheek and jawline of the crouching demoiselle is (figure 97), it seems plausible that the earlike swirl on the cheek of the Ijaw mask (figure 112) may have had a key influence. It is clear that African art played a critical role in Picasso’s work at this and later periods, whether in tracing paper calques that cojoin two-­dimensional line drawings with three-­dimensional works or in an African mask in which nipples become eyes. Tristan Tzara noted that Picasso’s “experiments in artistic form characteristic of Cubism seemed like the natural conclusion of exposure to the T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

135

anonymous resources of the art of black peoples.” 32 “Cubism,” a term that was first coined in 1908 by Matisse and Louis Vauxcelles, changed in subsequent years, but the importance of African art to Picasso’s oeuvre suggests that key aspects of this seminal art movement owe much to Picasso’s grappling with the Frobenius volume (and other sources, such as Stratz; see chapter 6) and his stated desire to convey a deeper truth about the object, as he addressed, among other things, the very “conditions of representability.” 33 The Grebo mask with a human face within the female torso (figure 120), the Kugelshofer Kongo watercolor (figure 96), and the Makonde mask whose curving nose is evident in frontal view (figure 119, top right) challenge the very way we see and understand form. As Alfred Barr noted, “Cubism often involve[s] the idea of simultaneity of point of view to account for the ‘impossible’ combination of several profiles and sections of a single face or figure in the same picture. A Cubist head, which in this way suggests the fusion of temporal and spatial factors, might indeed serve as a crude illustration of relativity.” 34 It is in large measure as a result of these explorations that Kahnweiler — ​­and other Picasso scholars, from Barr to John Golding to Douglas Cooper — ​­claimed that Les Demoiselles marked cubism’s beginning, a point later amended to specifically refer to the right side of the canvas. Already in 1914 Salmon heralded Picasso’s guitar construction as the most important new direction for art, for the object transcended categorization of any kind — ​­movement, type, and genre: “We are freed from painting and sculpture, which already have been liberated from the idiotic tyranny of genres. It is no longer this or that. It is nothing. It’s el guitar.” 35 What was new was the transformation of a two-­dimensional form (paper) to craft a three-­dimensional work (the guitar) but key visual tools and ways of reimagining form and the arbitrary nature of it were already in play. The nature of form explored in African artworks from Frobenius and other sources challenged one to rethink the very roots of recognition. So important were the Grebo masks in particular to Picasso’s revolution in seeing and creativity that he bought one of these works in Marseille.36 This, like other African sculptures, provided Picasso with an ongoing model for subversion. As Paul Guillaume notes, “In a living human face, an eye is an eye, a mouth a mouth [but] the negro mask-­maker” had the freedom to “select from the given data to emphasize a certain recurrence and eliminate whatever would not fit in with it.” 37 It was this same African art frame that nurtured Picasso’s ongoing interest in exploring art problems in new ways.

136

chapter four

Masks and Portraits As stated earlier, Leo Steinberg once claimed that Picasso’s 1907 self-­portrait (plate 6) contained “the most important brush stroke Picasso ever made.” 38 I had not seen the diagonal cheek mark on this painting before James Cuno pointed it out to me, nor had I noticed a reference to similar marks sometimes seen on African masks, yet as I looked more closely at this self-­portrait I recognized lines from one of the masks Frobenius had published (plate 7; also plate 2, top right). What Picasso’s self-­portrait and many of his other portraits from this and later eras convey is in many ways further enhanced by this insight. The more familiar I became with the Frobenius images and the array of Picasso’s paintings, sculptures, and notebooks in the critical 1906–10 period, the more I became aware of an array of other elements at play. One of these is the primacy of masking; many of Picasso’s portraits of his close friends from this period and later, in particular those who knew his deep-­seated interest in African art, were engaged visually through mask imagery from Africa. Many of these portraits reflect the influence of masks published in Frobenius. Picasso seems to have used these African forms to find and express the essence of individuals. This was no less true of his remarkable self-­portrait. Picasso is well known to have provocatively asked, “Are we to paint what’s on the face, behind it, or inside it?” In all his works, portraits and self-­portraits alike, the question stands out: how does an artist portray someone via their exterior or their interior? In many ways Picasso emphasized the inherent links between portraiture and masking, that is, between the surface appearance and what hides behind the mask. So important was this idiom for Picasso that soon after his death in 1973, his widow, Roque, took his good friend André Malraux to the site of his last works. Malraux’s attendant biography, Picasso’s Mask, focuses in part on similar idioms of metamorphosis in Picasso’s career. Related issues of masking and portraiture are rich, complicated, and challenging, and contain a bodily, emotional, and intellectual “thickness” that makes the whole so much larger than the individual parts. Not surprisingly, the mask and its complement, the mirror, were used not only in many of Picasso’s later works but also as the title of a later portraiture exhibition drawn from his oeuvre, The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso.39 In the same way that Picasso proclaimed on one sketchbook “Je suis le cahier,” he could well have exclaimed “Je porte le masque!” (I wear the mask). As Pierre Daix points out, the artist hid various strategies of subversion intended T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

137

to obfuscate and distract, yet it was clearly more than this for him. There is something distinctly evocative in the masquerade, conveying a certain force or power that cannot be completely understood in the object itself. As Picasso maintains, “Masks weren’t like other kinds of sculpture. Not at all. They were magical things.” Could this be in part the reason that Picasso introduced masks for three of the five figures in Les Demoiselles? In this very detail we get a sense of one of the underexplored issues in this canvas: specifically who was being masked and why.40 The answer, I suggest, lies in large measure in the fact that these three women instantiate geographic regions and populations outside of Europe. In their core body features they are similar, but the masks convey other features and identities. The nature of the mask is not solely to serve as a substitute persona but also to convey a vital source of enrichment through additive elements of identity — ​ ­empathy for example. Steinberg points to Picasso’s empathy by way of “intrusions” that laid the sitter bare and at times made them unappealing. The portrait, through the mask, holds similar weight, addressing at once recognized physical features and unseen qualities, contradictions, ambivalence, and feelings. As part of their inherent dehumanizing function, masks can make the subject more human in a different way. In short, while hiding the person, the mask takes on a revelatory and transformative role. This feature of the mask, whether addressed through ideas of classical Greek or African forms (or even modern theatrical productions), helps to illuminate various external and internal features.41 Picasso created a number of masklike portrayals in the course of his career, works that suggest the historic importance of the genre to him. Norman Mailer notes in this light, “He will use masks in preference to faces many times over the next six and a half decades. If a form can represent more than one object, so can a mask serve for a multitude of men and women, and archetypes in nature as well.” 42 Picasso seems to have portrayed the acquaintances who “got” what he was doing in terms of African and related models by employing related visual tropes in his portraits of them. Equally importantly for Picasso, as for Matisse,43 the face of each person is in many respects considered akin to a mask. Here, too, images from the Frobenius volume figure prominently. G e r t r u d e St e i n

Outside of Les Demoiselles, perhaps the most iconic Picasso painting from this early period is Picasso’s portrait of his patron and supporter, Gertrude Stein 138

chapter four

(figure 123). He completed this work in the fall of 1906 just prior to his initial work on Les Demoiselles. Picasso himself had suggested to Gertrude Stein that he paint her portrait following his first dinner with her and her brother Leo, most likely in March 1906, around the time Picasso first met Henri Matisse; the Steins had purchased Matisse’s Bonheur de vivre (figure 18)after seeing it at the March 1906 Salon des Indépendants.44 Stein claims to have sat for Picasso at his Bateau-­ Lavoir studio some eighty to ninety times over the spring and early summer of 1906. Stein sat several days a week for this large oil on canvas, and to pass the time Olivier read out loud La Fontaine’s fables, among other works. Stein likely also talked about her own writing projects. She was then using a literary masking form to address a mixed-­race woman named Melanctha who would appear in her soon-­to-­be published Three Lives.45 At some point Picasso grew frustrated with Stein’s portrait and with his inability to convey her character, and in May, just prior to his departure for Gósol, he effaced her physiognomy, claiming, “I can’t see you any longer when I look.” 46 The fact that Leo Stein thought so highly of Matisse’s Bonheur likely made Picasso’s approach to Stein all the more difficult, for the artist clearly wanted this large canvas to be a “statement.” Picasso returned to the Stein portrait only following his summer at Gósol. John Richardson writes, “The day [Picasso] returned from Spain he sat down and out of his head” completed the work without requesting additional sittings.47 Richardson dates this event to late August or early September. However, it may have been late September or October. Picasso had, in essence, reimagined Stein with a masklike face. The new masklike features Picasso gave to Stein’s face, seemingly from memory after his return in August, suggest a certain metaphoric parallel with Melanctha, the literary mask evoking Gertrude’s raw power, forceful persona, inner tensions, and gender-­masking elements, and hinting, perhaps, at aspects of her homosexuality. The finished painting, almost monotone in hue, is notably different from Matisse’s richly colored Bonheur, and Stein, who, like Picasso, was well known for her “skill in playing people off against each other,” would position the portrait in her rue de Fleurus apartment directly above Matisse’s striking 1905 portrait of his wife, Amélie, Woman with a Hat.48 The power and stylistic complexity of Picasso’s Stein portrait would not only indicate a major transformation in Picasso’s approach to form but also the sources he would use. While many scholars now identify the Stein portrait change with Picasso’s new interest in ancient Iberian sculptures (figures 70 and 71), there is much in this portrait that is suggestive of Frobenius’s images of African masks, most T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

139

above | left to right fig 123

Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1906. fig 124

Mende mask (Sierra Leone), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

fig 125

fig 126

Vai mask (Sierra Leone), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

Mende mask (Sierra Leone), 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

importantly works associated with the Mende and Vai women of Sierra Leone (figures 124–26). These masks and the associated costumes suggest not only Stein’s physical heft but also her identity as a powerful woman. As one of the few examples in which women wear masks in Africa, the Mende Bundu association performers contained similar ideas of female power and complexity. These particular African sources are striking. Female leaders of Mende society wear these masks during initiation rites for single (unmarried) girls. Although we do not know whether Picasso knew of the unique female associations of these masks, as a model for Stein, who was single, this choice was an apt one. The Bundu mask forms are important for other reasons as well. These helmet-­ shaped works characteristically feature facial and body fullness, the sense of girth amplified by the neck and ruff of raffia straw that angles outward to cover the wearer’s body. The oversize brown velour cloak that engulfed Stein’s sizable body in this portrait is reminiscent of these ruffs. The Bundu masks also display a prominent and wide forehead, narrow (almost squinting) eyes set close together, and a large coiffeur of neatly ridged hair folds, all of which are also visible in Picasso’s portrait of Stein. Fernande Olivier

Fernande Olivier (figure 77) was another important subject of Picasso’s dramatically new approach to form. His 1906 oil portrait of her (figure 127), completed around the same time that he finished the Stein portrait, is a path-­ forging work in its own right. Here Picasso zeroed in on one of Olivier’s most distinguished traits — ​­her thick, long, curling red hair, often worn high atop her head — ​­making her seem even taller than her already considerable height. Olivier’s elaborate coiffure, shown in rich red and yellow ochre hues in a pattern that conveys a certain African-masklike appeal, evokes the features of African masks in Frobenius. That Olivier knew better than most Picasso’s deep passion for African art is noteworthy in his distinctive masking evocations here. Picasso pressed the mask comparison further by showing the small part of Olivier’s visible physiognomy in a grisaille, not only making the hair stand out as the most important part of the figure but also suggesting that her hair is alive with some kind of spiritual power. Picasso employed the same red-­yellow ochre in the area behind the hair, as if the color and light of the hair embodies the illumination of the space, while the area below, outside its aura, remains in dark gray shadow. This quality is further enhanced by the body position Picasso chose for Olivier. T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

141

fig 127

Picasso, Woman with Bent Head, 1906. fig 128

Anon., Kongo mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 129

Picasso, Woman with Pears, 1909.

142

She is seated on the ground or on a low stool so that it is her mass of hair that is most prominently in view. We experience the added masklike element from this vantage, for Fernande Olivier’s hair, like that of many Parisian women, served in some ways as a mask, enabling a quick identity change from mistress to fashion icon, both shielding and revealing her face. In another portrait of Olivier, from the spring of 1909 (figure 129), Picasso refashioned his composition and Olivier’s features into a geometric play of triangles, diamonds, and diagonals — elements that define at once her eyes, nose, mouth, hair, attire, and background. It is almost as if the coiff ure “mask” of the earlier Olivier portrait served as inspiration for a new, more fully cubist approach to the same subject. At the same time, details of this portrait seem closely drawn on another African mask from Frobenius (figure 128) — most notably the lozenge eyes, thick arched brows, thin beaklike nose, pursed lips, and square offcenter chin. In this portrait, again dominated by hues of red and yellow ochre, the soft neutral background of grays and ochre hues incorporates a curtain and upturned table whose top supports an angle-rich container of fruit, the latter rendered in what may be an homage to Paul Cézanne and Les Demoiselles. In this portrait, none of the compositional elements in themselves evoke a distinctive part of the body, leaving it to the viewer to reassemble an understandable form, much as Apollinaire suggests happens with the Dahomey war god, Gu (figures 147 and 148), As such, Picasso at once “primitivizes” his subject and makes her modern. If we see new facets of Olivier and of Picasso’s view of her in this heavily faceted portrayal, particularly as compared to his earlier rendering of her via a coiff ure mask, it is because her once lively tangle of red curls and chapTer foUr

soft-­collared blouse have been transformed into a hard, crisp, well-­disciplined caricature, and Olivier’s once equally soft features have hardened into a steely mask. Picasso’s and Olivier’s relationship, which had begun in 1904, well before his new success, went through ups and downs before it ended in 1911. André Salmon

André Salmon was a native Parisian but had spent much of his life in Saint Petersburg, where his father, an engraver, found work transforming old master paintings into prints. The two returned to Paris around 1900; four years later Salmon met Picasso and became a member of his inner circle of friends. Stein described Salmon as “very lithe and alive [though not] . . . particularly interesting. She liked him.” 49 Salmon clearly was important to Picasso and was, in the words of one scholar, among the “sponsors” of Les Demoiselles, since he was among those attributed with christening it the “Philosophical Brothel.” He also published the painting’s first critical response, in 1912. This was the first eyewitness account of the work’s birth and changing form. The essay, titled “Histoire anecdotique du cubisme,” appeared in La Jeune peinture française and offers rich details about the work and about Picasso’s broader interests in Africa. Salmon, who also lived in the Bateau-­Lavoir, was the subject of a 1907 portrait series (figure 130) by Picasso, in which he rendered Salmon’s distinctive profile into versions of “tribal” masks that display a prominent prognathous jaw. In many ways this series recalls the Frobenius mask stage illustration (figure 93) that also appears to have been important to Picasso’s rendering of the standing African in Les Demoiselles. Rubin notes of the Salmon portrait: “As usual, Picasso considers his figure from the back and the side as well as the front. The hatched shading of the caricature becomes the ‘fishbone’ pattern of Salmon’s spine, and points in the direction of primitivist scarification. The wave of Salmon’s hair is simplified into a jutting crest, which, given the elongation of both the cranium and the face, creates something like a Pharaonic profile. This crest would drop down, as Picasso proceeded, to becoming a jutting brow.” 50 Another scholar writes that Salmon’s caricature was “caught forever in transition from caricature to primitivized image, caught in transit between Charivari and the Congo.” 51 Picasso’s selection of African models for Salmon’s portrait suggests that he saw his friend as someone who understood the importance of the African works, and their significance to a new way of seeing and creating form. He also recognized the primacy of related aesthetic idioms of feature disT he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

143

placements, formal asymmetries, volume to line interconnectedness, color play, and ideas about the origins and “nature” of image making. Here Picasso honored Salmon by rendering his portrait as a heavily African-­inspired composition, suggesting Salmon’s view that “already [in Les Demoiselles] Picasso was passionate about the Negro sculptors, whom he placed far above the Egyptians.” 52 Again, as Rubin notes, “Unlike Apollinaire . . . Salmon not only championed tribal art for itself but as an inspiration for contemporary artists. He was the first to write about it in connection with Picasso.” 53 Ma x Jacob

Max Jacob, who in 1903 shared a room with Picasso on Boulevard Voltaire, was one of the earliest members of the Picasso “band of poets.” It was Jacob who renamed the ramshackle complex atop the Butte Montmartre, where Picasso moved a year later, Le Bateau-­Lavoir. Jacob, an enchanter and improviser who, as the group’s genial (and sometimes outrageous) clown, playfully engaging with people and places to make them sometimes larger than life, had been a star pupil in philosophy, and was a passionate follower of philosophical and esoteric texts. He grappled with everything from ritual to cosmogony, and coupled these interests with a love of poetry, music, and painting. Picasso’s gouache portrait of Jacob (1907; figure 131) zeroes in on his beaded brow to reflect someone deep in thought as his piercing eyes stare up toward the artist, at the ready for either somber discussion or play. According to Richardson, “Besides forming Picasso’s literary tastes, Jacob interested him in the occult — ​­a source for much of the mystery in his work. Jacob was obsessed by every aspect of magic. He also delved into the Cabala, both Jewish and Christian [and the] . . . study of astrology, palmistry and other forms of divination.” 54 The oversize rounded crown of Jacob’s head, dominant arched brows, and long face, which features a planklike nose, flap-­form ears, and pointed chin beneath a thin, slightly upward-­curving mouth, exhibits close similarities to another Frobenius mask from Africa, in this case a Makonde example from Mozambique (figures 132 and 119, bottom right) or the final image of his physiognomy study evolving by stages from mask form to living human (figures 93, top row right, and 133). This adds to the quixotic engagement of the portrait.

144

chapter four

fig 130

Picasso, Studies of André Salmon, 1907.

fig 131

Picasso, Max Jacob, 1907. fig 132

Anon., Makonde mask (Tanzania and Mozambique), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 133

Mask to face development, Frobenius 1898.

wilhelM Uhde

Art dealer Wilhelm Uhde was born in what is now Poland. He studied law and then art history in Munich and Florence, and moved to Paris in 1904. As one of the earliest supporters of Picasso, he acquired Death of Harlequin in 1905. It was Uhde who encouraged Picasso’s later dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, to visit the artist’s Bateau-Lavoir studio in the spring of 1907 to see Les Demoiselles. Richardson notes that in this critical era, it was largely Germans (Uhde and others) who were buying and promoting Picasso’s works.55 In Picasso’s 1909–10 portrait of Uhde (figure 135), the features of his long thin face are punctuated with angular, often V-shaped dark lines — eyebrows, nose, chin, hair — as well as suit coat shoulders and lapels, shirt collar, and tie. A tiny T he s o r cer er’s a p p r en T i ce

145

mouth is drawn tight and severe. In the stern face, with piercing hawklike eyes, we sense someone who is judgmental, acerbic, and temperamental. Uhde’s visage barely emerges from the crisp angles of the background, brushed with warm ochre hues cut with grays. The whole suggests a weathered cliff, each facet a part of its history and identity. With the deep charcoal zigzagging line running from the hairline, down the forehead, nose, and mouth to the chin, there is a sense of someone of both suppressed energy and action. Stein writes about this portrait, Uhde was a German in his mid-­30s when Picasso painted him during the spring of 1910. . . . With slicked-­back hair, a high forehead, downcast eyes and puckered lips, an elegant topcoat and starched shirt collar alternating with triangular shapes, Uhde seems downright prissy. . . . Uhde was undoubtedly well born, he was not a blond German, he was a tallish thin dark man with a high forehead and an excellent quick wit. . . . He kept a kind of private art shop. It was here that Braque and Picasso went to see him in their newest and roughest clothes and in their best Cirque Médrano fashion kept up a constant fire of introducing each other to him.56 One of the African masks in Frobenius shows similarities to this Uhde work, a double-­headed, white-­faced Igbo work with key physiognomic details with similarly angled black linear forms (figure 134). Many of the same elements of this Igbo mask are visible in the Uhde portrait through a cubist interpretation. With respect to Uhde’s relationship to Picasso and questions of African sources, Richardson points out, “Picasso took a strong liking to this free spirit, who had such a sharp clear eye and sharp clear mind and was so receptive to new concepts. Uhde responded with total devotion. He worked hard to understand the new language of cubism and prided himself on being one of Picasso’s most loyal followers.” 57 Amb r o i s e V o l l a r d

Ambroise Vollard, one of the early twentieth century’s most important art dealers, was born off the east coast of Africa on the island of Réunion. Moving to Paris for his studies in his youth, he began collecting art while working on his law degree. Vollard opened a small gallery in 1893, which eventually moved to a larger space at 39 rue Laffite, at which point it became the avant-­garde gallery in Paris and an important alternative to the staid institutions of Paris Salon culture. Picasso’s relationship with Vollard began in 1901 when the latter mounted an exhibition of his work along with that of the artist Francisco Iturrino. 146

chapter four

fig 134

Anon., Ijaw mask (Nigeria), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 135

Picasso, Wilhelm Uhde, 1909–10.

fig 136

Picasso, Ambroise Vollard, 1910. fig 137

Anon., Kuba mask (Congo), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

Around 1904 the dealer became a key promoter of Picasso’s new oeuvre and was responsible for the large commission in the spring of 1906 that enabled the artist to travel to Gósol that summer and to begin work on his new canvas, Les Demoiselles. Vollard was known for his dramatic shifts of temperament, and even when in a good mood, Stein notes, he stood “in the centre of the room . . . a huge dark man glooming. This was Vollard cheerful. When he was really cheerless he put his huge frame against the glass door that led to the street, his arms above his head, his hands on each upper corner of the portal and gloomed darkly into the street. Nobody thought then of trying to come in.” 58 In Picasso’s 1910 portrait of Vollard (figure 136), prisms of light and dark grays that press toward tan and orange ochre make Vollard’s face pop with a staccato of angular patches that delimit the distinctive tall, broad, largely bald forehead, thick nose, and tight thin lips of the sitter. While some art scholars suggest that Vollard is sleeping, in many ways his light gray, pupil-­less eyes more aptly evoke the “all-­seeing,” self-­referential, timeless, and flat sightless eyes of Matisse’s Vili figure (figure 43) and African masks (figures 96 and 107). The multiplication of features and the lozenge eyes reflect in even more remarkable ways one of the striking Kuba masks published by Frobenius (figure 137). The brown and gray colors in the two works also are important. When coupled with the similarly shaped open mouth and flat surfaces beneath the brow, where the eyes would be, we get a sense of body play through the proliferation of formal elements. Like the Dahomey Gu figure admired by Picasso in this era (figures 147 and 148), the viewer has to cobble together the various parts to create the whole. And, like the 1906 portrait of Stein, Picasso completed the painting without Vollard’s presence. This portrait reveals someone who is at once strong, intelligent, calm, confident, and distant. If the thin upper lip and tight jaw hint at the sometimes meager prices Vollard offered artists for their work (an issue that angered Gauguin, among others), Vollard’s well-­rounded belly evidences an eye and a career path that brought him renown and material well-­being. Picasso captured the East African–born art broker in sun-­flecked golden hues. The whole bristles with energy framed in a masquerade-­like aura reminiscent at once of an African mask and an honorific bronze portrait bust. Picasso added distinctive elements from Vollard’s life to his portrait to identify not only the man and the dealer but also the artist’s relationship with him: books (consistent with Vollard’s ledger books and role as publisher), a tall bottle (suggesting Vollard’s love of wine, perhaps, and the sumptuous dinners the 148

chapter four

two shared), and a tube or rolled canvas (the key product of exchange between Picasso and his dealer). These elements are enhanced by rich hues floating in the background, which stand out against the monochromatic surface and add further visual interest. M a r i e -­T h é r è s e W a l t e r

Picasso took up provocative sculptural portraits in 1929 and the early 1930s, one of the most striking of which is his Head of a Woman (figure 139), a work that encapsulates the lively persona of the artist’s young lover, Marie-­Thérèse Walter. While this sculpture owes its origins in part to the architectonic and spatially charged linear cubist studies of the 1912 period, the work also represents the artist’s return to African masks. Here Picasso captured Walter’s striking physical attributes — ​­oval face, body curves, and straight outward-­flaring hair. The portrait was created through an assemblage of found and formed metal objects with striking concave and convex volumes — ​­curving forms and straight linear elements. With this mix, Picasso achieved an infectiously upbeat, graceful, and shiny image of Walter, effectuated through the bright aluminum surface. It is a work that clearly reinforces attributes of the frequently smiling and notably fair image of the youthful Walter. This sculpture, one of a series of four created in 1929–30, combines elements of a playful sculptural drawing with mirroring (the front and rear head shapes, for example), rhythmic flow, solid and voids, and profile and frontal views that is in many ways suggestive of African sculpture. These contrasting elements are enriched by conjoining idioms of mimesis with arbitrary forms. The Walter portrait is a key exemplar of a highly unusual African mask type (from the Jukun of Nigeria; figure 138) that Picasso likely could have seen only in the Frobenius volume. This original Jukun work (lost in the World War II bombings) reflects the kind of visual complexity that may have in part inspired Head of a Woman and several others. The Jukun masks feature a wonderfully light and elegant play of contrasting convex and concave elements framed around strong ovals, rectangles, triangles, and cylinders that often cut into the surface or press out from it. These works help us further understand Picasso’s own use of the Frobenius mask in works completed during this period and later. Other artists in this era and shortly after also appear to have been using this book in their work. Henri Gaudier-­Brzeska (who is known to have read Frobenius) used related formal elements in his painting, including compositions that emphasize bold juxtapositions T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

149

fig 138

Anon., Jukun mask (Nigeria), late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 139

Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1929–30.

fig 140

Gaudier-Brzeska, Self-Portrait, 1913. fig 141

Delaunay-Terk, Young Finnish Woman, 1907.

of color and a return to more elementary form.59 Gaudier-­Brzeska’s 1913 Self-­ Portrait (figure 140) is likely drawn in part from Frobenius’s African mask depictions, featuring shared asymmetrical facial geometries and a bold color palette reminiscent of Frobenius and of Picasso’s studies from this book. A similar case can be made for Sonia Delaunay-­Terk, a close friend of Picasso’s 1907 dealer, Wilhelm Uhde, who, like Frobenius, was German. Among her striking new works from this period is her boldly colored Young Finnish Woman (figure 141), in which asymmetrical facial patterns and tearlike lines trace diagonally down the cheek, dividing the face. Matisse’s 1913 portrait of his wife, Amélie (figure 110), which shows her with the facial features of a Punu mask (from Gabon), likely derives from Frobenius as well.60 This Matisse painting is also reminiscent of Picasso’s 1909 portrait of Fernande Olivier, which clearly comes from this same source. That Matisse (as well as Marcel Duchamp) may have been familiar with one of the Stratz volumes is suggested by the dramatic figural poses (figure 325; compare figure 201) and captured movements (figure 326; figures 261, 262, and 265). Before we leave the subject of Frobenius, African art, and Picasso in this era, it is important to emphasize that many of the same types of African mask forms that appear in Frobenius became important to Picasso (and others) as they were building their own African art collections, including masks and figures from Congo groups (Vili and Loango), peoples living in Gabon (Punu, Kota, and Fang), and cultures from the Atlantic area farther west (Baga and Grebo), forming a core nucleus of African art objects that Picasso and his circle bought and displayed. Picasso revealed to Rubin that the first objects his artist friends “liked, if not acquired” were Kota reliquary guardian figures and Baga Nimba masks.61 A competition emerged around African art collecting. As Olivier pointed out, “The question at this time was which of them, out of Picasso, Braque, Derain, Vlaminck, Matisse, etc., would discover the most beautiful works by black artists. Art nègre contributed greatly to their artistic development.” 62 Having Frobenius’s handsome book of African mask forms, likely benefited Picasso in this pursuit. While Picasso also explored Nigerian works (most importantly Ijaw, Ibibio, and Jukun) in the same Frobenius volume, since these were from the English colonial world, they were less available in Paris, Marseilles, and other French centers. Regardless of the source, like the Congo and Gabon works, these masks also convey striking visual and emotional power. As Georges Braque told Dora Vallier, “The African masks also opened up a new horizon to me. They enabled me to come into contact with instinctual things, direct manifestations that went against the false tradition I abhorred.” 63 T he S o r cer er’s A p p r en t i ce

151

Chapter five

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in L. K. Ludwig,

True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling, 13

L’Oiseau du Bénin The 1892–93 French conquest of the West African kingdom of Dahomey (in what is today the Republic of Benin) retained an important hold on many French citizens in the years that followed.1 In France and elsewhere, Dahomey was well known for both its history and its arts. Indeed, it was a Dahomey sculpture (figure 142) that led Picasso’s good friend Guillaume Apollinaire to nickname him l’Oiseau du Bénin (The Bird of Benin). The sculpture is of a long-­legged water fowl with a snake and a fish in its mouth, and depicts a royal Dahomey Toxosu deity with its ability to draw life (well-­being and other benefits) from local springs; this god also is closely linked to human anomalies and stillbirths. The two twisting metal wire forms beneath the bird’s neck evoke the Dahomey god Dangbe Ayidohwedo, the rainbow serpent who brings plenty and well-­being to believers. It is not known if Picasso knew of this symbolism, but he had likely seen an array of similar works on view in the Dahomey pavilion at the Exposition Universelle on his first visit to Paris in the early fall of 1900 (figure 143).2 An array of other Dahomey arts and popular press images were also circulating in this period (figures 145 and 146). Apollinaire had collected some twenty-­two African works before his death in 1918, six of which were from Dahomey, the largest single source among his corpus.3 The bird sculpture, which he kept in prominent view on his desk, was

described as “the best piece of all” his African works.4 The sculpture stands around 15.5 centimeters tall, is 23.5 centimeters in length, and shows the bird with a snake and a fish in its mouth. The body and wings are constructed from hammered brass sheeting secured onto a wood core. Iron was used for additional details, among these the legs and a serpent. The work’s patina-rich surface bears a pattern of incisions that suggest feathers. The sculpture was the work of a royal metal artist from the Hountondji family guild, dating to the era of King Agoli Agbo (r. 1894–1900), who had replaced King Behanzin (r. 1889–94), whose overthrow by the French brought in a new era of colonial rule. The bird was probably taken to France by someone in the course of, or soon after, the French military campaign.5 Like many artworks from the ancient kingdom, this Dahomey assemblage sculpture — a work pieced together from various found or created parts — influenced Picasso’s growing artistic vision and those of his friends. Whatever its impact, as John Richardson explained, “Picasso enjoyed being L’Oiseau du Bénin.”6 Jean Cocteau, who later acquired the bird from Apollinaire, explained the source of Picasso’s new name: one day the impressionist artist Jean-Louis Forain showed the sculpture to the Spanish muralist Josep Maria Sert i Badia in Picasso’s presence, adding the notable compliment, “C’est un Rubens nègre” (It’s an African Rubens). In the aftermath of this event, Apollinaire began calling Picasso l’Uccello nègre,7 and later referred to him as l’Oiseau du Bénin in one of his novels, Le Poète assassiné.8 In this text, Apollinaire writes of a bird that rises above the fire and comes back to life, phoenixlike, able to reshape the future. Fertility and metamorphosis, two of the key themes associated with this figure, were important ones that Picasso addresses in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.9 l’o i s e a U d U B é n i n

fig 142

Hountondji, Dahomey, bird, late 19th century (Apollinaire). fig 143

Hountondji, Dahomey, bird, late 19th century. fig 144

Picasso, Metamorphosis I model, 1928.

153

fig 147

Akati, Gu figure (Benin), c. 1860. Musée du quai Branly.

fig 145

Anon., Dahomey Fa Bowl (Benin), late 19th century, Ratzel 1898.

fig 146

“Amazones et Guerriers,” L’Epinal, 1892.

fig 148

Drawing, Gu figure, in Delafosse 1894b.

When, in 1927, Picasso was asked to create a memorial for Apollinaire, who had died of an illness in the aftermath of World War I, he initially based it on a birdlike being with a snake in its mouth (figure 144). The model he created, Metamorphosis, couples human and animal elements with breastlike motifs to suggest the same transformative qualities that the original Dahomey bird and Apollinaire were seen to evoke. Later, when Cocteau drew an image of Picasso as l’Oiseau, Picasso added to this drawing other salient motifs of the era, including a copy of Le Poète, a roulette wheel, and an image of his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, whom he had married in 1918.10 Picasso’s 1967 sculpture to the city of Chicago (figure 336) likely is based on this Dahomey bird and model for the Apollinaire memorial (figure 144) as well. Throughout his career, Picasso created similar assemblage forms that resonate with this striking Dahomey work and others. Assemblage became particularly important to Picasso in cubist works such as the collage Guitar (1912; figure 122). Some of the most striking of his later compositions from the 1930s and 1940s feature a range of bird and animal motifs along with assemblage techniques. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Picasso’s larger sculptural corpus without looking with some depth into their striking African roots. One of these, Picasso’s Woman in the Garden (1929–30; figure 323), was created from iron pieces that were soldered together and painted white. While the technique is somewhat different from the Dahomey bird, the visual effect is quite similar. His later Little Owl (figure 335), moreover, may have been linked not only to his own nickname and a pet owl he owned in this era but also perhaps to broader African and other cultural associations of owls with sorcery, and the force of seen and unseen nocturnal agencies that can appropriate and transform the human life force.

Of War, Creativity, and Art of Assemblage Picasso’s 1907 visit to the Trocadéro did not have the seminal impact on him that has long been attributed to it, since many of the African artworks important to his oeuvre were discovered through other means — ​­Henri Matisse’s Vili sculpture and Frobenius’s book of African masks among these. Nonetheless, particularly important to Picasso from that visit was the remarkable iron figure of Gu (figures 147). This work by the Dahomey metal artist Akati Ekpelekendo (Akati Akpele Kendo), dating to circa 1860, features locally forged metal and European manufactured parts. This visually striking nearly life-­size iron sculpture featured prominently in Apollinaire’s discussion of cubism in his 1912 Paris L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

155

Journal article: “The human figure certainly provided the inspiration of this singular work [of iron]. And yet, by a stroke of invention as funny and profound as a page of Rabelais, not one of the elements that compose it resembles any part of the human body. The African artist was obviously a ‘creator.’” 11 To “read” this sculpture viewers must “assemble” its various parts in their minds. Apollinaire celebrates this Dahomey war god sculpture “precisely as if it is a Cubist conception.” 12 The sculpture is an iron masterpiece of local and foreign elements (bolt, screws, and chain). The work showcases the very process of its assembly with visible iron joints, all in a manner that simultaneously amplifies and challenges the identity of key human features and parts. Observe the gigantic flat, curving, flaplike ear, large flat feet, thin stiltlike legs, and minimalized mouth and eye. This remarkable figure, whose raised machete and bell, along with its hat of iron tools and implements, conveys a sense of human power, efficiency, precariousness, and potential. Gu, as the god of creativity and destruction (artists and warriors), is a force that Picasso could find grounding in, although how much he knew of these additional attributes is not known. In rethinking Picasso’s oeuvre in the critical 1906–7 era alongside African works from Dahomey and elsewhere, it seems clear that the core canonical issues of cubism were already in germination in this period, and thus were considerably further along than many scholars have assumed. In essence, the idea of assemblage had intellectual and sculptural roots in African works Picasso had seen at this time, works constructed from everyday materials (found objects such as iron bolts and knives) and newly fashioned elements. Apollinaire writes specifically of this Gu figure, explaining that “the pearl of the collection — ​­a large iron statue . . . [is] without doubt the most unusual and one of the most graceful works of art to be found in Paris.” 13 The sculpture in this way also challenged prevailing ideas with respect to well-­established and fixed boundaries between African objects of “curiosity” and canonical Western “art.” This perspective seems to have been shared in part by Picasso, who, like Gu, savored the seemingly paradoxical agencies of creativity and destruction. Indeed, it has been argued, “The linkage of Cubist conceptualism to the so-­called ‘primitive’ is immensely suggestive.” 14 The process of disassembling and reassembling anew — ​­or, in Maurice de Vlaminck’s terms, “recomposing, reducing, flattening, piecing, assembling” — ​­has a direct African complement in this work and in several others that Picasso saw among friends, at the Trocadéro and elsewhere. Particularly important for this Gu sculpture — ​­apart from the assemblage elements — ​­is that the sculptor, a onetime Dahomey war prisoner put into the 156

chapter five

service of art by Dahomey King Glele (r. 1858–89), could be identified at once as an artist (not artisan) and a creator (not imitator).15 The iron sculptures that Picasso made later in life owe part of their inception to this and other Dahomey arts. The assemblage elements that the Dahomey sculptures and Picasso works share are at once disruptive and compelling visually; as individual pieces they may not make visual sense, but when put together, the larger identity of the work becomes clear and all the more potent through this fracturing and reassembly process. While Picasso turned to assemblages in particular later in his career (from 1911–12 onward), he was already exploring the theme in Les Demoiselles through the manner in which he deracinated and relocated the nose and the ear of the crouching figure, turning them to their more visible and readable side views, and repositioned the female’s eyes in a provocative asymmetry, which forces the viewer to take them in not as a paired unit, as is normally done, but simultaneously individually and together. Picasso saw Africa and its arts as new ways of conceiving, exploring, and engaging with form. Broader idioms of artistic assemblage, along with internal stylistic incongruences and frequent sharp or ruptured edges, are elements often identified specifically with synthetic cubism; related features are also in evidence within the Dahomey art corpus.16 In many ways these forms, like Les Demoiselles, add not only unique visual power but also new sensorial and intellectual potential. These became important for Picasso and his circle as they began to grapple with African-­linked ideas of magic and transformation, framed around idioms of the “primitive” more generally.17

Dahomey Art in Popular Culture Other examples of Dahomey art were well ­known to Picasso and his circle in this era, as seen not only in private collections and the Trocadéro but also in curio shops and image-­rich journals, such as L’Epinal (figure 146) and Le Petit journal illustré (figure 337). Journals were increasingly using color lithographs to illustrate stories of interest to the news-­hungry Paris citizenry, as André Salmon wrote: I myself kept a very vulgar color illustration [figure 337] from the Petit Journal Illustré, the sort common French people . . . cut out to decorate their walls. It represented the first soldiers of Colonel Dood [sic] entering L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

157

Abomey and smiling at the Dahomey idols, with their heads of jackals, buffalos and unimaginable monsters. I have always wondered when some literate soldier would write an account of the shock that these monuments, of a new kind of beauty, and one older than that with which we are accustomed, gave to his “civilized” mindset. The soldier’s book has never been written. The picturesque was too blinding. What did we finally need to enable the discovery of Negro art?18 While few scholars today have addressed the likely impact of Dahomey art on Picasso, others in his circle were well aware of it. Salmon observed, “I . . . could not even imagine the purity of the Dahomean statuary that Picasso showed me, even if I sense a kind of savage beauty mixed in with the exotic picturesqueness.” 19 A grouping of the latter works were on view in the Trocadéro (figures 54 and 80). The life-­size sculptures of a lion man (King Glele) and a shark man (King Behanzin; figure 54), the work of the royal carver Sosa Adede,20 had been secured by the French colonel Alfred-­A médée Dodds during the colonial conquest. The separately carved and attached arms of these works and the bright acid blue green and orange coloring of them — ​­and other equally boldly colored works discovered by these troops (figure 337) — ​­likely held interest and may have served as partial models for the notably acidic hues that Picasso employed in fashioning the two African demoiselles in his canvas. Works of Dahomey art were also available in other Paris venues. For example, several Dahomey polychrome figures sat on a shelf at a Paris wine bar on rue d’Argenteuil, which was visited by Vlaminck, who described them as “statuettes from Dahomey daubed in red ochre, yellow ochre and white” (see figure 145, which is similarly colored).21 For Vlaminck, these works were a revelation: “I had an intuition of the power they contained. They revealed African art to me.” 22 He later explained, “These three Negro statuettes [from Dahomey] . . . were showing me something of a very different order entirely! I was moved to the depths of my being. I asked the owner to sell them to me. He initially refused, but I insisted.” 23 Roland Dorgelès adds another element to Vlaminck’s discovery: “When he had taken them home, his whim was not yet satisfied; on the contrary. Seduced by these she-­devils, he dreamed of nothing but fetishes, charms, and amulets, and started a collection.” 24 Picasso likely knew of this incident, now believed to have taken place toward the end of March 1906.25 The strikingly bright multicolored surfaces of Dahomey sculptures provided a key model for Picasso’s African demoiselles. As early art scholar Jacques Las158

chapter five

saigne explained, “In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon . . . he tried for the first time . . . to render these volumes by using hatching or planes of bright colour. . . . This conception had affinities with the work of certain primitives, and in particular the prodigious, anonymous creations of African art, and the beautiful masks from Benin [Dahomey] discovered at this time.” 26 Moreover, as Salmon wrote in 1912 about Picasso’s engagement with African art while he was painting Les Demoiselles, “The images from . . . Dahomey seemed to him reasonable.” 27 Part of this group’s interest was the unusual qualities of the sculptures themselves, but also their connection to the unique history and colonial legacy of Dahomey. To Patricia Leighten, “In the decade before 1907, Dahomey . . . became almost synonymous as a name with an especially terrifying notion of the ‘primitive Other,’ one built around travellers’ tales that had produced an entire mythology of human sacrifice and cannibalism.” 28 Indeed, for some artists and writers, such as Apollinaire, it was precisely this quality of “barbarism” and “crudeness” that made works of this sort particularly appealing.29 The long campaign to secure Dahomey for France (1877–94) was framed around a purported need to control rampant “fetishism.” The mass collecting of related artifacts was key to this and cleared the path for new missionary activities as well. Le Petit journal illustré was not the only popular journal that published images of Dahomeans and their artworks that Picasso likely saw. Max Jacob notes that “[Picasso] also admired my images d’Epinal [which] I think I was the only one collecting at the time. . . . I gave him everything.” L’Epinal’s rendering of marching amazons (figure 146) and other warriors, whether real individuals or as part of long-­standing mythologies, complicated ideas of gender and sexuality in ways that intrigued and challenged the young artist in Les Demoiselles, and other works, as we will see. Picasso and Fernande Olivier followed cartoon series that sometimes engaged Africa and the newly colonized areas of the world. One particularly intriguing series was Rudolph Dirks’s The Katzenjammer Kids, which appeared in the Sunday supplement of many American newspapers and featured Mamma Katzenjammer with her twin boys, Fritz and Hans, and the ship captain whom they loved to prank. Gertrude Stein revealed that in 1906–7 Picasso and Olivier closely followed this cartoon series. She recalled handing a thick package of the cartoons to Picasso, sometimes causing the ire of Olivier, who had wanted them instead.30 The May 6, 1906, Katzenjammer cartoon (plate 8), published around the time that Stein was sitting for her portrait with Picasso and shortly before he began his studies for Les Demoiselles, is a particularly interesting one. L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

159

This cartoon, Der Katzenjammer Princes Rescue der Captain,31 unfolds in nine color scenes with an audience of a half dozen wild animals dressed in Western clothing and holding wine glasses. The ship’s captain is about to be turned into a stew by a group of what are possibly African natives, but two young children who had witnessed the events escape and help him get away. Fashioned in the highly offensive racial tropes of this era, made worse here by the prominent cannibalism theme in play, the larger focus of the cartoon is on the dangers that await Western sailors when they visit ports of call. Dirks had been involved in the colonial effort, when in 1898, one year after initiating the series, the German-­ born cartoonist left his adopted new home in the United States to fight in the Spanish-­A merican War; he added several new characters on his return. The theme of boat travel to exotic and potentially dangerous ports likely would not have been lost on Picasso, whose early studies for Les Demoiselles included a sailor often conveyed with African mask referents (figure 82). The Dirks cartoon series also probably interested Picasso because of the ripe humor-­based distortions addressed in the accompanying cartoon speech balloons (a form that Dirks helped popularize). These were written in very simplified English, heavily accented in his native German, a language shared by many recent émigrés in the United States in this period, the errors inventive exclamatory wordplay (“how wuz dot for a close shave”) consistent with the broader nonnative demographic. In truth the series needed few if any words to convey the various plot lines that brought the Katzenjammer readers to sites around the world. Considered to be the first true newspaper comic strip, this long-­running cartoon series had wide appeal across many readership groups, many of whom knew little English. That Picasso and Olivier were among the devoted fans is not surprising. As Picasso contemplated themes for his forthcoming large canvas, the idea of two men (the sailor and the doctor) who are trapped and facing danger on a tropical island may well have crossed his mind.

1900 Exposition Universelle In February 1900, Picasso participated in his first major exhibition, at the avant-­ garde Els Quatre Gats café in Barcelona. One of the works on view was the painter’s recent painting The Last Moments, which was also selected for inclusion as one of the Spanish fine arts entries at the Exposition Universelle that year.32 Picasso created a somber dark modernist scene of a dying woman and her priest. He would repaint the work in 1903, turning the canvas from horizontal 160

chapter five

to vertical and reinvesting it with a new (but related) theme, La vie (figure 301). The latter painting — ​­focused on questions of death and rebirth, and framed around the subject of intergenerational family ties — ​­is linked in key ways to Les Demoiselles. The grounds of the Exposition Universelle in Paris were vast, comprising some 350 acres, described by one reviewer as a “labyrinth of labyrinths, this enormous multitude of collections, this museum of museums . . . all is too crowded.” 33 The colonial section of the exposition was set up along the hillside directly facing the Eiffel Tower, between the Trocadéro and the Seine. This is the site of Picasso’s 1906–7 sketch Parisienne et figures exotiques (figure 32), in which the Eiffel Tower looms large in the background. The aim of the ethnographic displays at the exposition was largely to show how colonialism was advancing the prospects of these now French-­controlled populations. Images of the “primitive other,” as, for example, in the Dahomey pavilion, depicted France’s recent military victory over the kingdom and the lands it laid claim to and framed it as the march of civilization over savagery. We know that Picasso visited here because the pavilion included a four-­meter-­deep lake complete with several pirogues (dugout canoes) that he included in one of his later drawings (figure 153). While one of his drawings from this visit would mock a Boer fighter (with related battles then under way in South Africa), his portrayal of the African reflects an adoption of the then (and still) persistent European meme of Africa as a site of hunger, poverty (no clothing), “primitive huts,” and transport. At this exposition Picasso would also have seen a giant guillotine-­like tower likened to the Dahomey platform of ritual sacrifice, a replica “python shrine” with a door guarded by two immense undulating snake forms, and an array of native men and women who occasionally danced to local drums. Several craft studios featured Dahomey weavers and metal smiths who fashioned cloth and jewelry for sale to passersby. One part of the Dahomey pavilion hosted an array of sculptures (figure 143) commissioned by King Agoli Agbo in the aftermath of the French conquest. Most of these works were illustrated by line drawings positioned on the pages of the exposition’s souvenir book, by Louis Brunet and Louis Giethlen.34 These works were returned to Dahomey at the close of the fair, and several are now on view in the Historic Museum of Abomey. Many of these royal sculptures were created through assemblage techniques that cojoined pieces of hammered metal atop a substructure of wood to create a richly textured surface, which was sometimes enhanced through incised patterns and pigment. A Dahomey masterwork made from a similar assemblage technique but in iron (figure 147) L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

161

was on view at the Trocadéro museum, where Picasso later saw it while working on Les Demoiselles. If the exterior of the Dahomey pavilion, with its four corner caryatids of strangely modeled sharklike forms (symbolizing King Behanzin; figure 54), was not enough to stir the mind of Picasso and of other European visitors to the strange artistic power of Dahomey society, then the interior displays certainly would have, particularly the “sacrificial table” (implying here human sacrifice) and its adjacent “fetishes.” 35 Little of this hyped terror had any basis in fact, but such realities did not matter in 1900, when colonialism was in full sway, and it was precisely this kind of fear and threat of ongoing danger that attracted people to these lands and to the colonial mission more generally. This mythos also likely attracted Picasso and his circle. A somewhat similar form that Picasso worked on during the summer of 1907 was titled La Danse aux voiles (The Veil Dance), a work now known as the Nu à la draperie. Loie Fuller and her veil dance was a popular feature of the exposition,36 drawing inspiration from the figure of Salomé, who would be the subject of several Picasso studies with important Africa female referents (figures 155 and 157).37

Picasso’s African Identity: Culture and Place In late 1906 and the first half of 1907, when Picasso was working extensively on Les Demoiselles, he also was exploring larger questions of identity, particularly in the context of African and European cultural exchange. Among his studies from this period is a 1907 pen and ink drawing (figure 149) related in its posture, gesture, and form to the standing African demoiselle. Particularly striking in this study is the name Málaga, written to the figure’s right, the name of Picasso’s hometown, a Spanish port city with European populations and mixed Berber (or Amazigh, as they prefer to call themselves) cultural identity and history, that he would reference in some of his early works (figure 152). The female shown in figure 149 similarly incorporates both African and European attributes, suggesting the cultural and physical hybridity that exists in this southern city, which has long been one of the main crossroads and points of passage between Africa and Europe, and which was, until the city’s fall to the Christians in 1487 and the fall of Granada in 1492, an important Berber (Amazigh) Islamic center. Key aspects of this heritage remain today. The woman in figure 149 elicits the same kind of powerful hybridity and north-­south global engagement that is witnessed in Picasso’s own cultural 162

chapter five

fig 149

fig 150

Picasso, Standing Nude with Raised Arms, 1907.

Picasso, Seated Negro, 1906.

fig 152

fig 153

Picasso, Moor on Prayer Rug, 1895–96.

Picasso, Caricature of Native with Hut and Canoe, 1905.

fig 151

Picasso’s Cuban relative, n.d. Photographer unknown.

fig 15 4

Picasso, Study of Black Man, 1895–97.

i­dentity, as evidenced by Stein’s remark that African art seemed “natural” and “civilized” to him, in part because of his Spanish origin.38 In some ways this figure also recalls the Malinke (Mandinka) women from Senegal and Mali (figures 188 and 193) from François-­Edmond Fortier’s photograph postcards, which Picasso is known to have collected in this period.39 Picasso’s drawing suggests important similarities to several of Carl Heinrich Stratz’s published photographs as well (see chapter 6). African female bodies and questions of character (perceived sexual norms among these) were seen to represent at once a countermodel and an ideal for the modern urban dweller in the West, and interested Picasso. If the fluidity, eloquence, and strength of the cursive Málaga text convey a potent emotional pull — ​­memories of his childhood, perhaps — ​­they also convey something of the surfeit of avant-­garde appeal that Paris and its critics ascribed to Picasso in the aftermath of the decidedly radical and challenging Les Demoiselles. The unusual motif in the lower right of the sketch, partially effaced by ink, offers another clue, for it seems to draw inspiration in part from the plate of fruit in the 1907 painting, and related studies of watermelon slices that evoke the female sex (figure 305). With daily ferries between Málaga and Morocco, the historic and cultural ties between the two regions remained strong. Picasso’s birthplace, named after a heavily salted fish that provided key sustenance for Mediterranean voyages, was a rich site of physical and cultural exchange. One scholar discussing the larger context of Picasso’s connections with Africa through his Spanish roots cites a 1887 Málaga text to this effect: “All Moroccans carry Spanish blood in their veins, and all Spaniards carry Moroccan blood in their veins.” 40 Picasso’s decision beginning in 1900 to sign his paintings with his mother’s name (Picasso) rather than his father’s (Ruiz) holds additional weight, for historically the Amazigh traced their ancestry through the female line, and the Spanish continued this matrilineal lineage legacy. Picasso’s long-­standing interest in his Andalusian roots, and specifically his Amazigh-­linked Málaga hometown, likely factored in this. So too did Picasso’s grandfather’s trip to Cuba, where he would father a number of Afro-­Cuban children — ​­relatives of the artist (figure 151). Picasso’s earlier drawings help us understand something of his view of Africa, particularly one drawing from 1905 and another from 1906. The first (figure 153) is likely a reimagining of the 1900 Dahomey pavilion, with its native house perched beside a manmade lake and pirogue. A child, in stick-­figure silhouette in the glare of the noonday sun, stands arms akimbo, his hands pressed inward

164

chapter five

against his too-­thin waist. Cognizant of the hunger that Africans sometimes faced, the artist hints at his own difficult circumstances, when, during his early Paris years, he sometimes went to bed without having eaten enough.41 A somewhat similar theme is conveyed in the very different ink sketch from 1906 (figure 150). This one depicts a large, well-­muscled African male of perhaps twenty who sits naked near a pot with his knees spread wide on the ground. This figure, too, suggests the poverty and hunger that likely held a personal resonance for Picasso, as he had experienced similar concerns regarding survival and success. The figure, though male, also shares a certain similarity with the crouching woman of Les Demoiselle.

Whence Magic? In December 1901 Picasso returned to Málaga with his friend Carlos Casagemas from Paris, where he had arrived only a few months earlier.42 This trip to Spain is thought to have been a deeply personal one for Picasso, a coming to terms with his birthplace and his deep Andalusian roots.43 When he arrived back in Paris, Picasso was wearing “a locket containing a stuffed beetle instead of the accustomed lock of a loved one’s hair.” 4 4 The significance of the beetle to the artist is unknown, but in ancient Egypt, life (and light) were associated with beetles, and their ink was used to write spells in North African (and Andalusian?) Amazigh culture. Picasso held notably idiosyncratic beliefs about the power of hair and voiced concerns about the cutting and disposal of his own hair.45 Similar beliefs about hair and related body detritus such as fingernails are widespread in Dahomey and many other African centers, as noted by Frobenius:46 Like all the people of the earth, Africans practice a sort of cult of relics, which extends principally to hair, nails, teeth, bones, among the latter, especially skulls. One admits that the deceased manifests itself through the debris of the body. The most important difference between this primitive conception and the conception evolved in Catholicism, for example, resides in the fact that what appears as natural is necessarily believed to sit with the supernatural and miracles. The conception of people of nature (Naturvölker) is more intense. For the deceased if he was a hunter, it suffices for him to take a tooth and keep it in order to inherit the power of that which has now disappeared.47 L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

165

To Frobenius, the mask is a “symbol of relations with the supernatural,” and as such it protects against physical aggression and offers resistance against adverse power, as well as lending active and passive protection.48 Françoise Gilot identified Picasso’s beliefs as a similar kind of “primitive power.” For Picasso, Gilot argues, related beliefs were framed around fears of the appropriation of one’s “substance” through objects such as what one wears. As in many areas of Africa, Picasso saw hair and fingernails as having unique, almost magical, qualities. Gilot recounted this at length: There is a primitive belief that one person can assume power over another through the possession of his fingernail, or hair trimmings; hence he should never be allowed to fall into the hands of someone else. But if they were burned to remove them from an enemy’s reach, the person himself might die. The true believers often carried the trimmings in little bags until they found a place secret enough to dispose of them with complete assurance. Pablo always had a great distaste for having his hair cut. . . . And the longer they grew the more anguished he became at the thought of having to face up to the dilemma. . . . One day in Vallauris he made the acquaintance of a Spanish barber named Arias. For some reason he felt Arias was a man who could be trusted. From then on, Arias used to come to La Galloise whenever a haircut could be postponed no longer. I never knew what happened to the hair. . . . It just disappeared.49 Picasso also had more standard concerns about artistic creativity and success as linked to magic, and the fear that related powers might be appropriated from him. As one scholar explains, “Toward the end of his life, Picasso refused to allow the American photographer David Douglas Duncan to photograph his recent portraits of his second wife Jacqueline Roque, exclaiming, ‘No! They’re finished! You might take something away!’” 50 One could hear much the same thing during the early days of photography in Africa. In play were more generic ideas associated with the need to counterbalance events. Whatever the source of Picasso’s beliefs in “magic,” they were deeply entrenched in his being well before he ever encountered African art. The ideas about magic that he may have gleaned from the African works, and the associated values perpetuated with them, simply added another level of engagement, a means to address a counter set of beliefs that offered further protection in

166

chapter five

the real and almost mystical combat the artist saw himself engaged with both in this era and later in his life. Some of these beliefs likely date to the tenth and eleventh centuries ce, when Amazigh troops of mercenaries and enslaved individuals from sub-­Saharan Africa penetrated what is today Spain, bringing with them an array of new beliefs and cultural forms. Artisans, musicians, poets, healers, builders, soldiers, and others from areas south of the Sahara (regions today identified with Mali, Senegal, and Nigeria, among other places) left an enduring impact on the Andalusian landscape; their legacy remained even after the fall of Granada to the Christians in 1492. Many Andalusian arts contained attributes of ritual protection and advancement, drawn in part from Amazigh beliefs in baraka, protection from evil or the darker forces of life, and that seemingly ordinary objects, words, or actions, change the course of one’s experiences.51 Over time, these practices became a key part of the everyday ethos of Andalusian life, reinforced in centers such as Málaga through the reinfusion of family, visitors, and ideas from Africa (figure 152). Málaga’s blood is deeply infused with the dna and cultural legacy of its shared history with Africa; however only rarely are Picasso’s Andalusian (Amazigh, African) roots and their impact on his work discussed as part of his internal struggles during this time. Picasso’s relationship to Africa was in many ways far more complex and compelling than often has been assumed. This history was nuanced and enriched by his family history and geographic ties to the continent, as well as by his own deep appreciation for the visual power of these sculptural forms. There are many ways of framing this. The Senegalese philosopher, poet, and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor clearly understood the importance of Picasso’s African art engagement. Stressing Picasso’s Andalusian roots, he once wrote of the artist, Magic — ​­in other words, the new procedures and forms — ​­was sought and found by the Andalusian among his Mediterranean ancestors, going back to the earliest Iberians. They obtruded on him, as on any genuine artist. . . . The point is that these pre-­Indo-­European sculptures had their origin in the same feeling for magic and poetry, and employed the same vocabulary, the same syntax, even the same style. . . . The Mediterranean and black Africans have bequeathed us a complete “repertory of forms” scorned by Europeans and especially Graeco-­Latin classicists, who are primarily concerned with detail and imitating nature.52

L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

167

In the end, Senghor confirms, “The Andalusian felt, therefore, that it was necessary to turn away from the concept of art as imitation, and replace it with that of art as invention.” 53 Critical to this view is a new way of understanding form as “co-­inventions of pre-­Indo-­European arts, and firstly those of negro art.” 54 William Rubin insisted accordingly, “Picasso’s assumptions about tribal usages . . . could only have reinforced his personal sense of the magical. And as the ‘fetishes’ were religious objects, the notion of art-­making and of religion became fused in a consciousness of the force of the artist [and] . . . the notion of image-­making as a supernatural, ritual power.” 55 Picasso likely picked up related ideas when he visited the Trocadéro and saw the labels associated with the African works. Some of these labels pointed to the power and protective importance of these arts: “Among those we know to have been visible in 1907 were ‘Cures the insane,’ ‘cures ailments caused by the deceased,’ ‘protects against the sorcerer’ and ‘cures gonorrhea.’” 56 Moreover in offering protection against illnesses, these works were seen to counter both “external threats” and the force of “power that could be turned inward.” 57 In Paris at this time, Africa and its arts held associations with elements seen to be “fetishistic, magical and above all potentially malefic and threatening” and also to call up “the exorcistic forces of sorcery.” 58 These and similar beliefs were already in play for Picasso prior to his first encounter with African art. In some ways Picasso saw himself as able to effectuate many of the same kinds of actions in his own work. Referencing his passion for the prehistoric Venus, he says, “Because nobody knows anything about her. Magic, sure! I make magic too! I also love the Negro pieces, and for the same reason.” 59 In this framing, there is something in Picasso’s art that served as both a form of protection and a call to action. Gilot recalled Picasso saying in the mid-­1940s, Men had made those masks and other objects for a sacred purpose, a magic purpose . . . in order to overcome their fear and horror by giving it a form and an image. At that moment I realized that this was what painting was all about. Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation. It’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. When I came to that realization, I knew I had found my way.60 André Malraux observes in this light, “Picasso had begun by sculpting traps for the future and posterity.” 61 As Picasso pointed out to Malraux, “The Negroes’ sculptures were intercessors, I’ve known the French word ever since. Against 168

chapter five

everything; against unknown, threatening spirits. I kept looking at the fetishes. I understood: I too am against everything. I too think that everything is unknown, is the enemy! Everything! Not just the details — ​­women, children, animals, tobacco, playing — ​­but everything! I understood what the purpose of the sculpture was for the Negroes.” 62 Moreover, insists Picasso, “The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture. They were magic things. . . . They were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influence of spirits again, to help them to become independent.” 63 Picasso’s 1937 statement to Malraux that Les Demoiselles was his “first exorcism picture” is consistent with this.64 What form of magical protection did these African works offer Picasso that was of such special concern to him in the era when Les Demoiselles was being conceived? Among Picasso’s most likely concerns were the potential demise of his own growing creative drive and renown as well as the potential threat of infertility should he succeed as an artist. Both speak to underlying concerns with immortality. Powerful and magical works of art were seen to help mitigate these and other potential threats. Among Picasso’s friends who had knowledge of these concerns, Jacob was deeply involved with not only magic but also mysticism, the occult, and the kinds of inward journeys that drugs offer,65 and Apollinaire collected many books that addressed cult practices.66 Another possible source for Picasso’s interest in Africa and the cultural practices associated with it may have come from still closer to home. Picasso’s maternal grandfather, Francisco Picasso Guardeño, left his wife Inés and their five children and traveled to Cuba in 1864.67 Here Guardeño took up a lover of African descent named Cristina Serra (a woman who may have been a slave at the time). Before Guardeño’s death in 1888, they had four children, supported in large measure by his work as a custom’s agent. Many layers of mystery surround this second family, including Guardeño’s planned return to Málaga in 1888, which never happened, and a letter to Picasso’s mother revealing that her father had been murdered in Cuba. The fact that Guardeño’s new children purportedly were given the same names as the children he had earlier sired in Spain makes the story all the more intriguing.68 Picasso’s Cuban relative, Juan Francisco Aurelio Picasso Serra (the first son born to Guardeño and Cristina; figure 151), was only two years older than he was. There is little doubt but that Picasso knew of this fascinating and in its own way revolutionary dimension of his family history, details of which may have come to him not only from his mother and maternal relatives but also from his later Cuban friend, Wifredo Lam, who moved to Paris in 1938. In many ways L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

169

this story adds complexity to Picasso’s African demoiselles, as well as to various questions at play around human evolution and eugenics within the canvas. These latter themes (see chapter 7) figure in both the composition and the meanings of Les Demoiselles. Regardless of the source, it is clear that Picasso’s recognition of the magic that art engages did not in any way distract from or contradict his search for broader intellectual ideas within which his new experiments were taking shape. From the vantage of Spain’s deep, sometimes embroiled history with Africa, questions of race are clearly important. In 1897, while still an art student, Picasso created several academic studies of African men — ​­one with a well-­muscled physique (figure 154). Did Picasso self-identify in any way with these African men that in some way was linked to his own regional African roots (and associated magic)? In 1896, Picasso attended the Barcelona Carnival after attiring himself in the costume of a Moor, his dagger secured in his belt and a long scimitar brandished in one hand. This was quite commonplace, but a drawing by an artist friend recalls this event.69 Spain had once controlled the North African coast — ​ ­colonies that France and England now claimed — ​­and in 1898 would again suffer the humiliation of territory loss when the crown jewels of its colonies — ​­Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico — ​­were taken over by the United States. Whatever Picasso thought about his Cuban relatives of African descent, the loss of these three colonies in the aftermath of the Spanish-­A merican War added another element to his own colonial understanding and framing of the era’s events. So did Moor-­linked structures in Paris that were important at this time, from the Spanish pavilion at the 1900 exposition, which was modeled on the North African style Alcázar in Toledo, to the pseudo-­Moorish-­style Trocadéro. Certainly other colonial issues may have interested him, but in the end, as with so many other things, it is likely that form and its related attributes took precedence.

Amazons on the Seine In 1893 a troupe of Dahomey amazons began the first of many performances in Paris, following on the heels of similar displays in Germany (see also chapter 6) and elsewhere. While Picasso never saw them, he clearly knew about these famous military women. One day during my year’s sabbatical at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC, as I was contemplating Dahomey amazons and their legacies in the West as part of my year’s project, I came across an early Picasso work that astounded me, a 1905–6 drawing titled 170

chapter five

La Danse barbare (Devant Salomé et Herode) (The Barbarous Dance [In Front of Salomé and Hérode]; figure 155). This drawing was Picasso’s paraphrase and reimagining of a Dahomey amazon portrayal, published by Richard Francis Burton, a famous Victorian traveler to Dahomey in his travelogue A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (1864). The frontispiece, An Amazon, by English illustrator John Wood (figure 156), features a well-­muscled, simian-­jawed woman in a crouching pose, a thick bullet pouch at her waist and her long rifle across her arms and thigh, searching for enemy prey; her hooded eyes, low-­angled forehead, thick cheekbones, broad fleshy lips, and unkempt hair create a certain bestial and dangerous personification, heightened by her stark profile against the darkening sky. The woman’s barely human features are consistent with highly derisive Western views of Africans in this era, their features — ​­shown to be as apelike as human — ​­reifying social evolutionary theories of the period. In front of her a group of fellow amazons stands at attention. In Picasso’s study for The Barbarous Dance, this same woman has been reengaged as a servant presenting a dish of fruit to the two reclining figures. Like Wood’s Amazon, Picasso’s rendering retained the servant’s deep black skin and almost apelike profile. He introduced a somewhat similar physiognomy in his rendering of the standing African on the right in Les Demoiselles. The historic Salomé was famously executed by John the Baptist at the request of her mother, after Herod, madly desirous of her, promised her anything she wanted. One of Picasso’s earlier portrayals of Salomé, a work from La Suite des saltimbanques (1905; figure 157), may also have been inspired by Burton. What seems most interesting about these early images is how Picasso ultimately drops the stereotype-­caricature illustration of African women for something much more open e­ nded in Les Demoiselles.70 In La Suite Salomé’s servant is a bare-­ chested, black-­skinned woman cradling the gory decapitated head of John the Baptist atop a platter. She stares across her prize toward the seated King Herod, extending toward him a long, thick clump of bloody hair. She seems almost oblivious to the acrobatically dancing Salomé in front of her, who openly flashes her vagina toward Herod, a performance more reminiscent of a dance hall routine than a political or religious offering. A third woman, older but also naked, stands uneasily at the king’s side, staring off into the distance. Noteworthy in this study is not only the rendering of a key figure in a biblical scene as a black woman but also its connection to the motif of heads as trophies for women warriors (figure 282). Picasso seems to have reimagined these two Salomé scenes around a still more L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

171

fig 155

Picasso, Salomé (La Danse barbare), 1905. fig 156

Wood, Dahomey amazon, in Burton 1864.

172

famous art historical referent, Édouard Manet’s iconic Olympia (1863). In this painting, a neatly coiffed nude white female lies semirecumbent on a thickly cushioned divan, staring boldly out toward the viewer as a uniformed black servant woman enters the room to present her with a large, elegantly paper-wrapped bouquet of flowers — a gift, seemingly, from her lover. In Picasso’s rendering of this somewhat similar engagement (figure 21), he utilized the plump body and physiognomic features of Apollinaire (figure 194; compare figure 2), who had published a poem called “Salomé” in 1905. The story of Salomé is an interesting one for Picasso (and Apollinaire) to have taken up in the context of a Dahomey amazon, for, as noted above, these fierce women were closely identified with decapitation. Moreover, Salomé had been the subject of a popular 1896 Oscar Wilde play that Picasso and many in his circle likely knew. Picasso depicted, in a voyeuristic fashion, the chance meeting of two key exotic personae of the past, indeed, two notable femmes fatales, here identified as deriving from a different race and time. Salomé was a deadly woman in biblical and ontological terms. Wood’s and Picasso’s portrayals are carefully positioned in a three-quarter back view, with the profi le facial features carefully marked, similar to the crouching figure of Les Demoiselles. The genital flash in both is noteworthy as well. The temptress-villain, a death-bringing femme fatale, shown in these renderings, draws our attention to the perilous nature of desire and the ways in which one’s sexual interest can be a bearer of chapTer five

fig 157

Picasso, La Suite des Saltimbanques, 1905. fig 158

Picasso, Amazon with Mother and Child, 1903?.

fig 159

Pradier, Amazon, 1840–41. fig 160

Picasso, study for Bois de Boulogne, 1906.

fig 161

Picasso, Equestrian at Work, 1905.

fig 162

Picasso, Clear and Simple History of Max Jacob, 1903.

fig 163

Picasso, Cavaliére en amazone, 1959.

both pleasure and danger. Picasso also addressed this larger theme of sexually desirable yet risky women in Les Demoiselles. By exploring figures of amazons in these works and others (figures 158 and 162), including studies for Les Demoiselles, Picasso adds to the historical curiosity and fear of this quintessential mythic femme fatale.

Ancient and Modern-­Day Amazons In his Dahomey travel narrative, Burton pondered whether amazons could be viable mothers. Picasso, in like fashion, in his 1903 drawing Amazon with Mother and Child (figure 158), presents an amazon in classic military helmet, exhausted from years of battle, contemplating at once the bonds of sisterhood, the solitude of memory, and the nurturing role of motherhood, the latter evoked through a set of overlapping figures to her right. In some ways the artist here has uprighted the classical form of a reclining wounded warrior, reimagining her attire from Greek sculptures and vase paintings, complete with the resonant crescent-­shaped helmet and staff. Related studies of amazons reveal a similar interest in questions of gender identity. Similar interests in complicating gender are invoked in various portrayals of amazons in Paris and elsewhere. This can be seen in the well-­known 1840–41 equestrian amazon sculpture by James Pradier (figure 159) positioned at the entry to the Cirque d’hiver, which Picasso often visited. The sometimes deeply paradoxical identities of women — ​­as workers and mothers, warriors and sexual objects — ​­are cojoined in these examples and Les Demoiselles. Similar concerns also could be raised about the Dahomey amazons (figures 146 and 179). We see this also in Picasso’s January 13, 1903, rendering of an ancient amazon sculpture in his birthday homage to Max Jacob, Histoire claire et simple de Max Jacob (figure 162). One of the most frequent amazon-­linked images taken up by Picasso is that of a woman astride a horse. Circus equestrians (figures 161 and 165) and women who rode horses for pleasure (figures 166 and 168) were among a group of Paris women who bore the moniker “amazon.” So too were women who rode bicycles (a newly popular sport in Paris at the time) in places such as the Bois de Boulogne, which also was a place of sexual rendezvous (figure 160). Both groups of mounted women complicated long-­standing sexual mores through their identities as independent beings, readily able to move and act on their own. While the same idea was being addressed in the women’s suffrage movement in this era, for Picasso the sexual twist on actions of mounting probably had more play, as L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

175

seen in figure 163. Circus-­performing amazons were women of élan and status in Paris during this period. One of these circus amazons, Laure Florentin (née Gargallo, a relative of sculptor Pablo Gargallo), was an artist’s model and good friend of Picasso’s, so the amazon identity had a personal link. Picasso undertook a number of amazon studies while working on Les Demoiselles, and these images and ideas also inform the work. The wife of the wealthy fashion designer Jacques Doucet, who would become the first owner of Les Demoiselles, started her professional life as a circus equestrienne.71 The long, buttoned jacket of the female riding coat, known colloquially as the amazone, became quite common attire for fashionable women of the bourgeoisie in the 1890s and early 1900s. Illustrated magazines of the era, journals well known to Olivier, included an array of related designs (figures 164–69). The striking amazone suit, which was modeled on men’s attire (long formal jackets with a deep rear vent worn over wide skirts that allowed one to sit astride a horse), with added decorative buttons on the front and back (figures 165 and 169), gave a nod to gender ambiguity. Fashion magazines were also keen to highlight the paradoxical image of the equestrienne’s body merging with the body of the horse (figures 166 and 168) — ​­a sort of female satyr motif that Picasso later engages. In some of these suits one can also see the visual play of military-­style buttons sewn in crisp rows down the front and back sides of the long jacket. Olivier owned an amazone-­style jacket that she wore to the opening of the Salon des Indépendants in March 1907 (figures 170 and 171).72 Picasso was actively working on the final preparations for Les Demoiselles at this time, and this suit charged his imagination for several of his studies in this period. Two of these studies depict a fashionably attired Paris amazon, likely Olivier, in three-­quarter view from the rear, her facial features and hair visible in a profile that twists subtly back toward us, as if to convey a fully three-­dimensional view. This same kind of transformational positioning is also seen in the crouching female of Les Demoiselles. Similar motifs of mirroring, reversing, and masking/unmasking are visible in many of Picasso’s other studies of this period (see chapter 6). The play of simultaneity between back and front in the above two sketches is reinforced by the fact that Picasso has used the buttons at the top of the rear vent in one sketch (figure 170) to render the figure’s buttocks with the image of a human face, replete with a pair of eyes (the two buttons) and a nose (the vent). In short, Picasso whimsically transformed the rear of the long amazone coat (as well as Olivier’s buttocks) into a face, a clear evocation of the arbitrariness of form and meaning, ideas reflected in Picasso’s growing interest in African mask forms that 176

chapter five

fig 164

Cavaliére in amazone attire, 1876. fig 165

Drouin, circus equestrian, 1865–66.

fig 166

Woman astride horse, 1901. fig 167

Woman in amazon garment, 1889.

fig 168

Female equestrian, c. 1900. fig 169

Mlle. Lovzeski in amazon attire, 1891.

fig 170

fig 171

Picasso, Woman in Riding Jacket, 1907.

Picasso, Woman in the Bois de Boulogne, 1907.

fig 173

fig 172

Picasso, Profile of a Woman, 1906–7.

Anon., Baga mask (Guinea), late 19th century, Musée du quai Branly.

fig 174

Picasso, Woman with Fan, 1907. fig 175

Picasso, Figure in Profile, 1907.

fig 176

Picasso, study, Les Demoiselles, 1906.

share similar visual plays (figures 113 and 120). The study in figure 160 suggests a woman in amazone attire holding a parasol as two male onlookers admire her and the two nearby horses shown on the Bois de Boulogne. Clearly, amazons were on Picasso’s mind at this time. The fact that the verso of figure 171 (a woman in an amazone suit) is a late five-person composition for Les Demoiselles (figure 176) reinforces this idea, as does the Demoiselle-related compositional sketch shown in figure 315, which includes a horse. Figure  170 is a remarkable study that captures the essence of Olivier as a l’o i s e a U d U B é n i n

179

fashion plate within a context rich in protocubist elements and African masking referents. Particularly striking in terms of the latter is a work published in Frobenius, a large, somewhat idiosyncratic Baga M’ba helmet mask (figures 173, 114, and 115). The play on form and displaced body features (nose, eyes, breasts) in figure 170 evoke at once the play of forms in figure 120 and the distinctive profiles that reflect the strong rhythm of profile curves and angles in Baga works (figure 173). Picasso’s 1906–7 Profile of a Woman (figure 172) and related studies (figures 174 and 175) similarly draw on African mask forms (Baga most importantly) and the three-­dimensionality of a female figure personified in both profile view and in the round (shown in partial rear and frontal views). One of the two Picasso sketches of Olivier’s amazone attire (figure 171) notably features on its back (reverse) a late date compositional sketch for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (figure 176). Picasso gave this important recto-­verso drawing (likely created around the March 20, 1907, opening of the Salon) later to the collector and critic Douglas Cooper.73 Leo Steinberg is among those who explored the art historical importance of this study, which holds key clues to Les Demoiselles. What no one has yet addressed is the fact that amazons were on Picasso’s mind as he was planning his large canvas of five women. Such women are not, of course, prototypical brothel denizens, mounted though they sometimes were. Instead, they evoke the complex identities of women as life’s warriors and sexual provocateurs. For this and other reasons, this drawing of Olivier is important to our deeper understanding of Les Demoiselles. The Bois de Boulogne in Paris was a playground for equestrian interludes and sexual encounters in ways that suggest a bordello. In many respects, the Bois de Boulogne brings together women from many different walks of life — ​­the women of the night and cavalières en amazon who frequented the Bois — ​­into a masquerade-­evoking setting in which women (and men) assume different roles. The woman attired in an amazone suit and holding a parasol in figure 160 is also of note because she is portrayed simultaneously from both the rear and side, as she looks across a pair of lively horses at the two men nearby. This scene also evokes playfully, and with some irony, the larger canvas of Les Demoiselles, a work that in some ways portrays five “amazons” (warriors in life) from various regions of the globe — ​­dangerous women of mythic grandeur that evoke ideas of both past and present. The two drawings of Olivier as a fashionable amazon are also important for understanding Picasso’s complex and expansive artistic and intellectual interests in Les Demoiselles. That Picasso was interested early on in the historical tradition of Dahomey 180

chapter five

women warriors (figures 146 and 156) is notable too, as he drew on his own keen fascination with their traditions to address questions of women and sex. In the same way that the rich assemblage arts of Dahomey that Picasso and his circle admired (figures 142 and 147) were taken up in new ways in Les Demoiselles, in his assembling of each of the women from a different perspective, position, posture, and style, it is the viewer who must reassemble the whole. In all this, Picasso sought to bring into play a deeper understanding of and engagement with the magic-­imbued world he was celebrating in African art and culture, which in key ways he had also experienced in Málaga during his youth.

A Colonial Portrait and the Discovery of Arbitrary Form There is another feature of Picasso’s drawings of amazon attire that offers insight critical to these works and to the larger 1907 canvas, something that Olivier points out in her later autobiographical account of this period, Loving Picasso: One day [the sculptor Georges] Deniker74 brought an explorer to see Picasso in his studio, a naval officer who told us that on one occasion, when he happened to be with some natives who enjoyed making sculptures, he had been curious to see their reactions to a photograph, which was something they had never seen before. He had placed a photograph of himself in uniform in front of them, and one of them had taken it, peered at it, turned it over and over in every direction, and handed it back without having recognized or understood what it was. The explorer then tried to explain that it was his own image. The African laughed incredulously, then took paper and pencil and began to do a portrait of the officer. In his own way he drew the head, the body, the legs and arms in the style of Negro idols and showed the image to the officer. But having looked at him again move carefully, he took back the drawing to add the shiny buttons of the uniform, which he had left out.75 Olivier goes on to explain, “The point of the story was that he saw no reason to put the buttons in their proper place: they surrounded the whole figure! He did the same thing with the stripes, which he placed beside the arms and above the head. I don’t need to spell out the comments this produced. Afterwards many strange things were seen in Cubist paintings.” 76 Many striking elements in this account are important to this period, includL’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

181

Fig 177

Morienval, La Guerre du Dahomey, 1893. Illustrator unknown.

ing the fact that reading photographs requires learning new skills. Particularly interesting here, however, is Olivier’s discussion of the African artist’s portrait of the French military officer, and his later addition of his buttons and braid not on the uniform jacket but on the officer’s face and above his head. It was the discussion of this incident involving an African artist that Olivier insists was one of the most seminal events in the development of cubism. This meeting most likely occurred in late 1906, around the time that Picasso was engaged in his night-­long experiments that would result in Les Demoiselles and the array of works that followed. Olivier’s Deniker citation brings into play the sculptor Georges Jean Deniker, who studied under Manolo (Manuel Martínez Hugué), one of the artists who initially welcomed Picasso to Paris. Georges Deniker was the son of the 182

chapter five

naturalist and anthropologist Joseph Deniker, who, since 1888, had held the position of chief librarian at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Joseph Deniker was deeply interested in race. He served as one of the main editors of the Dictionnaire de geographie universelle, and in 1900 published his well-­known Races et peoples de la terre, which compiled and corrected a wide array of anatomical data and maps, offering a new, more historically valid accounting of racial origins. His interests also extended to differences in European cultures, the subject of another book, Les Races de l’Europe. Joseph Deniker’s publications on race were well known in this era. What is important here is that Deniker had the right connections to bring a French naval officer and explorer to Picasso’s studio, someone who, like Picasso, was interested in native African forms and cultural traditions. Who was this officer? My first thought was that is was the French administrator Paul Brocard, who in 1902 donated a striking Baga D’mba (Nimba) mask to the Trocadéro Museum (figures 114 and 173). This work was later published by Paul Guillaume in his 1917 Sculptures nègres. Brocard, who was infamous for his strictness (and cruelty), had served as an administrator in Senegal, where he was satirized by a local journalist, Jean Daramy d’Oxoby, as “Boubacar I, King of Sine-­Saloom.” 77 In many ways Brocard’s life would have been an apt model for Alfred Jarry’s fictive disdainful colonial Père Obu. The colonial officer mentioned by Deniker, however, was not Brocard but instead likely a French officer stationed in Dahomey. We learn something about him through Francis Carco, a poet, novelist, playwright, and art critic from New Caledonia who moved to Paris in 1910. In Carco’s 1928 memoir we read that the colonial effort and mapping of new French territories “became the obsession of all those who were doing their utmost to find new formulas or to transform the old ones. So everyone questioned the explorers. One naval officer displayed his portrait, executed by a Dahomean, who, when depicting the face and bust, simply arranged the numerous buttons on the jacket of his uniform in a halo around the forehead of his model. This revelation (which has never been reported) subsequently had a considerable influence on the dissociation of elements introduced by Cubism.” 78 The Dahomey artist described by Carco and Olivier clearly had captured what was most important about the subject of his portrait. Specifics of physiognomy were far less significant than the buttons and braid that defined his status as a French colonial officer. Where specifically these distinguishing accoutrements were placed mattered less than their presence. In the very arbitrariness of their positioning these displaced elements conveyed L’O i s e a u d u B é n i n

183

the meaning of the sitter that was more important than any details of his physiognomy. If, as Carco states, they were integrated in a halo form, the artist was cojoining elements of a key Western art historical tradition as well. Who was this French naval officer visiting Dahomey? I have read nearly all of the accounts of French military figures and colonial officers while researching a larger project on Dahomey amazons. The person who stands out most distinctively in this regard is an officer named Henri Morienval, who, as a sous-­ lieutenant d’ infanterie de marine during the French invasion had become familiar with the southern region of Dahomey. He went on to publish a memoir based on his experiences. The bright red cover of this book is emblazoned not only with gold lettering but also a gold-­embossed image of a seated Dahomey chief flanked by two standing amazons, their rifles resting against their shoulders (figure 177). In the upper left corner, shown in profile wearing a pith helmet and a handsome gold-­braid-­decorated jacket, is the author, Morienval. One of the interior plates shows a fuller rendering of this officer’s jacket with many bright gold buttons punctuating the chest.79 While we may never know with certainty that it was Morienval who met with Picasso in his studio and recounted this incident, in many ways his precise identity is less important than the incident itself. We know that many Dahomey and other African works that Picasso saw through friends such as Guillaume Apollinaire and in collections such as at the Trocadéro display similar kinds of visual displacements or seemingly arbitrary elements that required the viewer to piece the whole together, completing the work in their imaginations. This process would become even more important to Picasso in the years ahead.

184

chapter five

P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in Kush Kalr and Priyanka Barupal,

Law Sex and Crime, 182

The Global Brothel Deep into research on a forthcoming book on Dahomey women warriors, I discovered a photograph of six nearly naked African women (figure 179) that I recognized as members of a Dahomey group of female warriors performing in Germany in 1890. When the French encountered the female Dahomey troops in the 1892–93 colonial wars, these women constituted but a thin shadow of their former presence. Their mid-­nineteenth-­century numbers had by then been heavily reduced through small pox and military losses. Europeans referred to them largely through the myth-­evoking label “amazon.” Locally they were known by several terms, most importantly minon, “our mothers,” a reference not only to their status and power but also their veiled association with ­sorcerers — ​­women who take life for their own advancement or that of others. The original source of the photograph was a 1902 or 1907 volume by the first gynecologist, Dr. Carl Heinrich Stratz, titled Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes (The Racial Beauty of Women). The women in this photograph were identified as Ashanti (from Ghana), but they were clearly members of a largely female Dahomean performance troupe. The image was taken circa 1893 by the German photographer Carl Günther, who had been commissioned by the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Primeval History to cover the various eth-

Chapter six

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.

Fig 178

Light and Dark, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Fig 179

Dahomey amazons, c. 1890. Stratz, Rassenschönheit. Fig 180

Sudanesin girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

nographic performance groups appearing in the Berlin Zoological Garden, the Berlin Panoptikum, and elsewhere.1 As I studied the other photographs and diagrams of the myriad women in the Stratz volumes, including figure 178, I soon realized that there were a number of other images that shared key attributes of the figures in Picasso’s various studies for his 1907 masterpiece. I had found another author whose work Picasso had clearly looked at closely.2 Similar to early compositional studies for Les Demoiselles (for example, figure 176), women in this tightly composed group photograph of Dahomey amazon performers assume a variety of poses — front, side, three-quarters, sitting low to the ground, and standing. The scene is shot from below to enhance their already sizable scale and power, an effect that, as with Les Demoiselles, makes the women seem even more dominant and imposing. The near-nude portrayals of these amazons, like period photographs of brothel women,3 not only deprive them of their individual and cultural identities as members of an elite military group but also transform them into specimens of sexual desire and science. The different postures displayed — both profi le and frontal views — also are consistent with the highly racial framing of global women and men that was promoted in the field of physical anthropology at this time when photographing individuals and groups. Indeed, it was believed that precise, “measurable” photographs of individuals in set poses would enable scientists to classify their sitters according to prescribed racial and ethnic categories.4 Rassenschönheit had an enormous print run and multiple editions beginning The gloBal BroThel

fig 181

Picasso, Two Peasant Women, 1906. fig 182

Picasso, Two Nude Women, 1906. fig 183

Picasso, Two Women, 1906.

187

in 1898 (sometimes several a year), each larger than the last in terms of page count, photographs, and diagrams. The final edition came out in 1941, on the eve of World War II. Which Stratz edition(s) Picasso most likely saw is not clear. Since each volume was somewhat different, I investigated several of the most likely editions. Stratz, described as “the most important racial aesthete of the period,” 5 authored a number of other illustrated books as well that were focused on race, women, and fashion around the globe, many of which merged science, anatomical study, aesthetics, eroticism, and art poses. One of these was an 1898 book, Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers (The Beauty of Women’s Bodies), that had forty-­five editions, the last also coming out in 1941. A 1900 French translation of Rassenschönheit, titled La Beauté de la femme, also appeared. In the translation, and in a new 1902 French edition, the author’s name is changed from Carl Heinrich Stratz to Charles-­Henri Stratz. The 1900 edition includes 180 illustrations, many from the earlier German volumes, but no image of Dahomey amazons appeared in this version. Clearly artists knew of these volumes, since, like the similarly illustrated French publications that showed models in various positions, artists were among Stratz’s intended audience. Like the question of editions, the source of Picasso’s book(s) is not clear, but bibliophile Guillaume Apollinaire, at work in 1906–7 on a Marquis de Sade project, likely knew of Rassenschönheit, even though it was not published in the catalog of his library following his death. The Stratz books were also accessible in local Paris libraries and bookstores. While Picasso and others in his circle may well have seen the French edition, based on the kinds of images Picasso explored in this era, it is more likely that he studied one or more of the Stratz German-­language volumes. The French translation of Stratz is nonetheless important to this story since it represents a composite of materials from several of his early books, including data on race typologies (along with related photographs) and the purported detrimental impact of modern fashion, corsets in particular. The 1900 and 1902 French Stratz editions were dedicated to Paul Richer, an artist and anatomist who served as professor of art anatomy at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-­A rts. He was also a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine and maintained a particular interest in the intersection of art and science. Both Richer and Stratz addressed the importance of a mécanomorphique approach to form, involving the role muscles play in conveying movement (plate 10; figures 264 and 265). What is also important here is the way that Picasso appears to have chosen red ink for his musculature studies based in part on the Stratz imagery 188

chapter six

(plates 10 and 11). Richer for his part drew on his large photograph collection of models and anthropological subjects (the latter in part for race studies). He projected glass slides of these various images while teaching anatomy to art students in the École’s amphitheater.6 These images date mostly to the early 1890s.

Two Nudes An array of Picasso works, including studies (plate 9; figure 46) for his Two Women (figure 183) of the fall and winter of 1906, not only reveal the likely impact of Stratz’s images on the artist but also in many ways transform the way in which we read Les Demoiselles. In the Stratz photograph in figure 178 we see two smiling women in conversation at a portal, one Caucasian, and one of African descent. The former holds a fluffy fringed bed covering that symbolically and visually separates the two. While both women appear to be modeling before the gaze and pleasure of the photographer, who stands before them in an implied ménage à trois, an afternoon lesbian romp is also suggested. That these two women are nude is significant, for the main contexts in which women of different races in this era would have populated the same space with relatively equal identity would have been a sexual encounter. As is clear from this and other Stratz photographs, the viewer (here clearly a more apt term than “reader”) was interested in not only the comparability of women’s bodies from around the world but also their sexual appeal, individually and with respect to each other. This photograph, appropriately labeled Helle und Dunkle (Light and Dark), is from a later, 1911 edition of Rassenschönheit, although the photograph was likely circulating earlier. Another Stratz photograph (figure 180) is a possible visual source for the beckoning gesture of the raised right hand of the demoiselle standing at the right of the Two Women canvas and related studies. Picasso’s 1906 study (plate 9) of two nudes from different races within a curtain-­delimited setting is interesting to explore here, since in the months ahead not only would he paint Two Women (figure 183), seemingly based in part on this study (though he chose to picture both as Caucasian in the end). He also created several related curtained compositional studies for Les Demoiselles (figures 10 and 210; plate 4). Each of these works suggests in many ways “the threshold of an encounter,” 7 with the curtain marking the coming together and the separation. In Picasso’s early study for Two Women, one woman appears to be black (or mulatto), and the other white, an idea of reciprocal mirroring that has a certain racial aspect and may also have parallels in the different ethnicities The Global Brothel

189

depicted in Les Demoiselles. Picasso’s rendering of the scene here adds a new kind of drama through the compression of interior space and the almost primordial quality of the two figures who communicate with each other through their head cants and finger-­beckoning gestures. The juxtaposition and mirroring of figures in these and other studies became particularly important to Picasso in the summer of 1906 while he was in Gósol, suggesting that he likely began studying the Stratz work while there.8 Other studies suggest this as well. In figures 181 and 182, for example, we see a seeming narrative progression moving from portrayals of two clothed women (figure 181) to these same women without attire (middle) to the now nude women performing on a stage in front of a curtained setting (figure 182) reminiscent of studies for Two Women and Les Demoiselles. The larger theme of women displayed with and without clothing, as Picasso does in several works from this period, including figures 186 and 187, is a recurring one in the various Stratz volumes (compare figures 184 and 185), as well as in the various photograph-rich art magazines circulating at this time, so in many ways Picasso’s interest in this subject is not surprising (figures 186 and 187). La Belle Hollandaise (Figure 186) also complemented the Stratz photos (figures 184 and 185) in evoking a nude Dutch woman attired in nothing but her traditional headdress. In figure 187 a woman in head covering whose buttocks and legs are visible through a translucent skirt carries the frisson of veiling and revealing at the same time. The shorter, fuller bodies of the Two Women (figure 183) here and in other contexts are also of interest, since, as we will see below, these dimensions are shared by several Stratz photographs of women from South Asia (figures 180 and 239). The heavy bodies and proportions of Two Nudes also owe something to African sculpture. One scholar identifies Picasso as having “two distinct phases [of primitivism] . . . the first similar to Matisse’s, the second altogether more original and violent.” 10 The women’s thicker bodies also recall the blocky girth of Gertrude Stein.11 Her homosexuality may have been evoked as well in the mirrored poses and gestures. Read even more overtly, one of the women is seen to pull “back the vulvalike fold of the curtain [with] the other pointing to what is within that fold, [actions suggesting] at once gestures of revelation and hiding.” 12 An additional source for Picasso’s Two Women may have been a January 5, 1907, issue of L’Humanité feminine (figure 190; a key source for Matisse in his exploitation of erotic ethnographic photographs at this time).13 Another possibility is a spring 1906 illustrated essay in L’Étude académique titled “La Culture physique,” which features an image of mirrored females in conversation. 190

chapter six

fig 184

Dutch woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 185

Dutch woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 186

Picasso, La Belle Hollandaise, 1905. fig 187

Picasso, Young Woman in Profile, 1906.

While these images are not as close as those from Stratz, it is interesting that the L’Étude essay highlights beliefs, then prevalent in Germany, about the importance of outdoor living (and nudity) to physical health. It is not surprising that this essay mentions Stratz and that we read here, “Only nude culture, as it was practiced in the ancient Greek gymnasiums (which derived their name from the Greek gymnos, “nude”) could lead to real health and cultivation.” 14 Indeed, for Stratz and other like-­minded individuals in this era, beauty carried important associations with health and character. Stratz’s interests were consistent with leisure-­class concerns in the Weimar era, a period in which physical culture and nudity were important to the development of not only one’s body but also to ideas of authenticity and the utopian ideals of societal egalitarianism.15 In this vision of the world, clothing was seen to be potentially deceptive. Only by removing clothing and disciplining the body could a sense of individual responsibility be promoted or personal success achieved and one’s deficiencies be overcome. Apollinaire and Picasso were familiar with “La Culture physique” ideals, as shown in Picasso’s caricatured rendering of Apollinaire holding a manifesto bearing this name (figure 194).16 This caricature shows a well-­muscled Apollinaire, representing a parody not only of Apollinaire’s writing for the journal but also his sizable weight and girth.17 La Culture physique was among those illustrated periodicals intended in part for École des Beaux-Arts students in need of ready models for nude studies. In February 1907, André Salmon reported that Picasso had “used a drawing to tease his friend into collaborating in the review La Culture physique,” a journal also identified with Stratz.18 While this periodical was clearly linked to health and lifestyle, as one Picasso scholar notes, “Despite the disclaimers, the photos were often purchased without the text by voluptuaries as well as by their intended academic audience.” 19 Photographs from this journal are believed to have inspired several of Edgar Degas’s prostitution studies, works that in turn appeared to influence Picasso as he was working on Les Demoiselles.20 Female nudes and related issues of race were on the minds of many in Paris in this period. One can see this not only in Stratz’s 1900 and 1902 texts in French but also in the order in which women sometimes appear in his volumes, a placement that often included not only distinctions between European women and those from other areas, but also, and equally importantly, between Europeans themselves — ​­Italian versus French, southern German versus Danish. Ideas of race and national identity often overlap here. Within this context, too, are raised 192

chapter six

questions of “ideal” (natural) beauty versus beauty enhanced by fashion. Journals richly illustrated with photographs of naked women, such as Mes Modèles, fashioned its documents by strategic emulation of the École’s beau ideal — ​­an artistic valuation scale that further legitimized social ones — ​­promoting certain feminine standards of grace and beauty, as well as acceptable norms of sexuality.21 Fantasies about women in other cultures played an important role here. As one scholar points out, “Matisse believed that photography, ‘by making it possible to see things for the first time independent of feeling . . . [had] assigned a new role to the imagination.’” 22 Furthermore, “The availability of the halftone reproduction process allowed these revues to skillfully shadow and condense the École tradition as saleable product to a degree of commodification that Paris had never witnessed before. It is no accident that Matisse’s first documented use of photographic reproductions corresponds to this breakthrough moment in the shared histories of nude photography and illustrated erotica in France.” 23 For Picasso, as well, photographic sources offered new models and forms of engagement that had appeal in the larger creative processes.

Picasso and Photography The importance of photography to Picasso’s oeuvre in the period of Les Demoiselles has been addressed by a number of scholars in recent years. These studies include the role of bordello photography and its workers in the early twentieth century.24 Other scholars have pointed to the importance of physical anthropology and the use of photographs in showing not only “ideal types” but also an array of anomalies, such as disease.25 Still other writers have pointed to the role of colonial agendas and issues of alterity framed around the use of photographs or postcards as evidence.26 Photographs from journals intended largely for artists had become increasingly important in Picasso’s circle by this time. Several of these journals were published by Amédée Vignola, of whom it has been written, “Although the message was carefully crafted for artists, Vignola believed it had national and racial import. The sophisticated science of appreciating physical beauty, after all, was a very real step towards cultivating it, concerning nothing less than the ‘physical evolution of the Species towards definitive perfection.’” 27 In part, Vignola saw art as a means to counter what was perceived as the critical threat of “ugliness.” 28 Linked in clear ways to the growing academic and popular interest in scientific

The Global Brothel

193

fig 188

Malinke women (Mali), Fortier 1906. fig 189

Congo woman, L’Humanité feminine, 1907.

evolution, the idea of elevating the human species through a focus on beauty had clear-cut French national political, race, and class implications.29 Vignola’s illustrated journals featuring naked women included, among others, L’Humanité feminine (figures 189, 190, and 192). The twenty-three weekly issues of L’Humanité that appeared between December 1, 1906, and May 4, 1907, took its readers on a whirlwind weekly tour, from Africa to Europe to the Middle East, in no apparent order except to canvas the world of women, many of whom are shown devoid of clothes. Each sixteen-page issue showed a mix of full-body, torso, and head shots, taken indoors and out, clothed and naked, in an array of poses, gestures, and expressions.30 Stratz and Vignola also occasionally published photographs of the same people, among these the young woman from the Congo (figure 189) who appeared in different poses in L’Humanité on December 29, 1906, and in the 1907 edition of Stratz. Matisse employed photographs from journals such as these as partial models in his studies beginning in late 1900.31 In late 1906 or early 1907, Matisse used a photograph of two nude Tuaregs (Targui, a Amazigh [Berber]-related group) from Morocco that appeared in Vignola’s L’Humanité feminine (figure 190) for two sculptures, Standing Nude and La Vie (the latter based in part on the former).32 Several Matisse sculptures, including Two Negresses, are similarly based on Vignola halftone photos. A Matisse studio photograph shows the image in view behind his sculpture as clear evidence that he was engaging with it.33 The same Tuareg photograph was published in 1900 by Stratz.34 Another possible photo194

chapTer six

fig 190

Young Tuareg girls, Morocco, L’Humanité feminine, 1907. fig 191

Java woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 192

Asante woman (Ghana), L’Humanité feminine, 1906.

fig 193

Bamako market (Mali), Fortier 1906.

fig 194

Picasso, Apollinaire, 1905.

graphic source for Picasso and Matisse is the image of a standing Asante woman posing with one arm crooked on her head (figure 192). This photograph appears in the December 29, 1906, issue of L’Humanité feminine and may have had an impact on Matisse’s Blue Nude (figure 19).35 Picasso’s Standing Nude (figure 149) likely derives from Stratz or one of the many ethnographic photo sources as well (figures 188 and 191). Costs and other problems with live models seem to have factored into the change to photographic sources of female figures in various poses. In November 1906, Matisse’s wife recalled that in her absence from Collioure, Matisse had finished a new painting: “In his few weeks without a model, Matisse had copied . . . from a book of photographs of naked girls called Mes Modèles,” another Vignola offering.36 Significantly, we learn, “It is entirely possible that Picasso knew Matisse was using Vignola’s L’Humanité as a source, and either one of them may have introduced it to the other.” 37 In the end, Picasso biographer John Richardson affirmed the possibility “that Picasso worked from photographs, as Matisse did at the time,” specifically “studies in L’Etude académique, a magazine for art students published between 1904 and 1908.” 38 While this and other similar journals are certainly important, it is equally plausible and somewhat more likely considering Picasso’s secrecy that he was exploring one or more of the Stratz volumes, since the photographs, artwork, and diagrams published there more closely resemble the imagery that he experimented with at the time. Whatever their specific sources, photographs of this type clearly encouraged new kinds of thinking about not only the figure but also abstractions therein. Indeed, like the building blocks of draftsman drawings, these photographs convey to Picasso’s female studies an almost architectonic quality. Such photographs played a role in transforming the body through distinctive abstractions. Concerning Matisse, it has been suggested that, “as with the African sculptures he admired, the photograph promoted a vision of the body as a plastic arrangement of volumes and contours. In the artistic vocabulary of Matisse’s time, this vision was often referred to as a decorative one and it was conceived as the antithesis to a picturesque vision; it meant transforming one’s subject rather than merely observing it.” 39 In short, photographs pushed artists like Matisse and Picasso to take liberties with the bodies of these models in a reevaluating process that resulted in new kinds of imagery.40 In many ways, for both artists, photography and African art worked together to promote visual engagements that led to new kinds of abstraction, visual complexity, and a sense of timelessness. While at present we have no concrete evidence — ​­other than the similari196

chapter six

ties within the artworks and the images themselves — ​­that Picasso used photographic sources of this type, several of Picasso’s statements suggest that he did. Picasso avoided directly answering Gelett Burgess’s 1908 question about where he got his models. Richardson observed, “He usually denied [using models] . . . probably to imply that these exercises were no longer necessary.” 41 In the course of several books and articles on Picasso and photography, Anne Baldassari highlighted the importance of these sources — ​­particularly ethnographic ­images — ​­to Picasso’s oeuvre in the 1906–7 period and later.42 She focused on several African postcards dated from 1905 to 1906 that were in Picasso’s collection (including figure 188). These forty-­some colonial-­era postcards were the work of Dakar-­based photographer François-­Edmond Fortier. Although it is unknown precisely when Picasso acquired these postcards, it was most likely in 1906, soon after they were printed in conjunction with either the Senegalese village display at the Grand Palais in Paris or the L’Exposition coloniale de Marseille, the latter of which was attended by André Derain and Matisse.43 One of the postcards that Baldassari highlights with respect to Les Demoiselles is a market scene near Bamako, Mali (figure 193), showing Fortier’s standard “types de femmes” theme. In this horizontal composition, set in a rural village savanna with earthen thatched houses in the background, are six standing women, three of whom hold calabash containers on their heads or shoulders, alongside three sitting or kneeling women, each displaying large calabash halves filled with what appears to be grain. Like many of the photographs of nude women that appear in Stratz and the various journals, most of the women photographed by Fortier are shown with bare chests. Four of the standing women in the Bamako postcard are positioned with their arms angled out or upward, a pose intended in part to accentuate the breasts. This Fortier postcard shares compositional elements with the Stratz photograph of the Dahomey warriors performing in Germany, France, and elsewhere (figure 179). The Stratz image’s tight composition, low focal point, and the bold stares of the women are especially noteworthy. There are similarities between other Stratz and Fortier images as well, such as postures with hands resting on the head or elbows angled outward or balancing vessels atop the head (figure 248). Looking at the whole corpus of Fortier postcards from this era, there are few outside of figures 188 and 193 that share a strong visual resonance with Les Demoiselles (or related studies), while a sizable number of Stratz images seem to have been closely studied and explored by Picasso in works from this period. Whatever the diverse interests of their various readers, the larger impact of The Global Brothel

197

these images — ​­whether published in the Stratz volumes or in the era’s photo-­ rich journals — ​­was that of a whirlwind sexual tour. To take just one example, the 1906–7 issues of L’Humanité were based on an imaginary tour that first stopped in Andalusia, then North Africa, Italy, Dahomey, and Congo, again North Africa, then Germany, returning to North Africa, then to Austria, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey, and finally Senegal.44 In Picasso’s creative mind, he may well have asked, why not bring representatives from all these women together in one place to meet (what would become Les Demoiselles)? In these weekly excursions into global sexual fantasy, the timing of the cojoined Dahomey and Congo stops on December 29, 1906 (figure 189), and North African Tuareg images on January 5, 1907, are of note, particularly since these places clearly interested Picasso, and, in the latter case, Matisse (figure 190). That one of the Congo women displays prominent body markings, consistent with Picasso’s treatment of the face of the African demoiselle in his 1907 canvas, is important. So too is the fact that the very first issue of this series featured women from Andalusia, his homeland. In this way, L’Humanité may have nurtured and advanced Picasso’s own personal and artistic interests. Picasso didn’t need the photographs as models (he likely had Stratz and other sources), but the journals were likely a factor in his decision to reimagine women in his studies and in Les Demoiselles as being part of a more global conversation. Few images in the Vignola journals seem to be specific sources for Picasso’s work, although Baldassari correctly pointed to general features.45 In Picasso’s view, the images were probably both too staid and too readily available. However, as suggested above, there is a broader issue here around the use of photographic sources and the envisioning of a sort of “virtual bordello” — ​­safe sexual, visual pleasure in the age of syphilis — ​­an imaginary brothel that also includes diverse female bodies, sites, and scenes. All of these sources of photographic imagery likely played a role in Picasso’s work, particularly in the critical December 1906–March 1907 era in which he was working on Les Demoiselles. A racial cross-­currency was being promoted in the broader corpus of illustrated artist journals, among these Mes Modèles. These plates sometimes presented women in similar positions to emphasize differences between races. Moreover, as Baldassari points out, the selling of colonialist imagery shaped largely around sexual mores (including titillating lesbian pairings) went hand in hand with the larger “primitivist project,” based on the pejorative view that African women are not only more sexualized but also are readily available for the colonial taking. There is no doubt that Picasso, like other artists, knew and used these jour198

chapter six

nals. Indeed, on a card he mailed to Leo Stein in February 1909, Picasso wrote “L’Humanité feminine: la femme d’afrique” as part of a longer list of objects and work materials (pencils, paint, a camera) he wanted to have when he left for Horta de Sant Joan.46 Note here too the importance of the camera. Picasso’s phrasing suggests that he may have already owned the magazine in question and wanted to put this item aside in preparation for the trip.

Carl Heinrich Stratz: Medical Doctor and Body Connoisseur Although Carl Heinrich Stratz was a medical doctor by training, he is known through his published volumes to have given “greater credence to the intuitive gaze of the physician than to empirical measurements.” Moreover, we know that if one of his examples of racial body type did not quite conform to his preconceived notions of that type, he dismissed it as an exception or explained the deviation as the result of racial mixture. . . . Since his evidence was often based on nude photographs of exotic women that he had purchased during his travels, he had to rely on the information provided by the sellers of these photographs, who, he said, often lied to him about their origins. In order to avoid being cheated, Stratz said, he only purchased photographs that accorded with impressions he had gained during his travels.47 Similar skepticism was certainly warranted concerning his use of female rather than male subjects for his racial studies. Stratz is believed to have selected particular women for his “racial typologies” because they “represented the character of a race in a purer form than men, and it was thus easier to arrive at valid racial classifications by focusing on women’s bodies.” 48 The reason for this focus was Statz’s notably biased belief that “a man’s individuality could supersede his racial character, but a woman’s could not.” 49 In his 1899 volume, however, Stratz changed his views somewhat, arguing that women dominated his studies because his profession as a gynecologist meant that he had fewer male subjects.50 Whatever the reason (and male homosexual concerns are probably part of this mix), the commercial draw of richly illustrated volumes focused on nude or nearly nude women’s bodies was likely an even more important factor for the largely heterosexual male audiences that were purchasing them. Suggestive, too, is the fact that, while Stratz included nude photographs of young girls, teenagers, and women in their twenties, he left out women who were much older than this. The Global Brothel

199

fig 195

Picasso, Nude Combing Her Hair, 1906. fig 196

Girl braiding hair, Stratz, Beauté. fig 197

Vienna girl, Stratz, Beauté. fig 198

Picasso, Seated Female Nude, 1908.

200

The various Stratz volumes show a broad range of women in diverse poses that seem to have influenced Picasso’s work. It was possibly in Holland, during a brief trip in 1905, that Picasso first came in contact with Stratz’s work (compare figures 184 and 185);51 however the artist appears not to have seriously grappled with its rich image base until the summer of 1906. Several of these photographs can be readily matched with Picasso sketches from the summer and fall of 1906, when Picasso was in Gósol, or soon after his return to Paris, extending to the winter and early spring of 1907, when he was working on Les Demoiselles. In one photograph, a woman pulls an arm to the back of her head, forcing her breasts to shift to a strikingly asymmetrical position that creates a sharply diagonal breast line (figure 197; plate 10) that compares in interesting ways with several Picasso studies for Les Demoiselles (and the second figure from the left on the canvas itself) as well as with the painting shown in figure 198.52 In another photograph, a young girl braids her long hair, which drapes down over one breast toward the navel (compare figures 195 and 196). The girl in figure 195 was originally shown kneeling or crouching. A third photograph presents a woman with her hands folded horizontally atop her head, obfuscating her face (compare figures 201, 210, 211, and 212). In a fourth, a girl of South Asian origin clasps her hands together on her forehead, her elbows and wrists angled outward as if to suggest handles (compare figures 200 and 213). In a fi fth, a woman with a raised arm and sharply defined buttock in profi le closely relates to Picasso’s Africanized “Málaga” female (see chapter 5; compare figures 149 and 203). And in a sixth and seventh photograph, a woman raises her arm with outspread fingers (figure 202) reminiscent of the Egyptian demoiselle; another folds her leg across her knee (figure 199), as in studies for the crouching demoiselles. chapTer six

fig 199

Senegal girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 200

Moor woman (Algeria), Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 201

fig 202

fig 203

Danish woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Batak woman (Indonesia), Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Fourteen-yearold girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Fig 204

Human figure diagram, Stratz, Beauté. Fig 205

Proportional study of figure, Stratz, Beauté, 1900. Fig 206

Male and female skeletal structure, Stratz, Beauté, 1900.

202

In addition to these works, some of the postures and gestures shown in the Stratz photographs suggest motifs in Les Demoiselles — ​­as well as in other works, such as The Adolescents (or Two Youths; figure 209). A number of the Stratz photographs show the familiar gesture of arms drawn up and to the back of the head (figure 191), a form seen in the centermost demoiselle, though there are a number of other possible sources as well. The strange raised hand with outspread fingers in the leftmost demoiselle is evocative of Stratz’s female of South Asian origin (figure 202). The demoiselle shown second from the left slides between upright and prone postures reminiscent of several Stratz photographs of half-­reclining, half-­standing females, at once horizontal and vertical, sleeping and awake.53 A somewhat similar figure can be seen in Picasso’s late August 1906 sketch Nu à la draperie. As suggested earlier, Picasso also may have used the 1900 Stratz image of a Parisian woman in street attire in creating one of the important early studies for Les Demoiselles (figure 33). Stratz’s Rassenschönheit and other volumes also were known for their scientific diagrams (figure 206), in particular those drawn from the same photographs he published of women from around the world (figures 207, 208, 265, and 269). With this feature, Stratz sought to distinguish himself from other compilers of similar publications that featured photographs and similar drawings of nude women. Most others, Stratz insisted, such as Richer’s 1897 Dialogue sur l’art et science (1897), were based on idealized proportions (as in figures 204 and 205), as part of broader aesthetic studies, rather than proportions derived from actual body renderings. Stratz saw his work as different from that of individuals who had studied body proportions, such as the German physiologist Gustav Fritsch, who proposed in his 1899 Die Gestalt des Menschen and earlier chapter six

fig 207

German woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 208

Diagram of German woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 209

Picasso, The Adolescents (or Two Youths), 1906. fig 210

Picasso, Woman with Raised Arms, 1906. fig 211

Picasso, Woman with Raised Arms, 1907.

fig 212

Picasso, Female Nude, 1906. fig 213

Picasso, study, Les Demoiselles, 1906–7.

fig 214

Ancient figure, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 215

Hokusai, Japanese bathing scene, c. 1820, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 216

Colonna Venus, c. 350 bce, Stratz, Beauté. fig 217

Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, Stratz, Beauté.

volumes that human body proportions should suggest “classical beauty norms,” as based on factors such as spine length. After studying Fritsch’s canonical body proportions for women from different parts of the globe, Stratz found that only white women met the ideal.54 Drawings of these women displayed proportions of earlier eras established in Greco-Roman arts.55 Stratz’s inclusion of images of prehistoric (figure 214) and classical GrecoRoman sculpture reinforces this idea, and the inclusion of artworks from various eras and areas of the world is interesting in light of his global interests as well (figures 215 and 216).56 Significantly, several of the Stratz volumes, including La Beauté de la femme (1900), also include photographs of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (86; figure 217), a theme important to Picasso (also by way of Ingres; figure 13) in addressing the larger theme of origins and parturition in the Les Demoiselles (chapter 7).57 Detailed numbering and diagrams were included in several of Picasso’s studies for Les Demoiselles (figure 213) that are broadly reminiscent of those found in Stratz’s illustrations. That Picasso did a number of these studies on tracing paper suggests that he was using books such as Stratz in recalibrating the proportions of his figures based on actual photographs or diagrams. Many of the photographs and diagrams in Stratz are shown together, like Frobenius’s grouped mask illustrations, encouraging the viewer to explore the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional form. These paired images also provided a possible basis for the mirroring play that Picasso pursued in this era and later (compare figures 229–30, 231, and 235–38).

Models, Postures, and Gestures 204

chapTer six

Stratz chose a wide array of poses for his nude models to meet the interests and expectations of diverse viewers, artists among these. It was in this context that Picasso appears to have begun to explore the imagery in Stratz, shifting to photographic sources instead of living models in the process. Indeed, to some extent these photographs likely became for him a kind of ready model. It has been suggested that “Picasso may have resorted to such photographs following his return from Gósol in the fall of 1906, because, as he told Pierre Daix, he did not work from a model after that vacation.” 58 Yet it would appear that he already worked with photographic models while he was in Gósol, as indicated by imagery in his sketchbooks from this summer period (see “Sketchbooks: New Dating”). Consistent with this we learn that “even in works dating from 1906, where the impact of Iberian or tribal art intervenes, [one sees] certain apparent distortions of gesture . . . [in which] Picasso . . . accepts a new challenge: to pro­ ject subjectivity into images of exotic cultures, to appropriate even archaic icons by vicarious inhabitation.” 59 Like several of Picasso’s works made during his stay in Gósol, the range of postures and gestures found in his 1906 painting The Harem (figure 218), created likely just after his return, suggests that he was largely using Stratz or a similar source. In many ways, each of the main bathing figures in The Harem seems to have a model in one of the women posed in Stratz or in artworks included therein (figures 219–23). Since to some degree Stratz sought to have his models (most notably European ones) use postures from historical artworks, it is not surprising that these gestures share similarities with works that could be found in museums, private collections, and illustrated art books. It is important to underscore the close relationship between historical artworks and the nudes that appeared in these volumes. One of the most striking art forms included in Stratz is an early nineteenth-­ century drawing of a Japanese bath scene (figure 215) from Katsushika Hokusai’s Manga series circa 1820.60 Like The Harem, this Japanese woodcut incorporates a bird’s-­eye perspective peering down on the activities from the upper left corner and presents seven women in various bathing poses, taking water from adjacent wooden tubs or drying off with towels. A single tall ceramic jug replaces these tubs in the Picasso scene, where different body-­drying states are a key focus. Equally important is the figure of the male shown in the Japanese woodcut. Seated on a dais at the rear left, he holds a large open book in front of his face, as if oblivious to the scene in front of him, in much the same way that the seated male nude in the foreground of The Harem has his eyes closed and is drunk and The Global Brothel

205

fig 218

Picasso, The Harem, 1906.

fig 219

fig 220

Girl kneeling, Stratz, Beauté.

German woman, Stratz, Beauté.

fig 221

fig 222

fig 223

Woman washing hair pose, Stratz, Beauté.

Eberlein, cast of woman, Stratz, Beauté.

French woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

dozing. If we are to understand the Japanese print as a harem bath scene, we can conclude that this bath guard is a eunuch. Both the Japanese woodcut and Picasso’s work are about averting one’s glance; in the latter work, the male’s eyes are at once blind and focused on things ordinarily unseen. In this way, Hokusai’s bathing scene, perhaps first discovered by Picasso in Stratz, should be considered as a partial inspiration for both The Harem and Les Demoiselles.61 In many ways the sleeping male in the foreground of The Harem also recalls the historical role of male castrati guardians (frequently individuals of African descent) within the harem. Color was also important in this work and in others from this 1906–7 period. The pleasure that Picasso seemingly derived from the Gósol area’s rustic setting, activities, and denizens during the summer of 1906 may have encouraged him to change to a more warm yet austere ochre palette. As Picasso emerged from his early 1904–6 rose period, a time when rich orange and rose hues were still balanced by other colors, he turned to more monochromatic treatments, in which earth-­hued pigments dominated. This had an almost classicizing effect near the end of this period, as seen in the works Two Women (figure 183), The Adolescents (or Two Youths; figure 209), and The Harem (figure 218), all of which date to the late summer or fall of 1906 and share a pale ochre color hue similar to ­Schwartze’s Sleeping Psyche (plate 13) published by Stratz. Picasso’s use of monochrome antique-­looking sepia hues has been said to derive from the postcards Picasso saw in this era.62 While this may be correct, equally interesting is that alongside these visual sources are several images published by Stratz that are notably sepia in hue. Sleeping Psyche (plate 13), a lithograph by Dutch-­born artist Thérèse Schwartze, with its red chalk features is one such work.63 The image of Psyche, the human soul, sleeping but soon to be awakened by Cupid’s kiss, is published here by Stratz in part to lay claim to science (race analysis), yet clearly he also engages the idea of sex. By including a prehistoric female figure (figure 214) alongside myriad photographs and drawings of women from around the world, Stratz drew attention to primordial ancestry and the idea of the broader family of humanity as one that embraces many races. This theme is also in play in Les Demoiselles (see chapter 7). In Rassenschönheit Stratz provided additional illustrations of the effect of background colors on rendering different body hues, such as purple versus yellow (figures 225 and 226) and red versus gray (plate 12). It is hard to see this effect in a black-­and-­white illustration, but it is important not to overlook the distinctive interior coloring of the demoiselles’ strange wall chamber (plate 1; The Global Brothel

207

fig 224

Graph of “Ideal Beauty,” Stratz, Beauté.

fig 225

fig 226

Color study (purple) of Caucasian beauty, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Color study (yellow) of Caucasian beauty, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

compare plate 12) as having a similar interest and effect. Here, Picasso positioned the five women in a setting of different color backgrounds that seem to suggest their different racial identities. Indeed, as in Stratz’s color studies, in Les Demoiselles the dominant background colors are blue-­gray and terracotta.64 For Stratz the question of body portrayals against differently colored settings was as much about science as art. He also provides a graph delineating the specific ages of rising and declining female beauty, bringing women into still closer scrutiny via purportedly scientific objectivity (figure 224). Stratz’s color diagrams of human musculature are important, too. In the rendering of a woman’s body in plate 10, what is striking is not only the bold asymmetry of her torso and breasts but also the patterning of the muscle structure on the body’s surface. This is another example of how the female body, through photography and detailed scientific illustration, is seen to transcend naturalistic convention and to suggest a greater level of architectonic engagement and abstraction. That Picasso may have seen and drawn inspiration from the red Stratz musculature drawings is suggested in several of his studies for Les Demoiselles. A group of Picasso’s studies of this period from late 1906 to early 1907 feature marked muscular details (plate 11; figures 227 and 228) that are very similar to key diagrams in Stratz. These were intended to show not so much body surfaces but rather what lies within that affects body form and movement. Picasso’s examples include red ink drawings of a rear and profile figure with her hands positioned on her head, in which her musculature is prominently shown. Equally interesting is a clearly related red ink figure by Picasso from the same sketchbook as the study for the sailor based on one of Frobenius’s African masks (figure 228). Both were created in preparation for Les Demoiselles. This sketchbook image set offers evidence that Picasso was likely using the Frobenius and Stratz volumes at the same time in his visual experiments. Questions of sexual convergence and ambiguity (androgyny) are visible in Stratz’s and Picasso’s work. In one of Picasso’s seated figures (figure 227), he appears to intentionally blur male and female identities. Arms, legs, and chest are heavily muscled (evoking the male), but the hair is long (characteristically female), and we see what appear to be breasts, although they could also be pectoral muscles. Like Stratz, who used red to emphasize anatomical features such as skeletal attributes and muscle groups, Picasso chooses red brushwork to mark key details of the torso and limbs. Note the African-masklike physiognomy in this seated figure (compare figures 106 and 109), suggesting that Picasso was simultaneously exploring imagery seen in Frobenius and Stratz. The Global Brothel

209

One frequently sees similar kinds of gender ambiguities in African sculpture (figures 99–101), where abstraction, minimalization, or breastlike pectorals on men (as well as beards and phallic lip labrets) challenge the eye of even a skilled connoisseur to distinguish gender identity. Related questions of sexual and racial ambiguity (or “transgression”) featured not only in pseudoscientific literature but also in popular culture. Picasso and Matisse, by challenging classical canons of beauty in their choices of new body typologies drawn from photographs, African art, and other forms, were seeking in part to reshape this legacy. Indeed, the “fluid notion of sexed identities that we see in Matisse’s nudes of 1906–9 suggests the pivotal role played by African sculpture in the artist’s search for ways to depict less normative visions of human sexuality.” 65 Moreover, this was “not simply an avant-­garde gambit to attack the academic canon of femininity, to shock contemporary viewers with excessive laidification as an end to itself [but] . . . reflect[s on] a deeper meditation on the nature of sexual identity.” 66 By presenting similar yet contrasting figures, these artists encouraged their viewers to explore these issues in new ways.67 This dovetails with the subject of eugenics and what were then perceived to be deep problems resulting from cross-­racial sexual engagements. This subject was also explored in the Stratz volume through photographs of mixed-­race individuals. The leftmost of the females in Les Demoiselles seems to have been painted by Picasso in such a way as to suggest that she transcends two geographic (and racial) typologies — ​­Southeast Asia and Egypt. And, not surprisingly, in this era when theories of eugenics were very much in play, the related issues explored in Stratz were seen to have scientific credibility.

Mirroring Reversals and Pairings Picasso, in this critical period from late 1906 to early 1907, shared with Stratz a fascination with what might be called mirrored reversals, that is the ways in which one form could be at once reflected in and reversed in another. This can be seen in the basic treatment of the body (clothed versus unclothed).68 Picasso and Stratz in this era also shared a keen interest in the ways in which the body could be better understood through pairings: front versus back views, standing couples from multiple vantages (front and side; figure 234; or front and back, 235–36, 237–38), as well as paired standing and sitting individuals (figures 229–30, 240). When looking at these images it is clear that if Picasso had not seen Stratz’s volume, he must have seen works very similar to it. These mirrored portrayals challenge one to rethink identities in new ways. Stratz’s 210

chapter six

fig 227

Picasso, Seated Nude, 1906–7. fig 228

Picasso, open sketchbook no. 9, 1907.

fig 229

Picasso, Two Nudes Holding Hands, 1906. fig 230

Picasso, Two Nude Women, 1906.

fig 231

Hottentot woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 232

German girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 233

Andalusian girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 234

Picasso, Three Standing Nudes, 1906. fig 235

Picasso, study for crouching figure, 1907.

fig 236

Picasso, study for crouching figure (back view), 1907. fig 237

Picasso, Nude with Bun, 1907. fig 238

Picasso, Nude with Bun, 1907.

engagement with these paired poses (see also figures 241–244) is consistent with practices of scientific racism, but what is also interesting is that formal front, rear, and profi le views are used especially for non-Western women (figure 231); the European women’s poses suggest a greater modesty and more of an interest in artful posing (figures 220, 232, 233, and 243). As we have also seen in the Stratz photographs and Picasso’s portrayals of female couples, the theme of pairing can hint voyeuristically at homosexuality (figures 178 and 239–40) in a not so nuanced way. Picasso and Stratz showed an interest in triads of women (figures 241, 242, and 245–47; plate 5). Three-figure compositions have a long history in art and evoke, among other things, the Three Graces, or Zeus’s daughters. The compositional interest and the seeming irony of including native women within the same taxonomic frame of “three beauties” would not have been lost on Picasso or Stratz. There is also in these figural triads something architectonic that further 212

chapTer six

removes the form from its photographic source and its natural subject, such that the work emphasizes the contrasting appeal of core volumes and voids, angles and oppositions, as seen for example in Picasso’s seeming translation of a scene of three women carrying vessels on their heads (figure 246). Comparisons of photographs and drawings of children published by Stratz with several studies by Picasso from this era are equally striking (figures 249– 51). Stratz was interested in stages of development, and comparisons of bodies at different ages (figure 252). Picasso’s work from this period showing mothers and children or siblings suggests a similar interest (figures 250–51, 253–55). Many of the young women on the pages of Stratz’s books were intended to be seen as fictively chaste yet sexually provocative subjects of artistic (or scientific) scrutiny (figures 199, 219, and 220). It seems clear that images of women, like those of race, had a derisive societal impact due to the seductiveness of their framing, in essence normalizing a sexual interest in children. This was made even more problematic since, hidden in clear view within these thickly illustrated and widely pursued texts, were images deemed to have a basis in science

The gloBal BroThel

fig 239

Two women from Siam, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 240

Picasso, Seated and Standing Women, 1906.

213

fig 241

Japanese women bathing, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 242

Sandwich Islands women, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 243

Italian woman and girl, Stratz, Beauté. fig 244

Egyptian and Nubian, L’Humanite feminine, 1907.

fig 245

Picasso, Three Standing Nudes, 1906.

fig 246

Picasso, The Blue Vase: The Dance (study), 1906.

fig 247

Th ree Zulu girls, Stratz, Rassenschoenheit.

fig 248

Togo women, Stratz, Frauenkleidung.

and reason. When we add to this their simultaneous associations with science, art, and sexual desire — all wrapped up in an attractive package that drew on broadly shared intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic grounding — the impact of these volumes is all the more problematic. The results were damaging, since these works also served as documentary evidence for establishing some living populations (including Africans, Native Americans, Asians, and others) as less developed than others, as well as viewing women and children as the “natural” object of broader societal interest and desire. Photography offered new potentials to view the body not only from multiple angles but also in motion: carrying children, carrying vessels, walking, or doing backbends. Many such images (both the photographs themselves and the drawfig 249

Girl, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 250

Picasso, Two Children, 1906. fig 251

Picasso, Adolescent Boy with Two Children, 1906.

fig 252

Children’s growth chart, Stratz, Naturegeschichte.

216

chapTer six

left | left to right

above | left to right

fig 256

fig 253

Sri Lankan mother and child, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

Picasso, Female Nude, 1906.

fig 257

Japanese mothers and children, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 254

Picasso, Two Brothers, 1906. fig 255

Picasso, Nude with Child, 1906.

ings based on them) are found in Stratz; during this period Picasso takes them up as well, among these women carrying pots on their heads (figures 259–64) and people in walking poses (figures 265–267). While some of these scenes may have been typical of the rural Spanish area where Picasso spent part of this summer, Stratz’s photographs of similar themes likely had an impact. And, indeed, some of these themes (backbends, for example) Picasso is unlikely to have seen up close in either Spain or France. Many of the movement studies, combined with the types of inversions of back/front, still/motion, interior/exterior body engagements taken up by both Stratz and Picasso, suggest what Leo Steinberg has called a kind of cinematic “shot/counter-shot.”69 Like the paired figures in Picasso’s Two Nudes study (plate 9) for Two Women (figure 183), these images The gloBal BroThel

217

fig 258

Hindu woman, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 259

Picasso, Woman at the Fountain, 1906.

fig 260

Picasso, Woman Carrying Pot, 1906. fig 261

Burma water carrier, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 262

Drawing, Burma water carrier, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 263

Picasso, Woman Carrying Pot, 1906. fig 264

Picasso, nude carrying a pot, 1906.

fig 265

Drawing, women walking, Stratz 1900. fig 266

Picasso, Nudes in Profile, Walking, 1906. fig 267

Picasso, Nude with Bun, Walking, 1906.

fig 268

Backbend photographic study, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 269

Motion study of backbend, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 270

Picasso, Nude Doing Backbend (profi le), 1907. fig 271

Picasso, Nude Doing Backbend (back view), 1907.

fig 272

Graffiti on figures, Stratz, Rassenschönheit. fig 273

Picasso, Woman with Arms Raised, Rassenschönheit. fig 274

Picasso, Female Figures, 1907.

220

serve in their own right as a form of “consecutive” visual engagement in which we see these figures “almost shading off into each other.”70 Similar interest in the photography of motion in humans and animals goes back to the 1880s with the work of Eadweard Muybridge and others, when glass slides were sometimes flipped very quickly to achieve the same effect. For Stratz, the added importance of diagrams of moving bodies drawn from photographs cojoined issues of science, sex, and art in new ways.71 Similar engagements occur in Picasso’s notebooks, where clearly linked images are seen on the fronts and backs of certain pages (recto-versos; figures 171 and 176; 283 and 285).72 This has been described as a kind of “graphic contamination,” in which one configuration suggests a digression or amplification of another work nearby.73 There is something similar at play in many of Picasso’s recto-verso studies from this period, as we have seen, and in the front and rear views of the same figures. While one scholar identifies this recto-verso engagement as a “lifetime obsession” of Picasso,74 it was particularly pronounced in this 1906–7 period. That Stratz includes a large number of related photographs and diagrams may be one reason for this. In some cases, readers added graffiti to the Stratz plates that conveys the ways in which these images could inspire the viewer to fantasize with and through them (see, for example, tracings of the fine line impressions by an early owner of my volume; figure 272). Whether one was an “ordinary” (generally male) reader or someone like Picasso, the surfeit of nude photographs of women in books of this sort in one’s own private collection offered unique opportunities for visual play and experimentation, including issues of androgyny and sexual ambiguchapTer six

ity wherein female torsos, heads, and limbs are transformed into penises, and buttocks into balls. In one painting Picasso has reinvented the rear view of a women’s body as a phallus (figure 273). In another (figure 274), he shows the central left figure with an erect phallus and breasts, three nearby kneeling women with bun-­style hairdos recast as similar erect phallus forms, and three adjacent standing women (one with a concave heart-­shaped African-masklike face) with breasts inscribed with eye glasses. Picasso was known to add supplementary imagery (graffiti) to published newspaper and journal images; he sometimes also pressed lines into a page to transfer one page image to another sheet.75 In many ways Stratz’s volumes, with their myriad images and diagrams, called out for a similar intervention, and Picasso may have succumbed. The enormous scale and disjunctured viewpoints, stylistic variables, and racial aspects of Les Demoiselles, as well as the large array of studies for this work, seem consistent with Picasso’s grappling with a theme of unique complexity, difficulty, and importance. This suggests a global brothel that has its origins in a pseudoevolutionary framework wherein a disparate assemblage of females from around the world are reunited within the 1907 canvas. In short, it is hard not to see Picasso as grappling with issues similar to those that Stratz (and others) were exploring pictorially and textually in this era. Through its early names, My Bordello and the Philosophical Brothel, Picasso’s seminal painting seems to evoke not just a virtual brothel, that is, one largely available for contemplation through the pages of a book or an artwork featuring naked or nearly naked women, but also the family of humans — ​­the source and wellspring from which all humans emerged. It is this theme that, in part, I explore further in chapter 7.

The Global Brothel

221

Pl ate 1

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.

Pl ate 2

Republic of the Congo and Gabon masks, Frobenius 1898.

Pl ate 3

Picasso, Study of Man, 1907.

Pl ate 4

Picasso, compositional study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.

Pl ate 5

Picasso, Three Figures under a Tree, 1907–8.

Pl ate 6

Picasso, SelfPortrait, 1907.

Pl ate 7

Anon., Kongo mask, 1898.

Pl ate 8

Dirks, Katzenjammer Kids, 1906.

Pl ate 9

Picasso, Two Nudes Standing in Front of a Curtain, 1906.

Pl ate 10

Human musculature, Stratz 1907.

Pl ate 11

Picasso, study of women, 1907. right Pl ate 12

Color study, Stratz 1900.

Pl ate 13

Schwartze, Sleeping Psyche, c. 1879–98.

Pl ate 14

Chart of world races, Stratz 1911.

Pl ate 15

Map of global race distribution, Stratz 1907.

Chapter seven

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. P A B L O P I C A S S O,

quoted in Herschel Browning Chipp,

Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, 264

Le Bordel Philosophique At the Collège de France in the heart of Paris’s Latin Quarter, a young historian presented a provocative lecture on the symbolic primacy of light in medieval France. Halfway through his talk, a medieval manuscript page flashed onto the immense screen behind him (figure 275). Seated in the audience, I immediately recognized it as another possible source for one of Picasso’s studies created around the time of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (figures 276 and 279). Picasso was a voracious consumer of images — ​­high art and low, local and foreign, historical and contemporary. For him, to quote the Collège’s Latin motto, the world docet omnia (teaches everything). Better still, to take up the words of Maurice Merleau-­Ponty emblazoned above the institution’s main hall, the products of Picasso’s own studio-­laboratory were “not preconceived notions, but . . . free thought.” The manuscript in question was one that medieval scholars know well, a thirteenth-­century work by Villard de Honnecourt intended in part for cathedral masons and others involved in the building trade, Album de Villard de Honnecourt: Architecte du XIIIe siècle. Immediately after the lecture I found a recent facsimile of the volume in a nearby bookstore, a reprint of the 1906 edition of Honnecourt’s large-­format

circa 1225–35 album of parchment sheets now in the National Library of France. The manuscript contains over two hundred pen a­ nd ink drawings, the most interesting of which are diagrams of animals and humans, including the one shown at the Collège that morning. The 1906 edition, published in Paris by Berthaud frères, had met with “thunderous” success, according to the publisher. Picasso clearly was aware of it, based on his strong interest in medieval art in the 1906–7 period (chapter 3).1 In the week that followed the historian’s lecture, as I prepared my own lecture on early African aesthetics here for the same Collège’s anthropology seminar the following week, I thought about Picasso’s Honnecourt-­inspired imagery. As with many of Picasso’s other book sources, it is not evident whether the artist had read the text, but he had clearly studied the accompanying illustrations, as several diagrams of animals and humans shown in this remarkable volume are reflected in Picasso’s work from this period.2 Particularly notable are sketches of “elemental” humans and animals (figures 276, 278, 279, and 322) that populate his Demoiselles sketchbooks as part of his broader search for the most basic ways to render form. These works suggest close complements with Honnecourt’s drawings. It was not only Honnecourt’s elemental geometries of the frontal and profile animal figures and human heads that held my eye but also his diagrammatic renderings of exotic long-­necked ostriches or flamingos (figure 275) and a racing quadruped (a dog, perhaps). Picasso reengaged these same animals in his own diagrammatic sketches, not only flamingos and storks (figure 276) but also running and standing dogs of various species. The bird species would likely have been familiar to Villard de Honnecourt only through the thirteenth-­century African trade (ostrich feathers were particularly valued in Europe during this period). Picasso’s elemental animal and human drawings from late 1906 were in part fanciful exercises to see how few lines it would take to make a viable image of a given species. They were drawn for a volume called Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d’Orphée, authored and later published (with different images) by Guillaume Apollinaire, who certainly would have known of the new Honnecourt edition. Similar ideas of pared-­down, elemental forms were also important to poets and writers in this circle, including Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein. The Picasso sketch in figure 278 (compare 277) reveals how the artist used these basic features to play with forms in new ways. In another sketch that also explores elementary form

le bordel philosophique

223

fig 275

Geometric and figural drawings, 1220s–40s, Villard de Honnecourt, 1906. fig 276

Picasso, Animals, 1907.

fig 277

Figure, 1220s–40s, Villard de Honnecourt 1906. fig 278

Picasso, Study of Nude, 1906–7. fig 279

Picasso, Woman in Profile with Pony Tail, 1907.

(figure 279), a large-­eared ponytailed girl in three-­quarter rear view is positioned atop a flock of birds (ducks and pigeons) with a fox in their midst. The image is not only prescient and playful but also fully engages questions of sign fluidity and arbitrariness. The outline of the girl’s ponytail defines the body of four birds — ​­three in profile and one in three-­quarter rear view. A somewhat wary fox in the lower middle of the page is in three-­quarter frontal view, its tail shaped by this same ponytail, which, in turn, transforms into the duck’s body. In this way the seductive curving dynamic of the ponytail simultaneously suggests the animated body and tail of a fox or a dog, and its potential prey. Through this ponytail the bird flock is now endangered by the predator fox in their midst. In another sense, fox (and tail) is to fowl as artist (and brush) is to model, or man to woman. We see the latter by looking at this drawing from another vantage, for example, the eye and beak of the pigeon that has metamorphosed into the angled ear of the girl. The drawing, in short, is an artistic synecdoche in which the part (tail, brush) is identified as a whole (fox, artist), a form of engagement that Picasso explored in other contexts as well. The work was completed at some point after Picasso had seen Henri Matisse’s Vili sculpture (figures 43 and 44), because the ponytailed girl featured in in this sketch is in many ways related to the woman with a canted head and large ear (figure 45) that Picasso appears to have worked on at this time. In addition to its liveliness, inventiveness, and humor, this sketch also provides insight into the transformational kind of work that Picasso undertook in Les Demoiselles, and in the studies that led to it. The ponytailed girl has long been recognized as one of a group of studies critical to the conceptualization of the crouching demoiselle. By the time the ponytailed girl was introduced into the 1907 canvas as the crouching demoiselle, she had been altered nearly beyond recognition, transformed into the strange female guardian of the scene of a five-­ woman engagement in Picasso’s painting. This sketch was equally important for exploring the early tenets of cubism, for it was this ponytailed girl (or another like it) with which Picasso’s close friend André Salmon stated, “Cubism was born.” 3 While Picasso specialists later departed from this view by proposing a series of mediating distinctions between forms such as these and concepts of cubism, the salient point here is that already by October 1906, Picasso had explored the arbitrariness of sign and symbol as both visual instrument and object.

le bordel philosophique

225

Medieval Art The remarkable folio drawings and text of Honnecourt (born c. 1190 ce) are today considered the most important existing medieval texts penned by an artist of this early period. The work was prepared for local builders’ guilds with detailed commentaries and illustrations of everything from figural and decorative arts to human proportion and movement studies, machine and construction diagrams, and important buildings, ground plans, and architectural details (window forms, furniture types, and towers). Images from classical Greece and Rome, most notably four cloth-­draped nude women, rounded out the imagery. The animal studies and figural diagrams, along with the proportional studies of bisecting geometries and basic laws of construction, were likely of greatest interest to the young Picasso. In his quest to move beyond the heavy weight of artistic rendering delimited by idioms of naturalism and realism, the young artist had actively sought something simple, elemental, and primary. Honnecourt’s inclusion of exotic Arabic and Indian forms was noteworthy, for in Picasso’s era, medieval art was considered to be part of a larger globalizing endeavor, one in which early European forms and foreign motifs were considered to be “primitive.” We can see in these examples what William Rubin described as Picasso’s striking interests in “‘outsiders’ or ‘primitives’ within the Western tradition . . . [extending also to] the oldest indigenous art of Picasso’s native Iberian peninsula.” 4 A number of Honnecourt’s diagrammatic sketches of human proportions and body parts suggest an interest in the conceptualization of images and the laws of construction. As noted above, Picasso’s drawings (figure 278) compare in interesting ways with Honnecourt forms (figure 277). Both of these figures render a standing human in frontal pose with hands on hips. In each, diamond diagrammatic lines delimit key parts of the body and points of transition therein. Proportional markers define the basic geometry of both humans to show a scale of comparative measurement that is more otherworldly than earthbound. Both also recapture the body and its modes of core representation as inherently two-­ and three-­dimensional. Picasso played with similar diagonal schema in other studies from this era, works that likely also drew from Carl Heinrich Stratz. Picasso explored questions of abstraction and core geometries similar to those that were part of Honnecourt’s conceptualization (as “abstract directrixes”).5 He conveyed an interest in the structural interconnections between profile and frontal view, two-­dimensional representation and three-­dimensional form, 226

chapter seven

ideas also reflected in many of the Frobenius and Stratz illustrations. Picasso additionally sought to engage ideas of primary structure or what one might call geometric primitivism. Picasso’s sketches, in particular those inspired by Honnecourt’s album, show the artist’s remarkably informed engagement, as well as advanced draftsman skills, in ways that are at once wholly modern and yet resonate with the past. These sketches offer new insights into the types of images Picasso engaged during the months he worked on Les Demoiselles, when he was also beginning to envision the form this new painting would take. Many ideas came into play at this time: elemental geometries; primary structure; the core relationship between two-­dimensional ground plans, three-­dimensional objects, and four-­ dimensional spaces; profile versus frontal rendering; still versus moving forms; “primitive” and earlier historical models; primary geometric and artistic elements; and “exotic” animal and human motifs. Picasso’s composite ponytailed girl and animal sketch exemplifies this turn to the past in ways that were simultaneously very modern.

Au Rendez-­vous des Poètes A range of issues broadly conceived as “philosophical” lie at the heart of Picasso’s Demoiselles visual engagements in the vital period from October 1906 t­ o March 1907, when he was focusing on this project. As André Malraux stated, in the early 1900s Picasso and his friends gathered at the bistro known as Closerie des Lilas (figures 6 and 7), near the Jean-­Baptiste Carpeaux fountain displaying women from around the world (figure 280). Of this bistro we learn, “It was there that Paul Fort, director of the review Vers et Prose, would meet every Tuesday with such writers and painters as Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Picasso and Braque.” 6 Fernande Olivier emphasized the importance of these Tuesday evening discussions: After dinner on Tuesdays we’ve been going to the Closerie des Lilas, which has kept some of its charm from the days when shop girls used to go dancing there to meet their sweethearts. . . . But the new crowd that goes there has created quite a different atmosphere — ​­they’re almost all intellectuals or artists, the picture of bohemianism, with their capes, broad-­brimmed felt hats, untidy long hair and loosely tied cravats. Often we go on foot which is fun, even if it means walking right across Paris. These Tuesday events . . . are attended by poets, writers, painters, sculple bordel philosophique

227

tors and musicians, young and old, who crowd into the café and onto the terrace. Drink is unlimited and by midnight everyone has become quite exhilarated.7 These nights indeed exhilarated Picasso. During his work on Les Demoiselles, as Salmon recalled, “One night Picasso deserted the group of friends deep in intellectual discussion: he went back to his studio and, taking up this picture, which he had left untouched for a month. . . . By a sublime stroke of caprice he had turned his picture into a masterpiece.” 8 It is clear that Picasso was now ready to initiate work on it. Stein also recognized this group of intellectuals as being important to Picasso. In her autobiography, written in the guise of Alice B. Toklas, she recalls, “I can so well remember the first time Gertrude Stein took me to see Guillaume Apollinaire. It was a tiny bachelor’s apartment on the rue des Martyrs. The room was crowded with a great many small young gentlemen. Who, I asked Fernande, are all these little men. They are poets, answered Fernande. I was overcome. I had never seen poets before, one poet yes but not poets.” 9 Reflective of this environment, Picasso posted a sign on his Bateau-­Lavoir studio door, circa 1905, with the words “Au rendez-­vous des poètes” (the meeting place of poets).10 This was a period of particularly rich exchange between artists, poets, and intellectuals, who together had formed a kind of avant-­garde “gang.” Both Jacob and Salmon (themselves struggling poets) had been living at Bateau-­Lavoir since 1905 and, along with Picasso, were members of the group. Another group member, art dealer and journalist Henri-­Pierre Roché, had introduced Picasso to Leo and Gertrude Stein in 1906.11 Discussions of literary subjects (such as the “ages of man”), philosophy, evolution, politics, and other issues of the day would have been of interest. So, too, would the changes brought by the new century (now only a few years old) and questions of how the world would be transformed in the years ahead. This gang of poets was Picasso’s think tank and social club. Apollinaire, who lived close by and was a leader in the avant-­garde literary scene, also played a vital part in the group helping to widen Picasso’s “intellectual horizons.” 12 It was Apollinaire who promoted the idea that poets and artists could create a shared “special language” that would enhance and connect the two worlds and their works. This likely is reflected in Picasso’s turn to elementary forms and Apollinaire’s use of “ideogrammes” in this era. The latter comprise poetic words composed on paper in the form of simple figures and animals. 228

chapter seven

Picasso also turned his hand to poetry. One of his compositional studies for Les Demoiselles (figure 283) features three women in a curtained space, set dramatically in the top half of the page, at an angle, and includes a layered series of words delimited thematically around the idea of germination. On the verso of this sheet is an unusual six-person compositional study for the canvas (figure 285). This study was tucked into Picasso’s sketchbook number four (see “Sketchbooks: New Dating”), which contained many critical drawings for Les Demoiselles. The women shown are the three most important demoiselles in compositional terms in the final canvas and related studies: the leftmost curtain-holding figure, the crouching figure, and the standing figure directly above her. These are the women that share non-European identities. Next to the leftmost figure in the sketch is a form that looks something like a four-petal seedpod, which does not appear in other compositional sketches. This suggests Picasso’s interest in ideas of evolution, growth, and change as he worked on Les Demoiselles. It is clear from this sketch that he sees Les Demoiselles rather differently than as simple (if notably jarring) brothel scene. Below the sketch is the French word Jurais, followed by three instances of the word Germinal, one of which was cut in half when Picasso divided the sheet, which he then reconstituted. At the end we find what appears to be the word Cuirs.13 The possible meaning of this study/poem is important to explore. Jurais means “swore” in French (imperfect tense, from the verb jurer, “to swear” or “to blaspheme”). This suggests the importance of the spoken word to set in motion events such as those at the beginning of time. Germinal derives from the term germen, from the Latin root meaning “seed.” Its repetition associates it with a chant or magical verse. Cuirs (if this is indeed the word Picasso intended to

le bordel philosophique

fig 280

Carpeaux, Fountain of the Four Parts of the World, Paris, 1874. fig 281

Tree support with masks, Frobenius 1895. fig 282

“Asante skull dance,” late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

229

fig 283

Picasso, Three Figures with Lettering, 1907.

write) evokes hides or skins, the attire of early humans. As such the text contains ideas not only of germination but also of birth and growth. In part, this set of words evokes a philosophical debate implied by one of the early titles of Les Demoiselles, Le Bordel philosophique. In this sketch, we move through various phases of growth or evolution, from a curse, through seeds and germination, to skins. Combined with its seedpod, the sketch offers the first clues as to the philosophy behind Les Demoiselles. Germinal suggests the seventh month of the year in the French Republican calendar (March 21 through April 19) and springtime, when seeds germinate, grow, and prepare to bear fruits and new seeds. March 26, as we recall, likely is the date that Picasso began to paint the canvas. In many ways, this poem also evokes the idea of Picasso’s own concerns with success, transformation, and growth. In addition, Germinal is the name of Émile Zola’s well-known 1885 novel that explores the difficulties of a migrant worker caught in a French miner’s strike. In Zola’s novel, the title name resonates with socialist ideals for improving workers’ lives, and specifically the better futures they hoped to have. 230

chapTer seven

Fig 285

Picasso, study, Les Demoiselles, 1907.

Fig 284

Postcard, Picasso to Leo Stein, 1907.

As Zola wrote at the end of this hugely popular work, in a phrase intended to offer hope, “Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself.” 14 Picasso was exploring similar ideas of germination, increase, and identity in Les Demoiselles, as suggested by the poem’s word selection and seedpod element in this compositional sketch. Zola writes of a character in his novel, Germinal, “Despite all the poverty and suffering she has known, the will to live is still so strong inside her, struggling to break through the fallen rocks and earth surrounding them, like green shoots from a growing seed.” 15 In this, too, ideas of renewal and a better future are conveyed through references to the seed of life and its potential to sprout once in the ground, germinating hope for what life itself can bring. The technologies and ideas of the new century, coupled with widely held theories about human evolution, in scientific and philosophical le bordel philosophique

231

terms, figure in this, as do the positive benefits the new “age of humans” would bring. In some ways, like the cinematic impact of Picasso’s notebooks or Stratz’s volumes, in this sketch we experience art as seriation, with the evolution of form and signification framed around textual referents. Figure 283, a recto-­verso compositional study (see figure 285), like the recto-­verso of the compositional study and Fernande Olivier in her amazone attire (figures 171 and 176), serves as a poignant lens into Picasso’s thought process and visual work in this period, offering a better understanding of the canvas’s intellectual origins as well as aspects of its meaning. As such this sketch incorporates a series of clues into the fuller array of philosophical issues at play. This is in part what the “rendezvous of poets” sign on the Bateau-­Lavoir door was all about. These were the ideas that nourished Picasso’s core interests — ​­intellectually and aesthetically — ​­when he was grappling with Les Demoiselles. Picasso ripped these compositional sketches in two (figures 283 and 285). He then “reconstructed” them; the photograph of figure 285 comprises only about half of the original. This deliberate act of destruction (and active reengagement) suggests that it was seen by him as a work of unique import, complexity, discomfort, and value. Picasso’s vision for Les Demoiselles involved a far more complex engagement with female sexuality than has to date been accorded to it. This vision was shaped in important ways by the likely (and conceptually natural) outcomes of sexual encounters — ​­progeny, or at a more distant but equally important level, human evolution, continuity, and immortality. The Easter egg–festooned Joyeuses Paque (Happy Easter) postcard that Picasso sent to the Steins (see chapter 2) to invite her to see his new canvas (figure 284) relates to this idea of immortality. It features a scene of putti (winged boys) presenting an enormous ribbon-­decorated Easter egg, and was sent by Picasso to his Jewish patron a full month after Easter (and Passover) in 1907. The card theme choice is highly unusual, yet significant, since the artist cared little for formal religion. It was a playful joke, since Picasso clearly knew the Steins were Jewish and that Easter was long over. He inked an ancillary ribbon on the egg, its ends terminating as mustaches for two of the putti. This notably strange card, like Picasso’s 1907 canvas, conveys ideas of Easter-­like new beginnings, renewal, and immortality, eggs being closely associated with birth. In a sense Les Demoiselles was also like the gigantic egg, from which would emerge a new age of art and a new era of engagement and fame for the young artist. There are a number of other Picasso works from Les Demoiselles–era sketch232

chapter seven

fig 286

Picasso, Study of Face and Plants, 1906–7. fig 287

Picasso, study with skull, leaves, infants, 1907.

fig 288

Picasso, study of Egyptian and African, 1906?

fig 289

Gauguin, L’Univers est créé, 1893–94.

books and related drawings that explore similar themes of germination and new beginnings (among these the drawings in figures 286 and 287). These images, like the seedpod and Easter egg, call up questions of life and death, and renewal and transformation more generally. One such study features vegetation emerging from a skull and crawling infants (figure 287). Related themes of world origins, which also appear in Paul Gauguin’s work (figure 289), and related evolutionary referents such as simians (figures 290 and 291) seem to be seminal to the ideas Picasso was exploring in Les Demoiselles. The human skull and plant forms suggest the continuum of life, from birth to death to renewal. Human skulls appear prominently in several of the books Picasso was likely consulting in this era. In Leo Frobenius’s volume Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (1898), skulls attached to the waistbands of “amazon dancers” (figure 282) reinforce the complex death-­bringing associations of these women, and cojoined images of skulls and masks with plant or tree forms (figure 281) illustrate theories of ancestor worship and the potency of the manes (souls of the dead) in African life, a tradition also found in the Egyptian (figure 294) and Roman worlds. Frobenius explores the subject of animal skulls (figure 292), human skulls (figure 294), and masks in a special section of this 1898 volume on skull cults, where he noted that the African belief in relics is universal: “The skull, in particular, is a relic that permits all sorts of communication with the spirits, wherein the deceased lives always and on occasion, penetrates man himself, taking possession of him.” 16 Frobenius used Kota reliquary figures from Gabon (figures 99 and 100) to illustrate this point. Of related significance is Picasso’s sketch circa 1903 depicting a pipe-­smoking monkey carrying a leafy branch while walking atop another plant (figure 288). This work was drawn in ink on the page of a Flemish design journal article “Onze Kunst/Notre Art” (Our Art). The other motifs sketched here by Picasso include an Egyptian figure walking in profile (recalling the leftmost figure of Les Demoiselles) as well as an Egyptian pyramid scene on the opposite page. A froglike quadruped and a flowering plant motif convey ideas of germination and transformation. The presence of African and Egyptian figures together here, similar to a carved relief by Picasso in the Musée Picasso, Paris, showing an Africanized nude on one side, and an Egyptian stylized bird on the other, is noteworthy. Similar to La Parisienne et figures exotiques (figure 32), these images uniting people from sub-­Saharan Africa with Egypt also are linked in key ways to Les Demoiselles, which brings together women from these areas and from elsewhere around the world. 234

chapter seven

The Global Brothel Stratz’s aim with his volumes in part was to furnish a scientific rationale for evaluating beauty and character, both in their own terms and against the assumed higher standard of European women.17 Each of Stratz’s volumes embeds visual coding that is intended to illustrate racial, class, and gender theories of the period that he sought to define, with certain geographic regions sometimes presented before other ones, as if they represented an earlier period of development. For Stratz, skulls referenced not only differences in gender, age (figures 293 and 295), and individual development but also racial and other distinctions; much as for Frobenius, skulls evidenced African ancestral belief systems (figures 292 and 294). Whatever their meaning, these skulls call to mind the medical student in Picasso’s early compositional sketches for Les Demoiselles (figure 321), who sometimes holds a skull. Stratz used mapping illustrations to reinforce this idea of a developmental model (plate 15). He included a color-­coded chart and map (plates 14 and 15) that delimit the five principal racial typologies proposed by the German anatomist, physiologist, and anthropologist Gustav Fritsch. These comprised the “Protomorphs” (primordial, natural) race made up of “Pygmies,” “Hottentots” [Khoisan], Papuans, aboriginal Australians, Philippine Negritos, American Indians, and Eskimos. The remaining race groupings are divided into two groups. The first, or “Archimorphs,” comprise the core “black, yellow, and white” races: Nigritter, Mongolian, and European (“Mittelländer”). The latter are divided into two subgroups: the “Northern” and “Roman” branches. Stratz’s final group includes the various “mixed races” (“Metamorphes”), living principally along borders between the three main races, in particular, northern Africa, eastern and southern Asia, and the Pacific Islands.18 This both fictitious and racist schema no doubt made a deep impression on many of Stratz’s readers, a notably large group, considering how many editions of his books were printed. It is hard to ignore the impact of this race-­imbued schema on the legacy of discrimination and violence that followed in Europe and elsewhere. Some of this legacy is in play in Picasso’s rendering of the two African and mixed Asian demoiselles, even though the artist is also seeking to subvert many of these same categories and hierarchies. In some ways it appears that Picasso is working against the racial ideology found in Stratz. This likely also figures into the reasons that he employs Stratz in the first place, specifically as a vision of the world to work against. The racial and ethnic identities in Picasso’s artworks are far more fluid.19 le bordel philosophique

235

fig 291

Picasso, SelfPortrait as Monkey, 1903.

fig 290

Picasso, Harlequin’s Family with Ape, 1905.

236

Like Les Demoiselles, Stratz’s thick volumes represent in their own right a kind of global brothel in which women from around the world are displayed in poses intended to suggest their availability. Like the popular photo journals of this era, Stratz’s volumes were in many ways organized around the idea of exhibiting women from different races in encounters with each other. We see in these publications clues that help us to understand Les Demoiselles in richer and more complex ways. It seems likely that Picasso intended for viewers to engage this painting as a comingling of historical women from different areas and eras. While unaware of Stratz, Leo Steinberg observed in his 1972 essay “The Philosophical Brothel” that the women depicted in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles are strangely disconnected from each other, almost unaware of each other’s presence.20 In some respects the five demoiselles suggest a visual mapping of this global race-framed schema. The crouching female stands as primordial Pygmy or Papuan woman; the leftmost figure, the Egyptian/Asian woman, serves as both Asian and mixed-race North African; the two central figures are exemplars of northern and southern Europe; and the standing figure on the right evokes Africa. While Picasso may not have meant this canvas as an explicit reference to Stratz’s mapping, similar ideas were broadly circulating in Paris artistic and intellectual circles at this time. Picasso’s demoiselles from this vantage can be seen to reflect a first-time meetchapTer seven

ing of the founders of five different races or cultures, each with distinctive postures, gestures, attire, and coiff ures (plate 1; figure 296).21 If so, the “strangely disconnected” ethos that Steinberg observed is to be expected. Much like the photo-rich volumes of Stratz, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles constitutes an imaginary brothel (bordel, or “complicated situation”) of broad global and historical interest. Like Stratz’s books, the canvas offers a vision of safe sex in an era rife with syphilis (incurable in this period) and other dangers. Picasso’s large canvas presents these women in a context free from such potential harms.22 In the same manner in which Stratz published an array of photographs, in which many of the women were identified not only by age but also by city or country of origin,

fig 293

Skulls of newborns, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

fig 292

King Takadu, Frobenius 1898.

below | left to right fig 294

Egyptian Pharaoh Setis I, Frobenius 1898. fig 295

Male and female skulls, Stratz, Rassenschönheit.

le bordel philosophique

237

the whole gives the feeling of a brothel of boundless scale, virtual though it was. Such a vantage at the same time calls up an array of social concerns, among these class, race, and one’s life circumstances.23

Art and Evolution A key thinker in this era was the scientist Henri Bergson, who lectured and wrote on art, creativity, and evolution, and was well known to key figures of Picasso’s circle.24 Bergson’s ideas were likely important to Picasso and his friends in this period; Jacob’s comment on the canvas that “painting henceforth became a science, and one of the more austere at that” appears in part to reflect this.25 The claim that art had become a science is interesting, as is Jacob’s comment in this same passage that the figures Picasso painted on this canvas were “ciphers on a blackboard” comprising referents to the “principle-­as-­equation.” 26 For Jacob, science, math, and philosophy drove the work. Clearly one of the most important issues of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century was that of origins: evolution versus godly creation. Much like the marriage of race “science” and art in the books and journals featuring photographs of women from around the globe in this era, there was a strong undercurrent of evolution in scientific, philosophical, and artistic models. By the 1890s Darwinian theory had penetrated both the intellectual and socio­ political worlds of Paris.27 Ideas framed around this new science predicated on the descent of humanity from apes were discussed at cafés and bars. Similar issues were being addressed in local dance and theatrical events, in which, for example, “convulsive movements” reflected ideas of origins and were intended in part to promote similar responses among audience members.28 Leo Steinberg writes that Les Demoiselles effectuates its powerful response “by cleaving depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and abbreviation; by slashing the web of connecting space; and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax.” 29 These elements at the core of Picasso’s cubist vision point to his engagement with the whole set of issues around evolution reflected in this canvas. The formal qualities that Steinberg engages here serve in their own ways as referents to evolution. Picasso’s careful selection of his women (and their attire) for Les Demoiselles (one “Egyptian/Asian,” two “European,” and two “African” (a “Pygmy” and other) also speaks to the broader issues of race origins and differences. While this quintet is notably different from the four females that support Jean-­Baptiste Carpeaux’s globe (figure 280; located in the Jardin du Luxembourg, across the 238

chapter seven

street from the Closerie des Lilas [figures 6 and 7], each referencing a different place and race), or the six sculptures in front of the Trocadéro (referencing Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North and South America) commissioned for the 1878 Exposition Universelle, it is tempting to speculate that similar ideas were being expressed in Les Demoiselles. Theories about cosmological origins, race, and cultural parallels were important to many artists and intellectuals in this era.30 Indeed it is conceivable that Picasso envisioned this painting as a kind of mapping of global racial differences and histories drawn in part from Stratz (plates 14 and 15). Within this framing, the crouching figure assumes the unusual role as the senior-most woman (the progenitor of the races), a reference consistent with both the so-called aboriginal race and the elderly crouching female or seer (sorcerer) referenced in other Picasso works (figures 297 and 298; compare figure 299); see also the rear-corner figure in The Harem (figure 218). The prominent emphasis on the crouching figure’s childbirth posture and widespread genitalia (figures 300 and 305) is consistent with this. Paul Gauguin, an artist in whom Picasso was deeply interested in this era, compiled a travel journal, Noa Noa (1893–94), that was drawn from Tahitian myths about the birth of stars. Gauguin’s L’Univers est créé (figure 289) explored a similar origin theme. The figure in the center right of L’Univers recalls the crouching woman in Picasso’s large canvas. Picasso owned a copy of Noa Noa,

le bordel philosophique

fig 296

Diagram of Les Demoiselles based on Stratz.

239

fig 297

Picasso, Celestina, 1903–4. fig 298

Picasso, Old Woman, 1903. fig 299

Picasso, study for crouching figure, 1907.

240

and he added drawings to its illustrated pages.31 Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897) features other forms of “primitive” figures and sculptures around this theme. These works may have been in part behind Picasso’s decision to paint each of the demoiselles in a style characteristic of the artworks from her specific area and era. For many at this time, African and Oceanic sculpture were associated with the “childhood of humanity,” a kind of “virgin” cultural climate in direct contact with which art could be born anew.32 Several of Picasso’s earlier works addressed aspects of this same broader evolutionary theme. His Harlequin’s Family with Ape from the spring of 1905 (figure 290) depicts a harlequin couple seated on a bench cradling their young child; a baboon squats on the ground and looks up at them curiously. It is hard not to see in this unusual quartet ideas of evolution. Here the long trajectory of human history is defined from the vantage of the quizzical ape. In short, this painting, like Where Do We Come From?, can be seen to focus not only on continuity (birth, family, death, regeneration) but also on salient ideas of human origins. Picasso’s Famille is composed in the manner of his three- or four-figure multigeneration paintings and studies from this period and later. Most important among these were his La Vie (figure 301) of 1903 and Man, Woman, and Child (the artist, Fernande Olivier, and a son; figure 308) of January–April 1907. The latter is a fictive family self-portrait in which each of the figures shows features evoking African masks. Picasso also featured himself as a monkey in several drawings, including his 1903 cartoonlike self-portrait (figure 291), signed in inchapTer seven

Fig 301

Picasso, La Vie, 1903.

Fig 300

Picasso, study for crouching figure, 1907.

tentionally childlike block letters as “Picasso pars lui-­même” (Picasso by himself). This work seems to be about both the mischievousness of monkeys and the science of evolution that identifies apes as being within the broader family of man. It also riffed on Picasso’s painting attire, an outfit referred to by Stein and others as his “monkey suit.” 33 One work, a 1907 sketch, depicts an adult in the act of crawling, as if in the very process of evolving to a new stage, and another features an adult learning core motor skills (figure 312). Clearly the issue of human origins and evolution interested the artist and his circle; so too did the idea that humans share key attributes with animals (specifically apes). Similar ideas, framed in somewhat comparable terms, were at play in a 1902 publication by art collector Eugène Rouart titled L’Artiste et la société, in which we learn that “perhaps even before humanity developed, the animal was on the road to become man, even before his conscience was awake, and speech had value, there was a beginning of art. An art that remained instinctive, and which, although it should today be practiced le bordel philosophique

241

in all its beauty, details, and long study, most of humanity knows of taste quite naturally without special education.” 34 Rouart goes on to note that “the oldest art of which we know a little, if not all its details, recognizing its emotion, grace and powerful feelings, is Egyptian art, which one can see admirable examples of right here in the Louvre and Vatican.” There is no doubt that Picasso knew of Rouart’s work; not only had Rouart acquired a set of Degas brothel monotypes that Picasso was likely familiar with in this era, but Picasso met with him in March 1907 and inscribed his address in one of his Les Demoiselles sketchbooks (see chapter 2). Picasso and his circle of friends discussed similar ideas from various vantages. While one should rightly be careful about applying any specific literal or narrative reading to Les Demoiselles (or any other Picasso work), certain large canvases important to the artist similarly address core science and philosophical themes, for example, Science and Charity (1897), La Vie, and Famille. A 1900 work, The Last Moments, that was chosen for exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1900 Exposition Universelle and was long assumed to be lost, is similar. It was this early painting (and exposition) that brought the young artist to Paris for the first time. It was recently discovered that La Vie was painted over Moments  — ​ ­two themes with clear connections. La Vie pulls us both forward and backward through time and space by way of a variety of images of families (proud parents and a child, pregnant lovers, and multiple generations). Picasso depicted here the key stages of life — ​­the couple in love, the birth of a child, old age, and death. In many ways, this painting makes clear the importance to Picasso of this inherent (if often underexplored by art scholars) link between sex and progeny, plus the complex yet ambivalent issue of women as both sex objects and mothers. Both La Vie and Moments include the scythe-­bearing figure Death. When Picasso painted over Moments he transformed the canvas from horizontal to vertical. In both paintings, the artist was interested in what one scholar has called issues of “final truth; the transience of human life.” 35 Questions of death and the cycle of time as well as the universality of human experience figure prominently here. While fresh canvases were expensive and artists occasionally covered older works with new compositions, in replacing Moments with La Vie Picasso engaged in seriation, analogous in some ways to the recto-­verso explorations seen in various Les Demoiselles studies (figures 283 and 285, among others). In a way, Moments and La Vie together represent a further exploration of this theme. The figures in La Vie are set in a highly compressed space and display divergent 242

chapter seven

gestures that suggest a timeless Sacra Conversazione, in which the conversation occurs not necessarily between the figures but rather in relation to them. Similar qualities are at play in Les Demoiselles, in terms of life, sex, human origins, past, future, and immortality. These works address large questions about the whole cycle of life as well as questions of origins and successions in the broad sense.

From Mathematical Physics and Pataphysics to Theosophy and Time Machines There were other issues that were very much in the air in Picasso’s select group of artists, poets, and intellectuals who met each week at the Closerie des Lilas (figures 6 and 7), ranging from mathematical theory and Henri Poincaré’s perceptions of the fourth dimension to perhaps rudimentary engagement with Albert Einstein’s hypotheses.36 Poincaré’s essays appeared between 1902 and 1908 and emphasized at once the hypothetical and creative aspects of science and math (mathematical physics).37 Picasso’s group of poet-­philosophers knew of Poincaré and his theories through the mathematician, Bateau-­Lavoir visitor, and occasional Picasso art dealer Maurice Princet. A different but equally important set of issues around space and time were also addressed by individuals such as Eadweard Muybridge, who was working on the science of movement and technology, in particular, chronophotography (see chapter 6). These studies had an important impact on cubism and its development.38 While Picasso maintained that “mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis, music and what-­not, have been related to cubism to give it an easier interpretation,” he goes on to observe that to insist that such perspective is the primary source for his work is “pure literature, not to say nonsense, which has only succeeded in blinding people with theories. . . . [As artists, w]e have kept our eyes open to our surroundings, and also our brains.” 39 Into this stew of ideas can be added several other questions in play in both Parisian popular culture and artistic and intellectual circles in this era: pataphysics and theosophy. Pataphysics, a “philosophy” focused on the metaphysical world, was invented largely by Alfred Jarry as a kind of “imaginary science of solutions” that involved a fair amount of literary gamesmanship (puns included, such as pataphysics’ name, from pâte à physique, “physics from pastry dough”). This “philosophy” first appeared in Jarry’s April 28, 1893, play Guignol, and was also included in his 1898 fictional piece Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pata­ physicien. In the latter we find an engagement with race-­linked, skin-­shifting le bordel philosophique

243

issues that Jarry explored in another well-known early text, Ubu Roi, in which, for example, Africans when laughing have flesh that literally changes from black to red. This kind of comedic reversal, as a metaphor for challenging enduring racism linked to political policy, was of vital importance to Jarry.40 Consistent with this focus, Jarry had invented a “man-­simian,” the Pithecanthropus erectus, as the purported missing link “in the chain of the highest primates.” 41 Jarry’s keen interest in evolution also found expression in his character Ubu Roi, in which elements of reversal were in play. According to the tenets of this outlook, to reach one’s full creative potential, a modern city dweller was asked to reach back into the (albeit imagined) primitive roots of one’s being. Since pataphysics addressed the properties of objects vis-­à-­vis their “virtual nature” and included diagrams of seemingly impossible forms, such as “the surface of God,” Jarry often celebrated inconsistencies and the unexpected.42 In many ways his work complements ideas about one’s real “nature” in Les Demoiselles. Theosophy, another life philosophy in this era, introduced and developed by Rudolf Steiner, comprised a rich cojoining of esoteric cosmology, modern spirituality, and evolution, laced with a heavy dose of self-­improvement, New World Order, and End Times ideation. Apollinaire and Jacob were among those said to have been followers.43 The Theosophical Society held its meetings in Paris from May 25 to June 14, 1906, promoting its tenets through a series of eighteen lectures, titled Evolution, Christ, and Modern Spirituality. While largely attended by society members, these talks marked an important phase in the theosophical movement.44 Visuals, including theosophical maps that span the continents (a map of the “lost” Lemuria, for example), addressed the historical imprint of time and geography in ways that resonate with Stratz’s work and related maps (plate 15). Fictive engagements around ideas of time were also important in this era, especially H. G. Wells’s hugely popular work The Time Machine (1895). In some ways, whatever Picasso, Apollinaire, and others were thinking in terms of exploring the world of early man or one’s perceptions of dimensions (two, three, or even four), Les Demoiselles, in bringing together women from different places and eras into one small cramped space, suggests an “event” that Wells’s time machine made conceptually possible. And when coupled with Apollinaire’s 1908– 16 tale in Le Roi-­lune (The Moon King) of a man who had sex with all of the women from every era (in a sense, another way of envisioning Les Demoiselles), one can see how ripe the bringing together of fantasy and intellectual worlds was for Picasso and friends at this time.45 Similar ideas of anachronism were also 244

chapter seven

at play in Matisse’s work in this period.46 While each of these theories, sets of beliefs, practices, and manifestations is important to understanding the critical era in which Picasso worked and even key elements of how Les Demoiselles was conceived, what stands out most clearly is the importance of time, space, origin, and evolution. These factors can also be seen in the striking sexual elements of the canvas.

Vaginal Environments A group of Picasso studies beginning in 1903 represents striking works of corporal synecdoche. In these, a woman emerges from (or enters) a splayed labia. In one image, a mature woman with legs spread wide appears within a giant vagina framed by a labia and pubic hairs (figure 302). One of the most unusual details of this particular work is the way Picasso vaguely wrapped the figure’s disproportionately stretched (and almost snakelike) right arm around her right thigh so that she is masturbating as she emerges from the womb. Her left arm is raised and folded behind her head, a gesture recalling the demoiselle standing second from the left. This image draws our attention to a complexity of issues related to sex (and its depiction) with which Picasso seems to have been grappling here, among these the emotional challenge of lovers becoming mothers. This work also presents a complement to medieval architectural details, such as those of the Notre-­Dame Cathedral (figure 303), in which the Virgin of the Assumption is shown within a lozenge-­shaped areola. While in the latter work the surrounding elliptical elements suggest heavenly light, the areola and the labia shapes seem linked. Picasso may have seen this work, since the plaster cast of this Virgin was part of the Trocadéro. The similar open genital form seen in Picasso’s sketch is interesting, since this view is most readily seen in the course of sex, during childbirth, or while bathing an infant daughter, actions that reinforce core connections between sex and birth, attraction and detraction. In some areas of the world — ​­for example, the Trobriand Islands in Melanesia — ​­a splayed vagina on a shield or house sculpture is believed to disempower enemies. While it is unlikely that Picasso knew about this, the motif ’s shock value comes into play in equally suggestive ways in his work. This form of a female figure nested within framing lips presents a provocative starting point to reconsider some of the more complex (and notably paradoxical) questions of sex and birth, copulation, and insemination within the context of Les Demoiselles. The canvas brings into play a visual setting for its five women le bordel philosophique

245

fig 302

Picasso, Vaginal Environment, 1903. fig 303

Cast, Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1320. Notre Dame. fig 304

Picasso, compositional study for Les Demoiselles, 1907.

fig 305

Picasso, study for crouching figure, 1907.

fig 306

Diagram of Les Demoiselles. fig 307

Courbet, L’Origin du monde, 1866.

that features undulating labia-­like surrounding walls suggestive of a vaginal environment. Another important clue in understanding this perspective of the canvas is a recto-­verso study that shows the crouching demoiselle with her legs drawn open to reveal (were she facing us) her layered labia; on the opposite side of the study (figure 305) are several watermelon slices colored a deep vaginal red, visible through the page, and also suggesting labia in a clear conflation of visual referents. Both images depict the soft interior of a form, and both may be consumed in various ways. The two images are a complementary pair, an idea supported by Picasso’s use of the paper sheet itself to address the complex issue of inside/outside, front/back. As one Picasso scholar notes of Les Demoiselles, “It seems to me that such figures are often best understood as bodies which the artist’s imagination seeks to inhabit, so as to arrive at the manifest from inside.” 47 In another drawing from around the same time, Picasso shows a similar woman from the rear, legs splayed wide, with a plate of watermelon slices angled in front of her. The wall in Les Demoiselles conveys a similarly curved frame (deep red on the left), suggesting that for the artist the theme of “vaginal environment” was as important for this painting as it was for the studies explored here. This enhances one’s sense of Picasso’s general interest in the relationship between objects and their surroundings rather than simply in the contour of the form alone. It is well recognized that already by early 1907 Picasso was exploring ideas about the interchangeability of solid and void (a perspective also key to cubism). In fact, as these studies and others make clear, these ideas were already being rehearsed in the autumn of 1906, in part around the photographic examples and diagrams published by Stratz, and in part through African art. What these works reveal, in short, is a striking conflation of sex, seed, birth, fruit, and the suite of generations (grandmothers, adult women, children) — ​­ideas all suggested by various comments Picasso made about whom precisely these de­ moiselles represent. The highly unusual squatting posture of the female shown in figure 305 and in the lower right of Les Demoiselles is all the more striking because this difficult posture is one that ancient Egyptian, Roman, Spanish, and many African women historically assumed when giving birth. The crouching demoiselle on the canvas, with her back turned to us, reveals her spread legs and vagina exclusively to the women in the scene in front of her, although in early studies a sailor seated in the center of the composition was able to see her as well. With her crouching childbirth posture, and two different-­colored eyes, she perhaps is meant to be seen as the mother, grandmother, or distant matriarch,

le bordel philosophique

247

in much the same way that Stratz’s text presents the aboriginal as the founding race of all the others. The composition of the painting itself is also interesting from this vantage. The canvas diagonals cojoin at the womb of the Caucasian demoiselle who, standing second from the left, is in some ways the one most closely identified with the artist himself (figure 306). What other secrets might the crouching figure hold that are important for Les Demoiselles as a whole? Picasso provided additional clues through the table positioned near her at the front center of the painting, on top of which are a slice of watermelon, several large clumps of green grapes, an apple (or peach), and a large pear that recalls the form of the phallic-­shaped porrón (compare object held by the male in figure 218). The two ends of the watermelon crescent are carefully positioned to form a traplike maw that opens wide in the direction of the uterus of the second female on the left. A plate of fruit plays a similarly complex role in Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) and Paul Cézanne’s A Modern Olympia (1873), as well as in Picasso’s exploration of this same theme (figure 21) and in Salomé (figure 155). The fruit plate functions as metonym for the painting, as can be seen in how the ovoid, phallic, and labia-­like forms suggest the core anatomical elements of both sex and procreation. One scholar speculated whether the three fruit referents in Les Demoiselles in some way functioned as a caricature of Manet’s and Cézanne’s paintings, in this case suggesting the forbidden fruit that is evoked within the brothel.48 To yet another scholar, Picasso’s inclusion of a fruit plate still life more likely served as “a sardonic joke: men do not go to brothels to eat fruit.” 49 In the end, whatever the origins of this motif, it is closely linked to the symbolic primacy of the canvas as a whole. Les Demoiselles shows a clear kinship with another important work that most likely was known to Picasso, Gustave Courbet’s provocative L’Origin du monde (The Origin of the World, 1866; figure 307). The subject of this work is a tightly cropped view of a woman’s genitals and belly, as seen by a lover. Her left leg is drawn wide to facilitate accessibility, and her back is pressed against the bed linen, with sheets that are twisted and in disarray yet also pulled up to hide her face. The mystery of hiding this woman’s identity as the rest of her body is fully bared is a key part of the painting’s enigmatic power. Like Picasso’s vagina environment studies, this work still holds a notable quality of shock, yet the straightforward title says it all: “The origin of the world.” The vagina is where the human world begins, a theme as salient for life at the beginning of humankind as it is for each succeeding generation. Picasso’s canvas has the same theme of 248

chapter seven

open vaginas and generational succession, even as it expands on this trope in very different ways. Courbet’s painting disappeared into private hands after 1868, but the gallery Bernheim-­Jeune appears to have sold it in 1910.50 The upcoming sale may have been an occasion for Picasso to see the work. Matisse was a friend of this family, and Bernheim-­Jeune exhibited and sold objects by many artists familiar to Picasso, including Braque in 1907, and both Kees van Dongen and Henri Matisse in 1909.51 In addition, the gallery was acquiring works that had been consigned by Picasso’s early dealer, Ambroise Vollard. In short, it is quite conceivable that through his many artist and dealer connections Picasso saw Courbet’s controversial painting before embarking on Les Demoiselles. It is likely that the work was known to Picasso by reputation even if he had never seen it in the flesh. In this work, as in Les Demoiselles, sex, birth, progeny, and perpetuation are joined. The setting of Les Demoiselles enriches our understanding of the shared vagina and birth canal referents, elements that evoke the sex act and the birth process simultaneously (compare figure 302). That the undulating elements that frame the women also recall both prehistoric caves and curtained stage sets is important, too, from the vantage of the painting’s overlay of complex referents. Matisse had used Paleolithic-­style animal imagery in his Bonheur de vivre, one of the paintings that impressed Picasso as he was working on the Demoiselles.52 Although the setting of this canvas is one that transcends normal spatial (and temporal) boundaries, and clearly is not intended to be a “real” place, its myriad features reinforce the broader subject of the painting. At once hard and soft, concave and convex, curved and angular, condensed and minimalist, this is a place where volumes and voids seem almost to devolve from and into each other in a manner that heightens the striking plasticity of the women who inhabit it. This is a mysterious, almost primal, environment at the juncture of nature and civilization, both within our immediate view and outside of time. It is a mystical place, a site at once here, there, and everywhere. In some ways, as noted of one of Picasso’s later paintings, “The space the figures inhabit has become so dislocated, so dematerialized, that we lose our own spatial bearings in relation to them.” 53 One of Picasso’s recto-­verso works (figure 304) is ripe with clues to help us further understand Les Demoiselles. On one side of the sheet, positioned horizontally, is a late compositional drawing; on the other side, positioned vertically, is a drawing of the head of the sailor that once occupied the center of studies for the large painting (figure 9), a face comparable to other early sketches of the le bordel philosophique

249

sailor (figure 82). On the side of the image featured here, Picasso created what is assumed to be a late, stripped-­down compositional study for Les Demoiselles, composed of a set of strong diagonal lines that create a large off-­center X. The crouching figure is shown in the lower right corner very near to where she ends up in the larger (now more square) canvas. What is especially significant about this sketch is that its composition looks remarkably similar to the positioning of the nude figure in L’Origin. The diagrammatic connection between this study and the final canvas is telling: the two diagonals of the study graphed onto the square canvas join directly on top of the uterus of the second demoiselle from the left. Suggested by this is not only the nature and importance of the uterus in terms of gestation but also the significance of this demoiselle standing second from the left in the painting, a woman that, following Stratz’s and Fritsch’s racial mapping, seems to suggest “lower Europe” (including Spain). Even if we focus our attention on the precise center of the canvas, the place where the corner diagonals meet, we see that these lines cross at a point near the uterus of the other (northern European?) Caucasian woman, a position that is equally germane to Picasso and what he may be addressing with this work. Taking into account this important compositional study, there is little doubt that in Les Demoiselles Picasso sought to address not only questions of sex and pleasure but also the associated ideas of offspring, family legacy, and regeneration, in short, human creation and evolution. That Picasso himself was born in “lower Europe” makes this canvas also about the artist, his own ancestry, and his legacy, both as an artist and as a figure within a longer family lineage. In this way, the volatile and often jarring qualities that are such an important part of the visual charge of Les Demoiselles share complexities and incongruities with the very nature of the sex act in the transformative roles women assume as lovers and mothers. Among the most important and well-­known exemplars of a similarly contradictory metonymic play is the Virgin Mary, a woman identified simultaneously as both chaste and mother. The five demoiselles in this rich and challenging canvas take on similarly paradoxical attributes that draw on both primordial ancestors and women of today. The framing of Les Demoiselles within this coitus-­linked context complements the various vaginal environment studies explored above, suggesting that we are staring not only into the folds and volumes of a vagina but also at women emerging from within. The highly constricted undulating setting in which the women are shown reinforces this idea. In this, Picasso appears not only to be grappling with how to visualize the sexual act — ​­here in part inside out (as he 250

chapter seven

might imagine a woman experiencing it) — ​­but also through the process of birth that sometimes follows sexual encounters. To Steinberg this inhabited space suggests “a nest known by intermittent palpation . . . by extending one’s self within it. Though presented symbolically, Picasso’s space insinuates total initiation, like entering a disordered bed.” 54 Steinberg’s erotic reading has endured within the literature on this canvas, likely because he focused our attention on the complex doubling and tripling of this sexually charged content in which each of the five women participates. Understanding this as both a coitus and birthing space reinforces this. This setting invites comparison not only with vaginas but also with cavelike spaces identified with the earliest humans. In 1906 the French archaeologist Abbé Henri Breuil published his important study on the stylistic evolution of cave paintings based on recent discoveries in southwestern France and nearby Spain.55 Breuil’s subject of interest is in part evoked in Les Demoiselles, for the southwestern region of France around Avignon was long associated with prehistoric rock forms. As Jacob writes of Picasso’s studies for the canvas, “Picasso started some large figures . . . with noses attached to the eyes. He became absorbed in a profound mediation, simplifying animals and things and arriving at a single stroke at drawings of a sort that recall prehistoric cave drawings.” 56 Jacob’s mention of “cave paintings” also suggests Picasso’s express aim to elicit these earliest forms in his studies for this canvas.57 In the same way that rock painting interested Picasso (in part through later book publications; figures 333 and 334), much the same can be said for the elementary forms found in Honnecourt’s drawings. As Picasso indicated, “We all love the prehistoric paintings, but no one resembles them!” 58 In addition to the primacy of the cave as a setting for artistic creativity, Abbé Breuil emphasized the importance of these forms to artistic evolution. Another early name of Picasso’s canvas, Brothel of Avignon, suggests the larger association of these gigantic overpowering women to Picasso with the Avignon area. That the Avignon region is linked with art and humanity at the very beginning of human existence appears to be central to the painting’s larger significance. Les Demoiselles’ setting in this sense represents a ritual space for ceremonial and other activities, in short, something resembling a cave.59 This setting in turn devolves into ancillary openings that lead further into the interior. There is something both enervated and timeless about Picasso’s conceptualization of this element. Despite the specific geographic framing of the painting today (as Avignon), the space suggests instead a place without precise location, a space of le bordel philosophique

251

the imagination, one that has no real present-­day or historical grounding outside of the painting itself. These features are consistent with the idea of women serving as procreators of distinctive human lines who have come together here, in this canvas, for a rare out-­of-­time encounter. As Steinberg suggests (though he comes to a different conclusion than I do), Les Demoiselles, like the study Two Nudes (plate 9), is “about the human condition.” 60 In the painting, “neighboring figures share neither a common space nor a common action, do not communicate or interact, but relate singly, directly, to the spectator. A determined dissociation of each from each is the means of throwing responsibility for the unity of the action upon the viewer’s subjective response. The event, the epiphany, the sudden entrance, is still the theme — ​­but rotated through ninety degrees toward a viewer conceived as the picture’s opposite pole. The rapid swing between these contrary orientations is not surprising for 1907, nor unique to Picasso.” 61 There is a mythic quality expressed in the canvas by this means, a sense of both timelessness and temporal elasticity in which women from different eras not only meet in but also engage and bring to life this newly created space. This sense of spatial and temporal incongruence and enigma is enhanced by the way that Picasso has treated light on the canvas. The lack of a single light source, coupled with the compression of the five women into this very cramped space, reinforces the sense of timelessness. In an early description of the work Salmon explains what stands out to him: “The large canvas . . . its austere figures, devoid of any play of light.” 62 This lack of light, or, of course, any single direct source of light, adds to the mythic quality of the canvas, where time seems to stand still. Salmon’s references to Picasso as a “sorcerer’s apprentice” several lines later enhances the timeless mystique.63 This reinforces the idea that a ritual has just happened or is about to unfold. The nature of this ceremony, though impossible to know, was likely in some way connected to their identities and related to fertility, regeneration, or immortality — ​­key issues for Picasso in this period. The different types of women portrayed in Les Demoiselles paradoxically seem not only timeless but also at once specific and iconic. Salmon highlights their masklike features and both impassive and inhuman faces, imagery that is suggestive to him more of “naked problems” than of heroes, gods, or symbolic figures.64 As we have seen, the number and complexity of “naked problems” explored in this canvas are sizable. They include questions of the complexity of artistic style, two-­dimensional and three-­dimensional elements, masking, assemblage, the origins and arbitrariness of form, to say nothing of sex, procre252

chapter seven

ation, offspring, origins, evolution, and immortality, each advancing and competing for place within the painting. To this we can also add time machines, theosophy, pataphysics, and mathematical physics, among others. This notably complicated space suggests at once nowhere and everywhere, a vagina and a curtained interior, a uterus and a cave, female interior and exterior in a spatial synecdoche that ripples with significance on many different levels. In a way Steinberg has also anticipated this complexity in his poignant description of Picasso’s “cleaving of the interior, elision of parts, slashing abrupt changes, sudden shifts, discontinuities.” 65 The strange women who make up this quintet have been explored from multiple vantages — ​­often conveyed in terms of a primitivism that for Picasso is highly charged. Similar primal features of rawness, immovability, and inadaptability are apt referents to powerful women everywhere. Surely the demoiselles are not virgins, but they are not singularly sexual beings either. They would fit uncomfortably in a brothel of any era or locale. As we have seen, the French term for bordello, bordel, also means “a mess” or a situation of unique complexity.66 This meaning of bordello is salient here, too, for it is an apt descriptor for the newly colonialized, Darwin-­informed era represented in this painting. The French term, le bordel, captures a sense of the world in which many different peoples and cultures have been forcibly brought together in ways that had not been imaginable before. The term “prostitute” in French literature was sometimes conflated with ideas of past action, as in Charles Baudelaire’s well-­known essay “Le Peintre de la vie moderne,” in which the celebrated author identifies the prostitute with ideas of savagery, an idea also at the heart of Picasso’s work.67 Picasso also took to the idea of “the savage” as “of a piece” with “the civilized woman” (and vice versa) in a somewhat whimsical study (figure 32) that foreshadowed Les Demoiselles. The transformative 1907 painting known early on as Mon Bordel instantiates not so much a house of sex but a metaphoric womb, a mess of peoples and eras that even the best philosophers and scientists of the day had difficulty unraveling. The very space that these women inhabit holds clues that help to unpack the core ideas underlying both the painting and its early title, Le Bordel philosophique. Taken as a whole, the diverse females in Les Demoiselles share identities not only as sexual temptresses but also as mothers. They meet here, as if for the first time, on a canvas whose cavelike and womb-­resembling interior makes this idea particularly clear. The eldest, most-­feared member of the group crouches at the lower right — ​­her back to us — ​­twisting around as if to stare us le bordel philosophique

253

down as we approach this strange reunion, seemingly uninvited. It is she who helps let us in on the secret behind Le Bordel philosophique. In this sense she also serves as a powerful complement and stand-­in for Picasso himself.

Progeny In the summer of 1904 Picasso’s new model and mistress, a woman named Madeline, became pregnant by the artist and had an abortion.68 In 1905, around the time Madeline would have given birth, Picasso sketched what is called a “tender” portrayal of a woman, with features very much like those of Madeline, holding an infant.69 By this point, Picasso had taken up with his new lover, Olivier, whom he had met in August 1904. In this same era, Picasso’s work on a “seraphic Virgin and Child suggests that they may have been done not so much in expiation of guilt over the abortion as in the spirit of what-­might-­have-­been.” 70 His several portrayals evoking the Virgin, sometimes shown with child, and his studies of vaginal environments are also notable given the circumstances. In returning to the photograph Picasso took of Guus and Dolly van Dongen in front of Les Demoiselles soon after it was begun (figure 27), these two living figures further enrich our understanding of the canvas around issues of sex, birth, and regeneration. This latter tripartite theme enhances the painting’s enduring power and complexity. Picasso scholars in the past have correctly brought to the foreground the highly charged sexuality of this remarkable canvas. Yet this sexuality is in equal measure linked to the frequent “by-­products” (whether desired or not) of sexual encounters — ​­pregnancy and parenthood. Sex, birth, progeny, and posterity converge not only in this work but also in several other Picasso canvases from this period, from the pregnant lovers in The Embrace (1903) to the tranquil young family in La Vie (figure 301) and the tender mother-­and-­child images in paintings done between 1904 to 1907. Picasso’s fall/ winter 1906–7 oil painting Man, Woman, and Child (figure 308), from around the time he created Les Demoiselles, shows that he was deep in thought about progeny. Here the artist painted himself standing in a cavelike environment, looking down at a fictive son on the lap of a seated woman resembling Olivier.71 The child’s features resemble those of the artist, yet the style of his face also recalls a bicolor African mask. The son is one Picasso and Olivier never had, and likely never would have had because she was unable to conceive.72 Similar family groups are featured in the Stratz volumes, and ancestor worship (the legacy of the past in the present) is prominently addressed in period anthropological 254

chapter seven

works such as those of Frobenius, but here there is something far more personal, a deeper exploration of past and future. One can see clear similarities between this work and Picasso’s powerful 1896– 97 painting Child and Her Doll (Sister of Artist) (figure 309),73 which portrays the artist’s terminally ill younger sister, Conchita, who had died of diphtheria the year before at the age of seven. In the aftermath of this death, the artist’s family moved to Barcelona. In this both striking and idiosyncratic painting, a blond clown doll is shown to be more lifelike than the emaciated and notably frail and rigid dark-­haired Conchita. The very gaunt Conchita assumes the persona of mother, holding the far more lively, curly haired doll that is bathed in light and competes with Conchita for our attention. This childlike figure in many ways animates the painting far more than the two-­dimensional and shadow-­obscured sister. The difficulty of Conchita’s illness and death clearly left an indelible impression on Picasso, who had vowed to give up his art if she would live, and questioned the potentially destructive role that his own success had on her life. Would his own success, what he hoped Les Demoiselles would finally bring him, mean that a similar childless fate might be in store for him? John Richardson points out that “Picasso would always be torn between longing to have children and exasperation at the responsibilities involved,” along with the fear of what productivity in the first case might mean in terms of creativity in his art.74 Indeed, we see that “it was as if continuing with his painting would interfere with a successful child-­birth, in the same way that, in his view, it had with his sister’s ability to remain alive.” 75 The story is that Picasso had promised to give up art if his sister lived. His creativity, in short, was linked to her death. Picasso desired both, yet feared that one might affect the other. These questions point to the possible artistic importance of the themes of birth (creativity) and death (demise) with respect to several Picasso works, including Les Demoiselles. This in turn brings up questions of Picasso’s conception of art (African and otherwise) as serving as spiritual intercesseurs in addressing the difficulties that life presents. Related desires and fears are in part behind Picasso’s comment that African art functions like weapons, as “traps for the future, and perhaps for posterity.” 76 The imagery referents in this very personal sibling portrait are similar to some works of African art, among these Dahomey arts of vodun (voodoo).77 Picasso may have known of this belief from his knowledge about Cuba, where this religion was practiced by onetime slaves, his grandfather’s black lover perhaps among them. These rituals were also taken up in the various British and le bordel philosophique

255

fig 308

Picasso, Man, Woman, and Child, 1907. fig 309

Picasso, Child and Her Doll (Sister of Artist), 1896–97.

fig 310

Picasso, Artist’s Dog and Puppies, 1907.

fig 311

Picasso, Two Infants, 1907.

above Picasso, Nude Crawling, 1907.

fig 312

left Picasso, Raymonde at a Desk, 1907.

fig 313

French accounts of Dahomey (see chapter 5). Picasso engaged similar themes of metamorphosis and duality in drawings of human skulls, transforming into living plant forms (figures 286 and 287). These themes are no doubt complicated by Picasso’s own deeply personal thoughts about his artistic future and questions of posterity. To Malraux, “Not only are Picasso’s works more haunted by metamorphosis than the works of any previous artist” but also one discerns fears that “metamorphosis, from which his genius derived, might also destroy him.” 78 Putting these issues aside for a moment, it is important to note that there were other factors in this period of work on Les Demoiselles that brought ideas of birth, children, and progeny to the foreground in equally profound ways. There were a number of births in the Bateau-­Lavoir in this era, including the 1905 birth of Dolly (figure 27), and Picasso’s 1906–7 sketchbooks record his “huge” floppy-­eared dog Frika with a large litter of pups (figure 310). The sketchbooks also document an unidentified infant (figure 311; compare figure 312). In the fall/ winter of 1906–7, Picasso and Olivier decided to adopt a child, likely in response to concerns about Olivier’s ability to conceive. The child, a thirteen-­year-­old girl named Raymonde (figure 313), introduced a riptide of new challenges. Among these was the cramped studio. With the upcoming arrival of a child it was critical for Picasso to acquire another space that would allow him to paint without the distractions of the newcomer, or, for that matter, Olivier and “the members of his entourage.” 79 The date Raymonde arrived is generally agreed to be March 1907, the same period Picasso began to apply paint to Les Demoiselles. However, soon after Raymonde’s adoption, she was returned to the orphanage. The reasons are unclear, although there were later suggestions that Picasso’s focused attentions on the young girl raised concerns for Olivier.80 One of Picasso’s sketches of Raymonde (figure 313) is found in the same Sketchbook 14 as drawings he completed just before he began to apply pigment to this canvas (figures 35–42), making it likely that Raymonde was with Picasso and Olivier while this canvas was being painted. If bringing a child from an orphanage into one’s home gives the child new life, then, conversely, when that child is returned, it is a deeply traumatic form of rejection for both the parents and the child. Picasso’s part in both decisions is unknown, but Olivier, who does not mention Raymonde in her autobiography, may have seen some of Picasso’s drawings of the bathing child. Certain books of the era, such as those published by Stratz, in some ways normalized the sexuality of children by positioning them in provocative poses, legitimating not only pedophilia but also a whole set of related issues (figures 199, 200, 219, 220, le bordel philosophique

257

and 243).81 Raymonde’s posture in one of Picasso’s drawings is similar to the classical Greco-­Roman theme of a boy pulling a thorn from his foot, as well as some of his studies for the crouching demoiselle. Whether this was grounded in Picasso’s knowledge of historical works and a fertile imagination or a reflection of the living situation is not clear. Significantly, Picasso’s sketches of Raymonde, Frika, and her pups, as well as Fernande Olivier’s amazon-­style coat that she wore to the Salon des Indépendants, are found in carnet 6 (see “Sketchbooks: New Dating”). This cahier is unusual in that Picasso appears to have conjoined several partial sketchbook sections in it, sewing them together to create a new one. Why he did this is not clear. Did the artist (or someone else) expunge certain pages? Had the original sections somehow been damaged? There is clearly a story here, and the fact that the reconstructed cahier 6 relates specifically to this key moment in Les Demoiselles’s history is noteworthy as much for what is now left out as for what it reveals. In the end, however, the history of Raymonde’s adoption and return does not appear to offer much more by way of insight into Picasso’s canvas, for, as we have seen, Picasso was exploring a range of ideas from a diversity of sources in which related concerns were only a small part of the issues being addressed. Yet questions of women as sexual beings and potential mothers clearly were on Picasso’s mind as he engaged this painting. Like the photograph of Dolly and her mother in front of the canvas, and the various studies of nursing puppies, Les Demoiselles elicits a similarly complex embodiment of human (and animal) sexual drives and the potential results thereof. The volatile and often jarring qualities of this painting are important parts of the visual charge of the work. This comes in part from the complexities and seeming incongruities of sexual acts and the almost sacrosanct maternal identity of (these same) women. It is this conflation between sex and childbirth that empowers Les Demoiselles. In the framing of an important painting focused on considerations of progeny and posterity, an array of other considerations come into play. One is the nature of generational change and competition therein. While Picasso may at one point have imagined a bordello scene and its array of brothel denizens, or at least a set of sexualized bathers, by the time he had started and completed the canvas, the theme had become much richer and more complex. These women have emerged in part as a reference to the ages of humanity — ​­the inhabitants of different periods around the globe. It is easy to see that they evoke not just sexual objects but also female ancestors of key historical eras. In short, as we have 258

chapter seven

seen, they constitute women who are simultaneously the subject of sexual desire and the figures that created and nurtured the very life blood of their families and lineages. They call into play the multivalent roles that women everywhere assume as sexual objects, family members, and mothers. As Picasso claimed vis-­ à-­vis the identity of these five women, they refer to a range of people — ​­his lover (Olivier) and Jacob’s sister and grandmother, as well as several others. In short these figures illicit a broader image of women than we have to date recognized. Since the first two women Picasso explored most fully in the canvas appear to have been the two mask-­wearing African figures, it is important to recognize that the global and historical reach of the work was critical from the outset. This global framing of the canvas is clear, from its origins in Picasso’s discovery of Matisse’s African sculpture to the striking racial differences in the artist’s studies for his related fall 1906 canvas, Two Nudes, to the many preparatory studies the artist undertook for this important painting.

A Gallery of Global Women Picasso differentiated his five women to suggest ideas of global encounter, and related progeny, in a number of ways. In addition to skin hue, physiognomy, and masks, these include an array of very specific identifying characteristics — ​ ­posture, gesture, coiffure, and dress — ​­that help to illuminate aspects of the identity and the roles each of these women plays in the canvas. The crouching figure’s deeply angled legs and ankles are spread wide in an exaggerated posture reminiscent of both birth and a deep second-­position plié, a dancer’s stance that serves in part to caricature Degas (figures 26 and 338). Picasso explored this motif in several studies from this era, yet it is somewhat surprising to find it in a formal painting, particularly one of this scale. This demoiselle’s left arm rests against her inner thigh and knee as if to further press her legs apart. Her right arm is posed akimbo, elbow angled wide, and the implied left hand rests on her haunch. She is naked, yet in many ways what we do not see is equally important. As we have seen in her wide-­kneed pose this demoiselle reveals her sex to the remaining canvas members as if to reinforce her role as their mother too. The standing African-­like demoiselle angles her body in several directions simultaneously. Large conical breasts press forward from her torso, and her buttocks extend backward, contrasting with the implied bending of her knees (here hidden by the large head of the crouching demoiselle in front). This woman’s dynamic standing posture is common in African sculpture (figure 103), and it le bordel philosophique

259

is sometimes described as the traditional African dance pose.82 Her arms are painted in such a way that they rise perpendicularly from shoulder level, a gesture assumed by many African women and men when transporting large goods such as wood or pots (figures 193 and 248). Several Picasso studies from this period explore this same theme, which — ​­coupled with the woman’s posture and three-­quarter profile — ​­suggest that she is a late arrival, rushing into the setting perhaps from some distance. The tall centermost chignon-­wearing female is depicted in contrapposto, her right knee and leg brought forward in front of her body. Her arms are extended upward to a tight, awkward, and seemingly painful gesture in which the elbows are pressed high above her head as the hands close together at the rear. This pose is quite common in historical European paintings as well as in photographic studies of this period, particularly in erotic scenes, because in this posture a woman’s breasts are pulled higher, making them more prominent. This de­moiselle wears attire recalling (among others) the famed beauty Venus de Milo (figure 63), a marble sculpture by Alexandros of Antioch (130–100 bce) that has long held a prime space in the Louvre. The figure’s gesture, which appears in part in Michelangelo’s Dying Slave (figure 67), also on view in the Louvre, suggests the importance of this latter artist and this work to Picasso.83 The theme of a dying slave and the context for which the artwork was made (Pope Julius II’s tomb) mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. The S-­shaped curve of this female’s body also in some ways suggests that of medieval French sculptures (figure 62), consistent with the importance of related works for Picasso during this period (see chapter 3). Based on these elements, the demoiselle’s posture and attire in some ways reinforce her identity with early Europe. The second Caucasian-­like female is more complex. Her arms are draped over her head in the manner of a Venus Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Sea), an iconic reengagement of the birth of Aphrodite as seen, for example, in Jean-­ Auguste-­Dominique Ingres’s Venus Anadyomene (1848; figure 13), although in this work and in the related painting, La Source (1820–56), one arm is folded over the figure’s head. In Botticelli’s original painting of the same theme (The Birth of Venus, 1486; figure 217), Aphrodite emerges from a large scallop shell. This motif, which evokes a vulva, has striking complements to Les Demoiselles in the labia-­like walls of the setting from which this figure and others emerge. Picasso likely knowingly drew on this idea of the goddess’s birth and the arrival of a new era, ideas that resonated with Les Demoiselles.84 The central demoi-

260

chapter seven

selle’s pose is singled out by Steinberg as one of rampant recumbence, which this scholar explores in largely erotic terms.85 In various drawings for this canvas, the tall centermost woman is seated, positioned on an incline, foreshortened, and/or in a half-­lying, half-­upright pose. The completed figure’s posture in the painting is similar to that of the newly born woman on the right in André Derain’s The Golden Age (1905; figure 17). Derain’s figure marks the transition between two ages, and, like the figure shown in Matisse’s Blue Nude (figure 19), evokes characteristics of both verticality and horizontality. The posture of the demoiselle standing second from the left also recalls in some ways Michelangelo’s rather androgynous 1523 sculpture Dawn, from the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence. The subject of Dawn, like Dying Slave (figure 67), coincides in interesting ways with themes of change and transition consistent with the “ages of humankind,” taken up by Matisse, Derain, and others in this era. Both of the centermost demoiselles suggest classical or Renaissance-­era sculptures consistent with the new interest in the antique. Illustrated books from Picasso’s period, such as those of Stratz as well as popular artist journals such as L’Etude academique, are filled with photographs of models posed in positions that recall these sculptural forms.86 It is also important to remember that many of Picasso’s close friends in this period — ​­Apollinaire, Jacob, and Salmon — ​­were literary figures whose educations were deeply steeped in classical lore. Picasso was not simply a great artist with an experienced and creative eye and hand; he also had a very agile mind and a quick wit, and hungered for diverse kinds of information. The posture and gesture of the Egyptian/Asian demoiselle on the left of the canvas are distinctive. In several early compositional drawings for the canvas, a male medical student is positioned here (figure 9). Little of this male persona is present in this female figure except her walking pose and strikingly rigid profile stance. She steps forward across the canvas toward the right, her well-­muscled right leg and foot machinelike in their movement. The figure’s right arm and fisted hand are similarly stiff. This woman’s posture, gesture, and implied movement recall many early Egyptian paintings and sculptures. In this era Egyptian arts were prized not only for their distinctive profiles and simplified yet elegant shapes (forms that were then classified as “primitive”) but also for their symbolic richness. In the case of these and the classical European forms, we get a sense of timeless advance.

le bordel philosophique

261

Clothing and Coiffure The unique, minimalist clothing worn by the five demoiselles adds in important ways to the identities of these women and to the meaning of the painting more generally. The two African-­like figures are depicted naked, based on Western views that sub-­Saharan and similar populations lived this way. In contrast, the leftmost Egyptian/Asian demoiselle sports a thin, almost transparent robe of yellow tones and a pinkish coral sheath that covers the right side of her body, draping to the floor along her leg and foot. This attire is consistent not only with the lightweight cotton sheath worn by ancient Egyptian women but also with the form-­fitting garments of silk or similarly soft materials that South Asian and Polynesian women wear. The iconic profile stance, inner serenity, gold-­brown facial hue, and light tropical wrapper reinforce these possible identities. The two Caucasian women are clothed in meaningful ways. The one standing second from the left wears a very thin and notably transparent white wrap secured at the juncture of her shoulder and raised arm. Her lowered hand clasps another white cloth. This she simultaneously drapes over and behind her thigh and haunches. The chignoned female who stands beside and slightly behind her at the center is shown naked from the waist up. A crisp semitransparent white cloth is draped around her hip, covering her lower belly, sex, and thighs. Since the dress recalls that of the Venus de Milo, if, in the view of Picasso and many other Western artists in this era, European women were the most beautiful, then Venus de Milo would have been an ideal source as ancestress of this group. Many of the forms that Picasso seems to have used in dressing his demoiselles are artworks: African figures, Egyptian or Asian sculptures and paintings, and classical Greek and Renaissance statuary. This is consistent with Picasso’s interest in including attire appropriate to the geographic and cultural regions that these women represent. The coiffures of the five women are distinguished in ways that inform the canvas as well. The Egyptian/Asian woman at the left wears her straight black hair slicked back behind her ear, reaching the middle of her back. The two European women have long, dark hair worn in different ways. The hair of the female positioned second from the left is worn parted in front and pulled back behind her ears, then tugged into a ponytail tied near the nape of her neck. This coiffure was familiar in rural communities in Spain, Italy, and other areas of southern Europe. The taller European woman standing beside her has instead drawn her hair on top of her head in an elegant, off-­center chignon; her bangs fall fashion262

chapter seven

ably across a corner of her forehead. This chignon coiffure is consistent with a chique urban dweller of Paris or other such city. The standing African’s black hair is parted and slicked back behind her ear. While there is no real evidence of curl, the smudged and jagged crisscross lines at the outer perimeters of her hair suggest this. The crouching female’s blue-­black hair is worn in a topknot tied high on her head. From this thick nob of hair extends a section that presses down the nearby shoulder and back in a manner that seems to almost counter the neat chignon of the standing European or the Parisian fashion plate in Picasso’s sketch (figure 32). One scholar has noted, somewhat tongue in cheek, that while in this canvas Picasso chose to emphasize “‘primitive stylization,’ there is nothing but hairstyle to distinguish the women from the male customers.” 87 Clearly these diverse coiffures hold additional significance for the reading of this painting. Taken as a whole, what is important in the variant features portrayed in the women of Les Demoiselles is Picasso’s insistence at once on the core differences and complementarities between them. Whether we focus our attention on the crouching demoiselle, the standing Egyptian/Asian, the arm-­raised African, or the carefully posed Caucasian in the elegant chignon, we get a sense of this play. At their core, all women are both the same and different; individual physiognomies (and masks), hairstyles, and fashions differentiate these women and the cultures they represent. The masks in the painting distinguish specifically those demoiselles whose origins lie outside of Europe, areas where masquerade continues to play an important role. The women in the canvas evoke a global stage set framed in part around shared concerns of sex and motherhood — ​­a complex and somewhat disordered bordel of ideas consistent with the meaning of the term brothel in French. Considering the importance of jokes and wordplay for Picasso, this framing of the canvas around cross-­global and transtemporal encounter seems especially germane to understanding Picasso’s selection of women from different races and ages to populate his painting. Together they embody not only a time machine of sorts but also processes of evolution and the interconnectedness of distinctions between global populations.

le bordel philosophique

263

Conclusions

What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing. ​­P A B L O P I C A S S O ,

quoted in Herschel

Browning Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, 263

The Creative Nexus Picasso’s path-­forging 1907 Les Demoiselles is a work of unique richness, complexity, and challenge. Discussions in the preceding chapters transform what we know about both the work and Picasso’s role within the modernist movement. Not surprisingly, the canvas follows multiple paths toward signification. It transports complex, sometimes competing and contradictory messages that individually and together enrich the canvas in important and unexpected ways.1 We now have a possible date for the work — ​­March 26, 1907 — ​­thanks in part to the two witnesses that Picasso set up in front of the canvas soon after he had applied paint to it (figure 27; Guus. van Dongen and her daughter, Dolly). In positioning this mother and daughter directly before the painting, and between the faces of the five demoiselles, Picasso also offers us a key hint to its larger thematic import. In this pictorial grouping of racially, temporally, and stylistically diverse women, Picasso points to inherent connections and complexities around issues of sex and progeny, here cojoining references to lovers, mothers, offspring, sisters, grandmothers, and others into a canvas broadly focused on origins and parturition. Picasso seems in part to have created a dramatic mise-­en-­scène of an apocryphal reunion of the mothers of each main global “culture.” Such a vision is in part what Picasso’s philosophical bordel (mess, complex situation)

engages. These references are aptly suggested in the painting’s early name, Le Bordel philosophique — ​­the philosophy here conveying in part the diverse viewpoints on related issues. The shockingly twisted head of the crouching demoiselle at the lower right of Les Demoiselles both attracts and repels viewers with her angry stare, advising us that we have stumbled, uninvited, into this strange reunion. Her stern look also is a warning to us not to disturb the solemnity of the occasion and whatever is about to take place. In the same way that the figure in Matisse’s Blue Nude (figure 19) appears to be rising up from the earth beneath her, and those in André Derain’s Bathers (figure 20) seem lost in the thick forest overgrowth in which they have just been birthed, Picasso’s canvas shows humanity’s first women at a later moment in the evolutionary process. In the 1907 painting we are shown a quintet of women from different geographic areas who are distinguished by their own unique geographic and cultural idioms (dress, coiffures, postures, artistic styles, and other elements). The five women shown here in many ways represent “types,” recalling the women on the pages of Carl Heinrich Stratz’s richly illustrated volumes. They provide us with a vision of women (and by extension men) who once and still populated the world. While Les Demoiselles is clearly “about” sex in the broadest sense, the work also introduces ideas of birth, regeneration, and immortality as a key part of this act, as addressed in both biological and cultural terms — ​­the idea of perpetuity including art and Picasso’s own position as an artist. Picasso had always intended Les Demoiselles to be an important painting, and, as he later revealed to André Malraux, this type of pictorial engagement, embracing as it does core ideas uniting sex, birth, progeny, generations, and evolution, is consistent with subjects he considered appropriate for major works. As Malraux explains, for Picasso such subjects revolved around “birth, pregnancy, suffering, murder, the couple, death, rebellion, and, perhaps, the kiss. Although such themes are generally embodied in forms characteristic of the era, one encounters them in almost every period. Nobody could be ordered to express them, but when any great painter encountered them, he was inspired by them.” 2 Picasso moved away from a single style or viewpoint in approaching form and composition to create a more “true,” “honest,” and “complete” reality. Picasso did not need any book to be able to do this, but books provided him with a visual and intellectual “infusion” that encouraged him to transgress long-­standing traditions of monolithic style and vision. As Picasso later explained to Brassaï, “I seek always to observe nature. I cling to resemblance . . . more real than the real, attaining the surreal. conclusions

265

That is how I understood surrealism.” 3 While the surrealist movement came considerably later, Picasso even in 1906–7 sought to create a canvas “more real than the real” through his rendering of the five demoiselles each in the art style of her geographic and historical identity — ​­dynastic Egypt/South Asia, ancient Europe, sub-­Saharan Africa. Each woman invokes simultaneously a different spatial, racial, and temporal realm. This multiplicity has a notable resonance with issues Picasso and others were then exploring around tropes of time travel and theories of evolution. In key ways this painting addresses both. We discern core elements of the painting through the complex concavity and convexity of its setting, suggesting at once a vagina, birth canal, cave, and curtained stage set for various activities. These framing elements, rather than evoking a “real place,” forcefully transgress established time and spatial idioms through multiple contradictory references. This space, full of mystery — ​­at once primeval and modern, bound by nature and by civilization — ​­like the women who inhabit it, is at once everywhere and nowhere. We, along with the generations of viewers who have stood in front of this painting, get transported by it into a larger struggle at which we want both to peer more deeply into its interior spaces and beckoning eyes and run away in fear. This temporal and spatial complexity also is consistent with what Alfred Barr calls the painting’s “sheer expressionist violence and barbaric intensity” and what the art critic Michael Brenson identifies as “the energy and violence stored within the work.” 4 Whereas for Barr the stylistic complexity and disparity was a sign that the work was largely a transitional (here cubist-­directed) one, for Picasso the internal stylistic differences were simply an attack on mimesis and the legacy of stylistic uniformity. Picasso’s move was an even bolder one in that he chose to “graft” Egyptian and sub-­Saharan masks onto the physiognomies of women with non-­European bodies and identities. While Picasso’s encounter with these same African works was critical to how Les Demoiselles came into being and took shape, what is striking is how the result of each such encounter is so different. Georges Didi-­Huberman, in Confronting Images,5 takes up visual forms that both lose their clarity and challenge a sense of rational understanding by pushing against art historical traditions of engagement. Les Demoiselles encourages a similar contradictory frame in multiple ways: perspectival differences, stylistic variants, the strange setting, and disjunctures between faces and bodies, masks, and other features. In incorporating these seemingly contradicting elements Picasso heightens the power and impact of this important work. His radical 266

conclusions

use of perspectival variants adds to the sense that the canvas is outside of place and time.6 Through this, Picasso encourages the viewer to take up each figure separately within the whole.7 One effect is a desire to explore the painting both close up and from a healthy distance. Les Demoiselles in some ways is also a historicizing work, replete with references to earlier European arts (prehistoric, classical, medieval, early modern) and others (African among these), to say nothing of the painting’s engagement with historic “ages of humankind” themes, here broadened to include the more global family and colonial encounter. Yet Picasso was in many ways also clearly ahead of his time, anticipating the bold disjunctures of cubism, and still later the surrealist intermingling of time and space. The use of different art styles to reference the diverse regions and periods of the women he depicts was for Picasso a way to create a more “complete” reality. Integrating these diverse forms, styles, and perspectives within the same canvas was a strikingly revolutionary move, and here, too, “Picasso had simply, as always, been light years ahead of the game.” 8 The canvas recalls in this way an art-­rich time machine — ​­a precursor to André Malraux’s later idea of “a pan-­cultural ‘Museum without walls.’” 9 Indeed, it is tempting to think that Malraux’s dream of a museum in which walls had no fixed place may have been partially inspired by conversations with Picasso around Les Demoiselles and other topics. One of the important findings of my research is Picasso’s use of book sources. Picasso did not need books to create this painting, but as we have seen, these volumes provided him with a new visual and intellectual “infusion” that seem to have further encouraged him to transgress long-­standing traditions of style and vision. That Picasso worked frequently from photographs in this era, found in these books and other contexts, adds to our understanding of the transformative impact of photography on Les Demoiselles. Picasso’s choice of books is insightful. Brassaï explained that one day, during a tour of his residence, Picasso “saved a surprise for us. From his secret cupboard, he takes out a faded manuscript by Alfred Jarry, from the Ubu cycle. The cupboard is crammed full of rare books and manuscripts by poets and writers, almost all annotated and illustrated by his hand. . . . One day, he showed me the manuscript of Apollinaire’s Bestiaires, which he had filled with animals of all kinds by his own hand [figure 276]. The cupboard also contains most of the letters received from his poet friends.” 10 This passage suggests Picasso’s interests in collecting and studying important books in the 1906–7 era. Many of Picasso’s friends could have easily furnished him with those books addressed in this conclusions

267

Fig 314

Pablo Picasso. Photo of Guillaume Apollinaire reading in the artist’s studio at Blvd de Clichy. Fall 1910.

volume that he appears to have scrutinized for his demoiselle experiments, and his German friends could have provided translations. Indeed, it is likely that Picasso’s friend (and sometime dealer) Wilhelm Uhde (figure 135) knew about Frobenius’s African masks volume, for Uhde’s close friend at the time, Sonia Delaunay-­Terk, painted figures, among these Young Finnish Woman, that show similar influences (figures 141).11 Another likely source for German and other books was Apollinaire, who had a sizable library collection on subjects as varied as cultic practices (among these perhaps Richard Francis Burton’s account of his travels to the kingdom of Dahomey; figure 156) and pornography (of which the Stratz volume on female anatomy was a notable example). Picasso took photographs of persons and subjects that were of particular interest to him. It is clear that he was familiar with Apollinaire and his reading as shown in the photograph that Picasso took 268

conclusions

of him in figure 314. As Breton explained, Apollinaire’s tastes reflected a “wide knowledge which hardly anyone else had of specialist subjects, such as mythology, everything connected with the esoteric, [as well as] forbidden books that libraries keep under lock and key.” 12 Olivier also noted, “Guillaume lends me books. He has an excellent library where you can find works by almost all the important authors from the eighteenth century to the present day. What would I do without reading? We don’t have any money, so we hardly ever go out, except somewhere in Montmartre where we can have dinner on credit.” 13 Several years later one critic wrote of Apollinaire that he “was not all that original. He was taking his cue from Frobenius, who had begun to argue that African art was neither primitive nor naïve; it was simply the African style.” 14 If needed, Apollinaire also could have helped with translations, as he had served as a tutor in Germany. It is important to note that whatever the books or however Picasso came to them, the artist never directly copied from these images, even in his studies.15 Rather (like so many of his myriad sources — ​­artworks among these), he employed various processes of retranslation, displacement, and creative reinvestment, sometimes in the manner of a caricatured visual quotation, with key elements often reversed. No doubt Picasso also followed the regular news about the French colonial presence in various parts of the world, Africa included. These sources, along with news from family and friends in Spain and Cuba, all left an imprint. The legacy of Picasso’s competition with Matisse and Derain, as well as various earlier artists, was important too. During the five months Picasso spent on work related directly to the canvas, he researched, analyzed, and evaluated ideas, materials, and results in an array of sketchbooks that are in many ways as informative as the canvas itself (see “Sketchbooks: New Dating”).16 From this vantage Les Demoiselles is an especially important work to address around issues of content and sources as well as process and creativity.

The Creativity Nexus To Apollinaire, Picasso’s large 1907 canvas marked a creative revolution: “I saw that everything had been done. One had to break, to make one’s revolution and to start at zero.” 17 This revolution was not an easy one, Apollinaire explains, since “it was carried out amid the conditions of a new spiritual and creative crisis — ​­one far more profound and all-­embracing than ever before because it touched on the technical, spiritual and pictorial possibilities open to the artist. conclusions

269

For Picasso, this was a solitary, internal revolution.” 18 To Apollinaire, “each consecutive stage was a new step into the unknown; every step was a violation of the status quo, a transcendence of given limits, a broadening of possibilities.” 19 Picasso celebrated the revolutionary nature of this canvas with his friends in the months that followed. Accordingly, in a July 3, 1907, letter to Picasso, the painter Francisco Iturrino writes, “You don’t know how much it pleased me to know that you have been working for months on a large painting [that] . . . will be quite different from the ones that I know and undoubtedly it is one of the things that makes me think and my imagination gets carried away.” 20 Although it is not clear which painting Iturrino is referring to, most likely it is Les Demoiselles. The fact that still now, over a century after the painting was completed, few if any at the time understood the full complexity of the work is an indication of its remarkable originality. Picasso’s endeavor was indeed so bold and transformative that the artist voiced some doubts about the painting, particularly after several of the early responses. Wilhelm Uhde relates, “I received a desperate note from Picasso asking me to come and see him immediately. He was tormenting himself for a new set of reasons. [His one time dealer Ambroise] Vollard and [art critic Félix] Fénéon had come to his place and had left again without any understanding of what they’d seen.” 21 Gertrude Stein reported the views of many: “The beginning of this struggle . . . was discouraging, even for his most intense friends. . . . I was alone at the time in understanding him. . . . perhaps because I was expressing the same thing in literature.” 22 Stein readily voiced her conviction about the revolutionary nature of this painting, writing in her 1938 book, “When Picasso, under the influence of African art, painted the Demoiselles d’Avignon (1906–7), it was a veritable cataclysm.” 23 Some clearly “got” it, and Picasso’s friends invited others to the studio to see the painting. After the German dealer Uhde brought another German dealer, Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, to the studio, the latter is said to have remarked that the painting “seemed to everyone something mad or monstrous.” 24 For Kahnweiler, however, this was a sign of Picasso’s brilliance. And, indeed, Picasso later told Brassaï of his indebtedness to Kahnweiler (then only twenty-­three years old, to Picasso’s twenty-­seven), “Without him, I would have never had a career.” Brassaï learned from Picasso that Kahnweiler was so “overwhelmed by the boldness of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, [that he] decided in 1907 to buy everything Picasso would produce, except five paintings per year, which the artist would keep for himself.” 25 In another example, following Apollinaire’s bringing Georges 270

conclusions

­ raque to the Bateau-­Lavoir studio to view the painting, the astonished Braque B likened its boldness to Picasso having drunk lit gasoline and spat fire upon the canvas. He soon began his own highly productive relationship with Picasso that led to new cubist endeavors and other art revolutions.26

Picasso and the Creative Process The subject of creativity within the larger “processes” of art making has been explored by scholars in many disciplines, from psychology27 to literature,28 to art history.29 Picasso is often a key subject of related studies. Significantly, Picasso’s many sketchbooks reveal no precise “vision” that can be said to have shaped his long months of study from beginning to end, nor do they directly inform the eventual changes he introduced when he first began applying oil pigments to the canvas. What these cahiers do suggest instead is that the artist was pushing himself to explore new forms of art rendering that sometimes lay far outside the boundaries of art practice in this period. T en K e y P o in t s o f Cre at i v e En g agemen t

What about the core temporal and contextual points of engagement that seemed to have shaped Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, making it the highly creative and, indeed, revolutionary work that it became? In addressing this question, Picasso’s creativity in relationship specifically to this canvas should be examined against his various work processes and the steps he took along the way. Ten core points speak to these issues in an especially salient way, and my discussion here also serves as a cogent summary of vital events explored in the preceding chapters, further deepening our understanding of the canvas itself and the core factors and processes in play in its creation. P o i n t O n e : F i n a n c i n g a n d R e c o g n i t i o n . The first major creative

impulse for Les Demoiselles was clearly the enormous influx of money Picasso received from the sale of paintings to Vollard in April 1906 (chapter 1). This sizable sum provided Picasso with not only financial freedom and the impetus to undertake more risk-­laden work, but also enabled him (with Olivier) to travel to Gósol, Spain, that summer to begin an array of initial visual experiments (chapter 6). During part of this period Picasso appears to have already been using one of the Stratz volumes in his experiments. conclusions

271

Gertrude Stein also provided funds around this time so that Picasso could rent a second studio in the Bateau-­Lavoir. This enabled him to adhere to the long uninterrupted hours of engagement without regular intrusions that were needed for this project. Olivier writes of the meager furnishings in the curtainless space of the first studio, which included a bedstead in the corner, a small cast-­iron stove supporting an earthenware wash basin, a table that housed Picasso’s pet white mouse, a small black trunk, a wicker chair for seating, and “some easels, canvases of every size, tubes of paint scattered all over the floor, paintbrushes, containers with turpentine, [and] a bath of etching acid.” 30 Outside of painting materials, quiet was clearly the most important element that Picasso needed. Vollard’s recognition of Picasso in his April contract and acquisitions held both financial and artistic merit, which helped nourish Picasso, reinforcing his decision to take unique risks in the months ahead. Both talent and ambition factored here too. Brassaï later writes of Picasso, “Few artists are gifted enough to put across Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. They would starve to death.” Indeed, Brassaï recalls, “Matisse told me one day: ‘You have to be stronger than your gifts to protect them.’” To Picasso specifically, Brassaï stated, “You had that gift: at twenty-­five, you were famous, you had been successful.” 31 But Picasso’s response to Brassaï is interesting, considering how critical this factor of risk was to his decision to take his next vital step: “For myself, I wanted to prove that you can have success in spite of everyone, without compromise. Do you know what? It’s the success I had when I was young that became my wall of protection [emphasis mine]. The blue period, the rose period, they were screens that shielded me.” 32 In the end, the Vollard sale provided a critical additional impetus to Picasso, as tangible evidence that he was not only talented but also valued by those who could potentially help bring even greater success. Able now to pay the rent, he was free to explore and prod the boundaries of art. P o i n t T w o : E n c o u n t e r w i t h a V i l i C o n g o F i g u r e . The second

major flash point of creativity unfolded that remarkable October 1906 evening when Picasso saw and physically grappled with the Vili sculpture that Matisse had recently acquired (figures 43 and 44; chapter 3). This experience was made more salient still by the perceived aura such an African work carried as an object of unique ritual and supernatural primacy. In the hours immediately following his close scrutiny of the sculpture, Picasso created a series of drawings combining elements of this carved figure in several female personifications (figures 45–49). Picasso’s decision to use this African object (one owned by his chief competitor, 272

conclusions

Henri Matisse) to create something new reveals how competitive he was. Just as Matisse had “discovered” this striking work, and would be credited as its source, Picasso sought to make a far more powerful and innovative response to it. In the aftermath of this encounter, Picasso would spend nearly five months on research and experimentation in which African art figured prominently, a time frame that contrasts strikingly with the relatively few days he likely spent applying pigment to his large canvas. The Cézanne retrospective in October 1906 had an impact as well on the earliest compositional studies for Les Demoiselles, suggesting bathing scenes that owe much to this source. Yet it was this African work that challenged Picasso even more throughout this process. P o i n t T h r e e : P r e d i l e c t i o n f o r W o r k . Another key factor was clearly

Picasso’s commitment to the hard work necessary to making a transformational canvas such as this. Apollinaire reveals that during this time Picasso was “locked up in his studio, working through the night . . . stubbornly concentrated on learning anew, changing his taste, re-­training his personal feelings.” 33 In this period, André Salmon explains, “The studio on the rue Ravignan was no longer the ‘rendez-­vous des poètes.’” 34 Picasso was clearly working alone much of the time, and his close band of friends would largely meet and celebrate elsewhere. As Picasso explained in an August 14, 1907, letter to Leo Stein, “I worked so hard in Paris this winter and last summer in the studio with all this heat that all my work finally made me ill.” 35 We learn too that after Picasso “made such an enormous effort in doing the Demoiselles, [he] stopped working the better part of each night as had been his custom.” 36 After work on Les Demoiselles was completed, and Picasso had sufficient time to rest, things returned to the earlier schedule: “Often of an evening, his friends now met as they had used to in the studio, to talk, smoke, and drink. They also visited others like the critic Maurice Raynal.” 37 P o i n t F o u r : E x p e r i m e n t a t i o n , P l a y, a n d t h e S e a r c h f o r N e w S o u r c e s . For Picasso the critical five-­month period of study and experimen-

tation dedicated to working out various ideas in pencil and paper, pen and ink, knife and wood, were in many ways as important as the painting of the canvas itself. New, creativity-­promoting sources and processes of engagement were a central part of Picasso’s everyday practice, research, and experimentation for Les Demoiselles. Apollinaire points out in a review of Picasso’s work two years before this canvas, “Everything enchants him and his undeniable talent seems conclusions

273

fig 315

Picasso, Studies of Seated Woman, Horse, 1906. fig 316

Matisse, Bathers with a Turtle, 1907–8.

fig 317

Matisse, Marguerite, 1907. fig 318

Picasso, Bowl, Profile and Top, 1907. fig 319

Picasso, Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon, 1907.

274

to me to serve an imagination in which the delightful and the horrible, the low and the delicate, are proportionately mingled.”38 With Picasso, work, play, and creativity were clearly joined — like the creative process itself that is sometimes framed as play — childlike or otherwise.39 The primacy of humor and “jokes” to Picasso is evidenced in Les Demoiselles as well, a work whose early title, Le Bordel philosophique, was said by Jacob to be a “studio joke to cheer the world of the innovative young painters.”40 Many of the drawings done during these months suggest a similar interest in humor and image play. Humor also featured in early responses to the canvas. Roland Penrose writes that Fénéon was with Apollinaire when he saw Les Demoiselles, and that on this occasion there was “some talk of caricature.”41 As “types,” the five demoiselles indeed in many ways function similarly. The five-month period of study and experimentation led Picasso to move outconclUsions

side standard sources of form — ​­to works of medieval, Iberian, Egyptian, and sub-­Saharan African art (in, among other places, the Trocadéro and Louvre), as well as to images of African masks and photographs of women from around the globe published in various book and other sources. During these months of study and experimentation, Picasso spent long nighttime hours working on various “problems” that filled a large number of sketchbooks, engagements that remained so important to Picasso that he kept them hidden in his personal possession until his death. In 1912 Max Jacob observed, Those who see in Picasso’s work the mark of the occult, of the symbol or of the mystic, are in danger of never understanding it. Instead, he wants to give us a total representation of man and things. Such was the goal of the primitive sculptors. But here we are concerned with painting, an art of surface, and that is why Picasso is obliged to create something new, in his turn, by placing those balanced figures — ​­which are beyond the laws of academicism and the anatomical system — ​­in a space rigorously consistent with the unexpected freedom of movement.42 What is striking to me in this statement is that, whether or not Jacob knew of Picasso’s use of books, this close friend addressed here new kinds of explorations, among these questions of two-­and three-­dimensional form, surfaces, and volumes (see figures 318 and 319). P o i n t F i v e : I l l u s t r a t e d B o o k s . Picasso came into the possession of sev-

eral important books in this period, and like the Vili figure, these transformed his approach to form, encouraging him to engage in deeper ways with different kinds anatomies and arts from around the globe. It is clear from several of Picasso’s sketches for Les Demoiselles that various books and objects were used in combination with each other. This cojoining of sources can be seen in a fall-­to-­ winter 1906 sketch (figure 315). At the lower left of the sketch is a compositional study for Two Nudes (plate 9; figure 183), a work that itself likely relates to a photograph of two women meeting in a curtained space in the Stratz volume (figure 178). The face of the seated demoiselle on the canvas’s lower right corner resembles one of Frobenius’s African masks (among these, figures 106 and 109). This same mask illustration was likely important for Picasso’s crouching demoiselle. Above the head of the seated demoiselle is an isolated spiral-­form ear, one that resembles that of the crouching demoiselle and may also relate to the Iberian stone head (figures 70 and 71). Picasso expunged the face of the conclusions

275

centermost figure in this sketch, but apparently he had also envisioned it with the curving heart-­shaped form of one of Frobenius’s African masks (a Punu work from Gabon, perhaps; figure 109). In other of Picasso’s sketchbooks and drawings (figure 228 among these), we also see him working through several different sources (including Stratz and Frobenius) at around the same time. And in one key decision involving the sketchbooks (cahier 6), Picasso appears to have conjoined several different sketchbook sections to create a new cahier. Apollinaire’s writings on Picasso’s creative process reveal much about the new kinds of visual sources he was using and their potential impact on him, including particularly those Apollinaire identified as “archaic, ‘primitive’ and ‘barbaric’ artistic systems akin to his own view of himself as a new Adam.” 43 These and other forms were important for Picasso, suggests Apollinaire, because “they both activated his emotional perceptions and imbued the image (thanks to their archaic associations) with a certain timeless atmosphere, a certain eternal background.” 4 4 What Apollinaire describes as Picasso’s “classroom”-­like studies during this period reveal that the artist was engaging in a variety of visual experiments. French naturalist Henri Mouhot wrote of his visits to Picasso’s studio that it was “a kind of laboratory.” 45 Picasso’s large array of studies for Les Demoiselles were important to his insistence on creating something entirely new, a move that was seen by Apollinaire at times to have a certain “awkwardness [that] may . . . be ascribed to the . . . aggressive destruction so typical of Picasso’s revolutionary spirit in 1907.” 46 P o i n t S i x : M u s e u m V i s i t s . As Picasso sought new visual forms for Les

Demoiselles, he was keen to explore not only their formal elements but also their emotional and expressive power. Picasso’s important visit to the Trocadéro most likely took place in late March, just before he began to apply pigment to his canvas. Presumably this trip was made at some point between the opening of the Salon des Indépendants (March 20) and the Tuesday evening (March 26) he likely turned his attention directly to the canvas — ​­a period consistent with the cold damp (early spring) temperature that the artist recalled years later about his visit to the Salon.47 For Picasso this Trocadéro visit was an emotional encounter. He states that he hated the place, admitting, too, that he willed himself to remain (“I stayed”) in the dank museum exhibition hall because it was a moving experience and he saw his own work in semi-­spiritual terms.48 What is important here, too, is the almost supernatural charge that the Trocadéro works provoked in Picasso, an experience in many ways complementing and enhancing 276

conclusions

his experience with Matisse’s Vili figure and the ancient Egyptian and Iberian works from the Louvre (one of the latter was now in his studio). The Trocadéro visit was important to the artist in other ways as well: “It wasn’t the forms of the fetishes that influenced me,” he said; “what they did was make me understand what I expected from painting. . . . Why sculpt like that and not some other way?” 49 The Trocadéro sculptures, including the large iron assemblage figure of the Dahomey war god, Gu (figures 147), challenged him to rethink the very nature of form. Interestingly, African works were not the principal focus of his Trocadéro visit at this time; indeed, Picasso appears to have happened upon these galleries almost as an accident. Yet even these works left an imprint. In the Trocadéro’s medieval collection, which Picasso had gone to see, as in the African and Oceanic galleries, the array of styles on view was striking, particularly since, like many artists in this era, Picasso probably assumed that they were part of a single culture and ethos. His decision to paint each demoiselle in the style of art linked to her specific geographic and historical identity likely derives in part from this experience. Much the same could be said for the Louvre, with its display of Egyptian and other works. We can’t overlook other important exhibitions featuring key artists of the past that had opened around this time in Paris, among these retrospectives of Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Yet it was the other, more unusual, works that made Les Demoiselles so transformative. P o i n t S e v e n : Dr e a m s o f P r o g e n y. During the winter months of 1906–7, when Picasso was deeply involved in studies for Les Demoiselles, the artist and his lover Fernande Olivier decided to adopt a child, Raymonde, a girl of around thirteen years of age who came from a Paris orphanage, and appears to have arrived in Picasso’s and Olivier’s Bateau-­Lavoir studio in March 1907, the same month he applied pigment to the blank canvas that would become Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Around this time as well Picasso painted an intimate family portrait showing himself, Fernande Olivier, and the son they never had positioned on her lap (figure 308). Picasso had once voiced concerns about whether he could have both children and artistic success — ​­recall the vow he made to give up his artistic dreams if his sister could live (figure 309). Raymonde’s arrival (and return to the orphanage several months later) is important in that it highlights key elements of the core idioms of sex, birth, regeneration, and origins that Picasso was exploring in this canvas. As a painting framed around cojoined questions of sex, reproduction, and evolution, the undulating vagina-­evoking conclusions

277

and cavelike walls, which seem simultaneously to swallow and disgorge the generations of humanity that these women embody, are in many ways as important as the women themselves to the effect and meaning of the canvas. P o i n t E i g h t: T h e S a l o n d e s I n d é p e n d a n t s . A vital and timely fac-

tor for Picasso at this time was the opening of the Salon des Indépendants on March 20, 1907. Here the artist saw for the first time the then shocking canvases of his two key rivals, Henri Matisse and André Derain (figures 19 and 20). To the end Picasso was an enormously competitive artist, one for whom jealousy and a desire to leave his competitors in the dust often featured centrally. Within a week of the Salon’s opening, Picasso would apply pigments to the enormous canvas he had acquired specifically for this painting. Both the Derain and Matisse canvases were at once emotionally and visually challenging. In their own way, they also were notably revolutionary. Picasso in part responded to these works with the even greater commitment to a revolutionary project for the demoiselles. His likely last preparatory sketches for these figures (those of cahier 14; figures 38–42), plausibly made just before he attacked the canvas, were presumably made around this time. Matisse’s and Derain’s paintings had been prepared specifically for the spring 1907 Salon opening and represented a vital challenge to historical ideals of beauty. The challenge of their perceived ugliness, too, likely became part of Picasso’s larger vision. According to Gertrude Stein, “He who created a thing is forced to make it ugly. In the effort to create the intensity and the struggle to create this intensity.” 50 But for Picasso, it likely was more than this — ​­a reshaping of the whole broader aesthetic and system of values that defined the history of art. P o i n t N i n e : P a r i s . France’s largest metropolis and its economic, social, and

political capital was a notably creative center in this period — ​­as evidenced not only in art, literature, music, theater, and fashion but technology and other arenas as well. The city had in large part already recovered economically from the crises of the 1870s through 1890s. Paris in 1906–7 was now a global crossroads, to which the recent colonial wars had introduced an array of new ideas, materials, and institutions. The once distant “primitive” global arena of conquered foreign lands was suddenly at the heart of Paris itself, impacting life there in a diversity of arenas. Radical change was not only accepted in Paris circles at that time but celebrated. New technologies were transforming both the home and the work place. Some innovations — ​­new photographic printing technolo278

conclusions

gies in particular — ​­made images available on a broader scale, and changed how art was being viewed and practiced. This could be seen in the many illustrated journals such as Mes Modèles and books such as those of Stratz and Frobenius. Clearly Paris was ready for major artistic change, and Picasso was perfectly positioned to lead this revolution. Artistic creativity and related concerns were being addressed by scholars and other writers in this era. Picasso and his circle of friends were following these currents, and Picasso likely hoped to promote related values in his own work. Picasso’s late March visit to the Trocadéro (figure 51), where he would see an array of medieval casts (figures 59, 62, and 303), African sculptures (figures 54–57, 99, and 147), and other works (figures 52 and 53) also left an impact on the large canvas. Although Picasso worked largely alone and late into the night during the critical period on his demoiselles experiments, he did take time to occasionally meet with his close-­knit band of highly talented and well-­read friends, some of whom were exploring related issues in their regular Tuesday evening gatherings at the Montmartre bistro Closerie des Lilas (figures 6 and 7). It was after one such discussion (most likely the night of March 26) of “intellectual” issues that Picasso returned to his Bateau-­Lavoir studio to begin applying paint to the readied canvas. P o i n t T e n : N e w I n t e l l e c t u a l I n s i g h t s . One of the many intellectuals

important in this era is Henri Poincaré, a leading European philosopher whose theories spanned the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and evolution.51 Poincaré’s interest lay in part in the role that intuition plays in human development. The mathematician Maurice Princet and his wife, Alice, were members of Picasso’s circle of friends, and likely introduced Picasso to the work of Poincaré and others. Poincaré, in turn, was a follower of the popular philosopher of art Henri Bergson, a figure also known to Gertrude Stein through her studies at Harvard under William James (who, like Bergson, was a “life philosopher”). Stein’s avant-­ garde literary project intersected in important ways with that of Bergson. The latter’s interest in humor and how it can reveal key truths has resonance not only with the work of Stein and Picasso but with that of Apollinaire and others. Bergson opposed the positivist tenets of philosophers such as Auguste Comte and Ernst Mach, emphasizing instead the kinds of “creativity that cannot be explained by science [or] . . . the relation between mind and reality.” 52 Several Bergson publications addressing this issue were likely known to Picasso and his group, including Bergson’s Time and Free Will (1889) and his Creative Evoluconclusions

279

tion (1907). Max Jacob had read Bergson’s works as a philosophy student, and he and many others in Picasso’s circle presumably saw public announcements for Bergson’s “widely advertised lectures” on art and creativity at the Collège de France.53 Matisse’s apartment and several brasseries the groups frequented were a few blocks away. Bergson maintained that evolution took place through élan vital (vital impetus), naturally creative forces advanced by artists and other humans that were consistent with nature’s ever-­present creativity.54 Similar ideas find grounding not only in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon but also in an array of related studies (figures 286 and 287). For Bergson, evolution promoted creativity through the need to continually adapt to new environments as life changed.55 Time — ​­flow, flexibility, transformation, change, and motion — ​­was central to this vision, with key aspects of life being experienced as a continuum or flow.56 For Picasso, prehistoric art and “primitive” art played a similar transtemporal role as élan vital, pressing him to enter a deeper engagement not only with origins, procreation, and immortality but also with evolution. Another core intellectual issue at play in both Paris and other centers in this period is evolution — ​­now framed both in scientific terms and with respect to socioeconomic and other questions of racial difference. There was an important artistic side to this discussion as well. One of the era’s important writers who addressed this is Gustave Le Bon. In 1905 Le Bon published his best-­selling volume L’Evolution de la matiere, exploring the instability of form as a factor in the creativity of nature. He saw atoms exemplifying this feature in both their impermanence and their transformation into energy.57 Le Bon’s book was reviewed in the bimonthly literary periodical Mercure de France, which was closely followed by Apollinaire, Jacob, Salmon, and others of Picasso’s circle.58 In many ways Les Demoiselles d’Avignon addresses similar questions of instability, impermanence, and transformation, not only through the female protagonists themselves and their uniquely transformational setting, but also in the inclusion of masks on several of their faces. C r e a t i v i t y a s P r o c e s s i n L e s D e m o i s e ll e s d ’A v i g n o n

As we have seen, the long-­term process of creating Les Demoiselles d’Avignon engaged Picasso for roughly a year, extending from April 1906, when he learned of the Vollard influx of funds, through the end of March 1907 (and with repainting likely into early April 1907), when he put the finishing touches to the canvas, including reworking several figures, softening their features, and redoing the eye 280

conclusions

shapes to make them less reptilian. In looking back on these events it is difficult to single out any one dominant creative factor. Stated another way, none of these actions or events speaks alone (or even in larger groups) to the transformative nature of this painting. Picasso had clearly employed a wide range of creativity-­ generating processes (intellectual and emotional) throughout. Each of these, along with the array of new sources he explored, and the specific era and place in which he worked, played a seminal role. There are clearly many more than ten key points of engagement that inspired and challenged Picasso’s thinking about Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. However, the core ones remain, in addition to his competitive drive and hard work: the timely influx of money and admiration, Picasso’s physical engagement with a Vili figure, the availability of new book and other sources, his finding of new (and older) artistic models in museums and other places, the unique contributions of intellectual and artistic friends, the challenge posed by Matisse and Derain in their Salon entries, and the Paris setting itself, with its array of new materials and ideas. These factors in many ways were as important to the transformative nature of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as Picasso’s notably deep talent. That said, in many ways one of the most profoundly influential sources remains Leo Frobenius’s illustrated volume of African masks. Not only do references to these images reappear throughout many of the sketchbooks and the final canvas, but Picasso returns to this source and others by Frobenius in the years ahead. Considering the core moments and insights that sparked Picasso’s creative decisions over this period, it is imperative that we now put aside several oft-­ repeated truisms about the artist and his work, including framing Picasso as simply “a genius” or “a troubled artist.” While the former may be in part correct, as is the case with nearly every truly gifted artist, not all of Picasso’s works were innovative or even remarkable, and it is precisely because Les Demoiselles is so transformative that it must be addressed in its own terms. Picasso came from a highly supportive family; his father encouraged his early success and offered material and other assistance. The key 1906–7 period when Les Demoiselles was being fashioned, moreover, was not a particularly difficult one in the artist’s life. Picasso was in a stable relationship with a beautiful and intelligent woman (Fernande Olivier), who helped to cultivate connections with Gertrude Stein and many others. Moreover, Picasso was relatively flush with money at this time (thanks to the large Vollard sale in the spring of 1906). Picasso was not suffering from any known illness or trauma (and none is conclusions

281

mentioned by his many friends or acquaintances). He had family and friends in Spain who were facing no known concerns; in Paris he had a solid group of friends he met with regularly (although less frequently while hard at work). And if today some might label Picasso a misogynist, seeing in this frame (and in his acts) a factor of his creative drive, it should be emphasized the Picasso’s behavior at the time was not outside the bounds of many Parisians, artists and otherwise. Although some today have recast Picasso as a “thief” or “plagiarizer” of African art for his own material ends, other artists, for example, Matisse, were doing much the same thing. Artists the world over have been doing this for generations. Picasso’s aim to transform European art necessarily also involved a reframing of African sculpture for many into a “high art” category, in keeping with an object of merit to be collected and admired by individuals and institutions of taste. Finally, the real story of Les Demoiselles is not about Pablo Picasso as a troubled genius who violently attacked his canvas and transformed it into something both strange and larger than life.59 For the vast majority of the five months Picasso engaged Les Demoiselles, he worked tirelessly — ​­exploring, researching, drawing, experimenting, mastering new forms of visual engagement, playing with core elements, pulling things apart, and reassembling them anew. During this process he repurposed his brilliant early childhood draftsman skills, using his mind, pen, pencil, brush, and chisel as he forced himself to reengage core ideas and questions, reframing them into something profoundly new and indeed revolutionary. All of this came together on March 26, 1907, after a night of deep philosophical discussion with his friends, in the cognizance of how far Derain and Matisse had moved things forward in their revolutionary paintings at the Salon.

Early Pictorial Responses to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and What They Tell Us Picasso’s engagement with broader ideas of origins and evolution in Les Demoiselles is evidenced in the ways several artists addressed this work soon after it was completed. Matisse responded to Les Demoiselles in a particularly salient way, most notably in his late 1907 painting Bathers with a Turtle (figure 316). Three figures dominate the otherwise starkly empty canvas, assuming various standing and crouching postures. While their poses recall those of Cézanne’s

282

conclusions

f i g 3 2 0 left Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1907. f i g 3 2 1 right Picasso, study of hand holding skull, 1907.

fig 323

Picasso, Woman in the Garden, 1929–30.

fig 322

Picasso, Eagle, 1907.

Bathers (figures 14 and 15) — ​­a key source also of Picasso’s Demoiselles and related compositional studies — ​­their rendering suggests what one critic has called “an uncoiling that evokes a progressive transformation of states of being, an evolution of consciousness.” 60 For Matisse, evolution seems also to have been in play. In Bathers with a Turtle Matisse has clearly absorbed Picasso’s transformative new painting, and has stripped down his own composition to essential elements as he explores this larger evolutionary theme. The turtle serves as another reference to evolution, since it is at home both on land and in water, living an existence of transition between these worlds, complementary to the larger evolutionary process in which fish transform into amphibians. Matisse also employs the gesture of both hands drawn up to the mouth seen in his own African Vili figure that had been so important to Picasso (figures 43 and 44). In another detail, Matisse gestures toward Picasso’s canvas, adding a separate (additional) eye above one of the figure’s ears. This recalls Picasso’s displacement of the crouching woman’s ear and broader interest in the arbitrariness of form.61 Not surprisingly, this canvas has been described as one of Matisse’s “most disturbing paintings,” and its core figures are described as “primeval creatures set in some indefinite place at the very ends of the earth” that convey a certain “primitive or primeval state of being.” 62 If we compare both this Matisse work and Les Demoiselles with Michelangelo’s fresco showing a similar “origins of man” theme (figure 324), the radical nature of both paintings becomes all the more apparent. Whereas Michelangelo’s assured touch of God’s index finger meeting Adam’s extended digit speaks to core scientific and religious beliefs of his era, Matisse’s disconnected family grouping and Picasso’s leftmost demoiselle with her disembodied raised arm and splayed searching fingers evoke the disjunctured human evolutionary processes highlighted in this era. Gertrude Stein declined to purchase this Matisse painting, claiming it was too large for her apartment. However, she did acquire Picasso’s Three Women (shown in figure 34), which is roughly the same size.63 This decision was likely highly painful for Matisse, and, although his new painting was ready for presentation at the 1908 Salon, he chose not to exhibit any work that year, a further sign of the impression that Les Demoiselles had made. Matisse’s portrait of his thirteen-­year-­old daughter, Marguerite (figure 317), completed in the months after Les Demoiselles, is another important “response” painting, one that also reveals how well Matisse understood Picasso’s great achievement.64 Matisse employs here a childlike style to render his daughter’s features, twisting her nose to the side in a comma-­like profile notably similar to 284

conclusions

that of Picasso’s crouching demoiselle and related studies (figures 97 and 299). Matisse additionally has flattened the composition, leaving out both shading and a sense of volume. All of these elements, including Matisse’s childlike text at the top left, suggest his own take on Picasso’s primitivizing approach. In this era, the term “primitive” enfolded not only populations in Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the pre-­Columbian worlds but also children and the insane. It was this Matisse work that Picasso selected from Matisse’s studio when the two exchanged paintings in the fall of 1907. Matisse chose a very different work from Picasso, the latter’s proto-­cubist still life, Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon (figure 319), a painting that was completed a few months after Les Demoiselles and reflects an interest in the interiors and exteriors of things such as bowls, pitchers, and skulls that the artist was already exploring in the sketchbooks (figures 318, 320, and 321). Each artist had selected the work of the other that was most reflective of what they knew to be main concerns in their developing oeuvres.65 A key issue here was that of elementary form. Picasso pursued this in part through Villiard de Honnecourt’s wonderfully fluid animal and human figures (figure 322), working in a radical shift in style and technique that foregrounded the seeming origins of form. This and the book by Leo Frobenius would lead to a wholly different concept of portraiture and of what it should entail, as, for example, with Picasso’s portrayals of Gertrude Stein (figures 123 and 124), Wilhelm Uhde (figures 134 and 135), Antoine Vollard (figures 136 and 137), and Jacqueline Roque (figures 138 and 139). We should also not forget that as committed as Picasso was to reinventing art, he also had an eye on the past, reframing art around an array of genres, including historically traditional “high art” themes such as the “birth of man,” and the most famous such works, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (figure 324). Significantly, as we recall, Picasso appears not to have been the only artist affected by Frobenius in this era, Henri Gaudier-­Brzeska and Sonia Delaunay-Terk being among the others (figures 140 and 141). Still other artists seem also to have been familiar with Stratz, including Matisse (figure 325: compare figure 201) and Marcel Duchamp (figure 326; compare figure 265). Picasso himself would come back to these book images later, most importantly to Frobenius, in works such as his 1909 Ballets Russes masked costumes such as his Parade mask from the 1909 Ballets Russes (figure 328), imagery that recalls Duala works from southern Cameroon (figures 327 and 329). In an equally stunning connection, Picasso appears to have turned to another Frobenius illustration, a page featuring basketry masks created through a process similar to caning conclusions

285

(figure 330) in his seminal 1912 work Still Life with Chair Caning (figure 331). Still later it was in a Frobenius volume that Picasso would find key sources for another challenging work, notably his celebrated 1937 painting Guernica (figure 332), created for the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition that year. Like many major Picasso compositions, the sources for Guernica are diverse. But among these we must cite the striking black-and-white photographs of Saharan rock paintings published in Frobenius and Abbé Henri Breuil’s 1931 book Afrique. This appeared as a double issue of Cahiers d’art in 1930–31 (nos. 8–9). One of the black-and-white photographs of rock painting shows abstract humans and large horned cattle (figure 333) in the thick overlay of imagery (figure 334) within a highly charged and often difficult to decipher setting notable in part for its compressed space. Similar features are found in Guernica. Picasso’s deep-seated interest in African-inspired forms of sculptural assemblage (figures 323 and 335) is noteworthy whether we are talking about metal assemblages or sculptures based on ordinary caning techniques (figures 330 and

f i g 3 2 4 above Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, c. 1512. f i g 3 2 5 right Matisse, Standing Nude, 1907.

fig 326

Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912.

286

conclUsions

fig 327

Cameroon and Nigerian masks, late 19th century, Frobenius 1898. fig 328

Picasso, Parade Mask, 1917.

above | left to right fig 329

Miscellaneous African masks, Frobenius 1898. fig 330 fig 331

Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912.

Anon., Nupe fiber mask, late 19th century, Frobenius 1898.

Fig 332

Picasso, Guernica, 1937.

Fig 333

Nubicon Desert (Sahara) painting, Frobenius 1898, and Frobenius and Breuil 1931.

Fig 334

Basutoland (South Africa) painting, Frobenius 1898, and Frobenius and Breuil 1931.

331). Picasso also engaged African assemblage elements in his own later assemblages (figure 335), including his large untitled sculpture erected in Daley Plaza in Chicago in 1967 (figure 336), based in part on African masks illustrated in Frobenius (compare figure 327). Conceivably, this choice in part reflected and acknowledged Chicago’s large African American community. Equally strikingly, this sculpture includes clear visual references to Apollinaire’s Dahomey sculpture “The Bird of Benin” (figure 142) and to Picasso’s earlier maquette intended for a memorial to his good friend (figure 144), a model that was rejected. The untitled Chicago work, Picasso’s first large public sculpture, also serves in key ways an evocative memorial to Apollinaire — ​­an apt reference to this remarkable man who had been so instrumental in the artist’s early engagement with African art — ​­and so many other things. This 1967 work highlights the ongoing importance of illustrated books in Picasso’s oeuvre even at this juncture, reinforcing how important they were as an ongoing wellspring for the artist. In some ways, like the early French officers’ discovery of Dahomey art on the battlefield of colonial encounter in Africa (figure 337), the myriad works of African art continued to interest Picasso. Let me conclude with one final example that allows us to see precisely how much Picasso had shifted art making from the then still highly valued impressionists, such as Edgar Degas and his popular ballet dancers in this era (figure 26). In Picasso’s Nude with Raised Arms (The Avignon Dancer) (figure 338), created around the same time as Les Demoiselles, we see the enormous impact that even at this young age Picasso had made on European art history. This striking Frobenius-­influenced painting served as a stand-­in for Les Demoiselles in the conclusions

289

fig 335

Picasso, Little Owl, 1951–53.

fig 336

Picasso, untitled Chicago sculpture, 1967. fig 337

Cover, Le Petit journal illustré, 1892.

Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1936 Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition, mounted by the museum’s director, Alfred Barr. In this exhibit, Picasso’s The Dancer was hung adjacent to a Kota reliquary figure from Gabon (figure 99) that, like several of the figures shown in Frobenius, displays formal links with both The Dancer and the crouching woman in Les Demoiselles. One can see connections between the unusual Kota bodies and Picasso’s early studies for the crouching demoiselle. The face of the dancer additionally evokes several Kongo 290

conclUsions

and Makonde masks that Picasso likely saw in Frobenius (plate 2, middle row center; figure 86). The Dancer not only provides key evidence of Picasso’s continued use of African art formal vocabularies in reconfiguring the human body but also serves as a kind of visual play and commentary by the artist on the celebrated Degas Dancers series (figure 26). As Picasso’s early biographer Pierre Cabanne explains, “La Danseuse [was] kept by Picasso as the incontrovertible evidence of the plastic adventure he was entering upon, indeed marks a capital stage in his process of decomposition of form.”66 The circumstances of its retention by the artist within his personal collection are insightful. As Cabanne tells it, Antonina Vallentin found the work among various other paintings behind a stove in the rue des Grands-Augustins apartment to which Picasso had moved in early 1937. What Picasso revealed to Vallentin about this painting is telling both in its own right fig 338

Picasso, Nude with Raised Arms (The Avignon Dancer), 1907.

conclUsions

291

and in how he chose to frame it. Notes Cabanne, “Picasso dragged it out, stuck in a strange white frame, which was what the painter wanted to point out to his visitor. ‘It’s one of Degas’s frames that I was able to get hold of,’ he explained proudly. ‘He had them made to order for him.’ And his hand caressed the old-­ fashioned moldings of the wood selected by Degas for his danseuses ‘on the wing’ in their spangled tutus.” 67 While we don’t know the specific Degas dancer that Picasso was referencing, this series of works showing ballerinas “in the wings” date to around 1875, as does figure 26. Antonina Vallentin goes on to explain to Cabanne that Picasso “was looking at the frame as if its connection with the repulsive monster [the crouching figure] it framed seemed absolutely normal to him. Why in the world should it have seemed abnormal?” 68 This was all the more important since for Degas the frames were a critical part of his artistic vision. Indeed, there is a story about the dealer that Degas and Picasso shared, one that Ambroise Vollard often cited, that notes that once, “when visiting a friend who had purchased one of his paintings and reframed it without permission in a gilded setting, the artist took the painting down from the wall, removed the frame, and walked out of the house with his painting under his arm. This uncompromising move was indicative of his convictions as to how his work should be presented — ​­and there are other personal accounts of Degas’s insistence on his framing choices.” 69 Picasso’s acquisition of Degas’s special danseuses frame for this work is as important in many ways for its meaning as is Picasso’s painting of the danseuse herself, and what she represents within the crouching demoiselle’s art historical legacy. In acquiring Degas’s signature frame to frame his own dancer painting, Picasso has in essence appropriated and claimed “ownership” of it, much as he had done in photographing Guus van Dongen and her daughter standing before Les Demoiselles (figure 27), or in taking the portrait of Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite, in their recent exchange (figure 317). Clearly Picasso’s Danseuse canvas, positioned now, even if temporarily, in Degas’s classic frame, also conveys how much Picasso, throughout his seminal 1906–7 studies and experiments for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, had reshaped not only the history of painting but also the way we have come to understand it. Anna Chave, in her essay on the canvas, brings together an array of striking commentaries around the legacy of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in the form of questions. “What was ‘the amazing act upon which all the art of our century is built’? What is ‘the most innovative painting since Giotto,’ the ‘harbinger comet of the new century,’ the very ‘paradigm of all modern art,’ no less?” 70 We read in 292

conclusions

turn that “no painting ever . . . signaled as fast [a] change in the history of art. Yet it was anchored in tradition.” 71 Pierre Daix points out of Picasso that “he would look at himself with the whole history of art to remake.” 72 Another critic noted, “He crossed a line that would come to be recognized as a major fault between cultures, a divide that makes the Demoiselles uniquely relevant a century after its completion. By addressing the intentions of Africa artists, however inaccurately, Picasso brought African artists into discussions of [the] contemporary.” 73 One could cite any number of exhortations about Picasso’s striking canvas. In their own right, they inform the painting very little, but they do point to the revolutionary nature of the work. The wellspring of creativity that Picasso drew on and was energized by in the course of making Les Demoiselles d’Avignon involved both drawing on and subverting the past at the same time as learning, step by step, how to reimagine the present and create the future anew. He reveals key elements of this endeavor in the last sketchbook he completed before applying pigment to the canvas (carnet 14; figures 35–42). In one of these sketches (figures 36 and 37), he superimposes on top of a pirouetting dancing figure very similar to those of Degas a written statement of his own remarkable history and planned future trajectory — ​­extending from his mother (ma) to his rise from Málaga, Madrid, and Barcelona, Spain, to Paris, France, and to ultimate global fame (Fa), to self-­ satisfaction with his own victory (A R R R R). He knew he had come a long way, especially for a youth and a Paris outsider, and this painting would push things even further. Whether one engages Picasso’s innovative Demoiselles d’Avignon through its sources or its larger creative processes, this provocative canvas continues to challenge us in important ways. The various quotations from Picasso that appear as epigraphs at the top of each chapter each also add to the significance of this painting in considering this artist and his larger oeuvre. In brief these quotes from Picasso speak to the larger significance of his diverse sources, his engagement with them, his work ethic while exploring a new canvas, and his larger interest in challenging us as viewers to rethink the world anew. For the preface, I chose as an epigraph Picasso’s view that “Inspiration exists but it has to find you working,” because in a way it also conveys the way that I or any other author engages on a book project, in this case a subject that I had little direct interest in until I began discovering his various book sources. More important, it explains how Picasso himself remained alert to his environment—working, if you will—to the point that he constantly was inspired by, and then utilized, images to which he was exposed. conclusions

293

He did this in his art as a whole, and in Les Demoiselles in particular. Thus, the epigraph illuminates both Picasso’s work, and this book, as the preface foretells. The introduction’s epigraph reads: “To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.” Here Picasso speaks in core ways to how he engaged in the varied art forms and cultures that were to become key sources for this painting and others, a search in the past that makes this history still alive and engaged in the present. The epigraph also suggests Picasso’s belief that using and building from prior works is one way of keeping that art alive, explaining his incorporation of such works into his own and foretelling in useful ways the manner in which Les Demoiselles itself would inspire future artists. But, as discussed in the introduction, it also highlights the way in which he sought to hide his sources, and the resulting controversy concerning his use of these materials. The transformative impact of Les Demoiselles — ​­for Picasso and for so many others over the course of the last century lies at the heart of chapter 1’s quote: “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” Chapter 1 explores the stepping stones that resulted in, and from, Les Demoiselles, and the painting’s role as (for example) a type of historical time travel, illustrating both Picasso’s meaning and the way in which Les Demoiselles fulfills the role Picasso so aptly describes. In the epigraph selected for chapter 2, Picasso asks: “What is a painter? . . . [H]e is someone who founds his art collection by painting it himself.” Chapter 2 explores further this definition and examines it against Picasso’s own practices and words, following the indepth process and diverse collection of arts Picasso explored as he worked on this painting, which in turn would shape his own collection practices in this period and later. A main theme of chapter 3 is how closely Picasso worked with actual objects in his exploratory sketches for this painting — ​­book illustrations, plaster casts, cartoons, sculptures of African art, and others — ​­evoked here in his statement, “In painting, as in life, you must act directly.” The epigraph chosen enriches our understanding of how Picasso took core materials from life itself to engage directly throughout his creative process. Discovering new sources of inspiration in places not then frequented by artists is the subject of chapter 4, “The Sourcerer’s Apprentice,” which takes up the illustrated book of African masks by Leo Frobenius — ​­a major Picasso discovery, as signaled in his statement, “I

294

conclusions

don’t seek; I find.” Chapter 5 is where I address Picasso’s likely family history with North Africa and the African diaspora (Cuba notably) as well as the special import that the culture of Dahomey (Benin) and the female warriors (Amazons) had on him, such that in Picasso’s words: “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Karl Heinrich Stratz’s richly illustrated ethnopornographic volume, featuring women from around the world posing nude before the camera is featured in chapter 6. For Picasso, this book also was an important resource, its sexual subject matter coalesces with its scientific content in providing examples of women’s bodies from a more global vantage. For Picasso, similarly, “Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.” Chapter 7 engages the philosophical framing of this important painting — ​­the quest for truth in a new way that also takes up the lies (fictions) that an artist uses to convey this idea. As Picasso explains: “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” As the final Picasso quote for this book, one that sums up the larger set of issues here, I have chosen Picasso’s overview on intentionality and outcomes: “What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.” As can be seen in the very process of his lengthy work related to this canvas, extending back to Picasso’s initial receipt of funding allowed him the time and freedom to reinvent himself (and art history) through this effort, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is more than any single aim or purpose, or even the sum of its various instantiations of ambition, goals, or desires, but rather became what is, a complex tangle of ideas and defining forms through the very act of Picasso’s complex creation process and encounters in the making of this monumental work. Newsweek claims that the canvas represents the “most influential art work of the last 100 years.” 74 The enduring impact of the work is also captured by a New York Times essay that discusses the jarring hold the canvas still has on audiences a century after it was painted: Even near the end of a century in which shock is so commonplace that it has become an artistic convention, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon remains an adventure. . . . Faces, breasts, shoulders and arms seem to detach themselves from bodies and hurl themselves at us from every conceivable

conclusions

295

angle. The curtains on the left and right appear to be both held open and in the process of snapping shut. At the age of 25, Picasso painted a sexual nightmare without exit.75 For me, far from a “sexual nightmare without exit,” it is a work of unique sexual power, an intense condensation of time and place merging together within the same cramped birth canal and cave-­resembling space, a compression of temporalities not only in people and places but also in forms of artistic rendering.

296

conclusions

Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without a generous grant from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research, the Dean of Social Sciences, and the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, or without the benefit of five other important research institutions where I was fortunate to be a fellow for various periods while researching and writing this book: the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; the Musée du quai Branly, Paris; and the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas, Dallas. In the course of this project I also benefited greatly from a series of lectures I delivered on this subject. I presented my initial findings on this painting publicly almost exactly a century after Picasso began to paint this canvas. This took place at the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York City (February 14–17, 2007). Subsequent to this, I gave other lectures on my research not only at my home institution of Harvard University but also at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte (Paris), the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, James Madison University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, the University of California (both Berkeley and Santa Barbara campuses), the University of Texas at Austin, Yale University,

Ithaca College, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Vassar College, and the St. Botolph Club in Boston. My findings benefited enormously from related questions at these lectures as well as a wide array of other private discussions I have had around imagery and ideas with key Picasso scholars and others. This book would not have been possible without new technologies — ​ ­from online search engines to the help of friends on social media. It also would not have been possible without great libraries. For these resources I am very grateful. For help with editing and checking sources, I owe a very special debt to Mere­ dith Baber, to Jack Flam, and to Ellen McBreen for careful pruning of the text and helping me to clarify key points. To Kevin Tervala, Raquel Zamora, and Ben Murphy also many thanks for help with source checking and other parts of the process. And to the incomparable Ivo Fravashi, I appreciate greatly the editorial care you gave this complex project. For key help in the difficult processes on the publishing side of things — ​­from possible presses, to image questions, to indexes, I wish to thank Patricia Aufderheide, Susan Bielstein, Lucy Cleland, Kyle Courtney, Diane Fortenberry, Peter Jaszi, Michelle Komie, Ian Jacobs, Roger Thorpe, and John (Ike) Williams, and Enid Zafran. This also would not have been possible without the ongoing help and support of my wonderful colleague and friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., who has stuck by and supported this project through thick and thin. As always, many thanks to Rudy for key support, encouragement, and intellectual engagement and wonderful diversions along the way. There are many other people I want to thank for help with this project; among these are Felicity Allen, Sean Anderson, Sophie Annoepel-­Cabrignac, Hannah Baader, Ian Balfour, Misty Bastian, Gaëlle Beaujean-­Baltzer, David Bindman, Yaëlle Biro, Yve-­A lain Bois, Emily Braun, Richard Brettell, Benjamin Buchloh, Stephen Campbell, Janie C. Cohen, Lauren Collignon, James Cuno, Laura A. diZerega, Michael Duffy, Gail Feigenbaum, Michael Fitzgerald, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Henry Louis Gates, David Getsy, Christine Göttler, Romy Golan, Maria Gough, Wendy Grossman, Catherine Hale, Jeffrey Hamburger, Dell M. Hamilton, Charles Haxthausen, Ian Jacobs, Judith Kaplan, Alisa Lagamma, Chris Lakey, Michèle Lamont, Irving Lavin, Patricia Leighten, Michael Leja, Sarah Lewis, Yukio Lippit, Stéphane Loire, Leora Maltz-­Leca, Laurence Mattet, Prita Meier, Jean-­Paul Mercier-­Baudrier, Andrei Molotiu, Laurie Moynihan, Alexander Nagel, Jonathan Nelson, Steven Nelson, Margaret Olin, Jack Parkinson, Jean-­Louis Paudrat, Andrew Perchuk, Christine Pinault, Joachim 298

acknowledgments

Pissaro, Rebecca Rabinow, Peter Read, John Richardson, Jennifer L. Roberts, Judith Rodenbeck, Martin Schreiber, Sheila Schwartz, Alexa Sekyra, George Shackelford, Richard Shiff, Eve Sinaiko, Simon Smith, Christine Stelzig, Jeffrey Stewart, Cristiana Strava, Roberto Tejada, Frédéric Thomas, Roger Thorp, Anne Umland, Kristina Van Dyke, Norman Weinstein, Laura Wexler, Robert Williams, Gerhard Wolf, Rachel Youdelman, and Henri Zerner. I thank the staffs of the Harvard University Libraries, the Picasso Archive and Foundation in Paris, and the various other institutions that made research possible. The critical end phase of this book would not have been possible without a generous year-­long fellowship from the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, and especially its remarkable director, Richard Brettell. This volume also would not have been possible without the generous help and support of Peter Jasci and the extraordinary work and insight of Kenneth Wissoker, Christine Riggio, Liz Smith, Amy Buchanan, Mindy Hill, Drew Sisk, Jessica Ryan, Chris Crochetière, and the great team at Duke University Press and bw&a Books.

acknowledgments

299

Sketchbooks: New Dating Carnet No.

Ne w Dat e

Subj e c t s

Carnet 1 Sketchbook 107 mpp 1858

Sept.–Dec. 1906

Image of elderly man from Gósol plus a number of studies of well-­muscled women from Stratz (back, front, profile views), along with walking figures (compare figs. 266, 267), studies of androgyny and musculature (compare plate 11), as well as an upturned face with masklike features and figure gesturing similar to Stratz (fig. 180) and Two Women (fig. 183).

Carnet 2 Sketchbook 104 imp 1859

Oct. 1906– Jan. 1907

Studies for Two Women (fig. 183). Several compositional studies for Les Demoiselles (seven-­figure study; two figures in curtained space); two women in curtained space; also drawings of crouching figure and doctor. Studies of Olivier (3/4 head view with coiffure — ​­recall her portrait as mask; fig. 127). Several Stratz-­linked studies also show muscled backs and a seated figure with foot on knee.

Carnet No.

Ne w Dat e

Subj e c t s

Carnet 3 Sketchbook 1063 mp 1861

Dec. 1906– March 1907

Studies for doctor, sailor, crouching figure in various renderings, including girl with ponytail and distorted nose (compare fig. 299), and watermelon slices (compare fig. 305). Seven-­person Demoiselle compositional studies and more simplified compositional studies for Les Demoiselles. Androgynous figures (such as Stratz). Recto-verso figures. Many crouching figures (figs. 235, 236, 299, 300, 305). Several studies likely based on African masks from Frobenius with white face mask (compare fig. 108). Figure with foot on knee (compare fig. 227). Most here seem related to Demoiselles. Frika with puppies (fig. 310).

Carnet 4 Private Collection

Feb.–March 1907

Many studies recall Stratz (front and back of same figure often with hands on head). Crouching figure. No compositional study for Les Demoiselles, so this seems already worked out. Studies seem to have air of experiments and studies for sculptural form. Studies of Egyptian figure in Louvre were slid into carnet 4 (figs. 75, 76). Note on inside of front cover: the hotel address where Henri Rouart was staying (the two lunched before end of March). He also inserts here: “Salle II” (referencing the Salon des Indépendants, which opened March 20). On final page he writes, “Escribir a Braque/Stein” (write to Braque/Stein). Separate studies tucked into this notebook include the Jurais composition (fig. 283) and its verso — ​­a six-­person compositional study for Les Demoiselles.

Carnet 5 Private Collection

April–May 1907

Created out of an exhibition catalog for H. Daumier shown in Paris, April 15–May 6, 1907. Several studies show measurement marks, suggesting he is studying proportions. Abstracted figure defined by diamonds (compare fig. 278). Also we see drawings for the painting Woman with Joined Hands. The woman’s face is bicolored, similar to African masks in Frobenius (plate 2) or the Trocadéro (figs. 55, 56).

Carnet 6 mp 1862

1906–7: (see below)

This sketchbook is composed of parts from several separate sketchbooks that were sewn together by the artist. Described as three separate segments; based on the imagery included, there may be only two. Examination of the carnet may help to answer this and other questions. Important: what he took out.

Carnet 6 Part I

Nov.–Dec. 1906

Part 1: Most closely relates to carnet 3, but likely done before it; includes principally six-­person compositions for Les Demoiselles. The six-­person compositions now have a female instead of the male doctor, so likely after carnet 2. Part 1 appears to end at 12R; part 2 seems to begin at 13R.

ske tchbo ok s: ne w dat ing

301

Carnet No.

Ne w Dat e

Subj e c t s

Carnet 6 Part II

Jan.–March 1907

Part 2: One six-­person compositional study and of demoiselle on the left. Standing figures in various postures and positions suggestive of Stratz (rear, profile, elbows angled upwards, some with linear hatching). There also are a group of schematic drawings of Frika and pups that look like they follow those drawn at the end of carnet 3. The number of pups is down to two, indicating that one has died. Several drawings of women in amazone coats, in one case with horses (figs. 160, 170, 171). Their bodies suggest Baga M’ba (Nimba) masks (fig. 173). Fernande wore such a jacket to the opening of the Salon des Indépendants on March 20, 1907. The adopted daughter Raymonde is included (compare fig. 313). So too are drawings perhaps related to the Picasso self-­portrait with Fernande and imagined son with African mask features (fig. 308). Also here are renderings of women as phalli (compare fig. 273).

Carnet 7 Private Collection

March–April 1907

Little essential for Les Demoiselles here, but drawings for the standing Caucasian demoiselle are still in play. The face of the adopted daughter Raymonde is here (compare fig. 313). Studies for Africanized figures, including studies for Nu à la draperie. Also, a study for the Dancer (fig. 338). Crawling baby and crawling man (figs. 311–12), as well as lots of elementary birds and animals (compare fig. 276), and on the reverse of one of these, which also shows a large ear, is the woman with a ponytail that becomes a foxtail (fig. 279). There is also a group of rather cubist still lifes with jar and cloths. The Raymonde portrait is right in the middle of them (compare fig. 313).

Carnet 8 Sketchbook 108 mpp 1860

Jan.–March 1907

Relates to carnet 6; likely after carnet 4. Large-­breasted women in amazone suit with Baga M’ba (Nimba) masklike features (compare figs. 170, 171, 173, 174, 175). Male and female figures with Frobenius-­like African masks. Words: buy “shorts for young girl” suggest this is just before Raymonde arrived. Here is found drawings of a head with plants emerging from it (fig. 287) and the figure of female body as male phallus after Stratz, as well as figures in African mask-­style faces and body poses plus studies for Nu à la draperie. Both Frobenius and Stratz are in play; a female figure with arm raised above her head, and a head with African mask features with diagonal markings. Also here are cubist-­like experiments with vessels and lemon (such as fig. 319) plus a vessel from top and side (fig. 318), reframing Stratz.

302

ske tchbo ok s: ne w dat ing

Carnet No.

Ne w Dat e

Subj e c t s

Carnet 9 Sketchbook 9 Private Collection

Jan.–March 1907

Beige paper used for various color studies. Looks to have been during multiple periods. Elementary bird study (hawk, in red ink, 4th from cover; fig. 322) is here (in carnet 7), and the figure of a woman with text, Málaga (3rd from cover, fig. 149). Studies for standing demoiselle and studies for doctor and sailor with diagonal cheek marks after Frobenius (plate 3), and another adjacent to the red ink musculature study (fig. 228) after Stratz (plate 11). Also a skull with foliage (compare fig. 287). Several sheets removed. Possibly the five-­person study for Les Demoiselles (Philadelphia) was here.

Carnet 10 Private Collection

Mar.–July 1907

This sketchbook was acquired by Leo and Gertrude Stein, who then disassembled it. Many works in color. Similar to works in carnet 8. African mask-­style heads after Frobenius (as well as studies for Nu à la draperie).

Carnet 11 Private Collection

Jan.–July 1907

Several Stratz-­linked works, including musculature and back bends (figs. 270, 271). Figures with African postures and masklike faces (recalling Frobenius). Similarities to carnets 8 and 10. Also studies of arching figure that come back in Picasso’s Dryad of 1908.

Carnet 12 Private Collection

March–April 1907

Motifs include elementary animal sketches (hawk, elephant, 4th and 1st from the cover; like fig. 276); various humans standing with animated postures and hands behind back such as Nu jaune; African faces with diagonal face marks (after Frobenius and Stratz). Spatial study with curtains. One page taken out (the first) and kept by Picasso; now in the mpp. Sketchbook images recall carnet 10 (with African-­like figures) dated March–April 1907.

Carnet 13 Private Collection

March–April 1907

Distorted face of crouching figure quite similar to the finished one in Les Demoiselles. Various figures with raised arms and African-mask­like faces and various gestures, recalling Nu jaune. A number of elementary animal drawings (camel, etc.; like fig. 276). Reprise of the masklike face of elderly man from Gósol.

ske tchbo ok s: ne w dat ing

303

Carnet No.

Ne w Dat e

Subj e c t s

Carnet 14 Private Collection

March 1907

Last sketchbook before the photograph of Les Demoiselles with Dolly van Dongen (fig. 27). Study for key figures in Les Demoiselles (figs. 35–42): crouching figure (very close to final one), standing African, Egyptian/Asian, and Middle Caucasian. Also figure of Raymonde. Various elementary animals (hawk, chicks; 2nd, 3rd, and 4th from cover). Various studies of undulated edged sides of Les Demoiselles. In one of these undulated frames he neatly prints “1 Ravignan” three times (his address). On the verso of the crouching figure: “pencil Ma/Málaga/ Madrid/Ravignan/Monsieur/ A [crossed out] R R R R R in perpendicular at right Barcelona/france Fa [crossed out].” This suggests that Picasso knew Les Demoiselles would be a defining one for his reputation. Written on back cover is 1907 Paris and address Ravignan.

Carnet 15 Private Collection

March–June 1907

Many in color. Studies for African figures Nu à la draperie and arched figures akin to Dryad. One missing page included still life Nature morte avec citrons. Study for still life Cruche, bol et citron (fig. 319) that Matisse selected in the fall 1907 exchange.

Carnet 16 Sketchbook 106 mp 1863

Feb. 1907– July 1908

Studies of figures from the back and sides (after Stratz). Figures in unusual backbend poses (figs. 270, 271), after Stratz (figs. 268, 269). Head with African mask features showing Baga M’ba (Nimba) and Makonde mask features after Frobenius (fig. 119). This study used for Picasso’s carving of a figure in wood (fig. 118). Preparatory study for Marins en bordée. Also studies for the Dancer (fig. 338), Woman with a Fan, and Dryad. Notation in sketchbook “14 Juillet,” while thought to be 1908, it is more likely to be 1907.

For images, see shsu (Mallen 1997–2018), Léal 1988a, and Seckel 1988.

304

ske tchbo ok s: ne w dat ing

Chronology Year

Picasso

1880s

1881 (October 25): Pablo Ruiz y Picasso is born in Málaga, Spain.

1890s

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

1887: Picasso completes several studies of black men.

1888: Picasso’s maternal grandfather, Francisco Picasso Guardeño, dies, leaving the children he fathered in Cuba with an African woman.

1896: Picasso wears the Moor’s costume in the Barcelona Carnival.

1893–94: Paul Gauguin completes travel journal, Noa Noa, and L’Univers est créé.

1896: Picasso completes L’Enfant et la poupée (La Soeur de l’artiste) (The Child and the Doll [The Sister and the Artist]), following his sister’s death in 1895.

Societ y

1895: H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine published.

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

Societ y

1897: Picasso completes Science and Charity.

1897: Gauguin completes Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

1898: Spain loses Cuba to United States in the Spanish-­ American War.

1898: Alfred Jarry publishes Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien.

1898: Leo Frobenius publishes Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas. 1898: Carl Heinrich Stratz publishes Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers.

1900–1905

1900: Picasso completes The Last Moments. 1900: Picasso first arrives in Paris. Attends the Exposition Universelle, where The Last Moments is on view.

1900: Joseph Deniker publishes Races et peoples de la terre. 1900: C. H. Stratz publishes La Beauté de la femme.

1901: First Picasso exhibition in Paris, organized by Ambroise Vollard.

1901: Carl Heinrich Stratz publishes Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes.

1901–4: Picasso’s “blue period.”

1902: Eugène Rouart publishes L’Artiste et la société on evolution and art.

1903: Picasso completes Amazon and Mother and Child, Vaginal Environment studies, The Embrace. 1904–6: Picasso’s “rose period.”

306

chronology

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

Societ y

1904: Picasso’s model Madeline becomes pregnant by Picasso and terminates the pregnancy. 1904 (August): Picasso meets Fernande Olivier. 1905: Picasso completes La Vie, an overpainting of his canvas The Last Moments.

1905: Georges Braque acquires a Tsogo mask (Gabon).

1905 (spring): Picasso completes Famille d’acrobates avec singe (Harlequin’s Family with Ape), a subject with parallels to evolution.

1905: André Derain completes The Golden Age.

c. 1905: Sign posted on Picasso’s Bateau-­Lavoir studio door, with the words “Au rendezvous des poètes.”

1905 (October–­November): Ingres’s Turkish Bath (1862) and Manet’s Olympia (1863) on view at the Salon d’Automne.

1905: Gustave Le Bon publishes L’Evolution de la matiere on the creativity of nature.

1905 (April 18): Dolly van Dongen is born.

1906

1905–6: Picasso completes studies of Salomé using as his model a Dahomey amazon from Richard Burton’s 1864 travelogue to Dahomey.

1905: Apollinaire completes a poem called “Salomé.”

1906: Picasso begins his animal studies for Apollinaire’s Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d’Orphée based in part on Villard de Honnecourt’s published manuscript images.

1906–7: Guillaume Apollinaire is at work on a Marquis de Sade project.

1906: Publication of a new edition of the Album de Villard de Honnecourt, d’après le manuscript, dated 1225–35.

chronology

307

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

Societ y

1906: Picasso completes study of an African male seated near a pot.

1906 (March): Gertrude and Leo Stein purchase Matisse’s Le Bonheur de vivre (1905–6) after seeing it at the Salon des Indépendants.

1906: French archaeologist Abbé Henri Breuil publishes study of stylistic evolution of cave paintings.

1906 (April): Picasso sells extant works to Ambroise Vollard for a sizable sum. 1906 (spring): Picasso effaces Gertrude Stein’s portrait, begun in 1905.

1906 (March): Derain sees African and Oceanic art in London.

1906 (May 25–June 14): International Theosophical Society holds its meetings in Paris.

1906 (summer): Picasso and Olivier travel to Gósol in Catalonia, Spain, for summer retreat. Here he completes The Harem and various studies. Picasso begins using Stratz? Picasso collects ethnographic postcards featuring Africans and others.

1906 (October 6–­ November 4): Paul Gauguin retrospective and special exhibit of ten Paul Cézanne paintings at the Salon d’Automne.

1906 (September–October): Picasso completes Gertrude Stein portrait. 1906 (October): Picasso handles Matisse’s Vili sculpture; that night he begins creating initial drawings of one-­eyed woman. Acquires canvas at this time? Picasso begins using Frobenius.

308

chronology

1906 (October 22): Cézanne’s death.

1906: L’Exposition coloniale de Marseille and a Senegalese village display at the Grand Palais.

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

Societ y

1906–7: Picasso draws Apollinaire holding the journal La Culture physique that promotes physical culture theories similar to those of Stratz.

1906–7: Photo-­rich journals published by Amédée Vignola show women from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East; used as models by Matisse and others.

1906 (October–December): Picasso completes Two Nudes. 1906–7 (fall–winter): Picasso completes self-­portrait with child: Homme, femme, et enfant. 1906–7: Picasso completes the ink sketch La Parisienne et figures exotiques. 1906 (late fall): Picasso draws women in amazone coats.

1906–7: Matisse and Derain meet in Collioure and decide to compete to make the most beautiful blue nude.

1906–7: Picasso and Olivier are reading The Katzenjammer Kids cartoon series. 1906–7 (October–March): Picasso works on studies and experiments for Les Demoiselles. 1907

1907 (winter): Picasso’s dog Frika has puppies. 1907 (March): Picasso acquires Iberian heads from the Louvre via Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret.

1907 (February 27): Guillaume Apollinaire describes a pink painting he saw in Picasso’s studio.

chronology

309

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

Societ y

1907 (March): Picasso visits the Trocadéro museum with Derain.

1907 (March?): Picasso and Olivier adopt Raymonde and return her shortly after.

1907 (March 20): Opening of the Salon des Indépendants, where Derain’s The Bathers (1906) and Matisse’s Tableau no. III (Blue Nude, 1906–7) are on view. Olivier wears an amazone coat.

1907 (March 26): Picasso begins to apply paint to Les Demoiselles canvas.

1907 (March): Wilhelm Uhde receives a desperate note from Picasso to come see him about a painting. He sees the painting and calls it astonishing. 1907 (late March): Ardengo Soffici visits Picasso and sees Les Demoiselles.

1907 (April 27): Picasso sends a card to Gertrude and Leo Stein inviting them to come to his studio about a painting.

1907 (spring): Wilhelm Uhde encourages Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler to see Les Demoiselles. Kahnweiler decides to buy everything from Picasso. 1907: Guillaume Apollinaire writes a pornographic novel, Les Onze mille verges ou Les Amours d’un hospodar (The Eleven Thousand Rods, or the Loves of a Lord). 1907: Guillaume Apollinaire short story “La Serviette des poètes,” set in Lapin Agile.

310

chronology

1907: Henry Bergson publishes Creative Evolution.

Year

Picasso

Fa m i ly, F r i en d s , A r t i s t s

1907: Picasso completes The Dancer and Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon.

1907: Matisse completes portrait of his daughter, Marguerite. 1907 (fall): Matisse and Picasso exchange paintings; Picasso selects Marguerite; Matisse choses Pitcher.

Societ y

1907: Sonia Delaunay-­Terk completes Young Finnish Woman. 1908

1908: Picasso completes Three Women and Nudes in a Forest.

1909

1910s

1908: Matisse completes Bathers with a Turtle. 1909: Guillaume Apollinaire publishes an anthology of L’Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade.

1910 (May): Les Demoiselles is published in the journal Architectural Record. 1912: Picasso completes Guitar and Still Life with Chair Caning.

1912: André Salmon references Les Demoiselles in his writings on cubism. 1913: Matisse completes portrait of his wife, Amélie, with a face resembling an African mask.

1916 (July): First exhibition of Les Demoiselles at the Salon d’Antin. 1930s

1909: Ballets Russes launched in Paris.

1914–18: World War I.

1918: Guillaume Apollinaire dies.

1939: Les Demoiselles purchased by the Museum of Modern Art

chronology

311

List of Illustrations Where an illustration is listed as “artist unknown,” “illustrator unknown,” “photographer unknown,” or the like, all reasonable efforts have been taken to identify the owner of rights in the material. If you are the owner of the copyrights or moral rights, please contact Duke University Press.

Plates Plate 1. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, March 26, 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York. (Online Picasso Project) opp.07:001. Plate 2. Anonymous artists, Republic of the Congo and Gabon masks, 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate II. Illustrator: E. Hugelshofer.  Plate 3. Pablo Picasso, Study of Man (medical doctor), March 1907. opp.07:017. Plate 4. Pablo Picasso, compositional study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, January– March 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York. opp.07.371.  Plate 5. Pablo Picasso, Three Figures under a Tree, autumn/winter 1907–8. Musée Pablo Picasso, Paris. opp.07.026. Plate 6. Pablo Picasso, Self-­Portrait, January–March 1907. Národní Galerie, Prague. opp.07.002. Plate 7. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, 19th century. Leo

Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate II. Illustrator: E. Hugelshofer. Plate 8. Rudolph Dirks, Katzenjammer Kids. Cartoon. “Princes Rescue der Captain,” May 6, 1906. Plate 9. Pablo Picasso, Two Nudes Standing in Front of a Curtain, October–December 1906. Private collection. opp.06.077. Plate 10. Human musculature (front and rear). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, figs. 61 and 65. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900. Plate 11. Pablo Picasso, study of women, rear and side views. January–March 1907. Sketchbook 9, 10V. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.322. Plate 12. Color study of Caucasian female body against different-colored backgrounds. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers, 1901, table III. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900. Plate 13. Thérèse Schwartze, Sleeping Psyche, c. 1879–98. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, 272. Plate 14. Chart of world races and their origins. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1911, 27. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907. Plate 15. Map of global race distribution (after Fritsch). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, opp. 358; 1907, 400.

Figures Figure 1. Pablo Picasso. The Twins (Brothel Scene), May 1905. Location unknown. Figure 2. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire as a Pope with a Nude Holding a Bottle, 1905. Private collection. opp.05.547. Figure 3. Antonio Gaudí, Dragon Fountain, Park Güell, Barcelona, c. 1903. Restored mosaic. Photo by Isiwal. April 24, 2013. Isiwal/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0-at (https://creative commons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). Figure 4. Au Lapin Agile, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 5. Au Lapin Agile interior. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 6. Closerie des Lilas, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 7. Closerie des Lilas interior. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 8. Fountain, entry courtyard, Cluny Museum (Musée national du Moyen Âge), Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 9. Pablo Picasso, seven-­figure study for Les Demoiselles, January–March 1907. opp.07.022. Figure 10. Pablo Picasso, study of four women in curtained space, October–December 1906. opp.06.039. l is t of il lus t r at ions

313

Figure 11. Edgar Degas, Madam’s Festival Day, c. 1877–79. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Former collection of Pablo Picasso. Figure 12. Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers in their Apartment, 1834. Louvre, Paris. Figure 13. Jean-­Auguste-­Dominique Ingres, Venus Anadyomene, 1848. Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. Figure 14. Paul Cézanne, Five Bathers, 1885–87. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland. Figure 15. Paul Cézanne, Three Bathers, 1879–82. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Figure 16. El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), The Vision of Saint John, 1608–14. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 17. André Derain, The Golden Age, 1905. Museum of Modern Art, Tehran, Iran.  Figure 18. Henri Matisse, Bonheur de vivre ( Joy of Life), 1905–6. The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.  Figure 19. Henri Matisse, Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), 1907. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland.  Figure 20. André Derain, The Bathers, 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Figure 21. Pablo Picasso, Parody of Olympia with Junyer and Picasso, late April–mid-­May 1901. Private collection. opp.01.176. Figure 22. Anonymous photographer, Woman of the Ouled Nail Tribe, Algérie Biskra, Algeria, c. 1907. Albumin print. Private collection.  Figure 23. Aduma ceremony (Gabon), n.d. Charton, “Au Pays des M’Fans,” in Le Tour du monde, 1890, 323. Drawing by Mme. Paule Crampel.  Figure 24. Pablo Picasso, Three Nudes, October–December 1906. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. opp.06.234. Figure 25. Anonymous artist, Icon of the Nativity, Constantinople, 15th century. Athens, Benaki Museum, Andreadis. Figure 26. Edgar Degas, Two Dancers in the Studio (Dance School), 1875. Private collection. Figure 27. Pablo Picasso, photograph of Augusta (Guus) van Dongen, wife of artist Kees van Dongen, and their daughter, Dolly, in front of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, late March 1907. Published by Warnod, Washboat Days, 1972, 22, and others. Figure 28. X-­ray of face of demoiselle (second from the left), Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, October 2016. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by S. P. Blier.  Figure 29. X-­ray of face of standing African demoiselle, Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, October 2016. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by S. P. Blier. Figure 30. X-­ray of face of Egyptian demoiselle (in profile on left), Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, October 2016. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by S. P. Blier.

314

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 31. X-­ray of face of crouching demoiselle (on bottom right), Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, October 2016. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by S. P. Blier.  Figure 32. Pablo Picasso, La Parisienne et figures exotiques, October–December 1906. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.349. Figure 33. Photograph of Parisian woman in winter street attire. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschöenheit des Weibes, 1902, 284, fig. 179.  Figure 34. Pablo Picasso, photograph of Dolly van Dongen standing in front of Three Women, 1908. Archives Picasso, Paris. Figure 35. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Sketchbook 14, 4R, with lettering “1 Ravignan, Ravignan, Ravignan” within curtain-­like frame. Private collection. Figure 36. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Sketchbook 14, 16V, with lettering “Ma, Málaga, Barcelona, Madrid, France, Ravignan, Monsieur, Arrrrr. Private collection. Figure 37. Picasso, sketch shown in figure 36, redrawn by author with key words printed. Figure 38. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Study for the Egyptian demoiselle. Sketchbook 14, 5V. Private collection. Figure 39. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Study for the second demoiselle from left. Sketchbook 14, 4V. Private collection. Figure 40. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Study for the standing African demoiselle. Sketchbook 14. Private collection. Figure 41. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Study for the crouching demoiselle. Sketchbook 14, 16R. Private collection. Figure 42. Pablo Picasso, sketch, March 1907. Study for two right-­hand figures. Sketchbook 14, 1V. Private collection. Figure 43. Anonymous Vili artist, seated figure, Republic of the Congo, 19th century. Wood. Former collection Henri Matisse. Private collection. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2016. Figure 44. Anonymous Vili artist, seated figure, Republic of the Congo, 19th century. Wood. Former collection Henri Matisse. Private collection. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2016. Figure 45. Pablo Picasso, Study of Woman, October–December 1906. Private collection. Zervos.xx.466. Figure 46. Pablo Picasso, Study of Two Nudes, October–December 1906. Private collection. opp.06.409. Figure 47. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, October–December 1906. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. opp.06.248. Figure 48. Pablo Picasso, Study of the Head of a Woman, October–December 1906. Sketchbook 104, 11R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.099. l is t of il lus t r at ions

315

Figure 49. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, October–December 1906. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Figure 50. Henri Matisse, Still Life with African Statue, 1907. Private collection. Figure 51. Plan of the Musée d’Ethnographie Trocadéro, Paris, post-­1903. Accessed September 1, 2018. https://heiup.uni-­heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/rt/ printerFriendly/9083/3101. Figure 52. Plaster cast detail of sculpture on the Arc de triomphe, Paris. Housed in Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013.  Figure 53. Plaster cast detail of sculpture on the Arc de triomphe, Paris. Housed in Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 54. Sosa Adede, Dahomey (Fon), Republic of Benin, 1889–93. Zoomorphic shark-­form bocio of King Gbehanzin. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 55. Anonymous artist, Adouma mask (Gabon), late 19th century. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 56. Anonymous artist, Adouma mask (Gabon), before 1820. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 57. Anonymous artist, Grebo (Krou) mask (Liberia), 19th century. Shown in Exposition universelle de 1900. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Photographer unknown. Figure 58. Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Woman, March–June 1907. Moderna Museet Stockholm. opp.07.347. Figure 59. Medieval-­style gargoyle, Notre-­Dame Cathedral, Paris, 19th century, in collaboration with Eugène Viollet-­le-­Duc and sculptor Victor Pyanet. Photographer unknown, 1925. Figure 60. Anonymous artist (Egypt), funerary mask, late 18th dynasty (1400–1300 bce). Louvre, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 61. Pablo Picasso, detail of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Head of Egyptian demoiselle. Figure 62. Plaster cast of Annunciation group, from west portal of Reims Cathedral, France, c. 1211. Formerly Trocadéro museum. Currently in Île de la Cité, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 63. Plaster cast of Venus de Milo, 130–100 bce. Louvre, Paris. Eaton, Handbook of Modern French Sculpture, 1901, 14. Photo: Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology. Figure 64. Plaster cast of Egyptian Pharaoh Psamtik II, 595–583 bce. Louvre, Paris. Eaton, Handbook of Modern French Sculpture, 1901, 13. Photo: Museum of Antiquities, University of Saskatchewan.

316

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 65. Plaster cast of wounded amazon, “Lansdowne type” (said to be after Polykleitos), 1st–2nd century. Eaton, Handbook of Modern French Sculpture, 1901, 30. Plaster cast in Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Figure 66. Plaster cast of Michelangelo’s Dusk from Tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, 1519–24. Caprioni, Catalogue of Plaster Cast Reproductions, 1901, 49. Photographer unknown. Plaster cast in Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Figure 67. Plaster cast of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, 1513. Eaton, Handbook of Modern French Sculpture, 1901, 42. Plaster cast in Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Figure 68. Drawings of plaster casts of Greek and Roman torsos, 480 bce. Caprioni, Catalogue of Plaster Cast Reproductions, 1901, nos. 3602–9.  Figure 69. Postcard showing interior of the Lapin Agile, rue des Saules, with plaster casts, c. 1900. Photographer unknown. Figure 70. Anonymous artist, head of a man (Iberian), Cerro de los Santos archaeological site in Montealegre del Castillo (Castile-­La Mancha, Spain), 5th–3rd century bce. Musée des antiquités nationales, Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye, France. Figure 71. Anonymous artist, head of a man (Iberian), Cerro de los Santos archaeological site in Montealegre del Castillo (Castile-­La Mancha, Spain), 5th–3rd century bce. Musée des antiquités nationales, Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye, France. Figure 72. Pablo Picasso, face of second woman from left, detail of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Figure 73. Anonymous artist (Egypt), middle period figure, back view, 2050–1652 bce. Louvre, Paris. Entered collection in 1899. Figure 74. Anonymous artist (Egypt), middle period figure, back view, 2050–1652 bce. Louvre, Paris. Entered collection in 1899. Figure 75. Pablo Picasso, study of Egyptian figure at the Musée du Louvre, February– March 1907. Sketchbook 4, V, VI. Private collection. Figure 76. Pablo Picasso, study of Egyptian figure at the Musée du Louvre, February– March 1907. Sketchbook 4, V, VI. Private collection. Figure 77. Photograph of Pablo Picasso and Fernande Olivier, c. 1906. Archives Picasso, Paris. Photographer unknown. Figure 78. Large sculptures in Corpus Christi festival at town hall, Barcelona, June 1902. In Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1991, 246. Photo by Arxiu Mas, 1902. Figure 79. Lawrence Alma-­Tadema, A Sculptor’s Model, 1877. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 18, fig. 4. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 21, fig. 4.  Figure 80. Sosa Adede, Dahomey (Fon), Republic of Benin, bocio sculptures of kings with zoomorphic features, late 19th century. Originally in Musée d’Ethnographie Trocadéro, Paris. Photographed before 1931. l is t of il lus t r at ions

317

Figure 81. Plate showing African masks beneath calque covering. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, table II; see plate 3.1. Figure 82. Pablo Picasso, Bust of Man, study for Les Demoiselles, February–March 1907. Musée Pablo Picasso, Paris. opp.07.031. Figure 83. Pablo Picasso, Head, February–March 1907. Drawn on Le vieux marcheur. Private collection. opp.07.374. Figure 84. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Man, 1908. Oil on wood, 27 x 21 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern. opp.08.251. Figure 85. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), Janus mask, 19th century. Wood and mixed media. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate V, fig. 43a. Figure 86. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), Janus mask, 19th century. Wood and mixed media. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate V, fig. 43b. Figure 87. Anonymous Mandingo artist (Senegal), mask, late 19th century. Fiber. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, S547, no. 12, plate IX, fig. 120. Figure 88. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Purrah mask.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate IX, fig. 117. Figure 89. Anonymous Loango (Kongo) artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate II, fig. 35. Figure 90. Anonymous Loango (Kongo) artist, (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Mask from Massabe-­Fluss (Loango).” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate IV, fig. 41. Figure 91. Anonymous Loango (Kongo) artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate IV, fig. 40. Figure 92. Anonymous Uelle or Aruwini artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate IV, fig. 21. Figure 93. Diagram of development of mask forms. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 182, fig. 30. Figure 94. Anonymous Ijaw artist (“old Calabar”; Nigeria), mask, 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VIII, fig. 82a and 82a b. Figure 95. Pablo Picasso, head of standing African woman, detail of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Figure 96. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century.

318

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, table II, plates 34a and 34a b. Figure 97. Pablo Picasso, head of crouching woman, detail of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Figure 98. Anonymous Kongo artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, 19th century. Wood, pigments, and organic materials, h. 25 cm. Collected by Joest 1887. Ethnologisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin–Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photographer: Claudia Obrocki, 1989. Figure 99. Anonymous Ondumbo (Kota) artist (Gabon), reliquary figure, 19th century. Wood, brass, copper, 63.6 x 29.5 cm. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Donor: Attillio Pecilo de Brazza. Inv.71.1886.79.4. Musée du quai Branly website. Figure 100. Drawing of Kota reliquaries (Gabon). Ondumbo masks. From article in Tour du Monde (1888) 2nd sem. Republished in Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 39, plate III, figs. 46–48. Figure 101. Drawing of Kota reliquaries in a shrine (Gabon), late 19th century. Label: “Mask or ancestor figure of the Aduma (after Jacques de Brazza).” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 85, no. 14. Figure 102. Pablo Picasso, seven-­figure compositional study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, January–February 1907. Sketchbook 104, carnet 2. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.466. Figure 103. Drawing of Luba stool (Republic of the Congo), caryatid form. Friedrich Ratzel, History of Mankind, 1898, 3:67. Figure 104. Drawing of Duala staff (Cameroon), late 19th century. Label: “Njongoro Staff from Cameroon.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 167. Figure 105. Anonymous Ejagham artist (Nigeria), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, table XII, fig. 123. Figure 106. Anonymous Loango (Kongo) artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, table I, fig. 26. Figure 107. Anonymous Ababoa artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Aruwimi area.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, table 1, fig. 21b. Figure 108. Pablo Picasso, Nude Woman with Raised Arms, study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, January–February 1907. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich. opp.07.341. Figure 109. Anonymous Punu artist (Gabon), mask, late 19th century. Wood. Label: “Ivili mask.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VI, figs. 52a and 52b. l is t of il lus t r at ions

319

Figure 110. Henri Matisse, Portrait of Madame Matisse, summer/early fall 1913. Her face is shown as a Punu mask (Gabon). State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. Figure 111. Anonymous Ijaw artist (New Calabar; Nigeria), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VI, fig. 69. Figure 112. Anonymous Ijaw artist (New Calabar; Nigeria), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VI, fig. 74. Figure 113. Anonymous Ibibio artist (Nigeria), mask, 19th century. Mislabeled: “Ngolo (Cameroon).” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VI, fig. 55a.  Figure 114. Anonymous Baga artist (Guinea), M’ba mask, late 19th century. Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Acquired from Brocard by Musée Ethnographique Trocadéro in 1902. On view in 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Figure 115. Drawing of a mask by anonymous Baga artist (Guinea), M’ba mask, late 19th century. Label: “Penda-­Penda of Bagos.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 105, fig. 19. Figure 116. Pablo Picasso, Face, February–July 1907. Almine and Bernard Ruiz-­Picasso Foundation for Art. opp.07.404. Figure 117. Pablo Picasso, Profile Head, February–July 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.337. Figure 118. Pablo Picasso, Standing Male Figure, February–March 1907. Wood carving. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.102. Figure 119. African masks from Makonde (Tanzania), late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate I. Figure 120. Anonymous Grebo mask (Côte d’Ivoire), late 19th century. Label: “Sassandre mask of the Ivory coast.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate XI, figs. 112a and 112b. (Destroyed in World War II bombings.) Figure 121. Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline with Crossed Hands, June 3, 1954. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Jacqueline Roque Picasso collection. opp.54.005. Figure 122. Pablo Picasso, Guitar, 1912 (ser. 1912–14). Museum of Modern Art, New York. opp.14.394. Figure 123. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, September–October 1906. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. opp.06.027. Figure 124. Drawing of Mende Bundu mask (Sierra Leone), late 19th century. Label: “Mask from Liberia.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VIII, fig. 116. Figure 125. Drawing of Vai Sande society mask (Sierra Leone), late 19th century. Label: “After Buttikofer.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, fig. 18.

320

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 126. Anonymous Mende artist (Sierra Leone), Bundu mask, 19th century. Label: “Mask from Liberia.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate XIII, figs. 131a and 131b.  Figure 127. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Bent Head (Fernande Olivier), September–­ December 1906. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (Inv. 2470). opp.06.050. Figure 128. Anonymous Yombe (Kongo) artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Unknown work.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate XII, fig. 126. Figure 129. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Pears (portrait of Fernande Olivier), 1909. Museum of Modern Art, New York. opp.09.024. Figure 130. Pablo Picasso, Portrait Studies of André Salmon, January–April 1907. opp.07.427. Figure 131. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Max Jacob, January–April 1907. Collection Ludwiz, Aix-­la-­Chapelle, Germany. opp.07.005. Figure 132. Anonymous Makonde artist (Tanzania and Mozambique), mask, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate I, fig. 8. Figure 133. Drawing showing proposed development from mask form to human physiognomy. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 182, fig. 30. Figure 134. Anonymous Ijaw artist (Nigeria), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Mask from Calabar.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VI, fig. 71.  Figure 135. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde, 1909–10. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Collection, St. Louis, Missouri. opp.10.013. Figure 136. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1910. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. opp.10.012. Figure 137. Anonymous Kuba artist (Republic of the Congo), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Baluba mask.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate XXIV. Figure 138. Anonymous Jukun artist (Nigeria), mask, late 19th century. Label: “Djuku mask.” Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VII. Figure 139. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman (Marie-­Thérèse Walter), 1929–30. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Opp.29.073. Figure 140. Henri Gaudier-­Brzeska, Self-­Portrait, 1913. Location unknown. Figure 141. Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Young Finnish Woman, 1907. Musée national d’art modern, Paris. Figure 142. Hountondji guild, Dahomey (Fon), Republic of Benin, Toxosu sculpture, bird holding fish, late 19th century. Metal, wood. Former collection G. Apollinaire. Name: L’Oiseau du Bénin. Private collection. l is t of il lus t r at ions

321

Figure 143. Hountondji guild, Dahomey (Fon), Republic of Benin, Toxosu sculpture, bird holding fish, late 19th century. Metal, wood. Le Musée historique d’Abomey. Photo by S. P. Blier, 1985. Figure 144. Pablo Picasso, Metamorphosis I, model for Guillaume Apollinaire’s tomb, early 1928. Almine and Bernard Ruiz-­Picasso Foundation for Art. Figure 145. Anonymous Dahomey (Fon) artist (Republic of Benin), bowl for Ifa divination, late 19th century. Friedrich Ratzel, History of Mankind, 1898, 3:480. Figure 146. “Au Dahomey: Amazones et Guerriers.” L’Epinal, 1892, no. 142. Figure 147. Akati Ekpelekendo (Akati Akpele Kendo), Dahomey (Fon), Republic of Benin, bocio power figure (Ebo) identified with Gu, God of War and Creativity, created to honor King Guezo (1818–58) by his son King Glele (1858–89), c. 1860. Originally in the Musée Ethnographique Trocadéro. Now in Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Figure 148. Drawing of Dahomey (Fon) bocio power figure (Ebo) identified with Gu (see figure 147). Delafosse, Nature, vol. 22, no. 1105 (1894b): 145. Figure 149. Pablo Picasso, Standing Nude with Raised Arms, inscribed with “Málaga,” January–March 1907. Sketchbook 9, cat. no. 12, 3rd from cover. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.055. Figure 150. Pablo Picasso, Seated Negro, 1906. Max G. Bollag Collection, Zurich. opp.06.148. Figure 151. Pablo Picasso’s Cuban cousin, Juan Francisco Aurelio Picasso Serra (1879– 1924), n.d. Photographer unknown. De la Rosa, “Picasso’s Cuban Cousins,” n.d. Figure 152. Pablo Picasso, Moor on Prayer Rug, 1895–96. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.95.227. Figure 153. Pablo Picasso, Caricature of Native with Hut and Canoe, 1905. Private collection. Sketchbook 24. opp.05.309. Figure 154. Pablo Picasso, Study of Black Man, 1895–97. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.96.102. Figure 155. Pablo Picasso, La Danse barbare (Salomé in Front of Hérode), 1905. Musée Picasso National, Paris. opp.05.040. Figure 156. John Wood, Dahomey female warrior (amazon). Richard F. Burton, A Mission to Gelele (1864), vol. 1, frontispiece.  Figure 157. Pablo Picasso, La Suite des saltimbanques (Salomé), 1905. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. opp.05.053. Figure 158. Pablo Picasso, Amazon with Mother and Child, 1903. Almine and Bernard Ruiz-­Picasso Foundation for the Arts. opp.03.068. Figure 159. James Pradier, Amazon, 1840–41. Located at 110 rue Amelot in front of the Cirque d’hiver, Paris. Photo by S. P. Blier, 2013.

322

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 160. Pablo Picasso, study for Bois de Boulogne, October–December 1906. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.500. Figure 161. Pablo Picasso, Equestrian at Work, spring 1905. Private collection. opp.05.032. Figure 162. Pablo Picasso, Clear and Simple History of Max Jacob, January 13, 1903. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.03.078. Figure 163. Pablo Picasso, Cavaliére en amazone (Jacqueline), October 5, 1959. Private collection. opp.59.167. Figure 164. Female horse rider (cavaliére) wearing amazone attire and daughter and woman in similar attire. La Mode illustrée, May 7, 1876. Figure 165. Adèle Drouin, a well-­known equestrian circus performer. La Mode illustrée, 1865–66. “Equitation monte en amazone,” Eroscheveuxpassion, February 9, 2010. Accessed September 1, 2018. http://eroschevauxpassion.over-­blog.com/article-­ecuyeres-­ et-­amazones-­des-­cirques-­d-­antant-­3-­adele-­drouin-­43922952.html. Figure 166. Woman astride horse. La Mode illustrée, 1901. “Equitation monte en amazone,” Eroscheveuxpassion, June 13, 2010. Accessed September 1, 2018. http:// eroschevauxpassion.over-­blog.com/article-­la-­modes-­des-­amazones-­annees-­1890-­ 1900-­47269904.html. Figure 167. Woman wearing an amazon garment in the boudoir. La Mode illustrée, April 21, 1889. Figure 168. Photograph of female equestrian in Paris, c. 1900. Eroscheveuxpassion, August 16, 2011. http://eroschevauxpassion.over-­blog.com/article-­chevaux-­en-­peinture-­ et-­amazone-­paris-­suite-­81161166.html. Figure 169. Mlle. Lovzeski in amazon attire. Photograph by Felix Nadir, 1891. In Documents 4, September 1929:224. Figure 170. Pablo Picasso, Woman in Riding Jacket, study on theme of Bois de Boulogne, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 6, 19V. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.483. Figure 171. Pablo Picasso, Woman in the Bois de Boulogne, January–March 1907. “Pour mon cher ami Douglas Cooper” (reverse of 176). Kunstmuseum, Basel. opp.07.006. Figure 172. Pablo Picasso, Profile of a Woman, autumn 1906–winter 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.133. Figure 173. Anonymous Baga artist (Guinea), Nimba mask, late 19th century. Musée Ethnographie du Trocadéro, entered in 1902. Now Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University. (See also figure 114.) Figure 174. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Fan, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 108. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.209. l is t of il lus t r at ions

323

Figure 175. Pablo Picasso, Figure in Profile, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 108. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.208.  Figure 176. Pablo Picasso, compositional study for Les Demoiselles, 1906. (Reverse of figure 171.) Kunstmuseum, Basel. opp.07.377. Figure 177. Cover of Henri Morienval’s La Guerre du Dahomey, 1893. Illustrator unknown. Figure 178. Light and Dark Skin. Photograph. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1911 (1921), 29, fig. 14. Figure 179. Dahomey amazons (Republic of Benin), performing in Hamburg, c. 1890. Photograph by Carl Günther. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 127; 1907, 148, fig. 83. Labeled incorrectly as “Ashanti women.” Figure 180. Sundamesin girl, age sixteen. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 111; 1907, 212, fig. 134. Figure 181. Pablo Picasso, Two Peasant Women and Face of a Woman, October–­ December 1906. Art Institute of Chicago. opp.06.319. Figure 182. Pablo Picasso, Two Nude Women, October–December 1906. opp.06.334. Figure 183. Pablo Picasso, Two Women, October–December 1906. Museum of Modern Art, New York. opp.06.24. Figure 184. Woman (age twenty-­t wo) from Schevenjugen, Holland, in local dress. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901; 1902, 191; 1907, 226; also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 292, fig. 160. Figure 185. The same woman shown in figure 184, without clothing. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 293, fig. 161. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901. Figure 186. Pablo Picasso, La Belle Hollandaise, 1905. Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane. opp.05.037. Figure 187. Pablo Picasso, Young Woman in Profile and Clasped Hands, October–­ December 1906. Carnet Catalan 35. Musée Picasso, Barcelona. opp.06.208. Figure 188. Malinke woman (Senegal or Mali), 1906. François-­Edmond Fortier postcard. Types de femmes series.  Figure 189. Congolese woman. L’Humanité feminine, February 16, 1907, 18. Figure 190. Young Targui (Tuareg) girls, Morocco, 1906. L’Humanité feminine, January 5, 1907, 40. Rassenschönheit des Webes, 1902, 131; 1907, 161. Figure 191. Java woman, eighteen years old. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Rassenschönheit des Webes, 1902, 106; 1907, 129; La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 85, fig. 27. Figure 192. Asante woman (Ghana). L’Humanité feminine, December 29, 1906, 8.  Figure 193. Postcard of people in the Bamako market (Mali), 1906. François-­Edmond Fortier postcard. Types de Femmes series.

324

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 194. Pablo Picasso, Apollinaire with a Copy of La Culture physique, 1905. Lionel Prejger Collection. Formerly Gertrude Stein Collection. opp.05.291. Figure 195. Pablo Picasso, Nude Combing Her Hair, October–December 1906. Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. opp.06.055. Figure 196. Girl (fourteen years old) braiding her hair. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 224, fig. 100. Figure 197. Girl from Vienna. Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 87, fig. 29.  Figure 198. Pablo Picasso, Seated Female Nude, 1908. State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. opp.09.056. Figure 199. Girl from Senegal (thirteen years old). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 247, fig. 160. Figure 200. Amazigh woman (“Moor dancer”) from Algiers, Algeria. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 151; 1907, 274, fig. 181. Figure 201. Danish woman. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers, 1899, 232, fig. 116. Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 384, fig. 261. Figure 202. Batak (Bata) woman, Indonesia. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 193, fig. 115, and 1907, 218, fig. 138. Figure 203. Fourteen-­year-­old girl of unknown identity and location. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 228, fig. 103. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901. Figure 204. Human figure diagram (after Fritsch and Merkel). Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 42, fig. 8. Figure 205. Proportional study of figure after photograph. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 318, fig. 173. Figure 206. Comparative study of female and male skeletal structure. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 103, fig. 40. Figure 207. German woman (twenty years old) from the Rhine Valley. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 252, fig. 125. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, 1902, 1907.  Figure 208. Diagram of woman from the Rhine Valley, Germany. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 253, fig. 126. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 1907.  Figure 209. Pablo Picasso, The Adolescents (or Two Youths), September–December 1906. Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. opp.06.010. Figure 210. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Raised Arms, October–December 1906. Sketchbook 218. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.05.072. Figure 211. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Raised Arms, March–April 1907. Kate Ganz and Tony and Gail Ganz Collection, New York. opp.07.349. l is t of il lus t r at ions

325

Figure 212. Pablo Picasso, Female Nude, September–October 1906. Private collection. Formerly Vincenc Kramar Collection. opp.06.066. Figure 213. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Raised Arms, study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, February–March 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.272. Figure 214. Ancient figure of a woman. Labeled incorrectly as “Egyptian.” Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 42, fig. 17.  Figure 215. Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese bathing scene, from the Manga series (sketches), c. 1820. Woodcut. Gustave Moreau Museum. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 36, fig. 13.  Figure 216. Colonna Venus, Roman copy of Praxiteles’s original, c. 350 bce. Vatican Museum. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 9, fig. 1. Figure 217. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1486. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 24, fig. 6. Figure 218. Pablo Picasso, The Harem, July–September 1906. Cleveland Museum of Art. opp.06.038. Figure 219. Girl kneeling on ottoman Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 237, fig. 111. Figure 220. German woman (twenty years old) kneeling on a chair. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 235, fig. 109.  Figure 221. Woman in pose of washing her hair. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 100, fig. 38. Figure 222. Gustav Eberlein, cast of a woman with hands posed in front. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 310, fig. 169. Figure 223. French woman from Paris, twenty years old, with arm raised. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 183; 1907, 326, fig. 218. Figure 224. Graph showing age of “Ideal Beauty.” Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 67, fig. 22. Figure 225. Color study of Caucasian female body against a purple background. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, fig. 97. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, fig. 99. Figure 226. Color study of Caucasian female body against a yellow background. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, fig. 96. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, fig. 98. Figure 227. Pablo Picasso, Seated Nude, study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, November 1906–March 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.082. Figure 228. Pablo Picasso, open sketchbook no. 9, with Figure with Raised Arms (in red ink) and Head of a Man (with diagonal cheek marks), January–March 1907. Sketchbook 9, 3R. Musée National Picasso, Paris.

326

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 229. Pablo Picasso, Two Nudes Holding Hands, November–December 1906. Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Staatlichen Museem zu Berlin. opp.06.244. Figure 230. Pablo Picasso, Two Nude Women with Their Arms around Each Other, ­November–December 1906. Private collection. opp.06.362. Figure 231. Hottentot woman, South Africa, front and back views. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 72, figs. 34 and 35. Figure 232. Mauchen (German) girl, sixteen years old. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 374, fig. 253. Figure 233. Andalusian (Spain) girl, sixteen years old. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 102; 1907, 288, fig. 192.  Figure 234. Pablo Picasso, Three Standing Nudes, October–November 1906. Z.VI.882.  Figure 235. Pablo Picasso, study for crouching figure, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.459. Figure 236. Pablo Picasso, study for crouching figure (back view), January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3, 13R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.016. Figure 237. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Bun, hands joined, from front, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 108. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.214. Figure 238. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Bun, hands joined, from back, 1907. Sketchbook 108. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.215. Figure 239. Two women from Siam (Thailand). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 195, fig. 116. Figure 240. Pablo Picasso, Seated and Standing Women, 1906. Philadelphia Museum of Art. opp.06.128. Figure 241. Japanese women bathing. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 97, fig. 45. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 45; 1902, 117; 1907, 62, fig. 62. Figure 242. Women from the Sandwich Islands. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 222, fig. 141. Figure 243. “Sabine” (Italian) woman and girl, twenty-­one and nine years old. Identified here as Italians with Greek profiles. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de Femme, 1900, 129, fig. 57; 1907 97. 1901, 123, fig. 59. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 265, fig. 166.  Figure 244. Egyptiannes and Nubianne. L’Humanite feminine, February 27, 1907, 89.  Figure 245. Pablo Picasso, Three Standing Nudes, October–December 1906. Private collection. opp.06.446. Figure 246. Pablo Picasso, The Blue Vase: The Dance (study), October–December 1906. Location unknown. opp.06.062. l is t of il lus t r at ions

327

Figure 247. Three Zulu girls (South Africa). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 132, fig. 73. Figure 248. Women from Togo carrying vessels. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Frauenkleidung und ihre natürliche Entwicklung, (1902) 1904, 155, fig. 83. Figure 249. Photograph of young girl of unknown identity. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, 54, fig. 20. Figure 250. Pablo Picasso, Two Children, July–September 1906. Museum Ludwig, Cologne. opp.06.047. Figure 251. Pablo Picasso, Adolescent Boy with Two Children, July–September 1906. Galeria Leandro Navarro, Madrid. opp.06.154. Figure 252. Chart showing the normal growth of children (after Geyer). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Natur­geschichte des Menschen, 1904, 136.  Figure 253. Pablo Picasso, Female Nude Shown from Behind, Holding Child’s Hand, July–September 1906. Barnes Foundation. Figure 254. Pablo Picasso, Two Brothers, Boy Carries Child on His Back (study), July– September 1906. Baltimore Museum of Art. opp.06.156. Figure 255. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Child on Back, July–September 1906. Barnes Foundation. Figure 256. Singalese (Sri Lanka) mother and child. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 73; 1907, fig. 97. Figure 257. Group of Kamajuras (Japanese) mothers and children. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 26; 1907, 79, fig. 40. Figure 258. Hindu woman. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 90; 1907, 158, fig. 90. Figure 259. Pablo Picasso, Woman at the Fountain and Elephant, July–September 1906. Private collection. opp.06.390. Figure 260. Pablo Picasso, Woman Carrying Pot, July–September 1906. Minneapolis Institute of Arts. opp.06.294. Figure 261. “Birman” (Burma) water carrier in Tamein. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 191; 1907, 189, fig. 113. Figure 262. Drawing of “Birman” (Burma) water carrier. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 192; 1907, 189, fig. 144. Figure 263. Pablo Picasso, Woman Carrying Pot, July–September 1906. Carnet Catalan 50. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.06.274. Figure 264. Pablo Picasso, nude carrying a pot, July–September 1906. Carnet Catalan 50. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.06.209. Figure 265. Drawing, women walking. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, 190, fig. 114, and La Beauté de Femme, 1900, 272, figs. 138–41.

328

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 266. Pablo Picasso, Nudes in Profile, Walking, October–December 1906. Sketchbook 109 (107), cahier 1, 31R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.256. Figure 267. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Bun, Walking, October–December 1906. Sketchbook 109, carnet 1, 10R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Figure 268. Motion study of backbend. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 242, fig. 116. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, 236, fig. 119a.  Figure 269. Backbend photographic study. Carl Heinrich Stratz, La Beauté de la femme, 1900, 233, fig. 108. Also in Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, 226, fig. 111. Figure 270. Pablo Picasso, Nude Doing Backbend (profile), February–April 1907. Sketchbook 106, carnet 16, 24R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.08.174. Figure 271. Pablo Picasso, Nude Doing Backbend (back view), February–April 1907. Sketchbook 106, carnet 16, 26R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.08.175. Figure 272. Graffiti added to figures. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1902, 100; 1907. Redrawing of lines following the lines of incised graffiti by Cristiana Strava. Figure 273. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Arms Raised, January–March 1907. Z.VI.869.  Figure 274. Pablo Picasso, Female Figures, January–March 1907. (Recto of 1907, 800). Private collection. opp.07.487.  Figure 275. Villard de Honnecourt, geometric and figural drawings, 1220s–40s. “Carnet” folio 36 original in parchment. Album de Villard de Honnecourt, 1906. Figure 276. Pablo Picasso, Animals, sketches for illustrations for a proposed bestiary by Guillaume Apollinaire, March–April 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.289. Figure 277. Villard de Honnecourt, detail of standing man, geometric and figural drawings, 1220s–40s. “Carnet” folio 36 original in parchment. Album de Villard de Honnecourt, 1906. Figure 278. Pablo Picasso, Study of Nude with Hands Clasped, Showing Proportions, October 1906–April 1907. Picasso Estate. opp.07.063. Figure 279. Pablo Picasso, Sheet of Studies: Woman in Profile with Pony Tail with Fox and Birds, March–April 1907. Sketchbook 1106. Foundation Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Museo Casa Natal. opp.07.193.  Figure 280. Jean-­Baptiste Carpeaux, Fountain of the Four Parts of the World, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, dedicated in 1874. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2014. Figure 281. Tree support with skull-­like masks, unknown source and date. Leo Frobenius, Die Kunst der Naturvölker, 1895, 602. l is t of il lus t r at ions

329

Figure 282. “Asante skull dance” (Ghana), late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 179, fig. 29. Figure 283. Pablo Picasso, Three Figures with Lettering [Jurais], February–March 1907. (Reverse of fig. 285.) Carnet 4, VIII R. Private collection opp.07.478.  Figure 284. Postcard from Picasso to Monsieur [Leo] Stein with the greeting “mes chers amis” [my dear friends], April 27, 1907. Yale Collection of American Literature, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Connecticut. Figure 285. Pablo Picasso, compositional study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, January– March 1907. (Reverse of fig. 283.) Private collection. opp.07.477. Figure 286. Pablo Picasso, Study of Face and Plants, 1906–7. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.338. Figure 287. Pablo Picasso, study with skull, leaves, infants, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 108, M. P. 1860, 17V, carnet 8, 17V. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.222. Figure 288. Pablo Picasso, study of Egyptian and African, on double page of “Onze Kunst” (Notre Art) (journal date 1902–3), October–December 1906? Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.02.274. Figure 289. Paul Gauguin, L’Univers est créé, 1893–94. Art Institute of Chicago. Figure 290. Pablo Picasso, Harlequin’s Family with Ape, 1905. Konstmuseum, Gothenburg. opp.05.003.  Figure 291. Pablo Picasso, Self-­Portrait as Monkey, January 1, 1903. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.03.002.  Figure 292. King Takadu with headdress, unknown date. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, no. 17. Figure 293. Skulls of newborns and different races of women. Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1907, figs. 45–47. Figure 294. Skull of Egyptian Pharaoh Setis I (d. 1279 bce). Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, 32.  Figure 295. Skulls of woman (left) and man (right). Carl Heinrich Stratz, Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes, 1901, fig. 102. Figure 296. S. P. Blier diagram of Les Demoiselles based on Stratz diagram and map. Figure 297. Pablo Picasso, Celestina (Carlota Valdivia), 1903–4. Musée National Pablo Picasso, Paris. Opp.04.003.  Figure 298. Pablo Picasso, Old Woman Warming Her Hands, 1903. Museu Picasso, Barcelona. opp.03.028. Figure 299. Pablo Picasso, study for crouching figure, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.298. Figure 300. Pablo Picasso, study for crouching figure, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.435.

330

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Figure 301. Pablo Picasso, La Vie, 1903. Cleveland Museum of Art. opp.03.001. Figure 302. Pablo Picasso, Vaginal Environment, 1903. Private collection. opp.03.210. Figure 303. Plaster cast of relief, Notre-­Dame Cathedral, Paris, showing the Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1320. Originally in the Musée d’Ethnographique Trocadéro. Now in the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris. Photograph by S. P. Blier, 2013. Figure 304. Pablo Picasso, compositional study and figure for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3, 3R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Figure 305. Pablo Picasso, study for crouching figure, January–March 1907. On verso are watermelon slices on a plate. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.452. Figure 306. S. P. Blier, diagram of Les Demoiselles showing diagonal lines cojoining at womb of Caucasian demoiselle on the left; framed via studies for the horizontal canvas. In the final canvas shape, the diagonals meet in this same general body area. Figure 307. Gustave Courbet, L’Origin du monde, 1866. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.  Figure 308. Pablo Picasso, Man, Woman, and Child (the artist, Fernande Olivier, and a son), January–April 1907. Kunstmuseum, Basel. opp.06.129. Figure 309. Pablo Picasso, Child and Her Doll (Sister of Artist), 1896–97. Almine and Bernard Ruiz-­Picasso Foundation for Art. opp.96.016. Figure 310. Pablo Picasso, Artist’s Dog and Puppies, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 7. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.461. Figure 311. Pablo Picasso, Two Infants, March–April 1907. Carnet 7, 17V. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Figure 312. Pablo Picasso, Nude Crawling, March–April 1907. Carnet 7, 20R. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Z.XXVI, 211. Figure 313. Pablo Picasso, Raymonde at a Desk, March 1907. Cahier 14. Formerly collection of the artist. Z.VI.914. Figure 314. Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire in the artist’s studio. Fall 1910. Figure 315. Pablo Picasso, Studies of Seated Woman, Horse, Hand, and Two Women, October–December 1906. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.06.329. Figure 316. Henri Matisse, Bathers with a Turtle, 1907–8. Saint Louis Art Museum. Figure 317. Henri Matisse, Marguerite, 1907. Musée National Picasso, Paris.  Figure 318. Pablo Picasso, Bowl Seen from Profile and Top View, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 108, carnet 8, 30V. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.239. Figure 319. Pablo Picasso, Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon, February–April 1907. Foundation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel. opp.07.004. Figure 320. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, February–May 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York. opp.07.285. Figure 321. Pablo Picasso, study of hand holding skull (medical student for Les Demoil is t of il lus t r at ions

331

selles d’Avignon) with a pitcher on the reverse, January–March 1907. Sketchbook 1063, carnet 3. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.07.441. Figure 322. Pablo Picasso, Eagle, March 1907. Sketchbook 14. Private collection. Figure 323. Pablo Picasso, Woman in Garden, 1929–30. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Figure 324. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, c. 1512. Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Apostolic Palace, Vatican, Rome. Figure 325. Henri Matisse, Standing Nude, Arm Covering Her Face, 1907. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Figure 326. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912. Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Figure 327. African masks (Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegambia), late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate IX. Figure 328. Pablo Picasso, Parade Mask (horse), February–March 1917. For Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Private collection. opp.17.080. Reconstructed by Kermit Love for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Figure 329. Drawings and watercolors of African masks (southern Cameroon and Nigeria), late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, plate VIII, figs. 57–81. Illustrator: E. Hugelshofer.  Figure 330. Anonymous Nupe artist, fiber mask (Nigeria), with details of plaiting technique, late 19th century. Leo Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1898, fig. 89. Figure 331. Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, spring 1912. Musée National Picasso, Paris. opp.12.002. Figure 332. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, May–June 1937, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. opp.37.001. Figure 333. African rock painting of cow or buffalo, Nubicon Desert, Sahara, unknown date. Label: “Goll. Ajuz.” Leo Frobenius and Henri Breuil, Afrique, 1931, 41. Figure 334. Detail of African rock painting, Khotsa shelter, Basutoland, South Africa, unknown date. Leo Frobenius and Henri Breuil, Afrique, 1931, 33. Figure 335. Pablo Picasso, Little Owl, 1951–53. Kröller-­Müller Museum, Netherlands. Figure 336. Pablo Picasso, untitled sculpture, dedicated August 15, 1967. Daley Plaza, Chicago, Illinois. Figure 337. French military officers stand before group of Dahomey bocio sculptures (Republic of Benin). Cover image of Le Petit journal illustré, November 26, 1892. Figure 338. Pablo Picasso, Nude with Raised Arms (The Avignon Dancer), March–July 1907. Tony and Gail Ganz Collection. opp.07.010.

332

l is t of il lus t r at ions

Notes Preface 1. More recent engagements include Dupuis-Labbé 2007; Row 2016; Unger 2018 “Picasso: Chapter One” 2018; Kalb 2018. 2. Chave 1994, 598. 3. Steinberg 1988, 11; Molyneux 2007, n.p.; Jones 2007; Foster et al. 2005, 84. 4. Daix 1993, 10. 5. T. J. Clark 2013; C. Green 2001a, 2; Leighten 1989, 74; Leja 1985, 67; Antliff and Leighten 2001 in passing. 6. Golding 2001, 26. 7. Jeanine Warnod provides a good description and flavor of this setting (1975, 7–16); see also Franck 2003. 8. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 244. 9. Quoted in McCully 2011b, 37. 10. Barr in Steinberg 1988, 63n50. See also Cousins and Seckel 1994, 148–49; and Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 254. According to Leo Stein, “Picasso was pleasantly childlike at times. I had some pictures relined, and Picasso decided that he would have one of his pictures too treated like a classic, though in reverse order — ​­he would have the canvas lined first and paint on it afterwards” (Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 254). Yet according to William Rubin

(1994, 65n206), there is no evidence that Picasso had the large canvas specially lined before he began to create “a classic work” (Leo Stein quoted in Steinberg 1988, 63). Rather, the lining was done after it had been completed. 11. McCully 2011b, 203. 12. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 182. 13. Flanner 1957, 74. 14. Interview with Michael Duffy in Trachtman 2004. 15. Hannah Gadsby in Nanette 2018. In some ways Gadsby’s perspectives are based on earlier writings about the canvas and the artist, such as Steinberg 1972; Huffington 1988; Rubin 1994. 16. There are numerous studies of anthropology and art, though relatively few dealing with European art history. Among these, see Westermann 2005. Other studies exploring various aspects of this topic include Mitchell 1986; Freedberg 1991; Iser 1993; De Bruyn 2006; and Belting 2014. 17. Geertz 1977. Jack Goody (1997) addresses the ways that representations are prone to change during revolutions and their aftermath. 18. Anderson 2002, 4. 19. Sabin 2002, 94. 20. See Mallen 1997–2018. The List of Illustrations includes the related shsu numbers that begin with the prefix opp (Online Pablo Picasso). Works in the public French collections works are available at http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/ joconde_fr. Specific museum websites also carry many of the Picasso images, among these the Museum of Modern Art and the Musée national Picasso (Paris). We are fortunate to have several richly illustrated books on Picasso in this period, notably, Alan Wofsy Fine Arts 2012, 2014; Dagan 2008; McCully 1997, 2011b; Richardson 1991, 1996; Rubin 1994; Seckel 1988; and Staller 2001.

Introduction 1. Boggs, Golding, and Rosenblum 1964, 11; Cooper 1970, 22–23. 2. Seckel 1994a, 222. 3. Rubin 1994. 4. See Barr 1936 and Golding 1994, among others. 5. Barr 1936, 30. 6. Barr 1936, 30; Barr 1946, 56. 7. Daix 1993, 62; Laude 1968; Goldwater 1938; Conrad [1902] 1980, 48; Foster 2004, 14; Barr 1936, 30. 8. Richardson 1991, 475.

334

notes to preface

9. Barr 1946, 270–71. 10. Steinberg 1988, 12. 11. Chave 1994, 598; Bois 1988b, 130. On aura, see Benjamin 1969, 223. See also Robinson 2013. On art and paradox, see Didi-­Huberman 2005; Steinberg 1988, 72n59. 12. Daix 1988a, 136. 13. Rubin 1994, 13. On Picasso’s bibliography, see Richardson 1991 and 1996. Leo Steinberg (1972) and William Rubin (1983) invoked this bibliographical view, the latter linking events in part to Picasso’s breakup with Fernande Olivier. For related discussion and critique, see Krauss 1981; C. Green 2000, 242; Anderson 2002, 115. 14. Chave 1994, 607 and 598. See also Duncan 1989 and Doane 1991. 15. Steinberg 1988, 72n59. 16. Steinberg 1988, 54. 17. Rubin 1988, 49n69. See also Golding 1994, 106; Golding 2001, 22; Foster 2004, 33; Foster et al. 2005, 78; Grillo 2010, n.p. 18. Bois 1988b, 138. 19. Rubin 1984a, 38. 20. Hal Foster (1985, 46) here draws on Yve-­A lain Bois’s writing on Picasso’s anxieties around the female sex, Medusa tropes, and Freudian castration concerns (Bois 1988b, 130–41, 172–73; Freud 1950). Foster (2004, 36) added to this argument, drawing in part from Richard Wollheim, the fear of Freud’s Wolf Man, in which the viewer is “suspended between desire and identification, attraction and anxiety . . . [as well as the] intuitive tapping of the psychic forces of such events as the primal scene.” 21. Foster 2004, 12. 22. Foster 1985, 58. 23. Foster 2004, 12, 14; Chave 1994, 606. 24. Clifford 1981, 561. 25. Benjamin 1940. 26. Leighten 2013; more generally, see Benjamin 1999, 248. 27. See, among many others, Fabre 1985; Laude 1968; Leighten 1990; Flam and Deutch 2003; as well as J. Green 2017. Herding (1992) is one of several scholars to link the core stylistic innovations of the work to the avant-­garde, and to interdisciplinary questions in literature, philosophy, and psychology. 28. “Pablo Picasso was one of the worst offenders of the 20th century in terms of his history with women,” yet his works likely will remain on view, said Yale University Art Gallery director Jock Reynolds in a New York Times essay discussing a recent decision to forestall an exhibition of Chuck Close at the National Museum of Art in Washington, DC. Reynolds quoted in Poegrebin and Schuessler 2018. 29. See, for example, Clifford 2007. notes to introduction

335

30. See, among others, Foster 1985. 31. Rubin 1994, 103; see also Rubin 1984b, 260. 32. Barr 1936, 30. 33. Malraux 1974, 171. 34. C. Sweeney 2004, 19; McBreen 2014, 8. See also Fabian 1983. 35. McBreen 2014, 63. 36. McBreen 2014, 114. 37. McBreen 2014, 49. 38. It was in part because of Picasso’s interest in African art that his early dealer, Paul Guillaume, promoted key connections between Picasso’s oeuvre and Africa that circulated in the years ahead. 39. Quoted in Seckel 1994a, 252. See also Cohen 2017. 40. Picasso quoted in Fels 1920, 23–26. 41. Richardson 1996, 26; Seckel 1994a, 216. 42. Fitzgerald 2014, 58; Chave 1994, 605. 43. In Debaene 2002, n.p. 44. Richardson 1996, 26. See also Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 216. 45. Quoted in Schwarz 1988, 116. 46. Quoted in Gilot and Lake 1964, 248. 47. Richardson 1996, 32. 48. Zervos 1942 in J. J. Sweeney 1941, 191; Seckel 1994a, 216. 49. Daix 1970; Daix 1993, 76. 50. Stein 1933, in passing; Rubin 1994, 103. See also Malraux 1974, 17–19. 51. Daix 1977, 88 and note 28. He is referring here to Barr 1946, 55, 56, 257. 52. Quoted in Chave 1994, 605. 53. Malraux 1974. 54. Daix 1977, 88 and note 28. The hypothesis that he is referring to here is that of Barr 1946, 55, 56, 257. 55. Quoted in Madeline 2006b, 19. 56. Brassaï 2002, 32. 57. Rubin 1994, 115–16: “Some have even suggested particular sources, such as the stylized contorted masks of the Songye people. But apart from the fact that such masks were not visible in France prior to World War I, they are like virtually all other tribal art, consistently symmetrical in character, whereas the croucher’s head is nothing if not asymmetrical.” Many African masks display asymmetrical facial designs, but these works Picasso likely saw in illustrated books, not in Paris museums or private homes (see chapter 4). 58. Stein 1984, 19.

336

notes to introduction

59. Barr 1946, 59. 60. Hal Foster (1985, 57) cleverly argues that the real “magic” that took place in the exhibition was that of adding commodity value to the African and other works; Picasso and friends had done this long ago. 61. Foster 2004, 12, 45. 62. Foster 1985, 16. 63. Daix 1993, 62. 64. Chave 1994, 607. 65. Rubin 1984b, 250. 66. Malraux 1974, 170. 67. Steinberg 1988, 73. 68. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins, 1994, 21. 69. Quoted in Rubin 1984a, 23. 70. Quoted in Seckel 1994a, 223. 71. Gedo 1994, 134. 72. Richardson 1996, 11. 73. Gedo 1994, 134. 74. Burgess 1910, 408–9. 75. In Baldassari 1997a, 72n167. 76. Bois 1994, 61. 77. Florman 2012c, n.p. 78. On the importance of autobiography in my own research, see Blier 2001. 79. Anderson 2002, 90.

ONE

  Setting, Titles, Sources, and Time

1. Pablo Picasso Archives, 87 rue Vieille-­du-­Temple, 75003, Paris, Box b1, 1906. 2. Pablo Picasso Archives, 87 rue Vieille-­du-­Temple, 75003, Paris, Box e10, Ateliers (Autres ateliers parisiens) 1906–50. 3. Stovall 1990, 25. 4. US Bureau of Foreign Commerce 1909, 130–31. 5. Bignon and Miscio 2010, 16n15; US Bureau of Foreign Commerce 1909, 130. The latter wage is reported for the following occupations in Paris: blacksmithing, painting, woodworking, plumbing, leatherworking, and landscape gardening. 6. Fitzgerald 1996, 30; McCully 2011b, 236. 7. Flam 2004, 24. 8. Flam 2004, 24. 9. Flam 2004, 24 and 27. notes to chapter one

337

10. Flam 2004, 51. 11. Flam 2004, 41. 12. Rubin 1994, 17. 13. Burgess 1910. 14. C. Green 2001a, 8; Golding 1994, 103. 15. Salmon quoted in Rubin 1994, 17–18; Mansfield 2006, 204n52. 16. Daix 1993, 79. 17. Anonymous 2013. Bordello in both Spanish and Italian also conjurs up spaces of unstructured chaos as well as prostitution. Thanks to Sean Anderson for pointing this out. 18. The Dutch painter Axel Salto used the name Les Filles d’Avignon in Rubin 1994, 18. Avignon is also a well known street of prostitution in Madrid. 19. Rubin 1994, 17–18; Caws 2005, 50; Anderson 2002, 27. 20. Seckel 1994a, 222. 21. Richardson 1996, 19. 22. Richardson 1996, 19. 23. Richardson 1996, 19. 24. Quoted in Richardson 1996, 442n28. 25. On Bordel d’Avignon, see Richardson 1996, 19. 26. Picasso biographer John Richardson (1996, 19) was critical of the brothel reading, particularly the idea that the work represents a specific brothel, but he offered no alternative explanation of the canvas. 27. Gersh-­Nešić 2005, 6n18. 28. Gersh-­Nešić 2005, 6n19. 29. Apollinaire 1909, 231. William Rubin (in Golding 1994, 103) and Cousins and Sekel (1994, 18) also discuss Les Demoiselles with respect to de Sade’s work and Apollinaire’s engagement with it. 30. Flam 2004, 53. 31. Flam 2004, 53. 32. Golding 1994, 109. 33. Daix 1993, 74; Flam 2004, 50. 34. Lavin 2008, 66. 35. Seckel 1994a, 232. 36. Although Jacob assumed these drawing had been lost, as Seckel explains, a number have been preserved in the Demoiselles sketchbooks, examples of which are illustrated here. 37. I thank Wendy Grossman for this insight. See in particular H. Breuil (1906). Joseph Déchelette (1908, 241) furnishes a description of the main French and Spanish prehistoric caves known at this time to contain significant rock paintings.

338

notes to chapter one

38. Giménez 1993, 33. 39. Brassaï 2002, 325. 40. C. Green 2001a, 3. 41. Anderson 2002, 78. 42. Steinberg 1988, 12. 43. Steinberg 1988 and Rubin 1983. See Flam 2008, 40, on the narrative elements. 44. Rubin 1983, 637. 45. Steinberg 1988, 43; Barr 1939, 60; Rubin 1994, 45. 46. Steinberg 1988, 37n24. 47. For a discussion of the many disparities in the sketchbooks from the vantage of paper, media, subject matter, and style, see Léal 1996, 103. See also Rubin 1994, 18, 14; Galassi 2011, 14; and Russell 1996. 48. Brassaï 2002, 223. 49. Daix 1993, 64. 50. Rubin 1994, 64. Interestingly, Picasso’s cahier 10 was in part divided up and sold as separate images to Gertrude Stein. 51. Golding 2001, 24. 52. Léal 1988a, 186. In this same carnet 6 are sketches of Picasso’s recently adopted daughter, Raymonde, so perhaps related pages were among those removed. See chapter 7. 53. Picasso began to use sketchbooks in 1894 and continued until 1967. They have been addressed for the 1906–7 era in Daix 1993, 65; Glimcher and Glimcher 1986; Brassaï 2002, 223, xix. The notebook images related to this period of Picasso’s work have been published in Cousins and Seckel 1994. See also Zervos 1942 (vol. 2), 1954 (vol. 7), and 1973 (vol. 27); and Léal 1996. 54. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 13, 14, and 18. 55. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 14. 56. Brassaï 2002, 364. 57. McBreen 2007, 81. 58. Daix 1993, 64. 59. Vallès 2010, 336. 60. Golding 1994, 113. 61. Cabanne 1977, 42. I would to thank Mark Meadow for suggesting the possible importance of Velásquez’s Las Meninas for Picasso’s canvas. 62. Flam 2004, 37. 63. Daix 1977, 87n12. On Picasso and the subject of appropriation more generally, see Burgard 1991. 64. A number of scholars have addressed the importance of Ingres’s Turkish Bath for notes to chapter one

339

Picasso’s work; see Daix 1977, 86, 88; Daix 1993, 52. On the theme of the harem, see Leja 1985; Buci-­Glucksmann 1987; and Corbin 1990. 65. See R. Johnson 1980a, 1980b; Laessoe 1987; Richardson 1987; and Golding 1994, 105. 66. Golding 1994, 105. 67. Laessoe 1987. See also Richardson 1987, 45. 68. Richardson 1996, 14. 69. See Richardson 1991, 429; Richardson 1996, 15–17; and Golding 1994, 106. Another source of Picasso’s interest in El Greco may have come from Miguel Utrillo’s 1906 Spanish monograph on the painter just prior to Picasso’s trip to Gósol by way of Barcelona (Daix 1993, 76). That both artists are Spanish is also important. 70. Cabanne 1977, 117. 71. For more on Picasso’s Gauguin connection, see Richardson 1991, 461; Daix 1993, 34, 55, 82; Rubin 1994, 39, 95; and Sweetman 1995, 583. In 1903, learning of Gauguin’s death, Picasso signed a nude he had drawn in Gauguin’s style as “Paul Picasso.” 72. McBreen 2014, 63 and note 35; cited 1895 in Guérin 1996, 110. 73. McBreen 2014, 63. 74. C. Sweeney 2004, 19. See also Fabian 1983. 75. Malraux 1974, 39. 76. A. Miller 2002, 27. 77. Flam 2003, 3. 78. Golding 1994, 212. 79. McBreen 2014, 35 and note 84. 80. Rubin 1994, 20. 81. Warnod 1975, 84. 82. Steinberg 1988, 63. 83. Steinberg 1988, 50–51. 84. Evelyn-­W hite 1936, 109–201. 85. Golding 1994, 48. 86. C. Green 2001b, 128. 87. Baldassari 1997a, 72n173. 88. Caws 2005, 42. 89. Daix 1993, 61. 90. Flam 2004, 6–7, 20. 91. According to Pierre Schneider, Matisse’s Bonheur is in some ways religious, for it “seeks to be the complete representation of the Golden Age, a sacred history. Of the origins, that is to say happiness. . . . Matisse’s religion is, then, one of happiness” (Schneider quoted in Golding 1994, 50).

340

notes to chapter one

92. Elderfield quoted in McBreen 2014, 194n75. Moreover, as McBreen points out, “This vision of history as both immediate and curiously distant, could only have been imagined in an age of commercial mechanical reproduction” (2007, 34). 93. C. Green 2001b, 137. 94. McBreen 2014, 34. 95. McBreen 2007, 86. 96. Flam 2004, 41–42. 97. Rubin 1994, 105. 98. Seckel 1994a, 244. 99. Like Les Demoiselles, as McBreen points out, Matisse’s Bonheur conjures the “ghosts” of “many artistic ancestors” (2014, 30). Significantly, Matisse, in his African-­art-­ inspired volumetric Blue Nude, was studying the January 1907 edition of L’Humanité feminine dedicated to women of Africa, most importantly those works from southern Algeria and Tunisia. This journal played for him a role analogous to that Stratz’s books did for Picasso (see chapter 6), although they use these sources in different ways and to achieve different results. 100. Clement 1994, 28. 101. McBreen 2014, 53 and in passing. 102. Flam 2004, 35. 103. Matamoros et al. 2005, note 58; emphasis mine. Flam, pers. comm., July 9, 2015; Jack Flam’s source is Spurling 1998, 533n3, who in turn cites Barr 1951. Flam (pers. comm., July 9, 2015) notes that this incident is now generally accepted in the literature. 104. Quoted in Huffington 1988, 93. 105. Brassaï 2002, 343. 106. On the thick layering of historical artistic sources by Picasso in ways that at once subvert and resist fixed meanings in this and other works, see Galassi 2011, 13–14, 28–29. 107. On the importance of Cézanne in Picasso’s work from this period, including Les Demoiselles, see Daix 1993, 61 and 79; Florman 2012b. Scholars such as Alfred Barr (1939), Edward F. Fry (1966a), John Golding (1994), and Leo Steinberg (1978b) have also made note of these connections. Interestingly, as Laurie Moynihan notes, Cézanne was known as a “primitive” artist. 108. Turner 1984, 151n24. 109. Turner 1984, 151n24. See also chapter 7. 110. This sale furnished $18,000 of the total $24,000 cost in 1939 from the Jacques Seligman and Company art gallery in New York City, where it had been on view in November 1937 (only the work’s second public exhibition, this one titled 20 Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903–1923). The co-­owners of the gallery, Germain Seligman and César de Hauke, furnished the remaining funding (Fluegel 1980, 309; Cousins and notes to chapter one

341

Seckel 1994 192–200). They had acquired the painting from the widow of its first owner, Jacques Doucet.

TWO

  The Making of a Painting

1. The decision to clean Les Demoiselles was made in 1993 by MoMA’s then chief conservator, James L. Coddington, who writes, “‘Demoiselles’ didn’t speak as strongly and with the vigor that one would expect, and we thought that this probably was not Picasso’s fault — ​­that it could well be the state of the picture. It looked gray, and dull, and diminished” (quoted in Tomkins 2004, 32). 2. Tomkins 2004, 32. 3. Lemke 1998, 39. 4. Brassaï 2002, 322. 5. Blier 1995. 6. Brassaï 2002, 326. 7. Stein 1933, 27. 8. Zervos 1942, 2:xli. 9. Rubin 1994, 106. 10. Rubin 1994, 105–6. 11. Penrose 1981, 19. 12. Kahnweiler 1920b, 23; 1949, 7. 13. Salmon quoted in Madeline 2006a, 203. Daniel-Henry K ­ ahnweiler would similarly note, “Of these paintings one can no longer say, ‘The light comes from this or that side,’ because light has become completely a means. The pictures are almost mono­ chromatic; brick red and red brown, often with a gray or gray green ground, since the color is meant only to be chiaroscuro” (1920b, 23). 14. I wish to thank Hannah Baader for exploring this possibility with me. 15. Steinberg 1988, 63. 16. The identity of this figure, which is addressed by Pierre Daix, Leo Steinberg, and William Rubin, among others, is taken up in Rubin 1994, 59, 204n2, 224. 17. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 146, Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 227. Cousins and Seckel also suggest that Apollinaire here is likely referencing a preparatory study or multiple canvases (146). 18. Steinberg 1988, 74. 19. Cabanne 1977, 116. 20. According to William Rubin (1994, 65n206), there is no evidence that Picasso had the large canvas specially lined before he began to create “a classic work” (according to Leo Stein, cited in Steinberg 1988, 63). Rather, the lining was done after the work had

342

notes to chapter t wo

been completed, in preparation for its delivery to Leo and Gertrude Stein, who were acquiring it. 21. Over the years, X-­ray evidence has been used to read the supposed transformation of the Caucasian demoiselles on the right of the canvas into figures with African features (see importantly Rubin 1994, 115 and related figures). The van Dongen photograph indicates how problematic such readings were, in retrospect. Moreover, Pierre Daix notes, “Recent X-­rays show that the final modifications of the standing demoiselle on the right — ​­and probably those of the girl on the left as well — ​­were done during the actual painting of the picture” (1993, 71). 22. This photograph, from the Dolly van Dongen archive, appears in Warnod 1975, 21; Seckel 1988, II, Fig. III.2 (plate number); Rubin 1994, pl. 232; and Baldassari 1997a, fig. 75. In William Rubin’s essay, the photograph is dated probably summer 1907; in the others, it is given a 1907–8 date. 23. Anne Baldassari, in her discussion of this photograph (1997a, 114), notes that Picasso during this period (1908) was working on a photographic project involving this work and his Three Women. In some ways, as Picasso would explain later to Brassaï, the invention of photography offered Picasso and other artists freedom to explore so much more: “When one sees what you express through photography, one realizes everything that can no longer be the concern of painting. Why would the artist stubbornly persist in rendering what the lens can capture so well? That would be crazy, don’t you think? Photography came along at a particular moment to liberate painting from literature of all sorts, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the realm of photography. Shouldn’t painters take advantage of their new-­found freedom and do something else?” (Brassaï 2002, 55). 24. Stein 1933, 33. 25. Gertrude Stein, in discussing her conversations with Fernande Olivier about the portrait Kees van Dongen created of the then model, emphasizes that the artist refused to admit that it depicted Olivier. Because she is shown partially nude, it may have suggested the more sexual nature of their relationship (Stein 1933, 33). 26. A. Miller 2002, 7. 27. Olivier quoted in Bourgeau 2006. 28. For this and more on the van Dongens and Picasso, see Olivier 2001a, 86, 174, 177. 29. Richardson 1996, 32. 30. Turner 1984, 152. 31. Turner 1984, 151. 32. Richardson 1991, 275n16. 33. Norman Mailer, one of many writers who promoted this scenario, writes with denotes to chapter t wo

343

cided dramatic flair, “So masks were installed in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. As Cabanne, along with four or five other experts, estimates, this transmogrification took place in the summer of 1907. Picasso had chosen in mid-­passage to perform an exorcism. While it is not certain that the following episode took place in the spring of 1907, Richardson places it there, and the inner logic of events makes the date likely” (1995, 258–59). 34. McCully 1982, 57. 35. Madeline 2006a, 203. Based largely on the claims that Picasso changed his vision for the painting midway through its completion, Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler asserts that “after months of the most laborious searching, Picasso realized that [the] complete solution of the problem did not lie in this direction. . . . A short period of exhaustion followed; the artist’s battered spirit turned to problems of pure structure” (1920b, 23). This framing in turn would shape the writings of more recent scholars, among these Yve-­A lain Bois, who, agreeing with the broadly accepted view that a major change had been made to the canvas, notes, “Nothing is more precious than evidence of that rejection, and Daix’s examination of the sketchbooks is highly useful here. In particular, it enables us to conclude that although there were indeed two working ‘campaigns’ on the Demoiselles, the hiatus between them was short” (2001, 48). 36. Later, Picasso confided in Antonina Vallentin, “I had finished half the picture. And I thought to myself, This isn’t it! I did the other half. And I asked myself if I should redo the whole thing. And then I thought: ‘They’ll understand what I wanted to do!’” (Daix 1993, 75–76). This has been and can be read in multiple ways. From the vantage of the Dolly van Dongen photograph, it takes on new meaning. 37. Daix 1993, 75. 38. Malraux 1974, 131. 39. Stein 1933, 13–14. While scholars generally date this drawing to 1905–7, it more likely dates to 1906–7 because the work appears to represent Fernande Olivier, who figured prominently in the period when Picasso was working on Les Demoiselles. 40. Stein 1933, 31–32. 41. Ashton 1972, 151. Picasso referred to their identities in correspondence with Pierre Daix, as the latter writes, “The principal work of this period . . . [is] le Bordel d’Avignon. Why bordello? And why Avignon? It is impossible to say. . . . He told me that while he was painting the picture he kept finding resemblances between the women of his imaginary bordello and actual women of his acquaintance: ‘That one is Max’s mother, add [sic] this one . . . I don’t remember the others’” (Daix 1993, 69). More names would come later. It is likely, however, that the idea of these women as referents to specific kinds of family relationships — ​­grandmother, lover, sister, etc. — ​­was an important aspect of the painting even earlier. The kind of personal specificity seen in John Richardson’s suggestion that Picasso sought to degrade Fernande Olivier in the work by suggesting

344

notes to chapter t wo

that she was a “whore,” referenced here “squatting on a bidet,” seems unlikely, however (Anderson 2002, 28). 42. Turner 1984, 152. 43. Michaella Prasad, pers. comm., March 2014. I thank Dr. Prasad for her astute reply to my query. 44. I thank Christine Goettler for discussing related issues of fashion and seasonal change with me. Another fashion transition date in some places is May 1, but Easter is more widely recognized because of the fashionable spring dresses and hats worn by Parisian and other women to Easter services. 45. Olivier 2001a, 186. 46. On March 25, 1907, Guillaume Apollinaire took part in a duel in which he suffered a leg injury that Picasso documented in a drawing (Daix 1993, 65). Whether Picasso knew this took place before he had begun work on the canvas is unknown, but the event was likely another thing that left Picasso uneasy and perhaps concerned with his own future and mortality. 47. Jack Flam, pers. comm., July 9, 2015. 48. Malraux 1974, 53. 49. McCully 1982, 55–57. 50. A. Miller 2002, 284n2. Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, who met Picasso after Les Demoiselles was completed, proposed that “after months of the most laborious searching. . . . [a] short period of exhaustion followed . . . [after which] the artist’s battered spirit turned to problems of pure structure” (1920b, 23). 51. Michael Duffy and Jack Flam, pers. comm., October 19, 2016. 52. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 148. 53. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 148. 54. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 150. 55. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 151. 56. Russell 1996. 57. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 151. 58. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 151. This notation has been translated as “Stein will be at home all next week except for Monday and Tuesday” (Cousins and Seckel 1994, 149). 59. Cousins and Seckel 1994, 151, fig. 1. On this, we read in Picasso’s hand, Mes chers amis [My dear friends] Voulez vous venir demain soir [Would you like to come tomorrow night] Dimanche [Sunday] Le tableau [The canvas] Picasso notes to chapter t wo

345

Cousins and Seckel translate this accordingly to read, “My dear friends, do you want to come see my painting tomorrow Sunday? Picasso” (Cousins and Seckel 1994, 149n3). 60. While John Golding originally identified this painting as Les Demoiselles, by 1988 he had changed his mind (Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 115). 61. Brassaï 2002, 132–33. 62. Brassaï 2002, 132–33. 63. Brassaï 2002, 133.

THREE

  Art in the Flesh

1. Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch bring together key documents on this subject, and note, by way of background that “Henri Matisse (1869–1954) became interested in African sculpture in the spring of 1906, at about the same time as did Vlaminck and Derain, and it was he who first introduce[d] Picasso to it that fall” (2003, 31). 2. Flam and Deutch 2003, 35. 3. Madeline 2006a, 198. 4. A slightly different version was written by Jacob in 1931 but published only later (Seckel 1994a, 232): “At some point, Matisse took from a table a statuette of black wood and showed it to Picasso. It was the first African sculpture [bois nègre]. Picasso held it in his hand the entire evening.” Another clarification was published by Jacob for the same event in Les Nouvelles littéraires in 1932 (Seckel 1994a, 232). Here he specifies, “One Thursday evening we dined at Quai Saint-­Michel, Salmon, Apollinaire, Picasso, and myself. I think it might even have been a weekly dinner, though I wouldn’t swear on it. . . . Matisse at one point took from a table a statuette in black wood and showed it to Picasso. It was the first African wood sculpture [that he saw]. Picasso held it in his hand for the rest of the evening.” In 1936–37, a final version of Jacob’s recounting was published posthumously (Seckel 1994a, 232). Here, as Picasso contemplatively held an African figurine following a rather familial dinner hosted by Matisse, the latter remarked, “Well look at that!” 5. Jacob [1931] (1964) cited in Seckel 1994a, 232. 6. Jacob [1931] (1964) cited in Seckel 1994a, 232. 7. Flam and Deutch 2003, 31. 8. Excerpt from Pierre Courthion typescript in Flam and Deutch 2003, 31. 9. Stein 1933, 77–78. 10. Stein 1933, 78; Hilary Spurling (2001, 372) is among several scholars who believe this was at Matisse’s apartment. 11. Flam and Deutch 2003, 31. 12. Paudrat 1984, 129.

346

notes to chapter t wo

13. Spurling 2001, 372; McBreen 2007, 99n122. 14. Flam and Deutch 2003, 29. John Richardson writes of Derain, “If he was not the first modern artist to ‘discover’ tribal sculpture, Derain was the first to see its potential as a catalyst” (1996, 76). 15. Paudrat 1984, 139n50 and 174. 16. Stein 1933, 77–78. A pair of Baga D’mba masks that somewhat resemble one that entered the Trocadéro in 1904 was acquired by Picasso in 1907. However, Picasso is likely to have made his striking 1906–7 Baga-­like drawings in part from a different source — ​­an illustrated volume on African masks published by German ethnographer Leo Frobenius (see chapter 4). 17. Madeline 2006a, 196. 18. Benjamin [1936] 2008; see also Hansen 2008. 19. On fetish, see Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988; on African idols, see Blier 2009. 20. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 197. 21. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 197. 22. Flam 2003, 3. 23. Flam and Deutch 2003, 28. 24. Quoted in Lemke 1998, 40n17. 25. Flam 2004, 32. 26. McBreen 2014. 27. Laman 1957, 159–60; Lehuard 1980, 1989, 55. 28. MacGaffey 1988. In bridging the visible and invisible worlds, powerful substances (such as earth from cemeteries) are applied to these figures to empower them. 29. Flam and Deutch 2003, 31. 30. McBreen 2014. 31. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 196. 32. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. 33. Flam 2003, 5. 34. Malraux 1974 in passing; Daix 1970; Gilot cited in Richardson 1996, 25. 35. Richardson 1996, 25–26; Rubin 1984a, 1984b. 36. Richardson 1996, 25n55. 37. Malraux 1974, 17–19. This is based on conversations the two had had in the 1930s. 38. Richardson 1996, 25. 39. Çelik 1992, 170. The edifice was demolished in 1937 to make way for the Musée de l’homme, a structure commissioned for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne that year, which also coincides with Picasso’s Guernica commission and first display. notes to chapter three

347

40. Its name came from the Spanish term for a place of trade (trocar, to barter), referring to a Spanish fortress on the Andalusian peninsula near Cádiz, not far from Picasso’s hometown of Málaga. In 1823, French troops won a battle to free the Spanish monarch Ferdinand VII, who had been imprisoned there, in an effort to found a constitutional monarchy. To Picasso, a native Andalusian and Spanish patriot, the Trocadéro name would have resonated clearly as a signal that underscored what was at stake in his decision to make Paris his home and to compete for acclaim in Europe’s capital of culture and power. 41. Baedeker 1907, 231–32. 42. On African, Oceanic, and Asian works, see, among others, Falser 2011. On broader human concerns, see C. Green 2005, 57. 43. Baedeker 1907, 231. 44. C. Green 2005, 57. 45. Rubin 1984b, 254. 46. Paudrat 1984, 132. 47. Lamp 2006, n.p. 48. I want to thank the Musée du quai Branly African curator Gaëlle Beaujean for pointing this out to me (pers. comm., December 6, 2010). The Branly has replaced the Musée de l’homme as the primary storage and exhibition hall for the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, in Paris (the latter museum replaced the Trocadéro, though at the same site). 49. Rubin 1984b, 262. As Hélène Seckel notes (1994a, 219n3; Rubin 1983, 632–33, and 1984, 262–65), “He renders null and void the most famous comparisons” made by specialists such as Alfred Barr (1946, 257; an Etoumbi mask) and John Golding (1958, 157 and 161; a Dan mask), among others. Seckel adds, “Those objects could not have been accessible to Picasso either at the Trocadéro or through dealers or friends in 1907” (1994a, note 3). 50. Rubin 1994, 107; see also Rubin 1984b, 262–65. Curators at the Musée de l’homme told Rubin in the 1980s that “virtually every mask and figure sculpture, and a majority of arms and utensils, were on view in the early installations of the museum (a view supported by the crowded character of the presentations in the 1895 photographs)” (1984b, 336n56). 51. Rubin 1984a, 17. 52. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33; Mailer 1995, 258. 53. Gilot and Lake 1964, 248. 54. Seckel 1994a, 216. 55. Stein 1933, 77–78. 56. Interestingly, in this era, Matisse is also interested in medieval art, along with

348

notes to chapter three

various Middle Eastern and North African forms (Desvallières [1908] quoted in Flam 1995, 26–31). 57. Enlart and Roussel 1910. 58. Enlart and Roussel 1910, n.p. 59. Richardson 1996, 40. 60. Olivier 2001a, 172–73. The skull, I remarked during my visit to the Lapin Agile, is said to have been there since the time of Frédé [Frédéric Gérard, the early owner] and is said to be purely decorative (Frédéric Thomas, email, October 24, 2013). 61. Richardson, who makes this observation (1991, 426–27), identifies the cast figure as Javanese. 62. Levitt 2011, 18. 63. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 196. 64. This latter work is shown in Rubin 1994, fig. 231. Interestingly, Gauguin’s work Ta Matete (1892) not only features figures with Egyptian-­like poses but also appears to be based on a British Museum photograph of a Theban painting (Danielsson 1969, 23). 65. Flam 2003, 3–4. 66. Madeline 2006a, 196. 67. Flam and Deutch 2003, 31. Rubin suggests that the works that especially interested Matisse and others early on were works by the Vili, Yombe, Punu, and “the Egyptian-­looking Gelede masks of the Yoruba” (1984a, 7 and 10). What he overlooks is the fact that in this era, to equate sub-­Saharan African art with the forms of the historically monumental and highly valued Nile Valley works was itself a radical move. Consistent with Rubin, Inez Haynes Gillmore Irwin described one of Matisse’s recent acquisitions in his studio as a “black Egyptian thing . . . with breasts like pyramids” (Irwin’s description here is from a discussion with Gelett Burgess cited in McBreen 2014, 286n78). This work may indeed have been an African sculpture, possibly a Bamana figure from Mali (McBreen 2014, xv). 68. Golding 2001, 22. 69. Golding 1994, 106. 70. Richardson 1991, 428. 71. Richardson 1991, 428. 72. Richardson 1996, 23. 73. Richardson 1996, 21. 74. Golding 2001, 24; Richardson 1996, 22; Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 36–37n135. 75. Gersh-­Nešić 2005, 507; see also Salmon 2005, 507; Richardson 1996, 22. 76. Richardson 1996, 22n45; Steegmuller 1963, 166. 77. Mailer 1995, 321–22. notes to chapter three

349

78. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 36n135. 79. Seckel 1994a, 216; Richardson 1996, 201–3. 80. Olivier 2001a, 161. 81. Richardson 1996, 21. 82. Seckel 1994a, 215. 83. See Rubin 1994, 103n253. As Fels explains, Picasso insisted, “It is that ‘l’art nègre’ had become too familiar to me. The African sculptures that hang around almost every­ where in my studio are more witnesses [of my work] than models [for it]” ([1920] in Rubin 1994 103n253). 84. Richardson 1996, 11. 85. Richardson 1996, 11. 86. Malraux 1974, 257. 87. In Madeline 2006a, 200. 88. Basler (1926) in Madeline 2006a, 205. 89. Sutherland 1936. 90. Richardson 1996, 23. 91. McBreen 2014, 46. 92. Madeline 2006b, 32. 93. McBreen 2007, 144. 94. Blier 2003. 95. See R. Johnson 1980b, 102–13; Richardson 1987, 40–47; Laessoe 1987, 133–34; Foundoulaki 1992, 102.

FOUR

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

1. Blier 2015. 2. See, among others, Frobenius 1913. 3. Rubin 1984b, 274n94. 4. In its own way, this 1898 work, with its rich array of color plates, was also a path forger in print media, since newspapers and other media had only begun using this technology a few years earlier. 5. See, for example, Rubin 1983, 630; Rubin 1984b, 254; Rubin 1994, 57–58, 62, 116, 130–32nn166–78. 6. I thank James Cuno for pointing out this incident to me. See also below. 7. Frobenius 1995, 256. 8. Frobenius 1995, 256. 9. Gilot and Lake 1964, 248. 10. McCully 2011b, 208.

350

notes to chapter three

11. Cabanne 1977, 120. 12. Rubin 1994, 16. 13. Krieger and Kutscher 1960, pl. 63. 14. Rubin 1994, 116. 15. Among those who have helped in my search to learn more about E. Hugelshofer are Richard Kuba, Christine Stelzig, Christine Goettler, Roger Fayet, and Bettina Richter. Still much remains to be learned about this figure. In this search I came across several German children’s books illustrated by E. Hugelshofer — ​­identified as a German Swiss artist  — ​­including Prinz verkehrt und andere Märchen (The Prince and Other Fairy Tales), published in Basel in 1907, and a small 139-­page poetry volume, Zweier Verslein zum Schmuzeln oder Unsinn mit Methode (Two Verses to Make One Smile, or the Nonsense Method), published in Bern in 1944. A sales announcement for the latter identifies this book as “verse and drawings by the primary teacher Ernst Hugelshofer taken during trips, hikes and everyday life that are full of wit and eloquence.” 16. Rubin 1994, 105. 17. Rubin 1984b, 266. 18. Seckel 1994a, 245. 19. Rubin 1984b, 278. 20. Salmon (1912) quoted in Gersh-­Nešić 2005, 3. 21. Rubin 1984a, 55. 22. On Oceanic works derived from the New Hebrides, see Madeline 2006a, 207; Rubin 1984b, 225–27, 255. 23. Lemke 1998, 43. 24. Rubin 1984b, 275, 277–79. 25. Rubin 1984b, 275n97, 276. 26. See Ellen McBreen (2007, 274) for more on Picasso’s and Matisse’s use of these headdresses. As she notes, a D’mba pair that Picasso once owned can be seen in the rear of a 1974 photograph of Picasso’s collection, taken by Claude Picasso and reproduced by William Rubin (1984b, 267). 27. Rubin 1984b, 279–80. 28. Rubin 1984b, 288. 29. Finlay 1998, 24n10. 30. C. Green 2000, 35. 31. Quoted in C. Green 1992, 36. 32. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 207. 33. Krauss 1981, 16. 34. Barr 1946, 68. 35. Gersh-­Nešić 2005, 4. notes to chapter four

351

36. Bois 1987, 37 and 40–48. 37. Quoted in Lemke 1998, 39–40. 38. James Cuno, pers. comm., April 14, 2014. 39. Alarcó and Warner 2007. 40. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. 41. Steinberg 1995, 106–7. 42. Mailer 1995, 229. 43. Blier 2017. 44. Flam 2003, 21; Flam and Deutch 2003, 24, 27, 31; Richardson 1991, 411. 45. Flam and Deutch 2003, 24, 31. 46. Rubin 1984b, 247; Huffington 1988, 86. 47. Stein 1933, 49. 48. Flam 2003, 22; Flam and Deutch 2003, 30. 49. Stein 1933, 54. 50. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 110. 51. Gopnik 1983, 375. 52. Salmon cited in Seckel 1994a, 245. 53. Rubin 1984b, 282. 54. Richardson 1991, 207. 55. Richardson 1991, 386; Seckel 1994a, 237; Richardson 1991, 389. 56. Stein 1933, 89. 57. Richardson 1991, 390. 58. Stein 1933, 27. 59. Davenport 1997, 22. 60. Blier 2017. 61. Seckel 1994a, 219n2. 62. Olivier 2001a, 179–80; see also Madeline 2006a, 201. 63. Seckel 1994a, 219n5.

FIVE

  L’Oiseau du Bénin

1. C. Green 2001b, 129; Leighten 1989, chap. 5. 2. On the reception of Dahomey art more generally in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Kelly 2015. 3. Donne 1983, 5 and 6. 4. Donne 1983, 7. 5. Donne 1983, 7. 6. Richardson 1991, 465.

352

notes to chapter four

7. Couturier-­Nicolay 1999. 8. This was published in 1916 but dates to 1903–4 and 1907–8; Richardson 1991, 465. 9. Richardson 1991, 465. See also Eberiel 1987. Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire showed an interest in tarot, magic, and the occult; the latter’s library had works dedicated to occultism, including a number of “forbidden texts” (Finlay 2002, 21–29; McCully 1980). 10. Fitzgerald 1996, 177. 11. Apollinaire 1972, 244; C. Green 1992, 34; see also C. Green 2000, 251. 12. C. Green 1992, 33. 13. Samaltanos-­Stenström 1984, 28. See also Tyhacott 2003, 111. For Katia Samaltanos-­Stenström (1984, 27), Apollinaire’s essay represents the first text by an art critic addressing such works from an aesthetic vantage. 14. C. Green 1992, 34. 15. Blier 1995, 339; 2019. 16. Blier 2003, 186. 17. Edwards and Woods 2004, 161; see also Finlay 1998; Seitz 1961. 18. Flam and Deutch 2003, 138. 19. Flam and Deutch 2003, 138. Gelett Burgess similarly mentioned Dahomey art in his 1910 piece, “The Wild Men of Paris” (Flam and Deutch 2003, 38). 20. Blier 1995, 332. 21. Flam and Deutch 2003, 27. 22. Seckel 1994a, 221. 23. Vlaminck [1943] 2003, 106; Flam and Deutch 2003, 27; Seckel 1994a, 221. 24. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 198. 25. Paudrat 1984, 139. 26. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 207. 27. Quoted in Daix 1970, 255. 28. Quoted in C. Green 2001b, 129. 29. Lemke 1998, 39n12. 30. Stein 1933, 28. 31. Stwallskull 2008. 32. A. Miller 2002, 11–12. 33. Mandell 1967, 62; Schneider 1981. 34. Brunet and Giethlen 1900, 519–26. 35. Brunet and Giethlen 1900, 518–19. 36. Richardson 1996, 37; Mandell 1967, 62. 37. Richardson 1996, 36. 38. Stein 1946, 22; Madeline 2006a, 197. notes to chapter five

353

39. See, most importantly, the work of Anne Baldassari. 40. C. Green 2005, 68. Natasha Staller also notes the important similarity between the curtain-­opening African figure on the right of Women of Algiers and the ­curtain-opening females in Les Demoiselles (C. Green 2005, 78). 41. Olivier 2001a, 175. 42. Richardson 1991, 174. 43. Richardson 1991, 174. 44. Richardson 1991, 174. For more on beliefs about hair trimmings, see Gilot and Lake 1964, 217. 45. Gilot and Lake 1964, 217–18. 46. See also Róheim 2005, 13. 47. Frobenius in Falgayrettes-­Leveau et al. [1898] 1995, 284–85. 48. Quoted in Streck 1995, 266–67. 49. Gilot and Lake 1964, 217–18. 50. Burgard 1991, 485; Cabanne 1977, 509. 51. Holod 1992, 41–61. 52. Senghor 1972, 147–48. This was linked to Senegal’s hosting of a Picasso exhibit in 1972. See also Picasso, Madeline, and Martin 2006. 53. Senghor 1972, 146. 54. Senghor 1972, 146. 55. Rubin 1984b, 268. 56. Rubin 1994, 16. 57. Rubin quoted in C. Green 2001b, 138. Green, however, doubts that Picasso’s view of magic came from period concerns with psychology as based in part on André Malraux’s use of the term “unconscious,” a view that would have meant familiarity with psychoanalysis. Moreover, Green suggests, “Picasso (who took his superstitions very seriously) might indeed have found what he thought of [as] magic in tribal sculpture” (C. Green 2001b, 138). 58. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 95n227. 59. Malraux 1974, 131. 60. Gilot and Lake 1964, 248; see also Anderson 2002, 63. 61. Malraux 1974, 96. 62. Malraux 1974, 11–13; Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. See also Anderson 2002. 63. Malraux 1974, 10–11. 64. Madeline 2006b, 23; see also C. Green 2001b, 138. To William Rubin (1984a, 73) this reference suggests that “those sculptures were ultimately a part of himself, of his own psyche, and therefore a witness to the humanity he shared with their carvers.” 65. See, among others, Read 2008; Olivier 2001a; McCully 1980; and Rubin 1996.

354

notes to chapter five

Max Jacob, with whom Picasso lived in the winter of 1902, used a number of drugs, including ether and henbane, believed to enhance mystic powers (Olivier 2001a). On their relationship, see Seckel 1994a. 66. See Read 2008, 10. 67. See de la Rosa, n.d. It is thought that he was a spy for the British government, and his work was concerned about the sale of slaves in Havana. I thank Marial Iglesias Utset for this insight. 68. De la Rosa, n.d. 69. Staller 2001, 298. 70. I thank Ellen McBreen for pointing this out to me. 71. Richardson 2007, 245. 72. Richardson 1996, 13. 73. Steinberg 1988, 58n44b. 74. While the English translation of Olivier’s book identifies him as the artist André Deniker (2001a, 202), in the original French edition he is cited as Georges Jean (Olivier 2001b, 109). The latter seems correct. In both texts he is identified as the son of naturalist, Joseph Deniker. 75. Olivier 2001a, 255. 76. Olivier 2001a, 255. 77. G. W. Johnson 1971, 151. 78. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 199–200. 79. Morienval 1893, opp. 134.

SIX

  The Global Brothel

1. For more on Günther, see, among others, Rothfels 2008, 100–103. 2. I initially published the Stratz photograph in a 2013 essay on the importance of Africa to Picasso and his circle. 3. See Leja 1985. 4. Theye 1989, 256. 5. Hau 2003, 83. 6. McBreen 2007, 75. See also Richer and Hale 1889. 7. Steinberg 1988, 52. 8. While Turner suggests that Picasso turned to photographic sources after his return from Gósol, in the fall of 1906, there is evidence that Picasso used Stratz imagery instead of living models during that trip as well. 9. One of the photographic pairs shown by Stratz in his 1907 volume of Rassenschönheit (137, fig. 75, and others) is of a German woman of African descent identified as notes to chapter six

355

“Zulu” (likely a stage persona), who in the clothed version wears a revealing dress in a leopard print and holds a spear. 10. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. 11. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. 12. Flam and Deutch 2003, 33. 13. See McBreen’s (2014) important discussion on Matisse’s sculpture and painting. 14. Hau 2003, 48. 15. Hau 2003, 7 and 30. 16. Elizabeth Turner 1984, 153, fig. 10. This caricature is identified by Turner as appearing in Apollinaire’s periodical La culture physique. Turner notes that Gertrude Stein identified this caricature of Apollinaire as “exemplifying what physical culture could do” (1984, 154). 17. Scharf 1975, 131. 18. Quoted in Daix 1993, 65. Even earlier, in 1904, Patricia Tilburg (2007) observed that an author named Dr. Stratz had addressed the importance of the nude. 19. Turner 1984, 156. 20. Turner 1984, 156. According to Turner, several of Degas’s brothels were part of Picasso’s collection, later given to the Louvre. 21. McBreen 2014, 22. 22. McBreen 2007, 45. 23. McBreen 2007, 46; 2014, 26. 24. See Leja 1985, 76–77. 25. See Lomas 1993, 2001. 26. See Baldassari 1997a, 72; and Janie C. Cohen, among others. 27. McBreen 2014, 28. 28. McBreen 2014, 28 and note 58. 29. McBreen 2014, 28. 30. There were also important technical changes in this period. As McBreen (2014, 29n66) points out, halftone screen technology came to France in 1902. Halftone technology made the printing of photographs far cheaper and thus very profitable, enabling people such as Vignola to publish images recycled from earlier publications (McBreen 2014, 26n37). 31. McBreen 2014, 31. 32. McBreen 2014, 42, 67, 74, 131. Elizabeth Turner (1984, 149–55) also points out the relationship between Picasso’s Two Nudes, the photo of the Tuareg, and Matisse’s sculpture Two Negresses. 33. McBreen 2014, xi.

356

notes to chapter six

34. Stratz 1900, 255, fig. 127. 35. “Femmes d’Afrique,” L’Humanité feminine, December 29, 1906, 8. 36. Spurling 2001, 372n126; McBreen 2014, 28. Vignola’s publications Mes Modèles and L’Humanité feminine appear not to have lasted beyond summer 1907, although earlier issues no doubt circulated longer. 37. McBreen 2014, 200n60. 38. Richardson 1996, 18n20. 39. McBreen 2007, 132. 40. McBreen 2014, 2, 19, 75. 41. Richardson 1996, 17. 42. Baldassari 1997a. 43. Baldassari 1997a, 72. 44. The diverse issues of L’Humanité féminine follow this route. A few of the women can also be seen in the Stratz volumes, suggesting that photographs were being circulated, that women were captured by different photographers, or both. 45. Baldassari 1997a. 46. Baldassari 1994, fig. 117; McBreen 2014, 74. 47. Hau 2003, 88. 48. Hau 2003, 89. 49. Hau 2003, 89. 50. Stratz 1899, 3. Picasso’s godfather, an early financial backer, was a gynecologist and may have supplied these books. I thank Sean Anderson for this insight. 51. Roodenberg, n.d., 23. In Holland, Stratz was a familiar figure at the Rijks Ethno­ graphische Museum, as the Museum Volkenkunde was then called. He went to The Hague to live, and borrowed photographs from the museum collection to use in his books. 52. As noted earlier, this same pose appears in classical sculptures, illustrated plaster cast volumes from this era, and other sources. 53. A similar photograph to these Stratz images also appears in L’Etude academique, March 15, 1906. See Turner 1984, pl. 18. 54. Hau 2003, 88; Stratz [1902] 1904, 19–24. 55. According to Elizabeth Anne McCauley, almost half of the French photographers working in the mid-­nineteenth century identified their work as “nature studies” intended for the use of artists, for whom nude studies were particularly in demand. See also McBreen 2014, 192n29; McCauley 1994, 154; and Dawkins 2002. 56. In the 1911 edition of Rassenschoenheit, Stratz includes a sculpture from Nigeria (fig. 2), seemingly to make the same point. 57. In several of Stratz’s German editions of Rassenschoenheit, the Medici Venus is shown instead: 1902, 40, fig. 1440; 1907, 43, fig. 18. notes to chapter six

357

58. Turner 1984, 155; see also Cabanne 1977, 111. 59. Steinberg 1995, 106. 60. I thank Yukio Lippit for help in identifying this image. 61. Richardson 1991, 469; Golding 2001, 20–21. 62. Baldassari 1997a, 39–43. 63. With thanks to Sheryl Reiss, Misty Bastian, and Nicola Courtwright for help in identifying this work. 64. It is important to note that the color in the 1900 French edition was different from the earlier German examples. 65. McBreen 2007, 201. See also McBreen 2014, 100, 115, 118. 66. McBreen 2007, 278n63. 67. See Flam 1984, 230. 68. Stratz’s amply illustrated Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers contains numerous instances in which he showed the same woman clothed in local ethnic costumes and naked. During a summer 1905 visit to Holland, Picasso undertook several similar works, showing the body beneath the dress, in full attire, and naked except for a cap. 69. Steinberg 1988, 52. 70. Steinberg 1988, 47. 71. I thank Judith Rodenbeck for pointing this out to me. 72. Bois 2001, 34. 73. Bois 2001, 34. 74. See Steinberg 1988, 58 on Picasso’s interest in backs and fronts. 75. Krauss 1986, 30–33. I thank Judith Rodenbeck for pointing this out to me.

SEVEN

  Le Bordel Philosophique

1. On other aspects of medieval art and modernism, see Nagel 2012. 2. Many of the animal drawings are found in carnet 7 in the same March–April 1907 sketchbook in which the portrait of the adopted daughter, Raymonde, appears. 3. Rubin, Seckel, and Cousins 1994, 103. 4. Rubin 1994, 14 and 16. 5. Hahnloser 2008, n.p. 6. Malraux 1974, 53. 7. Olivier 2001a, 170–71. 8. Fry 1966a, 81–83; and in McCully 1982, 55–57. 9. Stein 1946, 59. 10. A. Miller 2002, 21. 11. A. Miller 2002, 21.

358

notes to chapter six

12. A. Miller 2002, 20n32; Belting 2001, 20. 13. Rosenblum 1986, 66; Hélène Seckel (1988, 29, cat. no. 26a) identifies the last word as Arurs rather than Cuirs, but the precise spelling remains unclear to me; I was unable to check this sketchbook image for clarification. 14. Zola 2004, 532. 15. Zola, Germinal [1885] 2010, n.p. 16. Frobenius in Falgayrettes-­Leveau et al. [1898] 1995, 284–85. 17. See Roodenberg, n.d.; Hau 2003, 83, 91; Brantlinger 1986, 185–222. 18. While the Stratz racial chart shown here was published in 1911, similar charts were published by him in earlier volumes as well. For an overview of Stratz’s racial categories, see Bean 1908, 451. 19. I thank Ellen McBreen for her help in thinking through this. 20. Steinberg 1988, 13. 21. Another way these women might be read is as symbols of the five continents, but this seems less likely. 22. Leja 1985, 66–68. 23. Chave 1994, 601; Lomas 2001, 115. 24. A. Miller 2002, 23n47. 25. Seckel 1994a, 244. 26. Seckel 1994a, 244. 27. Gordon 2009, 1. 28. Gordon 2009, 19 and 33. 29. Steinberg 1979, 124. 30. Hau 2003, 87. 31. Gasman 2007, 395. 32. McBreen 2007, 118. Reference to African art as “virgin reality” was made by Gino Severini (Seckel 1994a, 251). 33. Mellow 1974, 109. 34. Rouart 1902, 9–10. 35. Podoksik 1989, 20. 36. The fourth dimension is explored with respect to Picasso and other artists in this era by Linda Henderson (1971 and 1983) as well as Arthur Miller (2002), Tony Robbin (2006), and others. On engagement with Einstein’s hypotheses, see A. Miller 2002. 37. See Henderson 1971, 1983; A. Miller 2002, 4. 38. See also Antliff and Leighten 2001. 39. Barr 1946, 270–71. 40. For more on Jarry, see Leighten 1989, 233. 41. Gordon 2009, 245. notes to chapter seven

359

42. On pataphysics, see Gordon 2009, 244, as well as Henderson 1983. 43. A. Miller 2002, 27. 44. Steiner [1906] 1912. 45. Apollinaire [1908–16] 1997, 313–16. 46. McBreen 2014, 31. 47. Steinberg 1995, 108. 48. Turner 1984, 146n17. 49. Richardson 1996, 11. 50. At this point it disappeared to Bulgaria, until Jacques Lacan bought it in 1955. 51. Flam, pers. comm., 2014. 52. I thank Jack Flam for pointing this out to me. 53. Golding 1994, 117. 54. Steinberg 1988, 63. 55. I thank Wendy Grossman for this insight. See in particular Breuil 1906. Joseph Déchelette (1908, 241) furnishes a description of the main caves known at this time that bore significant rock paintings. Among these sites (and their discovery dates) are Altamira (Spain, 1875, 1879); Chabot (Ardèche, France, 1879); La Mouthe (Dordogne, France, 1895); Font-­de-­Gaume (Dordogne, France, 1902); Bernifal, Teyjat, and La Calévie (Dordogne, France, 1903); Covalanas, Castillo, Homos de la Peña, and La Haza (Spain, 1903); La Grèze (Dordogne, France, 1904); La Clotilde and La Venta de la Perra (Spain, 1906); and Gargas (Haute-­Garonne, France, 1906). 56. Seckel 1994a, 232. 57. Although Jacob assumed these drawings had been lost, a number have been preserved in Les Demoiselles sketchbooks, examples of which are illustrated here. 58. Malraux 1974, 125. 59. Steinberg 1988, 52. 60. Steinberg 1988, 52. 61. Steinberg 1988, 13. 62. Quoted in Madeline 2006a, 203. 63. Madeline 2006a, 203. 64. Salmon 2005, 3. 65. Steinberg 1979, 124. 66. Elizabeth Hutton Turner (1984, 153) also makes this point. 67. See Richardson 1996, 13. John Richardson points to the possible impact of Charles Baudelaire’s essay “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” on Picasso at this time, particularly with respect to contrasting ideals of pure (good) and horrible (evil) beauty. 68. Richardson 1991, 302–4. 69. Richardson 1991, 306.

360

notes to chapter seven

70. Richardson 1991, 306. 71. Richardson 1991, 474n29. 72. Richardson 1996, 29. 73. I want to thank Misty Bastian for reminding me of this work. 74. Richardson 1991, 306. 75. Fudjack and Dinkelaker 2000, n.p. 76. Malraux 1974, 96. In many ways this deep-­seated and universal paradox around identifying female lovers as both objects of one’s sexual desire and the iconic mothers of one’s children is reflected in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. 77. See Blier 1995. 78. Malraux 1974, 128 and 78. 79. Richardson 1991, 471. 80. Richardson 1996, 29–30. See also Fudjack and Dinkelaker 2000, n.p. 81. Stratz’s sexualization of children is evident in photographs in other Stratz volumes as well. 82. While Picasso likely did not know about this dancing element in African sculpture, he had studied this posture closely while handling a Congo figure during a fall 1906 evening with Henri Matisse and Gertrude Stein (see chapter 2). Thompson 1984. 83. Tinterow and Stein 2010, 92, 136; McCully 2011a, 144; and Caws 2005, 50. 84. Daix 1993, 40. Interestingly, Brassaï (2002, 100) notes that later Picasso owned two copies of the Venus of Lespugue sculpture from Gravettian, a steatopygous female with exaggerated breasts and sexual characteristics, dated c. 24,000 to 22,000 bce. 85. Steinberg 1988, 27. 86. McBreen 2014. This interest in the antique complements larger concerns promoted to the middle class through sources of physical culture and hygiene. Moreover, in the words of Michael Hau, “The white race was the most capable and had the most perfect and beautiful individuals. Women of other races could still be considered beautiful and represent an ideal of racial beauty, but only if their appearance did not interfere too much with the aesthetic concept of beauty embodied in the most beautiful members of the white race” (2003, 87). 87. North 1995, 270.

Conclusions 1. I have addressed similar aspects of visual “multiplexity” in architectural and sculptural terms in Blier 1987, 1995, 2005. 2. Malraux 1974, 39. notes to conclusions

361

3. Brassaï 2002, 36. 4. Barr 1939, 60; Brenson 1988, c13. 5. Didi-­Huberman 2009. 6. Steinberg 1988, 63. 7. Steinberg 1988, 60. 8. Golding 1994, 111. 9. C. Green 2005, 54. 10. Brassaï 2002, 202. 11. Brassaï 2002, 332; Stein 1933, 13; Blunt and Pool 1962, 17. 12. Breton 1952, 24. For a catalog of Apollinaire’s library, see Boudar and Décaudin 1983. 13. Olivier 2001a, 165. 14. Davenport 1997, 22. 15. In many ways, Picasso’s use of these sources probably resembled Matisse’s engagement with photographic journals as discussed so provocatively in McBreen 2014. 16. In essence, self-­teaching; explored in Rancière 1991. 17. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 47. 18. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 47. 19. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 47–48. 20. Quoted in Cousins and Seckel 1994, 152. 21. Daix 1993, 79. 22. Daix 1993, 79. 23. Quoted in Seckel 1994a, 252. 24. Rubin 1989, 348; see also Chave 1994, 598. 25. Brassaï 2002, 346. 26. Braque in Seckel 1994a, 227 and note 7; see also Leighten 1989, 80–91; McCully 2011b, 237. 27. In the field of psychology, creativity is often identified with broader factors of the human condition, among these neurological issues. For a general overview of various approaches and findings on creativity and related ideas of genius, innovation, and novelty, see, among others, Nahm 1965; Hausman 1975, 1985; Tatarkiewicz 1980; Hospers 1985; Dutton and Krausz 1985; Feyerabend 1987; P. Murray 1989; Sternberg 1999; Runco 2006; Runco and Albert 2010; Gardner 2011; Sawyer 2012; and McMahon 2013. For discussions of the importance of problem-solving rationales, see Sawyer 2012, 283, 302; Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1999, 2013; Csikszentmihalyi and Getzels 1988. On creativity and the human condition, see Sawyer 2012, 99, 150, 163, 286, 288. Brink (2007) addresses the relationship between creative process and biography from the vantage of human development and anxiety in relationship to Picasso and other artists; see Brink

362

notes to conclusions

2000, 2007. On sarcasm, see Huang, Galinsky, and Gino 2015. On visual intelligibility, see Zeki 1999, op. 52. On evolutionary issues, see Gallese and Freedberg 2007; and Davis 2011a, 2011b. See also Dutton 2009; Zeki 1999; Mallgrave 2010; Temple 2014; and Fineberg 2015. And for a broader critique of these approaches in art history, see Rampley 2012. 28. In literary contexts, creativity is framed around issues such as mythical journeys or issues of incongruity. For Maurice Blanchot (1995), creativity involves an inward journey, pressing the boundaries of life and death (light and darkness). I thank Rachel Youdelman for pointing this out to me. Kenneth Burke identifies artistic creativity with strategies of engagement and the need to convey “simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity.” See Burke 1964, 34–49. For Burke, competition and jealousy can also play a role — ​­both of which he sees as potentially very creative. See Burke 1931, 107, 154, 152. 29. In Re-­Enchantment, various kinds of “play” are seen to enter into the core creative act, including the selection of sources to inspire imagination. See Elkins and Morgan 2009, 3–22. James Elkins also draws on the potent metaphor of alchemy to address painting process and focuses on the very act of mixing pigments and then applying them to the canvas, as well as the transformative process of the act of painting itself. See Elkins 2000. 30. Olivier 2001a, 139. 31. Brassaï 2002, 180. 32. Brassaï 2002, 180. 33. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 48. 34. Quoted in Daix 1993, 79. 35. Daix 1993, 87. 36. Cabanne 1977, 122. 37. Cabanne 1977, 122. 38. Quoted in Penrose 1981, 130. 39. Runco 2006. 40. Seckel 1994a, 244. In some ways Johan Huizinga’s important writings on the play element of culture figure in this, since for both Huizinga and Picasso play could also be a deeply serious act. Huizinga 1955; see also Baumeister, Schmeichel, DeWall 2014. 41. Quoted in Cousins and Seckel 1994, 147. 42. Seckel 1994a, 245. 43. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 48. 44. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 48. 45. Quoted in Seckel 1994, 243. notes to conclusions

363

46. Apollinaire, Eimert, and Podoksik 2014, 48. 47. Seckel 1994a, 219. 48. Malraux 1974, 11. 49. Malraux 1974, 11. 50. Quoted in Daix 1993, 79. 51. Poincaré 1908. 52. A. Miller 2002, 23. For an overview of Bergson and creativity, see Bergson 1975. 53. A. Miller 2002, 23n47. 54. A. Miller 2002, 23. 55. Runco and Albert 2010. On evolution and creativity, see Wallas 1926 and, more recently, Simonton 1999. 56. A. Miller 2002, 23. 57. A. Miller 2002, 27n63. 58. A. Miller 2002, 27. On Picasso and evolution more generally, see Gordon 2009. 59. Elkins 2000. 60. Flam and Deutch 2003, 58. 61. Flam and Deutch 2003, 59. See also Bois 1988a. 62. Flam and Deutch 2003, 59. 63. Flam and Deutch 2003, 60. 64. See, among other sources, Blier 2017. 65. Flam and Deutch 2003, 55–56. If, as rumor has it, Picasso’s friends tossed toy darts at the Matisse portrait of Marguerite in the Bateau-­Lavoir studio (although no related physical damage resulted), this extends the child-­linked referent here to an additional level of competition and possibly even sexual punning. 66. Cabanne 1977, 112. 67. Cabanne 1977, 112. 68. Cabanne 1977, 112. 69. Gramotnev 2016, n.p. 70. Chave 1994, 598 and notes 1 and 2. 71. Caws 2005, 50n3. 72. Daix 1993, 63. 73. Fitzgerald 2014, 64. 74. Plagens 2007, 68–69. 75. Brenson 1988, c13.

364

notes to conclusions

References Ackerman, James S. 1997. “Villard de Honnecourt’s Drawings of Reims Cathedral: A Study in Architectural Representation.” Artibus et Historiae 18 (35): 41–49. Adamson, Natalie, and Toby Norris 2009. Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists, and the Arriere-­Garde: Defining Modern and Traditional in France, 1900–1960. Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars. Alan Wofsy Fine Arts 2012. Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue: 1885–1973: The Rose Period — ​­1905–1906. The Picasso Project. San Francisco, CA: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts. 2014. Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue: The African Period — ​­1907–1909. The Picasso Project. San Francisco, CA: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts. Alarcó, Paloma, and Malcolm Warner 2007. The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Anderson, Wayne V. 2002. Picasso’s Brothel: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. New York: Other Press.

Anonymous 2013. “C’est le Bordel.” In Un mot par jour: Etymologie des mots et origine des expressions courantes de la langue française. January 7, 2013. Accessed July 6. http:// originedesmots.blogspot.com/2013/02/cest-­le-­bordel.html. Antliff, Mark 1988. “Bergson and Cubism: A Reassessment.” Art Journal 47 (4): 341–49. 1993. Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-­Garde. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1996. “Organicism against Itself: Cubism, Duchamp-­Villon and the Contradictions of Modernism.” Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 12 (4): 366–88. 2010a. “Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Guerre sociale: Art, Anarchism and Anti-­Militarism in Paris and London, 1909–1915.” Modernism/Modernity 17 (1): 135–69. 2010b. “Sculptural Nominalism / Anarchist Vortex: Henri Gaudier-­Brzeska, Dora Marsden, Ezra Pound.” In The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–1918, edited by Mark Antliff and Vivien Greene, 47–57. London: Tate Publishing. Antliff, Mark, and Patricia Leighten 2001. Cubism and Culture. New York: Thames & Hudson. 2008. A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Apollinaire, Guillaume 1907. “Henri Matisse.” La Phalange 11 (2): 481–85. (1908–16) 1997. Le Roi-­Lune. Paris: Mille et une nuits. 1949. The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Mediations, 1913. Translated by Lionel Abel. New York: Wittenborn and Company. See also 2004 translation by Peter Read. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1968. “The Moon King.” In The Poet Assassinated. Translated by Ron Padgett. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press. 1970. Les Onze mille verges. Paris: L’Or du temps. 1972. Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902–1918. Edited by Leroy C. Breunig. Translated by Susan Suleiman. New York: Viking Press. 1977. Oeuvres en prose. Edited by Michel Décaudin. Paris: Gallimard. 2014a. Exploits of a Young Don Juan. London: Locus Elm Press. 2014b. L’Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade. Edited by Jude Kahn. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. Apollinaire, Guillaume, Dorothea Eimert, and Anatoli Podoksik 2014. Cubism. New York: Parkstone International.

366

references

Apollinaire, Guillaume, and Peter F. Read 2004. The Cubist Painters. Berkeley: University of California Press. Aragon, Louis 1965. “La Peinture au défi.” In Les Collages, edited by Louis Aragon, 35–71. Paris: Hermann. Ashton, Dore, ed. 1972. Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views. New York: Viking Press. Baedeker, Karl 1907. Paris and Environs: With Routes from London to Paris; Handbook for Travelers. London: Dulau. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1981. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, 259–422. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baldassari, Anne 1994. Picasso, photographe, 1901–1916. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. 1997a. Le miroir noir: Picasso, sources photographiques, 1900–1928: Paris, musée Picasso 12 mars–9 juin 1997. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. 1997b. Picasso and Photography: The Dark Mirror. Translated by Deke Dusinberre. Houston, TX: Museum of Fine Arts. 2000. Picasso: Working on Paper. London: Merrell. 2002. “Corpus ethnicum: Picasso et la photographie coloniale.” In Zoos humains: De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows, edited by Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, Eric Deroo, and Sandrine Lemaire, 340–48. Paris: La Découverte. 2007. “Horta de Ebro, 1909: Genetics of Cubism.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 119–48. Paris: Flammarion. Baldassari, Anne, ed. 2008. Cubist Picasso. Paris: Flammarion. Baldassari, Anne, Paule Mazouet, and Anais Bonnel 2007. “Chronology of Cubism.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 333–57. Paris: Flammarion. Baldwin, James 1962. “The Creative Process.” In James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by T. Morrison, 668–72. New York: Library of America. Bandmann, Günter 1965. Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Stuttgart, Germany: Reclam. references

367

Barkin, Elazar 1995. “Victorian Promiscuity: Greek Ethics and Primitive Exemplars.” In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, edited by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, 56–94. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Barkin, Elazar, and Ronald Bush, eds. 1995. Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Barr, Alfred H., Jr. 1936. Cubism and Abstract Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1939. Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1946. Picasso Fifty Years of His Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1951. Matisse: His Art and His Public. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Barthes, Roland 1977. “The Rhetoric of the Image.” In Image, Music, Text, edited and translated by Stephen Heath, 32–51. New York: Hill and Wang. Basler, Adolphe 1926. La Peinture religion nouvelle. Paris: Librairie de France. Bataille, Georges 1929. “Figure humaine.” Documents 4 (September): 195–96. Baumeister, Roy F., Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 2014. “Creativity and Consciousness.” In The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, edited by Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Carry Kaufman, 185–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bean, Robert Bennett 1908. The Benguet Igorots: A Somatologic Study of the Live Folk of Benguet and Lepanto-­Bontoc. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Becker, Howard S. 2008. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Belloni, Lucy 1999. “The Evolution of Picasso’s Gertrude Stein.” Burlington Magazine 141 (1150): 12–18. Belting, Hans 2001. The Invisible Masterpiece. Translated by Helen Atkins. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2014. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

368

references

Benjamin, Walter (1936) 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. 1940. Theses on the Philosophy of History in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books. 1969. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books. 1999. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berger, John 1965. The Success and Failure of Picasso. New York: Vintage. 1969. The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays. New York: Pantheon Books. 1972. Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin. Bergson, Henri (1889) 1965. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Translated by Frank L. Pogson. New York: Harper. 1907. L’Évolution créatrice. Paris: F. Alcan. 1975. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Mabelle L. Andison. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield Adams. Bernheimer, Charles 1989. Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-­Century France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bignon, Vincent, and Antonio Miscio 2010. “Media Bias in Financial Newspapers: Evidence from Early Twentieth-­Century France.” European Review of Economic History 14 (3): 383–432. Birkett, Jennifer 1988. “Fetishizing Writing: The Politics of Fictional Form in the Work of Remy de Gourmont and Joséphin Péladan.” In Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence, edited by Liz Constable, Dennis Denisoff, and Matthew Potolsky, 268–88. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bishop, Claire 2006. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents.” ArtForum International 44 (6): 178–83. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso. Blanchot, Maurice 1995. The Gaze of Orpheus, and Other Literary Essays. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press.

references

369

Blau, Eve, and Nancy J. Troy, eds. 1997. Architecture and Cubism. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Blier, Suzanne Preston 1987. The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1998. Royal Arts of Africa. New York: H. N. Abrams. 2001. “Autobiography and Art History.” res: Anthropology and Art 29:24–40. 2003. “Assemblage: Dahomey Art and the Politics of Dynasty.” res: Anthropology and Art 45:186–210. 2005. “Trading and Transcending Places: A Hybrid, Multiplex Approach to Visual Culture.” In Anthropologies of Art, edited by Mariët Westermann, 89–107. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2009. “Capricious Arts: Idols in Renaissance-­Era Africa and Europe (The Case of Sapi and Kongo).” In The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions, and the Early Modern World, edited by Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach, 11–30. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2013. “Africa and Paris: The Art of Picasso and His Circle.” In The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 5, The Twentieth Century, part 1, The Impact of Africa, edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr., 77–98. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2015. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2017. “Portraiture and Masking.” In Matisse in the Studio, ed. Ellen McBreen and Helen Burnhan, 95–112. Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts. 2019. Asen: Memoires de fer forgé—Art vodun du Danhomè. Lausanne: Ides and Calendes. Blunt, Anthony, and Phoebe Pool 1962. Picasso, the Formative Years: A Study of His Sources. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society. Boeck, Wilhelm, and Jaime Sabartés 1955. Picasso. New York: H. N. Abrams. Boggs, Hean Sutherland, John Golding, and Robert Rosenblum 1964. Picasso the Man. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario. Bohn, Willard 1997. Apollinaire and the International Avant-­Garde. Albany: State University of New York Press.

370

references

2002. The Rise of Surrealism: Cubism, Dada, and the Pursuit of the Marvelous. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bois, Yve-­A lain 1987. “Kahnweiler’s Lesson.” Representations, no. 18 (spring): 33–68. 1988a. “Henri Matisse: Bathers with a Turtle.” Saint Louis Art Museum Bulletin (fall): 8–19. 1988b. “Painting as Trauma.” Art in America 76 (6): 130–41, 172–73. 1992. “The Semiology of Cubism.” In Picasso and Braque: A Symposium, edited by William Rubin and Lynn Zelevansky, 169–208. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1994. “On Matisse: The Blinding.” October 68:61–121. 1998. Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry. Paris: Flammarion. 2001. “Painting as Trauma.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bois, Yve-­A lain, John Elderfeld, and Laurie A. Stein. 1988. “Henri Matisse: Bathers with a Turtle.” Special issue, Saint Louis Art Museum Bulletin (fall): 1–19. Boudar, Gilbert, and Michel Décaudin 1983. Calatogue de la Bibliothéque de Guillaume Apollinaire. Paris: Édition cnrs. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Alain Darbel 1997. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Translated by Caroline Beattie and Nick Merriman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourgeau, Jeff 2006. Picasso’s Camera. n.p. Accessed August 24, 2015. http://jefbourgeau.com/picasso%27s_camera.htm. Republished by the Museum of New Art (mona), Pontiac, MI, July 1, 2006. http://www.undo.net/it/mostra/ 32786. Bourriaud, Nicolas 1998. Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Les Presse Du Reel. 2006. “Relational Aesthetics.” In Participation, edited by Claire Bishop, 160–71. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Bozo, Dominique, Marie-­Laure Besnard-­Bernadac, Michèle Richet, and Hélène Seckel 1985. Musée Picasso: Catalogue sommaire des collections. 2nd ed. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux. Branner, Robert 1963. “Villard de Honnecourt, Reims and the Origin of Gothic Architectural Drawing.” Gazette des Beaux-­Arts 61:129–46. references

371

Brantlinger, Patrick B. 1986. “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent.” In “Race,” Writing and Difference, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 185–222. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Brassaï (pseudonym of Gyula Halász) 1966. Picasso and Company. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 2002. Conversations with Picasso. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Braun, Emily, and Rebecca Rabinow 2014. Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Brenson, Michael 1988. “Art: Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles.’” New York Times, February 8, C13. Breton, André 1952. Entretiens: 1913–1952. Paris: Gallimard. Breuil, Henri 1906. “L’Évolution de l’art pariétal des cavernes de l’âge du renne.” C. R. 13th session of the Congrès International d’Anthropologie et Archéologie Préhistoriques. Vol. 1. Monaco: 367–86. Brink, Andrew 2000. The Creative Matrix: Anxiety and the Origin of Creativity. New York: Peter Lang. 2007. Desire and Avoidance in Art: Pablo Picasso, Hans Bellmer, Balthus, and Joseph Cornell: Psychobiographical Studies with Attachment Theory. New York: Peter Lang. Brito, Mario 2017. “Picasso Primitif ” April 26. http://blog.mariabrito.com/view-­a ll/2017/4/26/ picasso-­primitif. Brodsky, Joyce 1986. “Delacroix’s ‘Le Lever,’ Cézanne’s ‘Interior with Nude,’ Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,’ and the Genre of the Erotic Nude.” Artibus et Historiae 7 (13): 127–51. Brooks, Peter 1993. Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brotchie, Alastair 2011. Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Broude, Norma 1980. “Picasso: Artist of the Century.” Arts Magazine 55 (2): 84–86.

372

references

Brunet, Louis, and Louis Giethlen 1900. Dahomey et dépendances. Paris: A. Challamel. Bryson, Norman 1988. “The Gaze in the Expanded Field.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 86–113. Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. 1984. “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting.” October 16:39–68. Buci-­Glucksmann, Christine 1987. “Catastrophe Utopia: The Feminine as Allegory of the Modern.” In The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, 220–29. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burgard, Timothy Anglin 1986. “Picasso’s Night Fishing at Antibes: Autobiography, Apocalypse, and the Spanish Civil War.” Art Bulletin 68 (4): 657–72. 1991. “Picasso and Appropriation.” Art Bulletin 73 (3): 479–94. Burgess, Gelett 1910. “Wild Men of Paris.” Architectural Record 27 (5): 401–14. Burke, Kenneth 1931. Counter-­Statement. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1964. Perspectives by Incongruity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Burnham, Helen 2017. “African Art and the Nude.” In Matisse in the Studio, ed. Ellen McBreen and Helen Burnhan, 67–94. Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts. Burton, Richard Francis 1864. A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, with Notices of the So-­Called “Amazons,” the Grand Customs, the Yearly Customs, the Human Sacrifices, the Present State of the Slave Trade, and the Negro’s Place in Nature. Vol. 1. London: Tylston and Edwards. Busch, Frederic N., ed. 2008. Mentalization: Theoretical Considerations, Research Findings, and Clinical Considerations. New York: Analytic Press. Cabanne, Pierre 1977. Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times. Translated by Harold J. Salemson. New York: William Morrow. Cailler, Pierre 1965. Guillaume Apollinaire: Documents iconographiques. Geneva: P. Cailler. Caprioni, P. P., and Brother 1901. Catalogue of Plaster Cast Reproductions from Antique, Medieval, and Modern Sculpture. Boston, MA: Barta Press. references

373

Caws, Mary Ann 2005. Pablo Picasso. London: Reaktion Books. Çelik, Zeynep 1992. Displaying the Orient Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-­Century World’s Fairs. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cembalest, Robin 2014. “10 Amazing Data Visualizations of Creativity and Art History.” Art News 20:n.p. Charton, Edouard 1890. “Au Pays des M’Fans: Voyage d’exploration de M. Paul Crampel dans le nord du Congo Français.” Le Tour du monde: Nouveau journal des voyages 60 (1559e): 321–36. Chassevent, Louis 1908. 22e Salon des Indépendants, 1906. Paris: Quelques petits salons. Chave, Anna C. 1994. “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism (A Feminist Critique).” Art Bulletin 76 (4): 597–611. Chipp, Herschel Browning 1968. Theories of Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1988. Picasso’s Guernica: History, Transformations, Meanings. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clair, Jean 1988. Le nu et la norme: Klimt et Picasso en 1907. Paris: Gallimard. Clark, T. J. 1999. Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2013. Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Clark, William W. 2000. “Reading Reims, I: The Sculptures on the Chapel Buttresses.” Gesta 39 (2): 135–45. Clayson, Hollis S. 1991. Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Clement, Russell T. 1993. Henri Matisse: A Bio-­Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1994. Les Fauves: A Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Clerbois, Sébastien 1996. “Apollinaire-­Picasso: Les Demoiselles œuvre clé.” Que Vlo-­Ve? 3 (24): 119–22.

374

references

Clifford, James 1981. “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (4): 539–64. 1985. “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern.” Art in America 73 (4): 164–78. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-­Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2007. “Quai Branly in Process.” October (spring): 3–23. Clouzot, H., and A. Level 1919. L’Art nègre et l’art Océanien. Paris: Devambez. Cohen, Janie C. 2015. “Staring Back: Anthropometric-­Style African Colonial Photography and Picasso’s Demoiselles.” Photography and Culture 8 (1): 59–80. Cohen, Janie C., Laura Blereau, and Beth Gersh-­Nešić 2015. Staring Back: On Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Burlington, VT: Robert Hull Fleming Museum, University of Vermont. Cohen, Joshua 2017. “Derain et ‘l’art primitif.” In André Derain, 1904–14. La Décennie radicale, edited by Cécile Debray. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou: 129–33. Connelly, Frances S. 1999. The Sleep of Reason: Primitivism in Modern European Art and Aesthetics, 1725–1907. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Conrad, Joseph (1902) 1980. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover. Cooper, Douglas 1970. The Cubist Epoch. London: Phaidon. Cooper, Douglas, and Gary Tinterow 1983. The Essential Cubism: Braque, Picasso and Their Friends, 1907–1920. London: Tate Gallery. Corbey, Raymond 1988. “Alterity: The Colonial Nude.” Critique of Anthropology 8 (3): 75–92. Corbin, A. 1990. Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cottington, David 1998a. Cubism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998b. Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-­Garde and Politics in Paris, 1905–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2004. Cubism and Its Histories. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. references

375

Courajod, Louis, and P. Franz Carcou 1892. Musée de sculpture comparée: Catalogue raisonné. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Cousins, Judith, and Hélène Seckel 1994. “Chronology of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 to 1939.” In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Studies in Modern Art 3, edited by William Rubin, Hélène Seckel, Judith Cousins, 145–205. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Couturier-­Nicolay, Paris 1999. “Apollinaire guilaume: Oiseau du Bénin. Anc. Coll. G. Appolinaire, Coll. d’un amateur provenant de J. Cocteau.” Sales catalog. Auctions. Fr. (Paris). November 19, 1999. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.auction.fr/_fr/lot/oiseau-­du-­ benin-­l-­groupe-­116140#.VXg_MWTBzGc. Cowling, Elizabeth 1997. “Review of Picasso and the Portrait, Paris.” Burlington Magazine 139 (1126): 60–62. 2002. Picasso: Style and Meaning. New York: Phaidon. Cowling, Elizabeth, Anne Baldassari, John Elderfield, John Golding, Isabelle Monod-­ Fontaine, and Kirk Varnadoe 2003. Matisse Picasso. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Crapanzano, Vincent 1995. “The Moment of Prestidigitation: Magic, Illusion, and Mana in the Thought of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss.” In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, edited by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bus, 95–113. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Crespelle, Jean Paul 1978. La Vie quotidienne à Montmartre au temps de Picasso: 1900–1910. Paris: Hachette literature. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 1988. “Society, Culture, Person: A Systems View of Creativity.” In The Nature of Creativity, edited by Robert J. Sternberg, 325–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999. “Implications of a Systems Perspective on Creativity.” In Handbook of Creativity, edited by Robert J. Sternberg, 313–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: HarperCollins. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and J. W. Getzels 1988. “Creativity and Problem Finding.” In The Foundations of Aesthetics, Art, and Art Education, edited by Frank H. Farley and Ronald W. Neperud, 91–106. New York: Praeger.

376

references

Dagan, Philippe 2008. Picasso. New York: Monacelli Press. Daix, Pierre 1966. Picasso 1900–1906: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint. Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Editions Ides et Calendes. 1970. “Il n’y a pas d’art nègre dans ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.’” Gazette des BeauxArts, series 6, 76 (1221): 247–70. 1977. La Vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso. Paris: Seuil. 1982. Cubists and Cubism. New York: Rizzoli. 1987. Picasso créateur: La Vie intime et l’oeuvre. Paris: Seuil. 1988a. “Dread, Desire, and the Demoiselles.” Artnews 87 (6): 133–37. 1988b. “Les Trois périodes de travail de Picasso sur Les trois femmes (Autumn 1907– Autumn 1908), Les Rapports avec Braque et les débuts du cubism.” Gazette des Beaux-­Arts 111 (January–February): 141–54. 1992. “The Chronology of Proto-­Cubism: New Date in the Opening of the Picasso-­ Braque Dialogue.” In Picasso and Braque: A Symposium, edited by Lynne Zelevansky, 306–21. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1993. Picasso, Life and Art. Translated by Olivia Emmet. London: Icon Editions. 2007. “The Stages of Picasso’s Discovery of Cubism: Late 1905–Early 1909.” In Cubist Picasso, 9–30. Paris: Flammarion. Daix, Pierre, and Joan Rosselet 1979. Picasso: The Cubist Years, 1907–1916: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings and Related Works. Boston, MA: New York Graphic Society. Danielsson, Bengt 1969. “The Exotic Sources of Gauguin’s Art.” Expedition Magazine 11 (4): 16–26. Davenport, Guy 1997. The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays. Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine. David, Philippe 1986–88. Inventaire général des cartes postales Fortier. San-­Julien-­du-­Sault, France: Fostier. Davis, Whitney 2011a. A General Theory of Visual Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2011b. “Neurovisuality.” Nonsite 2. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://nonsite.org/ issues/issue-­2/neurovisuality. Dawkins, Heather 2002. The Nude in French Art and Culture, 1870–1910. New York: Cambridge University Press. references

377

Debaene, Vincent 2002. “Les Surréalistes et le musée d’ethnographie.” Labyrinthe atelier interdisciplinaire 2, (12): n.p. De Bruyn, Ben 2006. “Anthropological Criticism of Wolfgang Iser and Hans Belting.” Art and Narrative: Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 15 (November). Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/iconoclasm/debruyn.htm. Déchelette, Joseph 1908. Manuel d’archeologie préhistorique celtique et gallo-­romaine. Paris: Libraire Alphonse Picard et Fils. de Honnecourt, Villard 1906. Album de Villard de Honnecourt: Architecte du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Berthaud frères. Delafosse, Maurice 1894a. “Statues of the Kings of Dahomey.” La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’ industrie 1086 (March): 262–66. 1894b. “Une Statue dahoméenne en fonte.” La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’ industrie 1105 (March): 145–47. de la Rosa, Ysabel n.d. “Picasso’s Cuban Cousins.” Artnet. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www .artnet.com/magazine/reviews/rosa/rosa9-­6-­00.asp. Deleuze, Gilles 1988. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Paris: Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux. 2001. “What Is the Creative Act?” In French Theory in America, edited by Sylvére Lotinger and Sande Cohen, 91–107. London: Routledge. Deniker, Joseph (1897) 1906. Les Races de l’Europe. Association française pour l’avancement des sciences . . . I. Congrès de Saint-­Étienne. II Congrès de Lyon. 1900. Races et peoples de la terre: Éléments d’anthropologie et d’ethnographie. Paris: Schleicher frères. Desvallières, Georgs-­Olivier 1908. “Notes of a Painter.” La Grande revue 2 (24): 731–45. Dias, Nélia 1991. Le Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, 1878–1908: Anthropologie et muséologie en France. Paris: cnrs. Didi-­Huberman, Georges 2000. Devant le temps: Histoire de l’art et anachronisme des images. Paris: Minuit. 2005. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art. Translated by John Goodman. College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

378

references

2007. “‘Picture = Rupture’: Visual Experience, Form and Symptom According to Carl Einstein.” Translated by C. F. B. Miller. Papers of Surrealism 7:1–25. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal7/ acrobat%20files/articles/Didi-­Hubpdf.pdf. 2009. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art. Philadelphia: Pennnsylvania University Press. Didi-­Huberman, Georges, Ángel González García, and Rosalind E. Krauss, eds. 2012. Economía: Picasso. Barcelona, Spain: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona. Dijkstra, Bram 1986. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-­de-­Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Dittmann, Lorenz 2007. Matisse begegnet Bergson: Reflexionen zu Kunst und Philosophie. Cologne, Germany: Böhlau. Doane, Mary Ann 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Donne, J. B. 1978. “African Art and Paris Studios, 1905–20.” In Art in Society: Studies in Style, Culture and Aesthetics, edited by Michael Greenhalgh and Vincent Megaw, 105–20. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1983. “Guillaume Apollinaire’s African Collection.” Museum Ethnographers Group 14:4–9. Drucker, Johanna 1996. Theorizing Modernism and the Critical Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press. D’Souza, Aruna 2008. Cézanne’s Bathers: Biography and the Erotics of Paint. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2013. “‘Inventing Abstraction’ and the Global Turn.” March 2, 2013. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://arunadsouza.net/inventing-­abstraction-­and-­the-­ global-­turn/.http://arunadsouza.net/inventing-­abstraction-­and-­the-­g lobal-­ turn/. Dubnick, Randa K. 1984. The Structure of Obscurity: Gertrude Stein, Language, and Cubism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Duncan, Carol 1973. “Virility and Domination in Early 20th Century Vanguard Painting.” Art­ forum 12 (4): 30–39. 1989. “The MoMA’s Hot Mamas.” Art Journal 48 (2): 171–78. references

379

Dupuis-Labbé, Dominique 2007. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: La Révolution Picasso. Paris: Barthillat. Dutton, Denis 2009. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Dutton, Denis, and Michael Krausz, eds. 1985. The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art. The Hague: Martinus Njihoff. Eaton, Daniel Cady 1913. A Handbook of Modern French Sculpture. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Eberiel, Rosemary 1987. “Clowns: Apollinaire’s Writings on Picasso.” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 14:143–49. Edwards, Elizabeth, ed. 1992. Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Edwards, Steve, and Paul Woods, eds. 2004. Art of the Avant-­Gardes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University. Einstein, Arthur J. 2002. Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. New York: Basic Books. Einstein, Carl 1920. Negerplastik. 2nd ed. Munich, Germany: Kurt Wolff Verlag. (1920) 2004. “Notes on Cubism.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October 107:158–68. 1926. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Propyläen-­Verlag. Elam, Michele, ed. 2015. The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin. New York: Cambridge University Press. Elgammal, Ahmed, and Babak Saleh 2015. “Quantifying Creativity in Art Networks.” Accessed August 13, 2015. http:// arxiv.org/pdf/1506.00711v1.pdf. Elkins, James 2000. What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting, Using the Language of Alchemy. New York: Routledge. Elkins, James, and David Morgan, eds. 2009. Re-­Enchantment (The Art Seminar). New York: Routledge.

380

references

Ellman, Richard 1982. James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press. Elwitt, Sanford 1986. The Third Republic Defended: Bourgeois Reform in France, 1880–1914. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Enlart, Camille, and Jules Roussel 1910. Catalogue général du Musée de sculpture comparée au Palais du Trocadéro (Moulages). Paris: A. Picard & Fils. L’Étude académique 1906. “La Culture physique.” L’Étude académique: Revue artistique, illustrée, documents humains 3 (49): 49–50. Evelyn-­W hite, H. G. 1936. Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. London: Loeb Classical Library. Fabian, Johannes 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fabre, Josep Palau i 1985. Picasso Cubism (1907–1917). Cologne, Germany: Konemann. Article I. Falgayrettes-­Leveau, Christiane, Yves Le Fur, and François Neyt, et al. Article II. (1898) 1995. Masques: Suivi d’un texte de Leo Frobenius. Paris: Editions Dapper. Falser, Michael S. 2011. “Krishna and the Plaster Cast: Translating the Cambodian Temple of Angkor Wat in the French Colonial Period.” Trans-­Cultural Studies 2:6–50. Fels, Florent [F. F.] 1923. “Chronique artistique: Propos d’artistes — ​­Picasso.” Les Nouvelles littéraires, artistiques et scientifiques (August 4): n.p. Fels, Florent [F. F.], ed. 1920. “Opinions sur l’art nègre.” Action 1:23–26. Ferry, Luc 1993. Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age. Translated by Robert de Loaiza. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Feyerabend, Paul 1987. “Creativity: A Dangerous Myth.” Critical Inquiry 13 (4): 700–11. Fineberg, Jonathan 2015. Modern Art at the Border of Mind and Brain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

references

381

Finlay, John 1998. “Picasso’s Constructions and Assemblages: 1912–1935.” PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. 2002. “Hommage à Apollinaire: Picasso, Parade, and the Manager Figures of 1917.” Apollo: Magaine 156 (489): 21–29. 2003. “De la magie blanche à la magie noire: Primitivism, Magic, Mysticism and the Occult in Picasso.” Apollo: Magazine 159 (500): 19–25. Fisher, Susan Greenberg, ed. 2009. Picasso and the Allure of Language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fiss, Karen 2002. “In Hitler’s Salon: The German Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale.” In Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, edited by Richard A. Etlin, 316–42. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fitzgerald, Michael C. 1996. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-­ Century Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2014. Post-­Picasso: Contemporary Reactions. Barcelona, Spain: Fundació Museu Picasso. Flam, Jack 1984. “Matisse and the Fauves.” In Primitivism in Twentieth-­Century Art, edited by William Rubin, 211–39. Vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1995. Matisse on Art. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2003. “Introduction.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 1–22. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2004. Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship. New York: Westview. 2005. “Matisse à Collioure, évolution du style et datation des tableaux, 1905–1907.” In Matisse-­Derain, Collioure 1905, un été fauve, 30–47. Exhibition catalog. Paris: Gallimard. 2008. Matisse and Picasso: The Story of their Rivalry and Friendship. New York: Basic Books. Flam, Jack, ed. 1994. Matisse on Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Flam, Jack, and Miriam Deutch, eds. 2003. Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Flanner, Janet 1957. “The Surprise of the Century.” Profile of Pablo Picasso. New Yorker, March 9.

382

references

Florida, Richard L. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. Florman, Lisa 2003. “The Difference Experience Makes in ‘The Philosophical Brothel.’” Art Bulletin 85 (4): 769–83. 2004. “Review of Cowling, Karmel, Staller, and Weiss, Fletcher, and Tuma.” Art Bulletin 86 (3): 614–20. 2012a. “Different Facets of Analytic Cubism.” Nonsite 5. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://nonsite.org/feature/different-­facets-­of-­analytic-­cubism#foot_9_3639. 2012b. “Insistent, Resistant Cezanne: On Picasso’s Three Women and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Source Notes in the History of Art 31–32 (1–4): 19–26. 2012c. “Picasso (and Warhol) and Things.” Nonsite 7. Accessed August 23, 2015. http://nonsite.org/article/picasso-­and-­warhol-­and-­things. Fluegel, Jane 1980. “Chronology.” In Pablo Picasso, edited by William Rubin, 416. New York: Museum of Modern Art: 13–404. Focillon, Henri 1992. The Life Forms of Art. Translated by George Kubler. New York: zone Books. Foster, Hal 1985. “The ‘Primitive’ Unconscious of Modern Art.” October 34:45–70. Also in Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts, edited by Francis Frascina, 199–209. London: Phaidon, 1992. 1988. Introduction to Vision and Visuality. Edited by Hal Foster. Seattle: Washington Bay Press. 1996. The Return of the Real: The Avant-­Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. 1997. “Death in America.” In October: The Second Decade, 1986–1996, edited by Rosalind Krauss, 348–74. Vol. 76. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. 2004. Prosthetic Gods. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. 2005. “1907.” In Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, edited by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-­A lain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloch, 78–84. London: Thames and Hudson. Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-­A lain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, eds. 2005. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson. Foucault, Michel 1982. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock. references

383

Foundoulaki, Efi 1992. From El Greco to Cézanne. Athens: National Gallery-­A lexandros Soutzos Museum. Franck, Dan 2003. Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art. New York: Grove Press. Frascina, Francis 1987. “Picasso’s Art: A Biographical Fact?” Art History 10 (3): 401–15. Fraser-­Jenkins, David 1997. “Baigneuses and Demoiselles: ‘Bathers’ in Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse.” Apollo Magazine 145 (451): 39–44. Frazer, J. G. 1908. “Statues of Three Kings of Dahomey.” Man 8:130. Freedberg, David 1991. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Freud, Sigmund 1950. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Liveright. Fried, Michael 1988. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frobenius, Leo 1895. Die Kunst der Naturvölker. Braunschweig, Germany: Westermann. 1898. Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas. Halle, Germany: E. Karras. 1907. Im Schatten des Kongostaates. Berlin: G. Reimer. 1913. The Voice of Africa: Being an Account of the Travels of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition in the Years 1910–1912. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson. Article III. 1995. Masques, suivi d’un texte de Leo Frobenius (1898). Translated by O. Kyburz. In Masques. Suivi d’un texte de Leo Frobenius (1898), edited by Christiane Falgayrettes-­Leveau, Yves Le Fur, and François Neyt et al. Paris: Musée Dapper. Frobenius, Leo, and Henri Breuil. 1931. Afrique. Paris: Editions Cahiers d’Art. Frosh, Stephen 2012. A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Fry, Edward F. 1966a. Cubism. New York: McGraw-­Hill. 1966b. “Cubism, 1907–1908: An Early Eyewitness Account.” Art Bulletin 48 (1): 70–73.

384

references

1981. “Review of Daix and Rosselet.” Art Journal 41 (1): 91–99. 1988. “Picasso, Cubism and Reflexivity.” Art Journal 47 (4): 296–310. Fudjack, Jack, and Patricia Dinkelaker 2000. “About Face Again—­Part Three: Picasso’s Open Secret.” Enneagram and the mbti, no. 7 (February) Accessed August 13, 2015. http://tap3x.net/EMBTI/ j7face2c.html. Galassi, Susan Grace 1996. Picasso’s Variations on the Masters: Confrontations with the Past. New York: Abrams. 2011. “Picasso’s Drawing Journey: The First Thirty Years.” In Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition, edited by Susan Grace Galassi and Marilyn McCully, 1–29. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gallese, Vittorio, and David Freedberg 2007. “Mirror and Canonical Neurons are Crucial Elements in Esthetic Response.” Trends in Cognitive Science 11 (10): 411. Gamwell, Lynn 1980. Cubist Criticism. Ann Arbor, MI: umi Research Press. Garb, Tamar 2001. “‘To Kill the Nineteenth Century’: Sex and Spectatorship with Gertrude and Pablo.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 55–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garcia Alonso, Francisco 2009. “Las investigaciones de Leo Frobenius y el Forschungsinstitut für Kulturmorphologie sobre arte rupestre en España (1934–1936).” Pyrenae: Revista de prehistòria i antiguitat de la Mediterrània Occidental 40 (1): 175–221. Gardner, Howard 2011. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: Basic Books. Gasman, Lydia Csató 2007. War and Cosmos in Picasso’s Texts, 1936–1940. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. Gauguin, Paul 1974. Oviri, ecrits d’un sauvage. Edited by Daniel Guerin. Paris: Gallimard. Geddes, Patrick 1900. “The Closing Exhibition — ​­Paris, 1900.” Contemporary Review 68 (419): 653–68. Gedo, Mary Mathews 1980. Picasso: Art as Autobiography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1981. “The Archaeology of a Painting: A Visit to the City of the Dead beneath Picasso’s La Vie.” Arts Magazine 56 (3): 116–29. references

385

1994. Looking at Art from the Inside Out: The Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art. New York: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, Clifford 1977. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays, edited by Clifford Geertz, 412–53. New York: Basic Books. Gell, Alfred 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. New York: Clarendon Press. Genova, Pamela A. 2003. “The Poetics of Visual Cubism: Guillaume Apollinaire on Pablo Picasso.” Studies in Twentieth-­and Twenty-­First Century Literature 27 (1): article 3. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.4148/2334–4415.1545. Gersh-­Nešić, Beth S. 1991. The Early Criticism of André Salmon: A Study of His Thoughts on Cubism. New York: Garland. Gersh-­Nešić, Beth S., ed. and trans. 2005. André Salmon on French Modern Art. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Revisited. New York: Francis Naumann Fine Art. Gikandi, Simon 2006. “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” In Beautiful Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, edited by Sarah Nuttall, 30–59. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gildea, Robert 1996. France, 1870–1914. New York: Longman. Gilman, Sander L. 1986. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-­Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” In “Race,” Writing, and Difference, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 223–61. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1993. The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin de Siècle. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995. Picturing Health and Illness: Images of Identity and Difference. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gilmore, Jonathan 2000. The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of Art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gilot, Françoise, and Carlton Lake 1964. Life with Picasso: The Love Story of a Decade. New York: McGraw-­Hill.

386

references

Giménez, Carmen 1993. “Introduction.” In Picasso and the Age of Iron, edited by Carmen Gimenez, 13–18. New York: Guggenheim Museum. Giménez, Carmen, and Francisco Calvo Serraller, eds.  2003. Colección Museo Picasso Málaga / Picasso Siglo XX, 1901–1972. 2 vols. Málaga: T. F. Editores. Girieud, Pierre n.d. Souvenirs d’un vieux peintre. Unpublished manuscript written between 1936 and 1948. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.pgirieud.asso.fr/souvenir/souv1 .htm. Giroud, Vincent 2007. “Picasso and Gertrude Stein.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 64 (3): 1–4, 6–54. Gleizes, Albert, and Jean Metzinger 1912. Du cubisme. Paris: Eugène Figuière. Glimcher, Arnold, and Marc Glimcher, eds. 1986. Je suis le Cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso. Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press. Golding, John 1958. “The ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon.’” Burlington Magazine 100 (662): 155–63. (1959) 1988. Cubism: A History and Analysis, 1907–1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1994. Visions of the Modern. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2001. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and the Exhibition of 1988.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 15–30. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goldwater, Robert 1938. Primitivism in Modern Painting. London: Harper & Brothers. Goody, Jack 1997. Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics, and Sexuality. Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell. Gopnik, Adam 1983. “High and Low: Caricature, Primitivism, and the Cubist Portrait.” Art Journal 43 (4): 371–76. Gordon, Rae Beth 2009. Dances with Darwin, 1875–1910. London: Ashgate. Gramotnev, Helen 2016. “Degas’s Frames for Dancers and Bathers.” The Frame Blog. October 3, references

387

2016. https://theframeblog.com/2016/10/03/degass-­frames-­for-­dancers-­and-­ bathers/. Gray, Christopher 1953. Cubist Aesthetic Theories. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Green, Christopher 1987. Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1992. Juan Gris. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery. 2000. Art in France, 1900–1940. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2001a. “An Introduction to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 1–14. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001b. “‘Naked Problems’? ‘Sub-­A frican Caricatures’? Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Africa, and Cubism.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 128–49. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Green, Christopher, ed. 2001c. Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon.” New York: Cambridge University Press. Green, Joshua I. 2017. “Fauve Masks: Rethinking Modern ‘Primitivist’ Uses of African and Oceanic Art, 1905–8.” Art Bulletin 99 (2): 136–65. Greenberg, Clement 1976. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Greer, John Michael 2003. The New Encyclopedia of the Occult. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications. Grillo, Tony 2010. “Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’: An Interpretation.” Earthlink. Accessed September 3, 2018. http://home.earthlink.net/~tgrillo/picasso.htm. Grogin, Robert C. 1988. The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900–1914. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press. Grosse, Ernst 1894. Anfänge der Kunst. Leipzig, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr. 1900. Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien. Leipzig, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr. Grossman, Wendy A. 2006. “Photography at the Crossroads: African Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Die Schau des Fremden: Ausstellungskonzepte Zwischen Kunst, Kommerz und Wissenschaft, edited by Cordula Grewe, 317–40. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner.

388

references

Groth, Aimee 2015. “Entrepreneurs Don’t Have a Special Gene for Risk — ​­They Come from Families with Money.” Quartz, July 17, n.p. Guérin, Daniel, ed. 1974. Paul Gauguin, Oviri: Ecrits d’un sauvage. Paris: Gallimard. 1996. The Writings of a Savage. Edited and translated by Eleanor Levieux. New York: Da Capo Press. Guillaume, Paul 1917. Sculptures nègres: 24 photographies précédées d’un avertissement de Guillaume Apollinaire et d’un exposé de Paul Guillaume. Paris: Frazier-­Soye. Guillaume, Paul, and Thomas Munro 1926. Primitive Negro Sculpture. New York. Harcourt, Brace & Company. Haeberle, Edwin J. 1985. “Der verbotene Akt: Unzuechtige Fotos von 1850 bis 1950.” In Das Akfoto: Ansichten vom Körper im fotografischen Zeitalter: Äshetik, Geschichte, Ideologie, edited by Michael Köhler and Gisela Barche, 240–52. Munich: C. J. Bucher Verlag. Hahnloser, H. R. 2008. “Villard de Honnecourt.” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Villard_Honnecourt .aspx. Hansen, Miriam Bratu 2008. “Benjamin’s Aura.” Critical Inquiry 34 (2): 336–75. Harrison, Charles 1993. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hau, Michael 2000. “The Holistic Gaze in German Medicine, 1890–1930.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74 (3): 495–524. 2003. The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hausman, Carl R. 1975. A Discourse on Novelty and Creation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1985. “Criteria of Creativity.” In The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art, edited by Denis Dutton and Michael Krausz, 75–90. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Haxthausen, Charles W. 2011. “Carl Einstein, Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler, Cubism, and the Visual Brain.” Nonsite 2. Accessed August 13, 2015: http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-­2/ carl-­einstein-­daniel-­henry-­kahnweiler-­cubism-­and-­the-­visual-­brain. references

389

Heidegger, Martin 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. Heinrich, Nathalie 1996. The Glory of Van Gogh: An Anthropology of Admiration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Henderson, Linda Dalrymple 1971. “A New Facet of Cubism: ‘The Fourth Dimension’ and ‘Non-­Euclidean Geometry’ Reinterpreted.” Art Quarterly 34 (4): 410–33. 1983. The Fourth Dimension and Non-­Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Herbert, James D. 1992. Fauve Painting: The Making of Cultural Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Herding, Klaus 1992. Pablo Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”: Die Herausforderung der Avantgarde. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Hesiod 1936. “Works and Days.” In Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Translated by H. G. Evelyn-­W hite. 3rd rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, no. 57. Hicken, Adrian 2002. Apollinaire, Cubism and Orphism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Hight, Eleanor M., and Gary D. Sampson, eds. 2002. Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place. New York: Routledge. Hildner, Jeffrey 2007. Picasso Lessons: The Sixth Woman of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Boston, MA: Architect Painter Press. Hiller, Susan, ed. 1991. The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art. New York: Routledge. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1987. The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. New York: Pantheon Books. Hoenigswald, Ann 1997. “Works in Progress: Pablo Picasso’s Hidden Images.” In Picasso: The Early Years, 1892–1906, edited by Marilyn McCully, 299–309. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Holod, Renata 1992. “Luxury Arts of the Caliphal Period.” In Al-­Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain,

390

references

edited by Jerrilynn Denise Dodds, 41–48. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hospers, John 1985. “Artistic Creativity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (3): 243–55. Huang, Li, Adam Galinsky, and Francesca Gino 2015. “The Highest Form of Intelligence: Sarcasm Increases Creativity for Both Expressers and Recipient.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (July 17): n.p. Huffington, Arianna Stassinopoulos 1988. Picasso: Creator and Destroyer. New York: Simon and Schuster. Huizinga, Johan 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-­Element of Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Iser, Wolfgang 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jacob, Max (1931) 1964. “L’Inédit de Max Jacob sur Picasso, Fox.” In Les Lettres, 1–11. Jarry, Alfred 1901. Almanach illustré du père Ubu. Paris: A. Vollard. Johnson, G. Wesley 1971. The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Johnson, Ron 1980a. “The Demoiselles d’Avignon and Dionysian Destruction.” Arts Magazine 55 (2): 94–101. 1980b. “Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’ and the Theatre of the Absurd.” Arts Magazine 55 (2): 102–13. Jones, Amelia, and Andrew Stephenson, eds. 1999. Performing the Body / Performing the Text. London: Routledge. Jones, Jonathan 2007. “Pablo’s Punks.” Guardian, January 9. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www .theguardian.com/culture/2007/jan/09/2. Josephs, Allen 1990. White Wall of Spain: The Mysteries of Andalusian Culture. Pensacola: University of West Florida Press. Junge, Peter 2003. Arte da Africa: Obras-­Primas do Museu Ethnológico de Berlim. Rio de Janiero: Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil. references

391

Kachur, Lewis 1999. “Review of The Picasso Papers by Rosalind E. Krauss.” Burlington Magazine 141 (1159): 628–29. Kahnweiler, Daniel-­Henry 1920a. André Derain. Leipizig, Germany: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1920b. Der Weg zum Kubismus. Munich, Germany: Delphin-­Verlag. 1948. “Negro Art and Cubism.” Horizon 12 (108): 412–19. 1949. The Rise of Cubism. Translated by Henry Aronson. New York: Wittenborn, Schulz: 7. Kahnweiler, Daniel-­Henry, and Werner Spies 1965. Pour Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler. New York: G. Wittenborn. Kalb, Claudia 2018. “Intense Provocative Disturbing Captivating Genius Picasso.” National Geographic, May, 99–125. Kantor, Sybil Gordon 2003. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Kaplan, Temma 1992. Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso’s Barcelona. Berkeley: University of California Press. Karmel, Pepe 2003. Picasso and the Invention of Cubism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2007. “Le Laboratoire Central: Cubist Drawings in the Musée Picasso.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 149–63. Paris: Flammarion. Kelly, Julia 2015. “‘Dahomey! Dahomey!’: The Reception of Dahomean Art in France in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries.” Journal of Art Historiography 12:1–19. Kendall, Richard, Lizzie Barker, and Camilla Cazalet 1994. Van Gogh to Picasso: The Berggruen Collection at the National Gallery. London: National Gallery London. Köhler, Michael 1985. “Pikanterien, Pinups and Playmates.” In Das Akfoto: Ansichten vom Körper im fotografischen Zeitalter: Äshetik, Geschichte, Ideologie, edited by Michael Köhler and Gisela Barche, 289–97. Munich: C. J. Bucher Verlag. Koussiaki, Fotini 2000. “‘My Picture Is a Sum of Destructions,’ Pablo Picasso (1881–1973).” Victoria and Albert Conservation Journal 34:19–22.

392

references

Kozloff, M. 1972. “Cubism and the Human Comedy.” Artnews 70 (5): 35–41. Krauss, Rosalind E. 1971. “The Cubist Epoch.” Artforum 9 (6): 32–38. 1981. “In the Name of Picasso.” October 16:5–22. 1986. The Originality of the Avant-­Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. 1988. “The Impulse to See.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 57–78. Seattle: Washington Bay Press. 1999. The Picasso Papers. Cambridge, MA: mit Press. Krieger, Kurt, and Gerdt Kutscher 1960. Westafrikanische Masken. Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde. Labrusse, Rémi 1998. Esthétique décorative et expérience critique: Matisse, Byzance, et la notion d’Orient. Lille, France: anrt Université de Lille III. Laessoe, Rolf 1987. “A Source for Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.’” Gazette des Beaux-­Arts 110:131–36. Laman, Karl 1957. The Kongo. 3 vols. Uppsala, Sweden: Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia. Lamp, Frederick 2006. Comment on Baga D’mba mask in the Musée du quai Branly. No. 1149. Ross Archive of African Images. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Larrea, Juan 1947. Guernica, Pablo Picasso. Edited by Walter Pach. Translated by Alexander H. Krappe. New York: C. Valentin. Laude, Jean 1968. La Peinture française, 1905–1915, et “ l’art negre”; contribution à l’ étude des sources du fauvism et du cubisme. Paris: Klincksieck. 2006. La Peinture française et “ l’art nègre” (1905–1914): contribution à l’ étude des sources du fauvisme et du cubism. Paris: Klincksieck. Lavin, Irving 2007. “Theodore Aubanel’s Les Filles d’Avignon and Picasso’s ‘Sum of Destructions.’” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 55–69. Paris: Flammarion. Léal, Brigitte 1988a. “Carnets.” In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by Hélène Seckel, 1:101–313. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux.

references

393

1988b. Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”: A Sketchbook. Translated by Suzanne Bosman. London: Thames and Hudson. 1996. Musée Picasso. Vol. 1, Carnets: Catalogue des dessins. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Léal, Brigitte, Christine Piot, and Marie-­Laure Bernadac 2003. The Ultimate Picasso. New York: Harry N. Abrams. “Le Bateau Lavoir à Montmartre” 2012. Montmartre-­hier, January 29. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://montmartre-­ hier.blogspot.com/2012/01/le-­bateau-­lavoir-­montmartre.html. Lebensztejn, Jean-­Claude 2007. “Periods: Cubism in Its Day.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 31–54. Paris: Flammarion. Le Bon, Gustave 1905. L’ évolution de la matière. Paris: Flammarion. Lehuard, Raoul 1980. Fétiches à clou a Bas-­Zaire. Arnouville-­les-­Gonesse, France: Arts d’Afrique Noire. 1989. Art Bakongo, les centres de style. Arnouville-­les-­Gonesse, France: Arts d’Afrique Noire. Leighten, Patricia 1985. “Picasso’s Collages and the Threat of War, 1912–13.” Art Bulletin 67 (4): 653–72. 1989. Re-­Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897–1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1990. “The White Peril and l’Art Nègre: Picasso, Primitivism and Anticolonialism.” Art Bulletin 72 (4): 609–30. 1994. “Cubist Anachronisms: Ahistoricity, Cryptoformalis, and Business-­as-­Usual in New York.” Oxford Art Journal 17 (2): 91–102. 2001. “Colonialism, l’art nègre and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 78–103. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013. The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-­Guerre Paris. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Leiris, Michel 1959. “Picasso et les Menines de Velásquez.” Preface to Picasso: Les Menines. Paris: Galeries Louise Leiris. Leiris, Michel, and Jacqueline Delange 1968. African Art. New York: Golden Press.

394

references

Leja, Michael 1985. “‘Vieux marcheur’ and ‘Les deux risques’: Picasso, Prostitution, Venereal Disease and Maternity, 1899–1907.” Art History 8 (1): 66–81. Lemke, Sieglinde 1998. Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. New York: Oxford University Press. Levin, Miriam R. 1989. When the Eiffel Tower Was New: French Visions of Progress at the Centennial of the Revolution. South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Levitt, Caroline 2011. “From the Walls of Factories to the Poetry of the Street: Inscriptions and Graffiti in the Work of Apollinaire and the Surrealists.” Papers of Surrealism 9. Accessed August 13, 2015. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/ 26929082/from-­the-­walls-­of-­factories-­to-­the-­poetry-­of-­the-­street-­inscriptions. Lewis, Sarah 2014. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon & Schuster. Leymarie, Jean 1971. Picasso, métamorphoses, et unite. Geneva: Skira. Linehan, M. M. 1993. Cognitive-­Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford Press. Lomas, David 1993. “A Canon of Deformity: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Physical Anthropology.” Art History 16 (3): 424–46. 2001. “In Another Frame: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Physical Anthropology.” In Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” edited by Christopher Green, 104–27. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lopes, Dominic 1996. Understanding Pictures. New York: Oxford University Press. Lubar, Robert S. 1996. “Narrating the Nation: Picasso and the Myth of el Greco.” In Picasso and the Spanish Tradition, edited by Jonathan Brown, 27–60. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1997. “Unmasking Pablo’s Gertrude: Queer Desire and the Subject of Portraiture.” Art Bulletin 79 (1): 57–84. Luschan, Felix von 1919. Die Altertümer von Benin. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. references

395

MacGaffey, Wyatt 1988. “Complexity, Astonishment and Power: The Visual Vocabulary of Kongo Minkisi.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (2): 188–203. Macke, August 2003. “Masks.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 48–50. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mackworth, Cecily 1961. Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubist Life. London: John Murray. Madeline, Laurence 2006a. “Anthology.” In Picasso and Africa, edited by Laurence Madeline and Marilyn Martin, 195–210. Translated by André Marshall. Cape Town, South Africa: Bell-­Roberts. 2006b. “Picasso: Impressions of Africa.” In Picasso and Africa, edited by Laurence Madeline and Marilyn Martin, 19–32. Cape Town, South Africa: Bell-­Roberts. Mailer, Norman 1995. Picasso: Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2002. “Fernande Olivier, 1881–1966, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” In Picasso et les femmes, edited by Ingrid Mossinger, Beate Ritter, and Kerstin Drechsel, 70–86. Cologne, Germany: DuMont. Malevich, Kazimir 2003. “The Art of the Savage and Its Principles.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­ Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack D. Flam and Miriam Deutch, 75–76. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mallen, Enrique, ed. 1997–2018. Online Picasso Project. Sam Houston State University. Accessed August 13, 2015. https://picasso.shsu.edu. Mallgrave, Harry Francis 2010. The Architect’s Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture. Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell. Maloon, Terence, ed. 2011. Abstraction: Paths to Abstraction, 1867–1917. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Malraux, André 1974. Picasso’s Mask. Translated by June Guicharnaud and Jacques Guicharnaud. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

396

references

Mandell, Richard D. 1967. Paris 1900: The Great World’s Fair. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Mansfield, Elizabeth 2006. Too Beautiful to Picture: Zeuxis, Myth, and Mimesis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marc, Franz 2003. “Letter to August Macke.” Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack D. Flam and Miriam Deutch, 47. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marchand, Suzanne 1997. “Leo Frobenius and the Revolt against the West.” Journal of Contemporary History 32 (2): 153–70. Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 1904. Destruction: Poèmes lyriques. Paris: L. Vanier. Markov, Vladimir 1979. “L’Art des nègres.” Translated by Jean-­Louis Paudrat. Cahier du Musée national d’art modern 2:319–27. Matamoros, Joséphine, Dominique Szymusiak, Jack Flam, and John Klein 2005. Matisse et Derain en 1905 à Collioure un été fauve. Exhibition catalog. Les Musées départementaux d’art moderne de Céret et du Cateau-­Cambrésis. Paris: Gallimard. Matisse, Henri 2000. Écrits et propos sur l’art. Paris: Hermann. 2003. “First Encounter with African Art.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 31–32. Berkeley: University of California Press. McAuliffe, Mary Sperling 2014. Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends through the Great War. Lanham, MD: Rowland and Littlefield. McBreen, Ellen 2007. “The Pinup and the Primitive: Eros and Africa in the Sculpture of Henri Matisse (1906–1909).” PhD diss., New York University. 2014. Matisse’s Sculpture: The Pinup and the Primitive. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McBreen, Ellen, and Ann Dumas, eds. 2017. Matisse in the Studio. Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts.

references

397

McCauley, Elizabeth Anne 1994. Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–1871. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McCully, Marilyn 1978. Els Quatre Gats: Art in Barcelona around 1900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum. 1980. “Magic and Illusion in the Saltimbanques of Picasso and Apollinaire.” Art History 3 (4): 425–34. 1981. “Picasso y ‘La Celestina.’” Batik 9 (64): 22–28. 1994. Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–1871. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2011a. “Early Critical Responses to Picasso’s Drawings.” In Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition, edited by Susan Grace Galassi and Marilyn McCully, 31–53. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2011b. Picasso and Paris, 1900–1907. New York: Vendome Press. McCully, Marilyn, ed. 1982. A Picasso Anthology: Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1997. Picasso: The Early Years, 1892–1906. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McEvilley, Thomas 1984. “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: ‘Primitivism in Twentieth-­Century Art’ at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984.” Artforum 23:54–60. McMahon, Darrin M. 2013. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books. Mellow, James R. 1974. Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company. New York: Henry Holt. Metzinger, Jean 1972. Le cubisme était né: Souvenirs. Paris: Éditions Présence. Michaud, Eric 2012. “Barbarian Invasions and the Racialization of Art History.” October 139:59–76. Miller, Arthur J. 2002. Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. New York: Basic Books. Miller, Christopher L. 1985. Back Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, W. J. T. 1986. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

398

references

Molella, Arthur P., and Anna Karvellas, eds. 2015. Places of Invention. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Molotiu, Andrei 2000. “Focillon’s Bergsonian Rhetoric and the Possibility of Deconstruction.” In Visible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/molotiu.htm. Molyneux, John 2007. “A Revolution in Paint: 100 Years of Picasso’s Demoiselles.” International Socialism 115. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=341. Morgan, David 2009. “Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Re-­Enchantment.” In Re-­Enchantment, edited by James Elkins and David Morgan, 3–22. New York: Routledge. Morienval, Henri 1893. La Guerre du Dahomey: Journal de campagne d’un sous-­lieutenant d’ infanterie de marine. Paris: A. Hatier. Murphy, Maureen 2009. “Du champ de bataille au musée : Les tribulations d’une sculpture fon.” In Histoire de l’art et anthropologie. Paris: inha / Musée du quai Branly (“Les Actes”), 2009, [En ligne], mis en ligne le 28 juillet 2009, consulté le 10 mars 2018. http://journals.openedition.org/actesbranly/213. Murray, Penelope, ed. 1989. Genius: The History of an Idea. New York: B. Blackwell. Murray, Stephen 1978. “The Gothic Façade Drawings in the Reims Palimpsest.” Gesta 17 (2): 51–55. Murrell, Denise 2000. “African Influences in Modern Art.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www .metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm. Museum of Modern Art 2004. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Conserving a Modern Masterpiece.” New York: Museum of Modern Art. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://www.moma.org/ explore/conservation/demoiselles/.http://www.moma.org/explore/conservation/ demoiselles/. Nagel, Alexander 2012. Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time. London: Thames and Hudson. Nahm, Milton Charles 1965. Genius and Creativity: An Essay in the History of Ideas. New York: Harper & Row. references

399

Nanette 2018. Jon Olb, Madeleine Parry, dirs. Netflix. Starring Hannah Gadsby. Neilson, Brett 1999. “Barbarism/Modernity: Notes on Barbarism.” Textual Practice 13 (1): 79–95. Nisse, Cleo, and Francesca Whitlum 2012. “André Derain’s Trees by a Lake: Le Parc de carriers-­Saint-­Denis.” In The Courtauld Collections: Conservation and Art Historical Analysis. London: Courtauld. Nochlin, Linda 1999. Representing Women. New York: Thames and Hudson. Noland, Carrie 2006. “Cubism.” In The Columbia History of Twentieth-­Century French Thought, edited by Lawrence Kritzman, 25–26. New York: Columbia University Press. North, Michael 1994. The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-­Century Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995. “Modernism’s African Mask: The Stein-­Picasso Collaboration.” In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, edited by Elazar Barkin and Ronald Bush, 270–92. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Okediji, Moyosore 2008. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Mamiwata, and African Modernity.” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 2 (3–4): 38–60. Olin, Margaret 2010. “Jews among the Peoples Visual Archives in German Prison Camps during the Great War.” In Doing Anthropology in Wartime and War Zones: World War I and the Cultural Sciences in Europe, edited by Reinhard Johler, Christian Marchetti, and Monique Scheer, 255–78. Bielefeld, Germany: Bielefield University Press. Olivier, Fernande 2001a. Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier. New York: Abrams. 2001b. Picasso et ses amis. Paris: Pygmalion. Otero, Roberto 1984. Recuerdo de Picasso. Madrid: Direccion General de Bellas Artes y Archivos. Pad’rta, Jiri 1960. Picasso: The Early Years. New York: Tudor.  Paudrat, Jean-­Louis 1984. “From Africa.” In “Primitivism” in Twentieth-­Century Art, edited by William Rubin, 125–75. Vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

400

references

Paul, Elliot Samuel, and Scott Barry Kaufman 2014. “Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity.” In The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, edited by Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman, 3–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peabody, Charles 1900. “Review: African Masks and Secret Societies.” American Naturalist 34 (408): 971–74. Penrose, Roland 1981. Picasso, His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press. Perloff, Marjorie 1995. “Tolerance and Taboo: Modernist Primitivisms and Postmodern Pieties.” In Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, edited by Elazar Barkin and Ronald Bush, 339–56. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1998. “Paper Chase.” Bookforum, April, 37, 40. Perry, Gill 1993. “Primitivism and the ‘Modern.’” In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, edited by Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina, and Gill Perry, 3–86. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2003. “Discovery of African Art.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 33–34. Berkeley: University of California Press. Picasso, Pablo 1920. Untitled comments. In Florent Fels, “Opinions sur l’art nègre.” Action 1 (April): 23–26. Picasso, Pablo, Laurence Madeline, and Marilyn Martin 2006. Picasso and Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Bell-­Roberts. “Picasso: Chapter One” 2018. Kenneth Biller, dir. Genius (US TV series). National Geographic, April 24. Picasso Primitif 2017. Exhibition catalog. Musée du quai Branly. Directed by Yves Le Fur, with texts by Le Fur, Gérard Wajcman, and Stéphane Breton. Paris: Flammarion. Pietz, William 1985. “The Problem of the Fetish, I.” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 9:5–17. 1987. “The Problem of the Fetish, II: The Origins of the Fetish.” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 13:23–45. 1988. “The Problem of the Fetish, IIIa: Bosman’s Guinea and the Enlightenment Theory of Fetishism.” res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 16:105–24. references

401

Pinny, Christopher 2003. “Notes from the Surface of the Image: Photography, Postcolonialism and Vernacular Modernism.” In Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson, 202–20. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Plagens, Peter 2007. “Which Is the Most Influential Work of the Last 100 Years?” Newsweek 150 (2): 68–69. Platt, Susan Noyes 1988. “Modernism, Formalism and Politics: The ‘Cubism and Abstract Art’ Exhibition of 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art.” Art Journal 47 (4): 284–95. Podoksik, Anatoli 1989. Picasso: The Artist’s Work in Soviet Museums. New York: Abrams. Poegrebin, Robin, and Jennifer Schuessler 2018. “Chuck Close Is Accused of Harrassment,” New York Times, January 28. Poggi, Christine 1988. “Frames of Reference: ‘Table’ and ‘Tableau’ in Picasso’s Collages and Constructions.” Art Journal 47 (4): 311–22. 1992. In Defiance of Painting: Cubism, Futurism, and the Invention of Collage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Poincaré, Henri 1908. Science et methode. Paris: Flammarion. Pool, Phoebe 1959. “Sources and Background of Picasso’s Art, 1900–06.” Burlington Magazine 101 (674): 176–82. Poore, Henry 1913. The New Tendency in Art: Post Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company. Pound, Ezra, and Louis Zakofsky 1987. Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky. Edited by Barry Ahearn. New York: New Directions. Price, Sally 1989. Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rampley, Matthew 2012. “The Artist’s Brain: What’s Wrong with Neuroscience and Cybernetics in Art History?” Paper delivered at nordik x Conference, University of Stockholm, October 26, 2012. Rancière, Jacques 1991. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Translated by Kristin Ross. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

402

references

2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Translated by Steven Corcoran. London: Continuum. 2013. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Edited and translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Bloomsbury. Rancière, Jacques, Fulvia Carnevale, and John Kelsey 2007. “Art of the Possible: Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey in Conversation with Jacques Rancière.” Artforum 45 (7): 256–69. Ratzel, Friedrich 1898. The History of Mankind. Vol. 3. Translated by A. J. Butler. New York: MacMillan. Raynal, Maurice 1921. Picasso. Paris: G. Crés. 1966. “Conception and Vision.” In Cubism, edited by Edward F. Fry, 94–96. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Read, Peter 2003. “Dans la Cuisine du peintre: Connotations littéraires et politiques d’une ­oeuvre de Picasso.” Revue du Louvre 53:75–84. 2008. Picasso and Apollinaire: The Persistence of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. “‘All Fields of Knowledge’: Picasso’s Art and the Intellectual Environment of His Early Years in Paris.” In Picasso and Paris, 1900–1907, edited by Marilyn McCully, 155–76. New York: Vintage. Reff, Theodore 1973. “Themes of Love and Death in Picasso’s Early Work.” In Picasso in Retrospect, edited by Roland Penrose and John Golding, 11–47. New York: Praeger. 1977. States in Olympia: Art in Context. New York: Viking Press. Retté, Adolphe 1903. Le Symbolisme: Anecdotes et souvenirs. Paris: Vanier. Richardson, John 1964. Pablo Picasso: Watercolours and Gouaches. London: Barrie and Rockliff. 1987. “Picasso’s Apocalyptic Whorehouse.” New York Review of Books 34: 40–47. 1991. A Life of Picasso. Vol. 1, 1881–1906. New York: Random House. 1996. A Life of Picasso. Vol. 2, 1907–1917. New York: Random House. 2007. A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932. New York: Knopf. Richer, Paul 1897. Dialogues sur l’art et la science. Auxerre, France: Lanier. Richer, Paul, and Robert Beverly Hale 1889. Artistic Anatomy. New York: Watson-­Guptill. references

403

Riviere, Joan 1929. “Womanliness as a Masquerade.” In Formations of Fantasy, edited by Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, 35–44. New York: Meuthen. Robbin, Tony 2006. Shadows of Reality: The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism, and Modern Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Robbins, Daniel 1988. “Abbreviated Historiography of Cubism.” Art Journal 47 (4): 277–83. Robinson, Andrew 2013. “Walter Benjamin: Art, Aura and Authenticity.” Ceasefire, June 14, 2013. Accessed August 13, 2015. https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-­benjamin-­art-­ aura-­authenticity. Róheim, Géza 2005. Animism, Magic, and the Divine King. New York: Cosimo. Roodenberg, Linda n.d. “Anceaux Glasses: Anthropological Photography since 1860.” Accessed August 13, 2015. http://issuu.com/bintphotobooks/docs/anceauxsglasses. Rosenblum, Robert 1960. Cubism and Twentieth-­Century Art. New York: Abrams. 1986. “The Demoiselles: Sketchbook No. 42, 1907.” In Je suis le cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso, edited by Arnold Glimcher and Marc Glimcher, 53–80. New York: Pace Gallery. 1996. “The Spanishness of Picasso’s Still Lives.” In Picasso and the Spanish Tradition, edited by Jonathan Brown, 61–93. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1997. “Picasso at Gósol: The Calm before the Storm.” In Picasso: The Early Years, 1892–1906, edited by Marilyn McCully, 261–76. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rosenthal, Mark 1983. “Picasso’s Night Fishing at Antibes: A Meditation on Death.” Art Bulletin 65 (4): 649–58. Roskill, Mark W. 1985. The Interpretation of Cubism. Philadelphia, PA: Art Alliance Press. Ross, James J., and Susan Vogel n.d. Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University. Accessed August 15, 2015. http://rossarchive.library.yale.edu/web/site/index.php. Rothfels, Nigel 2008. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

404

references

Rouart, Eugène 1902. L’Artiste et la société. Paris: Petite collection de l’Ermitage. Row, Sue 2016. In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art. London: Penguin. Rubin, William 1972. Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1977. “Cézannisme and the Beginnings of Cubism.” In Cézanne: The Late Work, edited by William Rubin, 151–202. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1979. “Pablo and Georges and Leo and Bill.” Art in America 67 (2): 142–43. 1983. “From Narrative to ‘Iconic’ in Picasso: The Buried Allegory.” In Bread and Fruitdish on a Table and the Role of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Art Bulletin 65 (4): 615–49. 1984a. “Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction.” In “Primitivism” in Twentieth-­ Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, edited by William Rubin, 1–79. Vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1984b. “Picasso.” In “Primitivism’ in Twentieth-­Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, edited by William Rubin, 241–343. Vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1988. “La Genèse des Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by Hélène Seckel, 367–488. Vol. 2. Paris: Editions de la réunion des musées nationaux. 1989. Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1994. “The Genesis of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by William Rubin, Hélène Seckel, and Judith Cousins, 13–144. Studies in Modern Art 3. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Rubin, William, ed. 1984c. “Primitivism” in Twentieth-­Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. 2 volumes. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1996. Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Rubin, William, Hélène Seckel, and Judith Cousins, eds. 1994. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Studies in Modern Art 3. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Rudorff, Raymond 1972. The Belle Epoque: Paris in the Nineties. London: Hamilton. references

405

Runco, Mark A. 2006. Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press. Runco, Mark A., and Robert S. Albert 2010. “Creativity Research: A Historical View.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, edited by James C. Kaufman and Robert J. Sternberg, 3–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russell, John 1996. “art view: The Groundwork For Masterpieces.” New York Times, March 10. Accessed September 17, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/10/arts/art-­view-­ the-­groundwork-­for-­masterpieces.html. Sabartés, Jaime 1946. Paintings and Drawings of Picasso with a Critical Survey. New York: Tudor Publishing. 1948. Picasso: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Prentice-­Hall. 1954. Picasso: Documents Iconographiques. Geneva: Pierre Cailler. 1957. Dans l’atelier de Picasso. Paris: Fernand Mourlot. Sabin, Stefana 2002. “Refracted Perspective: Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Artistic Experimentation.” In Picasso et les femmes, edited by Ingrid Mössinger, Beate Ritter, and Kerstin Drechsle, 91–101. Cologne, Germany: DuMont. Sade, Donatien-­A lphonse-­François, Marquis de 2006. Philosophy in the Boudoir, or The Immortal Mentors. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Penguin. Salmon, André 1912. La Jeune peinture française. Paris: Sociète des Trente. 1920. L’Art vivant. Paris: G. Crès. 2003. “Negro Art.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 133–44. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. On French Modern Art. Edited and translated by Beth S. Gersh-­Nešić. New York: Cambridge University Press. Samaltanos-­Stenström, Katia 1984. Apollinaire, Catalyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp. Ann Arbor, MI: umi Research Press. Sauders, E. Stewart 2001. “University of Paris Libraries: Sainte Genevieve Library.” In International

406

references

Dictionary of Library Histories, edited by David H. Stam, 877–79. Vol. 2. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Sawyer, Robert Keith 2012. Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scharf, Aaron 1975. Art and Photography. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books. Schieder, Martin 2014. “Metabild–Zahlungsmittel-­R aubkunst: Das Bildnis der Familie Soler von Pablo Picasso.” Zeitschrift fuer Kunstgeschichte 77 (2): 257–70. Schiff, Richard 1990. “Picasso’s Touch: Collage, ‘Papier Collé, Ace of Clubs.’ ” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 38–47. Schneider, William H. 1981. “Colonies at the 1900 World Fair.” History Today 31 (5): 31–36. Schwarz, Herbert T. 1988. Picasso and Marie-­Thérèse Walter, 1925–27. Montmagny, Quebec: Editions Isabeau. Scoditti, Giancarlo M. G. 2006. La Flagellazione del primitivo: Il problema della forma dall’arte tribale a Picasso. Torino, Italy: Bollati Boringhieri. Seckel, Hélène 1994a. “Anthology of Early Commentary on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, edited by William Rubin, Hélène Seckel and Judith Cousins, 213–56. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1994b. Max Jacob et Picasso. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Seckel, Hélène, ed. 1988. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. 2 vols. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Seitz, William C. 1961. The Art of Assemblage. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Sekula, Allan 1982. “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning.” In Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin, 84–109. London: Macmillan Press. Senghor, Léopold Sédar 1966. “The Hidden Force of Black African Art.” Vogue 148 (10): 236–39, 276–77. 1972. “Picasso en Nigritie.” In Picasso and Africa, edited by Laurence Madeline and Marilyn Martin, 145–48. Cape Town, South Africa: Bell Roberts.

references

407

Serraller, Francisco Calvo 1993. “Vulcan’s Constellation.” In Picasso and the Age of Iron, edited by Carmen Giménez, 65–98. New York: Guggenheim Museum. Shapiro, Meyer 1937. “Nature of Abstract Art.” Marxist Quarterly 1 (1): 77–98. Shattuck, Roger 1968. The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant Garde in France, 1885 to World War I. New York: Vintage Books. Simonton, Dean Keith 1999. Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Bernard 1998. Modernism’s History: A Study in Twentieth-­Century Art and Ideas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Spurling, Hilary 1998. The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869–1908. New York: Knopf. 2001. The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869–1908. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Staller, Natasha 1989. “Méliès’ ‘Fantastic’ Cinema and the Origins of Cubism.” Art History 12 (2): 202–32. 2001. A Sum of Destructions: Picasso’s Cultures and the Creation of Cubism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Steefel, Lawrence D. 1992. “The Neglected Fruit Cluster in Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.’” Artibus et Historiae 13 (26): 115–20. Steegmuller, Francis 1963. Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters. New York: Penguin. Stein, Gertrude 1909. Three Lives. New York: Grafton Press. 1933. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1946. Picasso. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1984. Picasso: The Complete Writings. Edited by Edward Burns. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Steinberg, Leo (1947) 1996. Appreciation: Painting, Poetry, and Prose. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

408

references

(1966) 1972. “Contemporary Art and Plight of Its Public.” In Steinberg, Other Criteria, 12. London: Oxford University Press. 1968. “Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà: The Missing Leg.” Art Bulletin 1968 50 (4): 343–53. 1972. “The Philosphical Brothel.” Art News 71 (5–6): 2–9, 38–47. 1978a. “The Glorious Company.” In Art about Art, edited by Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall, 8–31. New York: Dutton. 1978b. “Resisting Cézanne: Picasso’s Three Women.” Art in America 66 (5): 114–33. 1979. “Resisting Cézanne, Part 2: The Polemical Part.” Art in America 67 (2): 114–27. 1988. “The Philosophical Brothel.” October 44:7–74. 1995. “Picasso’s Endgame.” October 74:105–22. 2007a. Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-­Century Art. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2007b. “The Prague Self-­Portrait and Picasso’s Intelligence.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 103–18. Paris: Flammarion. 2007c. “Resisting Cezanne: Picasso’s Three Women.” In Cubist Picasso, edited by Anne Baldassari, 71–102. Paris: Flammarion. Steiner, Rudolf P. (1906) 1912. Occult Significance of Blood. Boston, MA: Colonial Press. Accessed September 1, 2018. https://archive.org/stream/occultsignifican00stei/occult significan00stei_djvu.txt. 2008. An Esoteric Cosmology: Evolution, Christ, and Modern Spirituality: 18 Lectures in Paris, May 25–June 14, 1906. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks. Stepan, Peter 2006. Picasso’s Collection of African and Oceanic Art: Master of Metamorphosis. New York: Prestel. Sternberg, Robert J., ed. 1999. Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stovall, Tyler Edward 1990. The Rise of the Paris Red Belt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stratz, Carl Heinrich [Charles-­Henri] 1897. Die Frauen auf Java: Eine Gynäkologische Studie. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Enke. 1898. The Beauty of the Female Body. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Enke. 1899. Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Enke. 1900. [Charles-­Henri Stratz]. La Beauté de la femme. Paris: Gaultier, Magnier et Cie. (1900, 1901, 1902, 1904, 1911, 1921) 1907. Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes. Stuttgart, Germany: Aufl. Verlag F. Enke. references

409

(1902) 1904. Die Frauenkleidung und ihre natürliche Entwicklung. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Enke. 1903. Was sind Juden: Ein ethnographisch-­anthropologshe Studie. Vienna: F. Temsky. 1904. Naturgeschichte des Menschen: Gundriss der Somatischen Anthropologie. Stuttgart, Germany: F. Enke. Streck, Bernard 1995. “Leo Frobenius (1873–1938).” In Masques, suivi d’un texte de Leo Frobenius. Translated by O. Kyburz, 247–57. Paris: Musée Dapper. Stwallskull [Steven Stwalley] 2008. “Crumbling Paper: The Katzenjammer Kids in Der Katzenjammer Princes Rescue the Captain (strip #13).” Posted on January 30, 2008. Accessed June 16, 2015. http://www.stwallskull.com/blog/2008/01/30/crumbling-­paper-­the-­ katzenjammer-­kids-­in-­der-­katzenjammer-­princes-­rescue-­the-­captain-­strip-­13/. Sullivan, Graeme 2004. Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts. New York: Sage. Sutherland, Graham 1936. “A Trend in English Draughtsmanship.” Signature 3:7–13. Sweeney, Carole 2004. From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism, and Primitivism, 1919–1935. Westport, CT: Praeger. Sweeney, James Johnson 1941. “Picasso and Iberian Sculpture.” Art Bulletin 23 (3): 191–98. Sweetman, David 1995. Paul Gauguin: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. Tatarkiewicz, Władysław 1980. A History of Six Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Temkin, Ann, and Anne Umland 2015. Picasso Sculpture. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Temple, Christine 2014. Picasso’s Brain: How Creative Genius Works. London: Constable and Robinson. Theye, Thomas 1989. Der geraubte Schatten: Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument. Munich: C. J. Bucher. Thompson, Robert Farris 1984. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-­American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House.

410

references

Thompson, Rosemary Garland, ed. 1996. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Human Body. New York: New York University Press. Tiffany, Daniel 1995. Radio Corpse: Imagism and the Cryptaesthetic of Ezra Pound. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tilburg, Patricia 2007. “‘The Triumph of the Flesh’ in Women, Physical Culture, and the Nude in the French Music Hall, 1904–1914.” Radical History Review (98): 63–80. Tinterow, Gary, and Susan Alyson Stein, eds. 2010. Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tomkins, Calvin 2004. “At the Museums: A Picasso Face-­Lift.” New Yorker 80 (13): 32–33. Torgovnik, Marianna 1990. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Trachtman, Paul 2004. “Cleaning Picasso” Smithsonian Magazine, October. Accessed August 31, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-­culture/cleaning-­picasso-­180766115/. Tucker, Paul Hayes 1982. “Picasso, Photography, and the Development of Cubism.” Art Bulletin 64 (2): 288–99. Turner, Elizabeth Hutton 1984. “Who Is in the Brothel of Avignon? A Case for Context.” Artibus et Historiae 5 (9): 139–57. Tyhacott, Louise 2003. Surrealism and the Exotic. London: Routledge. Uhde, Wilhelm 1928. Picasso et la tradition française: Notes sur le peintre actuelle. Paris: Les Quatre-­Chemins. Umilta, M. Alessandra, Cristina Berchio, Mariateresa Sestito, David Freedberg, and Vittorio Gallese 2012. “Abstract Art and Cortical Motor Activation: An eeg Study.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6:1–9. Umland, Anne 2011. Picasso: Guitars, 1912–1914. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

references

411

Unger, Miles J. 2018. Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World. New York: Simon & Schuster. United States Bureau of Foreign Commerce, US Department of Commerce and Labor 1909. Consular Reports: Commerce, Manufactures, Etc. Nos. 340–42 (January). Vallès, Eduard 2010. “The Rusiñol Paradigm: From Curiosity to Homage.” In Picasso Versus Rusiñol, edited by Eduard Vallès, 334–38. Barcelona, Spain: Ajuntament de Barcelona, Institut de Cultura. Vargish, Thomas, and Delo E. Mook 1999. Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Varnedoe, Kirk 1984. “Gauguin.” In “Primitivism” in Twentieth-­Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, edited by William Rubin, 179–209. Vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Varnedoe, Kirk, and Adam Gopnik, eds. 1993. High and Low: Modern Art Popular Culture. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Varnedoe, Kirk, et al. 2002. Matisse Picasso. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Vlaminck, Maurice de (1943) 2003. “Discovery of African Art.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 27–28. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vohs, Kathleen D. 2013. “It Is Not a Mess, It’s Creativity.” New York Times, September 13, 2013. Accessed August 13, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/its-notmess-its-creativity.html. Vohs, Kathleen D., Joseph P. Redden, and Ryan Rahinel 2013. “Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity.” Psychological Science 9:1860–67. Vollard, Ambroise 1932. Les Réincarnations du Père Ubu. Paris: Le Divan. Von Sydow, Eckart 2003. “The Meaning of Primitive Art 1932.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 234–37. Berkeley: University of California Press.

412

references

Waber, Ben, Jennifer Magnolfi, and Greg Lindsay 2014. “Workspaces That Move People.” Harvard Business Review, October. Accessed August 15, 2015. https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-­that-­move-­people. Wallas, Graham 1926. The Art of Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Warnod, Jeanine 1972. Washboat Days. Translated by Carol Green. New York: Grossman. 1975. Le Bateau-­Lavoir, 1892–1914. Paris: Les Presses de la connaissance. Webb, Virginia-­Lee 2000. Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Weber, Eugen Joseph 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Weisberg, Robert W. 2006. Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Weiss, Jeffrey S. 1994. The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp, and Avant-­Gardism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2003. Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wells, H. G. 1895. The Time Machine. London: Heinemann. Werth, Margaret 1997. “Representing the Body in 1906.” In Picasso: The Early Years, 1892–1906, edited by Marilyn McCully, 277–88. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Westermann, Mariët, ed. 2005. Anthropologies of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wilson, Willam S. 1997. “Review of Rubin et al. Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation.” Art Journal 56:88–93. Wood, R. J. 1870. The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man. Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company. Worms de Romilly, Nicole 1982. Braque: Cubism, 1907–1914. Paris: Maeght.

references

413

Wright, Alastair 2004. Matisse and the Subject of Modernism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zayas, Marius de 2003. “Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art.” In Primitivism and Twentieth-­Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam and Miriam Deutch, 70–72. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zeki, Semir 1999. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press. Zeldin, Theodore 1973–77. France, 1848–1945. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zelevansky, Lynn, ed. 1992. Picasso and Braque: A Symposium. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Zervos, Christian 1932–78. Pablo Picasso: Catalogue raisonné des œuvres. 33 vols. Paris: Cahiers d’art. 1942. Pablo Picasso. Vol. 2. Paris: Cahiers d’Art, 1906–12. Zola, Émile 2004. Germinal. London: Penguin. (1885) 2010. Germinal. London: The Folio Society.

414

references

Index Illustrations are indicated by italicized page numbers. Works by Picasso are listed by their titles; works by all other artists are under the name of the artist. Ababoa mask (Congo), 126, 127, 148 abstraction, 11, 15, 59, 123, 196, 209, 226 Adolescent Boy with Two Children (1906), 212, 213, 216 The Adolescents (or Two Youths) (1906), 200, 203, 207 Adouma (Gabon): ceremony, 49, 49; masks, 92, 92, 127 African art: Apollinaire and, 85, 135, 142, 152–53, 184, 267, 268, 289; Braque and, 10, 85,

151; “childhood of humanity” associated with, 240; compared to Egyptian sculpture, 144, 234; compared to French sculpture, 87; compared to medieval art, 96; cubism and, 9–12, 88, 133–36, 155–56, 181; Les Demoiselles’s relationship with, xii, xiii, 10, 12, 66, 88–89, 267, 270; Derain and, 44, 47, 85, 87, 346n1; disjuncture of, Picasso’s experimentation with, 129–33; European artists and, 87–88; influence of, 10, 85–87, 128, 259–60, 279; Jacob and, 135; Matisse and, xi, xv, 7–10, 47, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 102–4, 109, 119, 128, 138, 155, 225, 272–73, 282, 284, 346n1;

Picasso’s engagement with, xi, xiii, 4, 6, 7–13, 39, 47, 70–71, 85–89, 93, 116–22, 128, 135–36, 142–44, 167–69, 184, 190, 197, 266–67, 270, 277, 282, 293, 336n38, 350n83; Picasso’s first exposure to (Matisse’s Vili figure), 9, 10, 30, 47, 70, 81–87, 110, 272–73, 277; in popular culture, 2, 56, 157–61, 352n2; religious views and ancestor cults as part of, 85, 119, 123, 234, 235, 254, 272; rituals associated with sculptures, 88–89, 128, 161–62; Salmon on, 89, 102, 157–59. See also racism; Trocadéro Ethnography Museum; individual artists, works, peoples, and countries

African masks: asymmetries in African masking traditions, 10, 337n57; calque covering of, 111, 112, 116; Cameroon and Nigerian masks, 285, 287; color and heart-shaped faces of, 125–29; in Les Demoiselles, 1, 48, 138, 263, 266, 275, 280; human evolution illustrated by, 119; Nupe fiber mask, 287, 289. See also specific African peoples African stereotyping, 161 “ages of humankind,” 40, 43–46, 47, 53, 207, 232, 258–59, 261, 267 Agoli Agbo (Dahomey king), 153 Akati Akpele Kendo, 154, 155–57 Alexandros of Antioch: Venus de Milo, xiii, 97, 99, 260, 262, 355n57 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence: A Sculptor’s Model, 108, 110 alterity and otherness, 4–5, 193 Amazigh (or Berber) culture, 162, 164, 167, 170, 194, 198 amazons, xiii, 170, 172, 173–74, 175–81, 177–78, 185, 187, 234 Amazon with Mother and Child (1903?), 173, 175 Ambroise Vollard (1910), 146–49, 147, 285 ancestor worship, 234, 235, 254. See also religious primacy of African art Andalusian arts and culture, 104, 125, 167, 198 animalistic nature of Les Demoiselles, 4–5, 67

416

index

Animals (1907), 223, 224, 267 Apollinaire (1905), 172, 192, 195 Apollinaire, Guillaume: African art and, 85, 135, 142, 152–53, 184, 267, 268, 289; death of and memorial to, xv, 155, 289; on Les Demoiselles, 59, 269–70, 273, 342n17; de Sade’s role in works of, 25, 188, 338n29; on experimentation of Picasso, 276; on Gu figure by Akati, 155–56, 353n13; Honnecourt drawings and, 223; “ideogrammes” and, 228; influence on Picasso, 261; injured in duel, 345n46; interchangeability approach and, 135; “La Culture physique” and, 192, 356n16; library of, 267–69, 268; magic, interest in, 169, 353n9; at Matisse’s home when Picasso first encounters Vili figure, 81, 84; Picasso and, 26, 61, 227, 228, 273–74; portraits of, by Picasso, 26, 172, 192, 195; “La Serviette des poètes,” 101; Stein and, 228; stolen Louvre objects and, 105–6; Stratz’s work and, 188; time travel as interest of, 40, 244; title of Les Demoiselles and, 22, 24; works by: Le Bestiaire, ou Cortège d’Orphée, 223, 267; Les Exploits d’un jeune Don Juan, 26; L’Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade, 25; Les Onze mille verges ou Les Amours d’un hospodar,

25–26; Le Poète assassiné, 153; Le Roi-lune [The Moon King], 244; “Salomé” (poem), 172 Apollinaire as Pope (1905), 26, 26, 172 Apollo with a Lyre (Vatican, c. 200 CE), 99 Arabic motifs, 226 Arc de triomphe (casts, Paris), xiii, xv, 42, 91, 96 Artist’s Dog and Puppies (1907), 256 art nègre, xiii, 7–13, 151. See also African art “Asante skull dance,” 229, 234 Ashanti (Ghana), 185 assemblage techniques, 15, 88, 109, 149, 153, 155–57, 181, 286, 289 Assumption of the Virgin (cast, Notre-Dame Cathedral), 96, 245, 246 Aubanel, Théodore, 26–27 avant-garde, 50, 78, 146, 335n27 Avignon: meanings associated with, 23, 25–27; prehistoric rock paintings in, 251 backbends, studies of, 202, 216, 219 Baga masks (Guinea), 92, 109, 129–31, 130, 178, 180, 345n16; Baga D’mba (Nimba) mask representing goddess of fertility, 110, 129, 132, 133, 183; Picasso and other artists acquiring, 151

Baldassari, Anne, 196–98, 343n23, 354n39 Ballets Russes costumes (1909), 285 Bamako, Mali market scene, 195, 197 Bamana sculpture (Mali), 349n67 Barcelona, 23, 255; Carnival (1896), 170; Corpus Christi festival (1902), 108, 109; Els Quatre Gats café, 160 Baroque, 13, 42 Barr, Alfred: on African art’s relationship to cubism, 9–11; on cubism, 2, 13, 136; Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition (1936), 2, 7, 290; on Les Demoiselles, 2, 11, 14, 33, 266; on influences on Picasso, 341n107 Baudelaire, Charles: “Le Peintre de la vie moderne,” 38, 253; “The Voyage to Cythera (The Vision of Venus),” 34 beauty: challenging classical canons of, 209–10, 278; ideals of, 9, 119, 192, 212, 262; science of appreciating physical beauty, 193; Stratz on beauty of women, 70, 192, 202–3, 207, 208, 235; Vili beauty norms merged with Western aesthetics, 121 Bechoff-David fashion house (Paris): Toilette d’après-midi, 72 Behanzin (Dahomey king), 153, 158, 162 Belgium and its Congo colony, x

La Belle Hollandaise (1905), 190, 191 Benjamin, Walter, 5 Berber culture, 162, 164, 167, 170, 194, 198 Bergson, Henri, 238, 279–80, 364n52 Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 120; Panoptikum, 187 Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Primeval History, 185 birth/origin theme, 24, 34, 38, 39, 41, 64, 119, 161, 204, 232–34, 239, 240, 242, 245, 247–50, 254–60, 265–66, 277–78, 285, 294. See also human evolution Blanchot, Maurice, 361n28 The Blue Vase: The Dance (study, 1906), 215 Bois, Yve-Alain, 4, 7, 335n20, 344n35 Bois de Boulogne study (1906), 173, 175, 179 bordellos. See brothels and bordellos Botticelli, Sandro: Birth of Venus, 36–37, 57, 204, 204, 260 Bourdais, Jules, 90 Bowl, Profile and Top (1907), 274, 275, 285 Boy Leading a Horse (1906), 21, 100 Braque, Georges: African art as influence on, 10, 85, 151; on Les Demoiselles, 271; as founder of cubism, 12; Grand Palais (Paris) retrospective (2013),

xv; Picasso and, 13, 75–76, 227; Uhde and, 146 Brassaï: on books that influenced Picasso, 34, 267–68; color and, 64; on cubism, 10; on Les Demoiselles, 54, 55, 270, 272; on Gaudí’s influence on Picasso, 29; Picasso and dating of his works, 80; on sketchbooks of Picasso, 31–32 Brenson, Michael, 266 Breton, André, xi, 13, 23, 268 Breuil, Abbé Henri, 251, 286, 288–89 Brocard, Paul, 183 brothels and bordellos: Bois de Boulogne scene suggesting, 180; bordello photography, 193; “bordel,” meaning of, 22–23, 25, 237; Le Bordel philosophique as early title of Les Demoiselles, 22–24, 25, 143, 221, 230, 251, 253–54, 264–65, 274; caricatures (1904 and 1905) by Picasso, 21, 26; Degas’s brothel scenes, 75, 192, 242, 354n20; in French literature, 253; global brothel, creation of, 221, 235–38; history and, 27; Picasso’s earlier works of, 41; Steinberg’s reaction to prostitutes and his fear of disease, 17–18, 60; as theme in Les Demoiselles, 1, 3, 5–6, 13, 17–18, 21–24, 27, 31, 35, 41, 51, 180, 187, 221, 229, 236–38, 253, 258, 263, 338n26; “virtual bordello,” 198, 221. See also sexuality index

417

Brunet, Louis, 161 Bundu masks, 139–41, 140 Burgess, Gelett, 9, 15, 22, 196, 353n19 Burke, Kenneth, 363n28 Burton, Richard Francis, 31, 175, 268; A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, 171 Bust of Man (1907), 112 Bust of Woman (1907), 92, 93 Byzantine icons, 38, 41, 50, 59 Cabanne, Pierre, 291–92, 344n33 Cahiers d’art (journal), 286 Cameroon. See African masks; Duala art Carco, Francis, 183–84 caricature, 21, 35, 142–43, 171, 192, 248, 259, 269, 274 Caricature of Native with Hut and Canoe (1905), 161, 163 Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste: Fontaine de l’Observatoire [Fountain of the Four Parts of the World], xv, 227, 229, 238–39 caryatid figures, 118–19 Casagemas, Carlos, 165 casts, artists’ use of, 94–99, 97–98, 107–8 Cavaliére en amazone (1959), 174, 176 Cavaliére in amazone attire (from La Mode illustrée, 1876), 176, 177 celestina, 125 Celestina (1903–4), 239, 240 Cerro de los Santos and Osuna

418

index

archaeological sites (Spain), 104 Cézanne, Paul: death of and retrospective on (1906), xv, 50, 273, 277; influence of, 38, 45, 46, 48, 50, 109, 142, 341n107; Picasso and, 38, 277; primitivism of, 12, 341n107; Woman with Pears in homage to, 142; works by: Five Bathers, 37, 45, 46, 50, 282–84; A Modern Olympia, 248; Three Bathers, 37, 46, 50 Chave, Anna, 292–93 Chicago sculpture (1967), 155, 289, 290 Child and Her Doll (Sister of Artist) (1896–97), 255, 256 circus equestrians and amazons, xiii, 173, 175–76, 177 Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine (Paris), xv, 96 Clear and Simple History of Max Jacob (1903), 174, 175 Cocteau, Jean, 9, 153, 155 Coddington, James L., 342n1 colonial era, x, 1, 5–6, 12, 70–71, 158, 170, 181–84, 193, 197, 267, 269, 278, 290 Comte, Auguste, 279 Cooper, Douglas, 180 Courbet, Gustave: L’Origine du monde [The Origin of the World], 40, 246, 248–50 Cousins, Judith, 342n17 Cranach, Lucas: The Golden Age, 44

creation and progeny. See birth/ origin theme; women creativity, 40, 135, 166–67, 169, 269–71, 278–79, 362–63 nn27–29 Cuba: cousin of Picasso from (photo), xiii, 163, 164; Picasso’s African family ties in, xiii, 8, 164, 169–70; as Spanish colony, 170; vodun [voodoo] and, 255 cubism: abstraction in, 15; African art and, 9–12, 88, 133–36, 155–56, 181; Les Demoiselles and, 2, 12–13, 59, 136, 247, 267; origins of, 11–13, 81–82, 84, 88, 102, 106, 156, 225, 271; primitivism and, 156; scientific and mathematical studies influencing development of, 243; sculptural portraiture and, 149; solid and void as interchangeable in, 247. See also assemblage techniques cultural identity, 162–65 Cuno, James, 116 Dahomey (now Republic of Benin): amazons from, 79, 170, 172, 175, 180–81, 185, 186, 187; Apollinaire collecting works from, 152–53, 289; birds (Hountondji family guild), 152–53, 153, 155; Fa Bowl, xiii, 152, 154; history of, 152, 159; popular culture embracing art of, 56, 157–61, 352n2;

stylistic diversity of art in, 109; Trocadéro figures from, 91–92; vodun [voodoo] arts of, 255–57. See also Gu (war god) Daix, Pierre: on African influence in Les Demoiselles, 10; on Baudelaire and Picasso, 34; on dating canvas of Les Demoiselles, 29, 344n35; on Picasso’s view of his role in art history, 293; on “Primitivist renewal,” 12; on reaction of Gertrude Stein to Les Demoiselles, 67; on subversive strategies of Picasso, 137; “There Is No Negro Art in the Demoiselles,” 9; on women in Les Demoiselles, 3, 24, 343n21 Dan (Dahomey serpent god), 152 The Dance of the Veils (1907) [now Nu à la draperie], 78, 162 The Dancer, 2, 51, 259, 289–90, 291 La Danse barbare (Devant Salomé et Herode) (1905–6), xiii, 79, 162, 171, 172, 248 Darwinian theory, 238 Davioud, Jean-Antoine-Gabriel, 90 death as theme, 34, 39, 119, 161, 240, 242, 255, 265 Death of Harlequin (1905), 145 Déchelette, Joseph, 338n37 Degas, Edgar: framing of his works, 292; Picasso’s acqui­ sition of Degas danseuse, 291–92; Picasso’s Nude with Raised Arms (The Avignon

Dancer) compared to, 51, 289; works by: brothel scenes, 75, 192, 242, 356n20; Madam’s Festival Day, 35, 36; Two Dancers (Dance School), 49, 289, 291 Delacroix, Eugène: Women of Algiers, 35–36, 36, 42, 50 Delaunay-Terk, Sonia: Young Finnish Woman, 150, 151, 268, 285 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Plate 1): African art’s influence on, xii, xiii, 10, 12, 66, 88–89, 267, 270; alternate titles for, 22–25, 27, 221, 230, 251, 265, 274; barbaric nature of, 4–5, 10, 159, 266; birth/origin and death in, 24, 34, 38, 41, 204, 233–34, 239, 247–50, 252–55, 257–60, 265–66, 277–78, 294; books and visual sources of, xiii–xiv, 13–18, 33–40, 267, 273–76; cleaning and X-rays of, 52–54, 58, 66, 342n1, 343n21; color in, 45, 53–59, 64, 67, 122, 128–29, 158–59, 207; compared to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, 260; compared to Cézanne’s Bathers, 45; compared to Degas and Manet, 35, 36; compared to Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, 35–36, 37, 42; compared to El Greco’s The Vision of St. John, 37–38, 42–43; compared to Ingres’s harem scenes, 36–37; compared to Matisse’s

Blue Nude, 74; compared to Matisse’s Le Bonheur de vivre, 44–45; compared to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, 42; compared to Picasso’s earlier works, 41; compared to Velázquez’s Las Meninas, 35; compositional studies for (Plate 4), 29, 30–31, 42, 52, 59, 68, 70, 74, 123, 124, 187, 189, 229, 232, 246, 249–50, 261; creative process involved in, 271–80; cubism and, 2, 12–13, 59, 136, 247, 267; curtains framing edges of, 41–42, 76, 76, 189–90, 253, 275, 293, 354n40; dating of canvas, 29–30, 32, 52, 65, 72–80, 264; diagrams of, 237, 239, 246; Doucet as original purchaser of, 23, 176, 342n110; effect on viewers, 266–67, 293; fertility in, 132, 153, 248; fruit pieces in, 248; gender identity in, 175; the gigantesque in, 21, 109–10; as historicizing work, 267, 285; history of Picasso’s work on, x–xi, xvi, 2, 4, 13–18, 27, 29–33, 49–50, 60, 66, 273, 280–81; humor in, 274; Iberian influence on, 11; importance of, in art history, ix–x, xii, 29, 33, 50, 78, 136, 228, 264, 269–70, 281, 293–94; light treatment in, 252; male figures in compositional studies for, 29, 30, 31, 59, 68, 113–14, 235, 261;

index

419

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (continued) masks in, 1, 48, 138, 263, 266, 275, 280; Matisse’s response to, 282–84; philosophy behind, 230–34; photograph from 1907 with Guus and Dolly van Dongen showing compositional elements of, xiii, 29, 52–53, 53, 60–68, 72–73, 76, 80, 254, 257, 258, 264, 292, 343n21; Picasso’s commentary (or reticence) on, 7, 10, 14, 50, 55, 106, 120, 169, 265, 344n36, 344–45n41; primitivism and, 7, 253, 263; race depicted in, 4–5, 221, 235, 237–39; repainting, theories of changes in, 30–31, 60–68, 75, 280–81, 344n33, 344n35; as revolutionary, 50, 57–59, 269–70; sacrifices Picasso made for, 101; sexuality in, 1, 3–5, 60, 159, 172–75, 181, 232, 250–54, 258, 263, 265, 277–78, 294; sorcerer’s apprentice role of Picasso in, 125, 252; Stratz and Fortier images and, 197, 202; study (1906), 30, 179, 179–80, 187, 233; study (1906–7), 68, 176, 203, 204; study and sketches for (1907), 30, 76–77, 76–79, 229, 231; study/poem (1907), 229; stylistic hybridity of, 2, 41, 107–9; time machine aspects of, 40–43, 244, 253, 266, 267; unfinished, according to early studies, 1–2; vaginal themes in, 5, 18, 24, 245–51,

420

index

266, 277–78. See also brothels and bordellos; women of Les Demoiselles; for influences on and specific associations with the painting, see the names of scholars and other artists as well as types of art Deniker, Georges, 181–83, 355n74 Deniker, Joseph, 183, 355n74 Derain, André: African art and, 44, 47, 85, 87, 346n1; artistic values and, 107; in competition and relationship with Picasso, 43–45, 49, 54, 74, 278, 281; Les Demoiselles and, 48–50; at L’Exposition coloniale (Marseille), 197; Matisse, relationship with, 48; at Salon d’Automne (1906), xv; Trocadéro Museum visits and, 90, 92, 94; works by: The Bathers, xvi, 46, 46–48, 73–74, 265, 278; The Dance, 44; The Golden Age [L’Age d’or], 41, 43–44, 46, 261 Dermée, Paul, 10 de Sade, Marquis, 25–26, 188, 338n29 Didi-Huberman, Georges: Confronting Images, 266–67 Die Brücke [The Bridge] school painters, 56, 122 Dirks, Rudolph: The Katzenjammer Kids cartoons (Plate 8), xiii, 159–60 Dorgelès, Roland, 158 Douai, France: Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai, 135

Doucet, Jacques, xi, 23, 176, 342n110 d’Oxoby, Jean Daramy, 183 Drouin, Adèle (circus equestrian), xiii, 175–76, 177 Duala art (Cameroon), 285; staff, 119, 126 Duchamp, Marcel: Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 151, 285, 286 Duffy, Michael, xi–xii, 52–54, 66, 74–75 Duncan, David Douglas, 166 Durrio, Paco, 39 Eagle (1907), 283, 285 Egyptian art, 101–7, 242, 275, 277; considered primitive art, 8, 261; equating sub-Saharan art with, 234, 349n67; Matisse on, 88 Egyptian figures, 78–79, 96, 102; Picasso’s study (1907), 71, 103, 234. See also women of Les Demoiselles Egyptian mask, 95, 96, 102 Einstein, Albert, 243 Ejagham mask (Nigeria), 119, 126 El Greco, 35, 41, 50, 59, 78, 340n69; as influence on Picasso, 38, 109; The Vision of St. John, 37, 37–38, 42–43, 109–10 Elkins, James, 363n29 Éluard, Paul, 31–32 The Embrace (1903), 254 Enlart, Camille, 95

L’Epinal (journal), 157; “Amazones et Guerriers,” xiii, 152, 154, 159, 175 Equestrian at Work (1905), 173, 175 ethnographic approach, xiv, 197. See also race; Frobenius, Leo; Stratz, Carl Heinrich L’Étude académique (journal), 196, 261, 337n53; “La Culture physique” (essay), 190–92, 195, 356n16 eugenics, 210 evolutionary theory. See human evolution exoticism, 85, 158, 199, 205, 226, 227 L’Exposition coloniale (Marseille, 1906), 197 Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1878), 90, 239 Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1900), xvi, 90, 92, 152, 160–62, 164, 170, 242 Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1937), 286 eyes of different colors (hetero­ chromia iridis), 68–70 Face (1907), 130, 131 Famille, 234, 236, 240 fantasy world, 244 fauvists, 44, 45, 54, 82 Fels, Florent, 8–9, 350n83 Female Figures (1907), 220, 220 Female Nude (two studies, 1906), 200, 203, 217 females. See vaginal themes;

women; women of Les Demoiselles feminism, xiv, 3–4 Fénéon, Félix, 75, 270, 274 Figure in Profile (1907), 132, 179 Flam, Jack, 7, 341n103, 346n1 Florentin, Laure, 176 Forain, Jean-Louis, 153 Fort, Paul, 74, 227 Fortier, François-Edmond, 164, 194–95, 197 Foster, Hal, 4–5, 12, 335n20, 337n60 Frede (owner of Au Lapin Agile), 349n60 French Communist party, xiii Freudian reading of Les Demoiselles, 4, 11–12, 335n20 Frika (Picasso’s dog), 257 Fritsch, Gustav, 235, 250; Die Gestalt des Menschen, 202 Frobenius, Leo (Plate 2): ancestor worship and cult of relics in works by, 119, 165, 254–55; paintings from Africa, 286, 288–89; tree support with masks, 119, 229; works on African masks, influence of, 10, 79, 93, 110, 111–16, 112, 114, 120, 121, 125, 128–29, 131, 133, 136–37, 166, 204, 209, 234, 268, 279, 281, 285–86, 287, 289, 291 Fuller, Loie, 162 Gabon. See Adouma Gadsby, Hannah, 334n15 gargoyles (Notre-Dame Cathedral), xv, 95, 95–96, 110

Gaudí, Antoni: Dragon Fountain (Park Güell), 26, 27; influence on Picasso, 29; Sagrada Familia cathedral, 27, 29 Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri: SelfPortrait, 150, 151, 285 Gauguin, Paul: colors in works by, 57; Picasso and, 277, 340n71; primitivism of, 12, 39; on themes of origin, 234; visual sources used by, 16, 349n64; Vollard and, 148; works by: Manao Tupapau, 39; Noa-Noa, 39, 239–40; Oviri, 39, 132; Ta Matete, 349n64; L’Univers est créé, 38, 233, 234, 239; Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 38, 240 Gedo, Mary Mathews, 14 gender identity, xiv, 175, 180, 209. See also amazons; women geometries, 87, 128, 151, 223–24, 226–27 germination, concept of, 230–32 Gertrude Stein (1906), 21, 71, 138–39, 140, 148, 285 Giethlen, Louis, 161 Gilot, Françoise, 25, 166, 168 Glele (Dahomey king), 157, 158, 171 Goldberg, Mécislas, 101 Golden Age, 41, 43–47, 261, 340n91 Golding, John, 104, 341n107, 346n60 Goldwater, Robert: Primitivism in Modern Art, 2 index

421

Goody, Jack, 334n17 Gósol (Spain), 20, 125, 148, 190, 199, 205, 207, 271, 340n69 Goya, Francisco, 35, 78 Grandes Serres de la Ville de Paris, xvi Grand Palais (Paris): Picasso retrospective (1966), xv Grebo (Krou) mask (Liberia), 92, 93, 135–36 Grebo mask (Côte d’Ivoire), 129, 133–36, 134, 179 Greco-Roman sculpture, mythology, and culture, 8, 40, 43, 102, 104, 175, 190–92, 212, 226, 258; torsos (cast), xiii, 98, 99, 337n52 Green, C., 352n57 Gris, Juan, 135 Gu (war god from Dahomey), 91, 142, 148, 154, 155–57, 277 Guardeño, Francisco Picasso (Picasso’s maternal grand­ father), 169 Guernica (1937), 286, 288 Guillaume, Paul, 136, 336n38; Opportunity, 88; Primitive Negro Sculpture (Sculptures nègres), 88, 183 Guitar (1912), 13, 134, 135, 155 Günther, Carl, 185 Halász, Gyula. See Brassaï The Harem (1906), 36, 122, 125, 205–7, 206, 207, 239 harem scenes, 35–36 Harlequin’s Family with Ape (1905), 234, 236, 240

422

index

Hauke, César de, 342n110 Head (1907), 112 Head of a Man (1907), 114, 130 Head of a Woman (1906, two studies), 82, 83, 127, 272 Head of a Woman (1907), 283, 285 Head of a Woman (1929–30), 13, 149, 150, 285 Herding, Klaus, 335n27 Hesiod, 43 Heymann, Emile, 85 homosexuality and lesbianism, 139, 189, 190, 198–99, 210 Honnecourt, Villard de, 78, 96, 224, 285; Album de Villard de Honnecourt: Architecte du XIIIe siècle, 222–23, 226–27; as inspiration for Picasso, 222–23 horseback riding, women engaging in, xiii, 175–76, 177, 179–80 Hugelshofer, E., 56, 113, 121, 122, 136, 351n15 Huizinga, Johan, 363n40 human evolution, 238–43, 363n27; African masks thought to illustrate, 119; Picasso’s interest in, 231–32, 266; popular interest of early 1900s in, 193, 280; as theme in Picasso’s and Matisse’s works, 265, 282–84 L’Humanité feminine (journal), 190, 193–98, 194–95, 210, 214, 357n36, 357n44 humor and jokes, 22–23, 62, 76, 160, 225, 232, 248, 263, 274, 279

Iberian art, 101–7, 205, 226, 277; head sculptures (5th–3rd century BCE), 11, 16, 102, 104–7, 110, 139, 275 Ibibio masks (Nigeria), 116, 129, 130, 135, 151 Icon of Nativity (anon., 15th century), 49, 51, 59 Ijaw masks (Nigeria), 16, 79, 116–18, 117, 129, 130, 135, 146, 147, 151 immortality as theme, 34, 38, 169, 243, 252–53, 265 Indian motifs, 226 influences on Picasso. See specific artists and genres of art Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 50; The Birth of Venus (Venus Anadyomene), 34, 36–37, 37, 204, 260; Odalisque with Slave, 36; La Source, 260; Turkish Bath, 36–37, 339–40n64 Injalbert, Jean-Antoine: Crucifixion, 99–101 Irwin, Inez Haynes Gillmore, 349n67 Iturrino, Francisco, 270 Jacob, Max: African art and, 135; in Apollinaire short story, 101; on art as science, 238; Bergson and, 280; birthday homage from Picasso to, 175; on Les Demoiselles, 128, 251; influence on Picasso, 159, 261; interchangeability approach and, 135; magic, involvement with, 169, 355n65;

Picasso, relationship with, x, 144, 227–28; on Picasso as “sorcerer’s apprentice,” 125; on Picasso’s art nègre period, 7, 9; Picasso’s birthday homage for (1903), 174, 175; on Picasso’s first encounter with African sculpture (Matisse’s Vili figure), 82–84, 346n3; portrait of, by Picasso, 144, 145; time travel as interest of, 40; on title of Les Demoiselles, 22, 23, 274; on understanding Picasso, 275; on women in Les Demoiselles, 27, 45, 258 Jacqueline with Crossed Hands (1954), 133, 134 James, William, 279 Jardin du Luxembourg, xv Jarry, Alfred: Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pata-­ physicien, 243–44; Guignol, 243; pataphysics and, 243; Père Obu (ficitious character) by, 51, 183; Picasso’s copy of manuscript by, 267; Ubu Roi, 244 John, Augustus, 9 jokes, 22–23, 62, 76, 160, 225, 232, 248, 263, 274, 279 Jukun masks (Nigeria), 149, 150, 151 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry, 10, 11, 13, 22–24, 56, 136, 145, 270, 342n13, 344n35, 344n50 Khokhlova, Olga (Picasso’s first wife), 155 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 56, 122 Kongo masks (Congo) (Plate 7),

16, 79, 114–15, 116, 118, 120, 120, 125–28, 126, 136, 137, 142, 142, 290–91 Kota figures (Gabon), 79, 92, 123–25, 124, 151, 234, 290 Kota shrine (Gabon), 122, 123, 124 Kuba mask (Congo), 147, 148 Lam, Wifredo, 169 Lassaigne, Jacques, 158–59 The Last Moments (1899), 160–61, 242–43 Laurencin, Marie, 23, 72, 105 Le Bon, Gustave, 280 Leighten, Patricia, 7, 159 Leipzig: Museum für Völker­ kunde, 121 Leiris, Michel, 132 Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa, 105 life cycle as theme, 119, 234, 240, 242, 243, 247, 280. See also birth/origin theme; death as theme Little Owl (1951–53), 155, 286, 290 Loango masks (Congo), 114, 128, 151 Louvre Museum, 101–7, 275, 277 Lovzeski, Mlle, xiii, 176, 177 Luba stool (Congo), 118–19, 126, 259–60 Mach, Ernst, 279 Madeline (mistress of Picasso), 254 magic, beliefs about, 138, 144, 157, 165–70, 181, 353n9, 354n57, 363n29

Mailer, Norman, 138, 343–44n33 Makonde masks (Tanzania), 79, 121, 131, 132, 136, 144, 145, 291 Málaga, Spain (Picasso’s hometown), 8, 162, 164, 167, 169, 181 Malinke (Mandinka) women (Senegal and Mali), 164 Malraux, André: on African sculptures, 89; on Closerie des Lilas bistro, 227; interview with Picasso (1937), 7, 10; on magic of image-making, 168; on “metamorphosis” in Picasso’s works, 257; “museum without walls” idea and, 267; on Picasso’s art nègre period, 9; on Picasso’s rebellious spirit, 106–7; on themes in Picasso’s works, 39, 137, 265; Trocadéro visit by Picasso and, 90; “unconscious,” use of term by, 354n57; works by: Picasso’s Mask, 137 Man, Woman, and Child (1907), 240, 254, 256, 277 Mandingo mask (Senegal), 115, 116 Manet, Édouard: Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, 35, 36; Olympia, 3, 35, 48–49, 172, 248 Manolo (Manuel Martínez Hugué), 182 Mariño, Armando, 54 masking in Picasso’s works, 74, 136–51, 176, 285. See also African masks; Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; specific African peoples index

423

mask to face development, 79, 118, 144, 145 Matisse, Henri: African art and, xi, xv, 7–10, 47, 81, 84, 85, 88, 102–4, 109, 119, 128, 138, 155, 225, 272–73, 282, 284, 346n1; anachronism and, 244–45; Bernheim-Jeune and, 249; Chinese and Egyptian sculpture and, 101, 104, 109; color used by, 54; compared to Derain, 43, 47; “cubism” term coined by, 135; Les Demoiselles and, 48–50; emotional and stylistic shifts in works by, 107; exchange of paintings (1907) with Picasso, 285; at L’Exposition coloniale (Marseille), 197; L’Humanité feminine magazine and, 190, 194; medieval art as interest of, 349–50n56; Paris apartment of, xv, 280; photographic sources utilized by, 16, 193, 194, 196, 209, 356n32, 362n15; on photography, 193; Picasso’s competition with, 21, 34, 48, 49, 89, 269, 278, 281, 284; primitivism and, 7–8, 190, 284; response to Les Demoiselles, 282–84; at Salon d’Automne (1906), xv; sexual ambiguity in works by, 209–10; the Steins and, 21, 84, 284; Stratz and, 151, 285; Tuareg images influencing, 194, 195, 198, 356n32; Vollard purchasing works from (1906), 21; works by: African- or

424

index

Asian-inspired sculptures, 89, 109; Bathers with a Turtle, 89, 274, 282–84; Blue Nude (Tableau no. III or Memory of Biskra), xvi, 46, 47–48, 73–74, 194, 261, 265, 278, 341n99; Bonheur de vivre, 21, 41, 43–45, 46, 46, 139, 249, 340n91, 341n99; Madame Matisse, 127, 127, 151; Marguerite, 274, 284–85, 292, 364n65; Nu couché I, 47; Standing Nude, 151, 194, 285, 286; Still Life with African Statue, 86, 86; Two Negresses (sculpture), 194, 356n32; La Vie (sculpture), 194; Woman with a Hat, 139. See also Vili figures Max Jacob (1907), 144, 145 McBreen, Ellen, 7–8, 341n92, 341n99, 351n26, 356n13, 356n30, 362n15 McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, 357n55 medieval art, xv, 8, 85, 94–99, 107, 222–23, 226–27, 260, 267, 275, 277, 279, 349n56 Mende masks (Sierra Leone), 139–41, 140 Mercure de France (journal), 40, 280 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 222 Mes Modèles (journal), 192, 196, 198, 279, 357n36 Metamorphosis model (1928), xiii, 153, 155, 289 Michelangelo: Aurore, 39; The Creation of Adam, 39, 42, 284, 285, 286; Dawn, 99, 261;

“Dusk” from tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici (cast), xiii, 98, 99; Dying Slave (cast), xiii, 98, 99, 260, 261; Sistine Chapel’s Isaiah, 42 mirroring, use of, 137, 176, 189–90, 204; mirrored reversals, 210–21 mixed race, 102, 104 modern art, 11–12, 13, 267, 293 Mon Bordel (1907), 253 monkeys, xiii, 8, 171, 234, 236, 240–41, 244 Moor on Prayer Rug (1895–96), 162, 163, 167 Morienval, Henri, 182, 184 Mouhot, Henri, 276 Moynihan, Laurie, 341n107 Musée du quai Branly (Paris), 348n48; Picasso Primitif exhibition (2017), 2, 5 Musée national du Moyen Âge (formerly Cluny Museum), xv Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): acquisition of Les Demoiselles (1939), 51, 341–42n110; centennial celebration of Les Demoiselles (2007), xii; Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition (1936), 2, 7, 290; “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art exhibition (1984), 4, 11, 92, 114 Muybridge, Eadweard, 217, 243 Nigeria. See Ibibio masks; Ijaw masks; Jukun masks Nimba masks. See Baga masks Nolde, Emil, 56, 122

Nu à la draperie (1906), 202 nude carrying a pot (1906 sketch), 188, 218 Nude Combing Her Hair (1906), 200, 200 Nude Crawling (1907), 241, 256, 257 nude culture, 190–92, 197, 199, 220, 356n18 Nude Doing Backbend (back view and profile, 1907), 33, 219 Nude with Bun (two studies, 1907), 79, 212 Nude with Bun, Walking (1906), 216, 219 Nude with Child (1906), 217 Nude with Raised Arms (The Avignon Dancer) (1907), 2, 51, 259, 289–90, 291 Nude Woman with Raised Arms (1907), 127, 127 Nudes in Profile, Walking (1906), 216, 219 occult. See magic, beliefs about Oceanic art: art nègre term and, xiii, 7; “childhood of humanity” associated with, 240; color in Picasso’s works associated with, 56, 128; Derain’s interest in, 44; Picasso and, 88, 277; sculptures, 56. See also Trocadéro Ethnography Museum odalisques, 47 Old Woman (1903), 239, 240 Olivier, Fernande, 20; adoption of child Raymonde, 257, 258, 277;

on African art acquisitions by artists, 151; on Apollinaire’s library, 269; on Bateau-Lavoir studio, 272; on Closerie des Lilas gatherings on Tuesdays, 227–28; in Les Demoiselles, 23, 72, 258, 344–45n41; Les Demoiselles references in her memoir, 22, 73; dress and appearance of, 71, 109, 176, 179–80, 232, 258; The Katzenjammer Kids cartoons and, 159–60; photograph of, 71, 108; Picasso, relationship with, 4, 20, 101, 142–43, 254, 281, 335n13; portraits of, by Picasso, 71, 141–42, 142, 151, 240, 344n39; revealing photography to be passion of Picasso, 63; Stein and, 71, 139, 228; on stolen Louvre objects, 106; time travel as interest of, 40; van Dongen’s portrait of, 62, 343n25; in Woman in Riding Jacket (1907), 176–80, 178; works by: Loving Picasso, 181–82 “Onze Kunst/Notre Art” [Our Art] (Flemish journal), 234 orientalist paintings, 34–35. See also individual artists and works origin as theme. See birth/origin theme; human evolution Ouled Nail culture, photograph of woman from (c. 1907), 47, 48 Ovid, 43

Pablo, Canon (Picasso’s uncle), 97 Parade Mask (1917), 285, 287 Paris: Au Lapin Agile (café), xiv–xv, 28, 42, 99–101, 100, 107, 110, 349n60; Baedeker’s 1907 tour guide, 90–91, 94; Bateau-Lavoir studios and neighborhood, x, xi, xiv, xv, 62, 101, 139, 143, 144, 228, 232, 257, 272, 364n65; Bernheim-Jeune gallery, 249; Bois de Boulogne, 173, 175, 178, 179, 180; Cirque d’hiver, 175; La Closerie des Lilas, xv, 28, 74, 227–28, 239, 243, 279; Cluny Abbey, 28, 96; as creative center, 278–79; as creative center of early 1900s, 146; French National Archives, 19; Galerie Berthe Weill, xi; Hôtel de Rohan, 19; Le Marais, 19; Notre-Dame Cathedral, 95–96, 110, 245. See also specific museums La Parisienne et figures exotiques (1906), 30, 49, 68, 69, 70–71, 90, 161, 234, 253, 263 Parody of Olympia with Junyer (1901), 48, 48–49, 172, 248 pataphysics, 243–44, 253 Pende “sickness” masks (Congo), 93, 122 Penrose, Roland, 274 Père Sauvage (shop), xv, 84 Le Petit journal illustré, 157, 290 Petit Palais (Paris) exhibition (1906), xv, 273 index

425

photography: of body in motion, 216–17; chronophotography, 243; Dahomey natives’ reaction to, 181–82; effect of technological revolution of, 278–79; fear of magical power of, 166; halftone screen technology and, 356n30; Picasso and, 63–64, 193–98, 267, 343n23 Picasso, Conchita (Pablo’s sister), 255, 256, 277 Picasso, Pablo: African masks and figures purchased by, 131, 132, 137, 151, 351n26; African postcard collection of, 197; Andalusian and Málaga roots of, 8, 162, 164, 167, 169, 181; art nègre period, 7, 9, 10; blue period, 56, 122, 272; children, views on, 212–13, 277; circle of intellectuals with whom Picasso associated, 22, 38, 85, 99, 101–2, 109, 135, 151, 157–58, 172, 181, 188, 193, 223, 227–28, 238, 241–42, 270, 273, 279–80; color, use of, 64, 128–29, 207; competitive nature of, 62–63, 278; on dating of his works, 80; on early success allowing later experimentation, 272; familial relationship with mother and other women, 25; financial situation allowing for time to work on Les Demoiselles, 20–21, 271–72, 281; as founder of cubism, 12, 225; height of, 21; immortality as concern of,

426

index

169; on life of artwork, xi, 1, 2; live models, discontinuing use of, 15, 64, 122–23, 196; magic, beliefs about, 138, 165–70; as l’Oiseau du Bénin, 153–55; on painter’s role and meaning of a painting, 52, 64, 81, 94, 137, 152, 185, 222, 243, 264; Paris apartment of (rue Ravignan), 19–20, 76, 78; personality of, xiii, 15, 62, 261; photograph of, 71, 108; photography as interest of and influence on, 63–64, 193–98, 204–5, 267, 343n23; portraiture and masking in works by, 74, 136–51, 176, 285; on prehistoric paintings, 251; recto-verso studies by, 220, 232, 242, 249–50; reputation of, xi, 9–10, 16, 33, 51, 78; rose period, 56, 122, 207, 272; on “the science of man,” 80; secrecy of, 14, 55, 106, 196, 267, 275; self-depictions (Plate 6), 116, 136–37, 236, 240–41, 254; sexual and racial ambiguity in works by, 209–10, 220–21; stolen Louvre statues purchased by, 105–7; surname choice by, 19, 25, 164; on surrealism, 266; titling of his paintings, 22; on Trocadéro Museum collection, 93–94; work process of, 30, 132, 271, 273–74, 342–43n20. For relationships with other individuals and influences on his art, see names of artists and specific art genres; for works

of art by Picasso, see titles of individual works Pieret, Honoré Joseph Géry, 105, 106 Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon (1907), 274, 275, 285 Poincaré, Henri, 243, 279 Polykleitos, wounded Amazon (1st–2nd century cast), xiii, 40, 97, 99 pornography and pedophilia, 25, 26, 257, 268 postcard from Picasso to the Steins (1907), 73–76, 231, 232 Poussin, Nicolas, 14 P. P. Caproni and Brothers (cast-making firm, Boston), 97–99 Pradier, James: Amazon, 173, 175 prehistoric history and art, 27, 70, 85, 251, 267, 280, 338n37 primitivism and “primitive” art: Cézanne and, 12, 341n107; childish thinking associated with, 40, 285; colonialist imagery and, 198; cubism and, 156; in Les Demoiselles, 7, 253, 263; Egyptian art and, 8, 261; European artists and, 12, 87–88; Gauguin and, 12, 39; geometric primitivism, 227; Heymann as art dealer of, 85; Matisse and, 7–8, 190, 284; medieval art and, 8, 226; Picasso and, 5–8, 40, 190, 280, 285; scope of art included in, 8, 104 Princet, Maurice, 243, 279 Profile Head (1907), 130

Profile of a Woman (1906–7), 178, 180 prostitutes. See brothels and bordellos Psamtik II (Egyptian pharaoh, 595–593 BCE), xiii, 97 Punu masks (Gabon), 93, 127, 127–28, 151, 276, 349n67 Pyanet, Victor, 95 race, xv, 30, 70, 102, 193, 236, 238–39; aboriginal as founding race, 248; racial ambiguity, 209–10; Stratz’s studies of, 183, 188–89, 192, 199, 202, 207, 235 race-linked parodies, 48–49, 243–44 racism, xiii, 4, 12, 70–71, 160, 161, 170–71, 187, 213; scientific racism and, 8, 210 Ratzel, Friedrich: Völkerkunde, 118–19 Raymonde (adopted child of Olivier and Picasso), 257, 258, 277, 339n52 Raymonde at a Desk (1907), 256, 257 Raynal, Maurice, 273 recto-versos, 217–20, 232, 242, 249–50. See also individual works regeneration theme. See birth/ origin theme Reims Annunciation group (cast c. 1211), xiii, xv, 94, 95, 96, 107, 110, 260 Réja, Marcel (pseudonym for Paul Meunier): Art by the Mad, 40

religious primacy of African art, 85, 119, 123, 234, 235, 254, 272 Reverdy, Pierre, 10 Richardson, John: on Les Demoiselles, 2, 9, 336n26, 344n33, 344n41; on Derain and exposure to African sculpture, 347n14; on German collectors of Picasso, 145; on Gertrude Stein portrait, 139; on Iberian art’s influence on Picasso, 104–5, 107; on Jacob-Picasso relationship, 144; on photographs providing Picasso with sources, 196; on Picasso as l’Oiseau du Bénin, 153; on Picasso’s ambivalence, 255; on stolen Louvre statues and their influence on Picasso, 106; on Uhde, 146 Richer, Paul, 188–89; Dialogue sur l’art et science, 202 Roché, Henri-Pierre, 228 rock paintings, 251, 286 Romanesque murals, 59 Roque, Jacqueline (Picasso’s second wife), 137; portraits of, 133, 134, 166, 285 Rouart, Eugène, 75, 242; L’Artiste et la société, 241–42 Roussel, Jules, 95 Rubin, William: on African art and Picasso, 11–12, 113, 127, 128, 132, 168, 337n57, 349n67; on compositional studies for Les Demoiselles, 30; on Les Demoiselles, 4, 56, 113, 121, 122, 132, 333–34n10, 342–43n20,

343n22; on Picasso’s visits to Trocadéro, 92; on Picasso’s working without models, 122–23; on primitivism and Picasso, 11, 226; on religion and magic in image-making, 168, 354n64; on Salmon’s portrait by Picasso, 143–44 Sacra Conversazione concept, 243 Salmon, André: on African art, 89, 102, 157–59; in Apollinaire short story, 101; on color lithography, 157–58; on cubism and Picasso’s role as originator, 128, 136, 225; on Les Demoiselles, xi, 44, 48, 57, 65–66, 74, 128, 159, 228, 252, 273; on Egyptian art and Picasso, 101–2; influence on Picasso, 261; Picasso, relationship with, x, 143, 227–28; on Picasso’s art nègre period, 7, 9; on Picasso’s first encounter with African sculpture (Matisse’s Vili figure), 81–82; portraits of, by Picasso, 143–44, 145; on stolen Louvre objects, 105; on Stratz and La Culture physique, 192; time travel as interest of, 40; on title of Les Demoiselles, 22, 24, 143; on women-dominated home life, 25; works by: “Histoire anecdotique du cubisme,” 143; La Jeune peintre française, 22, 143; Negro Art, 102 index

427

Salomé, xiii, 79, 162, 171, 172, 248 Salon d’Antin (Paris, 1916), 23 Salon d’Automne (Paris, 1905), 48 Salon d’Automne (Paris, 1906), xv, 38, 50 Salon des Indépendants (Paris, 1906), xvi, 44 Salon des Indépendants (Paris, 1907), xvi, 46–51, 73–75, 176, 276, 278 savagery, 5, 7, 12, 161, 253 Schneider, Pierre, 340n91 Schwartze, Thérèse: Sleeping Psyche (Plate 13), 207 Science and Charity (1897), 31, 242 science and math: art, sexual desire, and science, combined in images of women, 213, 217, 253, 357n55; hypothetical and creative aspects of, 243–44; painting as, 238 scientific racism, 8, 210 Seated and Standing Woman (1906), 213 Seated Female Nude (1908), 200 Seated Negro (1906), 163, 165 Seated Nude (1906–7), 209, 211 Seckel, Hélène, 338n36, 342n17, 346n49 Self-Portrait (1907) (Plate 6), 116, 136–37 Self-Portrait as Monkey (1903), xiii, 234, 236, 240–41 Seligman, Germain, 341–42n110 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 167–68 Serra, Cristina (Cuban lover of Picasso’s maternal grand­ father), 169

428

index

Serra, Juan Francisco Aurelio Picasso (Picasso’s uncle), 169 Sert i Badia, Josep Maria, 153 Setis I (Egyptian pharaoh), 234, 235, 237 sexuality: ambiguity in, 209–10, 220–21; in Les Demoiselles, 1, 3–5, 60, 159, 172–75, 181, 232, 250–54, 258, 263, 265, 277–78, 294; de Sade and, 25–26; norms of, 192–93; sexual encounter of a Caucasian and an African woman, photograph implying through nudity of, 189; sexual trauma depicted, 12; Stratz portraying, 125, 209–10, 237–38, 258; women riding horseback and, 175–76, 177, 179–80. See also vaginal themes sexually transmitted diseases, fear of, 3, 60, 116, 168, 198, 237 simian features and monkeys, xiii, 8, 171, 234, 236, 240–41, 244 sketchbooks of Picasso, 31–33, 137, 209, 217–20, 271, 275, 285, 298–302, 339n53; carnet 4, 75, 229; carnet 6, 258, 276; carnet 6 and its reconstruction, 14, 32, 339n52; carnet 9, 209, 211, 276; carnet 10, 339n50; carnet 14, 257, 293; dating of Les Demoiselles by reference to, 75–78; Rouart’s address in, 242; secrecy of, 14, 275 skull, leaves, infants (study, 1907), 123, 233, 234, 257, 280

skulls, 31, 99, 119, 123, 165, 229, 233, 234–35, 237, 257, 283, 285 Soffici, Ardengo, 75 Songye masks, 54 Sosa Dede (Dahomey royal carver), 56, 90, 91, 92, 108, 109, 110, 158, 162 Spain, 19, 104, 167, 170. See also Andalusian arts and culture; Iberian art; specific cities Spurling, Hilary, 346n10 Staller, Natasha, 354n40 Standing Male Figure (1907), 39, 87, 131, 132 Standing Nude (1907), 162–64, 163, 194 Stein, Gertrude: on African art and Picasso, 9, 11, 84–85, 87, 135, 164; on Apollonaire caricature by Picasso, 354n16; Bergson and, 279; on circle of intellectuals with whom Picasso associated, 228; on creative process of painting, 278; Les Demoiselles and, xiv, 4, 8, 42, 55, 67, 75, 270, 284, 343n20; funding Picasso, xi, 272; Honnecourt drawings and, 223; interchangeability approach and, 135; on The Katzenjammer Kids, 159; Matisse-Picasso competition and, 21, 284; Olivier and, 71, 139, 281; Paris apartment of, xv, 139; Picasso and, xv, 24–25, 75–76, 228, 281; on Picasso’s art nègre period, 7; portrait of, by Picasso, 21, 71, 138–39, 140, 148,

285; postcard (Easter greetings) from Picasso to, 73–76, 231, 232; purchasing carnet 10 from Picasso, 339n50; time travel as interest of, 40; Two Nudes figures reminiscent of, 190; on Uhde portrait by Picasso, 146; on van Dongen, 62; on Vollard, 147; works by: autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 228; Three Lives, 139 Stein, Leo: Les Demoiselles and, xi, 22, 343n20; Matisse-Picasso competition and, 21; Matisse’s Bonheur and, 21, 44, 139; Picasso and, xv, 75–76, 198, 228, 231; postcard (Easter greetings) from Picasso to, 73–76, 231, 232; Roché and, 228 Steinberg, Leo: on compositional studies for Les Demoiselles, 13, 30, 41, 180, 238; on Les Demoiselles, 3, 4, 41, 42, 114, 252, 253, 261, 333n10; on empathy of Picasso with portrait sitters, 138; on erotic reading of Les Demoiselles, 251; fear of sexually transmitted disease and prostitutes, 17–18; on influences on Picasso, 341n107; on mirror reversal (called “shot/counter-shot”), 217; on Picasso’s brush stroke in self-portrait, 116, 137; on “sexual charge” of Les Demoiselles, 60; works by: “The Philosophical Brothel,” 236, 237

Steiner, Rudolf, 244 Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), 13, 286–89, 287 Stratz, Carl Heinrich (CharlesHenri), 199–204; abstraction and geometrical concerns in, 226–27; beauty, studies and graphs of, 70, 192, 202–3, 207, 208, 235; body in motion as subject of photographs, drawings, and diagrams in, 216–17; Burma water carrier (drawing), 218; children’s growth chart, 212, 216; color study of women (Plate 12), 207; compared to Fortier, 197; Duchamp and, 151, 285; Eberlein, Gustav: cast of woman, 205, 206; in L’Étude académique study, 190–92; family groups in, 254; French translation of works by, 188, 358n64; German woman diagram, 202, 203; global brothel presented by, 236; Hokusai, Katsushika: Japanese bathing scene, 204, 205; in Holland and the Hague, 357n51; human figure diagrams and studies, 202, 202; influence on Matisse and other painters of the period, 151, 285; influence on or similarity to Picasso, 31, 41, 43, 79, 164, 188–89, 194, 196, 199–200, 204–5, 209, 226, 235, 247, 261, 271, 279, 341n99, 355n8; mirrored reversals and, 210; models, postures, and gestures chosen for works of,

204–10; musculature studies (Plate 10), 78, 99, 188, 200, 209; pedophilia and, 257; racial studies (Plates 14 and 15), 188–89, 199, 210, 235, 239, 244, 250; Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes [The Racial Beauty of Women], 185, 187–89, 202, 207, 355n9, 357nn56–57; Die Schönheit des weiblichen Körpers [The Beauty of Women’s Bodies], 188, 358n68; sexuality portrayed by, 125, 209–10, 237–38, 258; skulls of newborns, diagrams of, 237; triads of women as subject matter of, 212; women walking, drawing of, 78, 219; photographs in volumes of: ancient figure, 202–4, 204, 207; Andalusian girl, 210, 211; Asante woman (Ghana), 194, 195; Batak woman (Indonesia), 43, 201; Burma water carrier, 151, 216, 218; Colonna Venus, 204, 204; Congo woman, 194; Dahomey amazons, 186, 197; Danish woman, 200, 201; Dutch woman, 190, 191; fourteen-year-old girl, 200, 201; French woman, 205, 206; German girl, 210, 211; German woman, 125, 202, 203, 205, 206; girl, 212, 216; girl braiding hair, 78, 200, 200; girl kneeling, 205, 206, 213, 257; graffiti on figures, 220, 220; Hindu woman, 218; Hottentot woman, 211; index

429

Stratz, Carl Heinrich (CharlesHenri) (continued ) Italian woman and girl, 210, 214, 258; Japanese mothers and children, 217; Japanese women bathing, 210, 212, 214; Java woman, 194, 195, 200; Light and Dark Skin, 186, 189, 210, 275; male and female skeletal structure, 202, 202; male and female skulls, 235, 237; Moor woman (Algeria), 200, 201, 257; motion study of backbend, 202, 216, 219; Parisian woman, 69, 70; Sandwich Islands woman, 210, 212, 214; Senegal girl, 200, 201, 213, 257; Siamese women, 190, 213; skulls of newborns, 235, 237; Sri Lankan mother and child, 217; Sudanese girl, 186, 189; Togo women, 215, 260; Tuareg woman, 194, 356n32; Vienna girl, 99, 200, 200; woman washing hair pose, 205, 206; Zulu girls, 212, 215 Studies of André Salmon (1907), 143, 145 Study of a Torso (1893–94), 97 Study of Black Man (1895–97), 163, 170 Study of Face and Plants (1906–7), 123, 233, 234, 257, 280 Study of Man (1907) (Plate 3), 111, 114 Study of Nude (1906–7), 223, 224 Studies of Seated Woman, Horse (1906), 274, 275–76

430

index

Study of the Head of a Woman (1906), 82, 83, 272 Study of Two Nudes (1906), 9, 30, 82, 83, 189, 272 Study of Woman (1906), 82, 83, 127, 225, 272 La Suite des Saltimbanques (1905), 171, 173 surrealism, 59, 266, 267 synecdoche, 225, 245 Tahitian myths, 239 Takadu (king), 234, 235, 237 Theosophical Society’s lecture series: Evolution, Christ, and Modern Spirituality, 244 theosophy, 244, 253 Three Figures under a Tree (1907) (Plate 5), 121, 212 Three Figures with Lettering (1907), 229, 230, 232 Three Nudes (1906), 30, 49 Three Standing Nudes (two studies, 1906), 210, 212, 212, 214 Three Women (1908), 62, 72, 73, 284, 343n23 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid): The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso exhibition, 137 Tilburg, Patricia, 355n18 time machine aspects of Les Demoiselles, 40–43, 244, 253, 266, 267 Tournier, Michel, 107 Trocadéro Ethnography Museum, exhibits and Picasso’s visits, 6,

89–97, 91, 107, 110, 122, 127, 131, 133, 155, 158, 162, 168, 184, 239, 276–77, 279, 347n16, 347n39, 348n40 Tuaregs, 162, 164, 167, 170, 194, 198 Turner, Elizabeth, 355n8, 356n16, 356n20, 356n32 The Twins (Brothel Scene) (1905), 21, 26, 41 Two Brothers (1906), 217 Two Children (1906), 216 Two Infants (1907), 256, 257 Two Nudes (1906) (Plate 9), 30, 42, 189–93, 217, 252, 259, 275, 356n32 Two Nudes Holding Hands (1906), 211 Two Nude Women (two studies, 1906), 187, 211 Two Peasant Women (1906), 187 Two Women (1906), 42, 82, 122, 187, 189, 207, 217, 275 Tzara, Tristan, 87, 135 Uelle mask (Congo), 115 Uhde, Wilhelm, 7, 9, 75, 268, 270; portrait of, by Picasso, 145–46, 147, 285 University of Zürich’s Ethnographic Museum, 116 Utrillo, Miguel, 340n69 Vaginal Environment (1903), 245, 246, 249 vaginal themes, 5, 18, 24, 245–51, 253–54, 266, 277–78 Vai masks (Sierra Leone), 139–41, 140

Vallentin, Antonina, 291–92 van Dongen, Guus (August) and Dolly (Augusta), photograph of (1907), xiii, 29, 52–53, 53, 60–68, 72–73, 76, 80, 254, 257, 258, 264, 292, 343n21 van Dongen, Guus (August) and Dolly (Augusta), photograph of (1908), 73 van Dongen, Kees, 52–53, 62, 249 van Gogh, Vincent, 12 Varnedoe, Kirk, 54 Vauxcelles, Louis, 47, 135 Velázquez, Diego, 14, 50, 78; Las Meninas, 35, 339n61 Venus. See Botticelli, Sandro; Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Verne, Jules: Around the World in Eighty Days, 40 La Vie (1903), 161, 240, 241, 242–43, 254 Vignola, Amédée, 193, 194, 196, 198, 356n30 Vili figures and masks (Congo): masks used for healing and divination, 120; Matisse’s Vili figure, 82, 102–4, 119, 155, 225, 272–73, 284; meaning and significance of, 88, 121, 148, 347n67; Picasso’s exposure to Matisse’s Vili figure, 9, 10, 30, 47, 70, 81–87, 110, 272–73, 277 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 95 Virgin Mary, 57, 245, 250, 254 Vlaminck, Maurice de, 45, 85, 88, 156, 158, 346n1 vodun [voodoo] arts, 255–57

Vollard, Ambroise: as art dealer for Degas, 292; as art dealer for Matisse, 21; as art dealer for Picasso, 20–21, 146–49, 271–72; portrait of, by Picasso, 147, 148–49, 285; reaction to Les Demoiselles, 75, 270 Walter, Marie-Thérèse, 149–51, 150 Wells, H. G.: The Time Machine, 40, 244 Wilde, Oscar, 172 Wilhelm Uhde (1909–10), 145, 147, 285 Wilson, Fred, 54 Woman at the Fountain (1906), 216, 218 Woman Carrying Pot (two studies, 1906), 216, 218 Woman in Profile with Pony Tail (1907), 222–25, 224 Woman in Riding Jacket (1907), 176–80, 178 Woman in the Bois de Boulogne (1907), 176–80, 178, 232 Woman in the Garden (1929–30), 155, 283 Woman with Arms Raised (1907), 220, 220 Woman with Bent Head (1906), 141, 142 Woman with Fan (1907), 132, 179 Woman with Pears (1909), 142, 142 Woman with Raised Arms (1906), 127, 189, 200, 203 Woman with Raised Arms (1907), 200, 203

women: as amazons, 170, 172, 173–74, 175–81, 177–78, 185, 234; blue as color of Virgin Mary and, 57; conflation of sexual and progenitor roles, 18, 41–42, 61, 64, 242, 245, 247, 249, 251, 258, 263; cultural identity of, 187, 262–63, 264; gender identity of, 175; Picasso’s fear of destructive power of, 3, 60; Picasso’s treatment of, xiii, 5, 68, 282, 335n28; race and, 187, 199; riding horseback, xiii, 175–76, 177, 179–80; science, art, and sexual desire, combined in images of, 213, 217, 253, 357n55; study of four women (1906), 29, 30, 42, 189; study of women, rear and side views (1907) (Plate 11), 209; in vernissage study, 21. See also brothels and bordellos; sexuality; vaginal themes women of Les Demoiselles: African demoiselles (two figures on right), 2, 4, 41, 51, 52, 56, 58, 60, 65–70, 79, 118–19, 122, 132, 235, 238, 259–60, 262, 263; amazon women in Picasso’s mind at time of painting, 180; asymmetrical features in, 125, 157, 200; author’s designation for, xii; Caucasian/European demoiselles, 16, 40–41, 58, 60, 65, 68, 78, 106, 236, 238, 248, 250, 260, 262–63, 343n21; crouching African figure (bottom right), 16, 56, 58, index

431

women of Les Demoiselles: crouching African figure, (continued) 66–70, 75, 79, 86, 96, 110, 120, 122–25, 129, 135, 165, 172, 176, 225, 229, 236, 253, 265, 275, 284, 285; crouching African figure, studies for, 212, 239, 240–41, 246, 247–48, 258, 259, 285, 290; from different geographic places and times, 8, 24, 30, 40–43, 50–51, 123, 236–37, 238–40, 252, 258, 259–62, 263, 266, 277; dress and hair of, 262–63; Egyptian/Asian demoiselle (leftmost figure), 16, 36, 40, 42, 56, 58, 59, 65, 68, 78–79, 95, 96, 102, 200–202,

432

index

210, 229, 234, 236, 238, 261–62, 284; as “every woman,” 24, 45, 51, 253, 259, 266; identities and distinguishing features of, 1, 21–24, 41, 67, 259–62; order of painting of figures, 60–61, 65; position of each figure, 22, 236; resemblances to women of Picasso’s acquaintance, 24, 344–45n41; second from left Caucasian/European demoiselle, 42, 56, 58, 68, 78, 102, 200, 202, 260–61, 262; size of, 21, 45, 101, 109–10; standing African figure (on right), 67, 117, 118, 132, 229, 236, 259–60; “two-sidedness” of crouching figure, 124; ugliness

of faces, 48. For more general entries about Les Demoiselles, see the heading for the title of the painting Wood, John: An Amazon (frontispiece illustration), xiii, 31, 171–72, 172 woodcarving, Picasso’s engagement in, 132–33 Yoruba masks, 349n67 Young Woman in Profile (1906), 190, 191 Zervos, Christian, x, 9, 14, 56 Zola, Émile: Germinal, 230–32 Zuloaga, Ignacio, 38