Reconcilable Differences: ’s Nude Woman in Front of a Statue as a

Thematic Roadmap to the Suite Vollard

Clara Nuckols AR 471 December 19, 2016

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I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers. It’s not up to me to make the choice. (qtd. in Coppel 25)

Created at the beginning of Picasso’s Suite Vollard, Nude Woman in Front of a Statue is a template of sorts encapsulating the nature of the entire Suite with its inconsistencies, contrasts between darkness and light, and raw beauty (fig. 1). Two women, “muse and sculpture,” are presented as an homage to the central theme of the project—the power of creation in art and love. This visual contrast is striking and intriguing, for one wonders why are the two women presented in this way? Who are they and why is there such a distinction? These questions are invited by this early print and remain to be explored as

Picasso creates more conflicting, yet complementary, works that play with these juxtapositions: the artist and the model, love and art, lightness and darkness. This print’s complexity defies any precise definition, but can be understood through its relationship with the other prints and the life and character of the artist, in particular his relationship with his mistress, Marie-Thérèse, and his obsession with neoclassicism.

A female figure, standing in contrapposto on the left, evokes ancient sculpture.

Her body is graceful and supple, but strong. Cross-hatching darkens her face while also highlights her body. Across from her, another nude woman sits, her back curved and body leaning toward the center of the composition. Fine lines define her hair, facial features, and chest. These delicate strokes contrast with the dramatic cross-hatching on the other figure. Although one of Picasso’s simpler prints, without a story or complicated

3 composition, Nude Woman in front of a Statue is nevertheless complex. Created in the early years of Picasso’s work on the set, its importance lies in its relation to the other prints of the Suite.

Picasso completed the last of the Suite Vollard’s one hundred prints in 1937.

Named after Picasso’s patron and dealer, who commissioned the project, and yet there is no record of payment, for it was supposedly funded by an exchange of paintings. The intention of the prints as a series is also unclear, and complicated by Vollard’s death in an automobile accident before the ensemble could be released for sale. Vollard’s sudden death put the project on hold, and the prints collected dust in the dealer’s storeroom and thus remained ignored by scholars. The heterogeneous nature of the prints challenges the notion of their forming a true set, and scholars and viewers alike struggle to make sense of their diversity in content and style. The series covers a broad range of subjects, from the classical imagery of sculptures and Greek gods to violent creatures and scenes of lovemaking. Their experimental nature is also perplexing, with Picasso using a range of processes, such as , drypoint, and sugar- lift aquatint.

Further inconsistencies appear in the prints’ style and content, suggesting that

Picasso originally did not intend to have an unfolding narrative or ordered sequence within the one hundred prints. It was not until 1956 that the art historian Hans Bolliger published the prints and organized them in thematic sections: “The Battle of Love,” “The

Sculptor’s Studio,” “Rembrandt,” “The Minotaur,” and “The Blind Minotaur.” The remaining twenty-seven prints were labeled “Miscellaneous,” and include Nude Woman

4 in front of a Statue and three portraits of Vollard. These “extraneous” works are puzzling, and challenge Bolliger’s thematic grouping. Bolliger conceded that “[a]t first sight the variety of themes treated might suggest incoherence. However, when the sheets are exhibited together, one is struck by the unity of underlying implication and tone” (qtd. in

Florman 71). Bolliger’s comment on the prints cohesion is valid, yet his decision to divide the works in sections does little to support one’s understanding of the prints as a whole. Considering Nude Woman in Front of Statue as a starting point for the Suite

Vollard, while keeping in mind Bolliger’s order, helps our interpretation and understanding of the other works. The decision not to place it in one of his thematic sections says something about the striking nature of Picasso’s work—its complexity, its fluidity and cohesive nature. For Daniel Robbins, the prints in the Suite Vollard “are all related, not directly as by theme, or as they were illustrations (many, undoubtedly were rejected as illustrations), but by the thread of Picasso’s personality.” Nude Woman in

Front of a Statue does just this, and defies Bolliger’s categories. It stands alone, revealing

Picasso’s personality, and creative and sensual powers that dominate the entire Suite. The subject matter fits into the theme of the Sculptor’s Studio, which is composed of forty-six and makes up the largest sub-section of the Suite Vollard. Hans Bolliger admitted that “[a]mong the twenty-seven sheets that are not included in any of the cycles, there are a few that could easily be connected with one of the main themes. . . . And in their subject matter, sheets 6 and 7 are closely related to the Sculptor cycle” (Bolliger xiii). The works, including print number six, Nude Woman in Front of a Statue, capture the relationship between artist and model, artwork and muse in a classical context, referencing antiquity with the ivy garlands, classical busts, and wreathed pedestals,

5 creating a space of Apollonian harmony. Soft and lucid lines define the figures and evoke neoclassical styles to create peaceful, idealized images.

The print, Sculptor and his Model before a Window (fig. 2), is a representation of this classical imagery and illustrates the traditional process of the artist looking at the model and creating his masterpiece. A sculptural female figure stands in the left side of the composition, her body in profile and facing the male artist, who is focused on her, while his hand simultaneously grazes a small sculpture in front of him. The relationship between artist and model is presented to the viewer. The contrast in the surface treatment, the model covered in dark, harsh cross-hatchings and the artist and sculpture defined by clear lines, draws the viewer to the scene being depicted. The black cross-hatchings on the face of the figure on the left diverts our eyes, like the artist, to the woman’s sumptuous physique.

The style and content of the print are similar to that of Nude Woman in front of a

Sculpture, which introduces the theme of the relationship between model, sculpture, and artist through a simpler composition. The central focus on the representation of the women and classical motifs draws our attention to this subject and sets the stage for later prints, connecting the depiction to the artist’s life in the early 1930s. The image is autobiographical: the Grecian-like model correlates with Picasso’s renewed interest in classicism, sculpture, and new love affair with his young muse and mistress, Marie-

Thérèse. The juxtaposition of the figures, in style and content, also expose the personality of the artist and his signature artistic style.

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The quotation of classical sculpture (fig. 3) traces back to the artist’s “classical period” of the teens and twenties. At a young age in art schools, Picasso was surrounded by plaster casts of Ancient Greek and Roman statues, and practiced copying these masterpieces. Picasso retained memories of these early studies, which he evoked sporadically in the 1920s, in stark contrast to his cubist works. His drypoint from 1921,

Three Women at the Fountain (fig. 4), is an example of his retreat into classical style, with the reference to ancient sculpture and emphasis on voluptuously modeled bodies.

The three female figures make up the entire composition, and the focus is drawn to their bodies and their interactions. The round and full figures, with draped clothing, are sculptural and evoke the bodies of classical sculptures. The amphorae that two of them hold are also reminders of Greco-Roman tradition.

Picasso’s retreat into a classical style, as in Three Woman at the Fountain, when considered in relation to his cubist works of the same period, is revealing of the artist’s stylistic exploration. Studies (fig. 5) is painting from 1920 that combines six miniature still lifes with four studies of classical figures. Picasso’s bringing classical style into his cubist experimentation reflects his artistic belief that for his creative process, the art of the past is fully relevant to the art of the present. Picasso defended his resorting to different stylistic choices when he declared in 1923 that “[w]henever I have had something to say, I have said it in a manner in which I felt it ought to be said. Different motives inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress, but an adaptation of the idea one wants to express and the means to express that idea” (qtd. in Florman 5).

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While classicism is present in his early works, it also plays an essential role in the

Suite Vollard—as throughout his oeuvre. For John Ferguson Picasso, “kept throughout his life the sense of form and outline, a love of beauty which, however sensual it becomes in his hands, retains a certain aloofness, and this balance for which the Greeks were always striving and which keeps Picasso from the excess in which others of his lesser contemporaries indulged” (Ferguson 183).

This “aloofness” translates into Picasso’s representation of his mistress, Marie-

Thérèse. His first interactions with the young model shows the artist’s initial attachment fueled by his combined artistic and sexual desires. In 1927, Picasso first encountered the

18-year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and is recorded saying to her: “You have an interesting face. I would like to do your portrait. I have a feeling we will do great things together”

(qtd. in Richardson 11). The subsequent relationship was built on this unsteady foundation, the dangerous melding of art and love, all of which is recorded in the Suite

Vollard.

The themes of Marie-Thérèse as a model and Picasso’s relationship with her are introduced in Nude Woman in Front of a Statue, through these two opposing representations. The statuesque and strong figure on the left is juxtaposed with the soft and submissive “model.” The perceived separate identities of the women, as art and model, are challenged by the composition, and the inclusion of a “gray area”—an zone of left figure’s dark cross-hatching on the that disrupts the right figure’s soft lines. The connection of the two “different” women makes one question their identities: who is the model and who is the sculpture? Which one is Marie-Thérèse?

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The identity of the classical figure, earlier understood as a classical sculpture, can be read differently for it is challenged by the physique of the present model, Marie-

Thérèse. Her statuesque, robust figure initially attracted Picasso, and the figure on the left may be a representation of Marie-Thérèse in true form. The sculptural figure on the left is contrasted to the soft, lucid female that has the signature face of the model, and alludes to the artist’s experimentation in depicting Marie-Thérèse. In Picasso and Marie-Thérèse:

L’Amour Fou, John Richardson explains their relationship: “[s]he became the catalyst for some of his most exceptional work, from groundbreaking paintings to an inspired return to sculpture in the 1930s, according her an almost mythic stature and earning her immortality as an art historical subject” (Richardson 30). At the Château de Boisgeloup,

Picasso’s created his signature white plaster heads (fig. 6), “composed of the organic, sexualized protuberances that fused the forehead and the nose” (Coppel 29). The juxtaposition of the image and the gray area, leaves the work—and the Suite—mysterious and open to interpretation.

Another print in the Sculptor’s Studio of the Suite Vollard, Sculptor and Kneeling

Model (fig. 7), presents a narrative with two figures facing each other in front of a window. The v-shaped composition is comparable to that of Nude Women in Front of a

Statue. The bodies of the figures touch each other, yet there is a distance and a sense of longing as the artist gazes at his model’s face, which is cast down and covered by dark lines. The nude sculpture, present in the previous prints, is now gone and the artist,

Picasso “the creator,” is lost in the body and beauty of his muse.

The emotions that this print convey capture the overwhelming problem Picasso faced in the process of making and representing art—his struggle to separate his fixation

9 with a woman’s beauty and his artistic creation. Stephen Coppel believes that “[f]or

Picasso the artist’s dilemma is the contrast between the created work and the reality; the impossibility of making a sculpture, or indeed any work of art, so perfect it could compete with life itself. The created work therefore can only be a fictive version of reality but one so powerful in expression it can induce a new vision” (Coppel 30). This overarching question is originally introduced by Nude Women in Front of Statue, through the presence of the sculpture and the model. With this print, the theme of the gaze appears in a new way as Picasso tries to include himself, “the creator,” in this representation. Unable to make a perfect sculpture, he creates a new foil with a wistful gaze.

Picasso’s fascination with Rembrandt, as can be seen in Rembrandt and Woman with a Veil (fig. 8), intermingles with the themes art and love to reveal his artistic style, inconsistent reading of past artistic masterpieces, and what Harold Bloom has called “the anxiety of influence.” Like Nude Woman in Front of a Statue, Rembrandt and Woman with a Veil is biographical. Picasso’s decision to emulate the works of past artists, like

Rembrandt, elevates his ego and self-identity and presents him as a superior “creator.”

Nude Woman in Front of a Statue introduces Picasso’s interest in quoting the art of the past. The sculptural nature of the figure on the left, evokes classical Venuses, and the delicate lines on the figure on the right is reminiscent of Ingres’s neoclassical drawings and her elongated body posed with her back curving and buttocks facing forward, evokes Ingres Grande Odalisque. As it turns out, Picasso had been engaging with the works of this artist well before the Suite Vollard. In 1907, Picasso created a study After Ingres’s “Grande Odalisque”(fig. 9), in which he made the neoclassical

10 masterpiece his own through his colorful composition and cubist style. This interpretation allowed him to assert his superior abilities as an artist who can update canonical works, as Gert Schiff put it, recreating “the past as a living present. This alone among his many achievements secures his place among the immortals”(qtd. in Marrinan 756). A drawing from 1920, Three Bathers Reclining by the Shore (fig. 10), is a later example of Picasso’s

“quoting” Ingres’s style. The composition is simple, with the focus on the outlines of three naked women. The soft and lucid lines are also characteristic of the classical prints in Picasso’s Suite Vollard.

Opposition manifests itself in Picasso’s treatment of the theme of the Minotaur, which features the contrast of light and darkness. The print Minotaur Caressing a

Sleeping Woman (fig. 10) is a foil to the Apollonian setting of the Sculptor’s Studio, and represents sexual violence, irrationality, and chaos. As in Nude Woman in front of a

Statue, the clash of the figures is highlighted by the surface treatment juxtaposing harsh crosshatching and smooth lines. The print’s subject matter contributes to the Suite’s overarching meaning as it presents another manifestation of the artist’s personality—

Picasso as a predator. The exploration of this threatening half-human creature exposes the dark side of Picasso’s love affair with Marie-Thérèse, the stress, anxiety of an affair that eventually destroyed his marriage. For Deborah Wye, “the mythic Minotaur became

Picasso’s alter ego…[and] gave him a vehicle for depicting sexuality and violence, and for expressing rage and guilt” (Wye 46).

So then, what do the Minotaur, Rembrandt, and classical sculpture have to do with an image of two nude women? A consideration of the Suite Vollard along with

Picasso’s early work vividly reveals the conflicting, yet complementary, nature of the

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Suite and exposes the artist’s raw emotions and what drives him: sexual desire, frustration, and creative obsession—all of which contribute to the fulfillment of Picasso’s ultimate purpose—artistic creation.

Nude Woman in Front of a Statue, and the entire Suite Vollard, form an early visual diary of Picasso’s personal and artistic tensions. A retrospective installation of

Picasso’s works in 1932 at the Galleries Georges Petit in Paris, reflected the artist’s awareness of the power of his emerging artistic style. The works, grouped not by chronology but by contrasting styles, produced a “kaleidoscopic effect” (Cowling 14).

The juxtaposition of neoclassical images with Surrealists works was shocking—just as is the diversity of the subjects of the Suite Vollard. As Elizabeth Cowling writes: “Far from creating an image of steady, coherent evolution, Picasso chose to present his career as one marked by dramatic and irrational changes and extraordinary diversity, and as moving not in progressive, linear fashion, but to and fro and round and round, like memory” (Cowling 15). The Suite Vollard ultimately records these tensions that define

Picasso’s career as he tries to come to terms with the art of the past while reshaping the way the twentieth century sees and experiences art.

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Sources Cited

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Bolliger, Hans. Picasso for Vollard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1956.

Cohen, Janie. “Picasso’s Dialogue with Rembrandt’s Art.” In Isadora Rose-de Viejo, Etched on the Memory: The Presence of Rembrandt in the Prints of Goya and Picasso. Amsterdam and London: The Rembrandt House Museum with Lund Humphries, 2000. 80–122.

Coppel, Stephen. Picasso Prints: The Vollard Suite. London: Press, 2012.

Cowling, Elizabeth. Picasso: Style and Meaning. London: Phaidon, 2002.

Robbins, Daniel. “The Vollard Suite.” Picasso's Vollard Suite: From the Collection of Dartmouth College Museum & Galleries. Hanover, NH: The Museum, 1980. 5–11.

Florman, Lisa Carol. Myth and Metamorphosis: Picasso’s Classical Prints of the 1930s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

Galassi, Susan Grace. “Picasso’s Odalisque” Source: Notes in the History of Art 11.3/4 (1992): 34–38.

Marrinan, Michael. “Picasso as an ‘Ingres’ Young Cubist.” The Burlington Magazine 119.896 (1977): 756–63.

“The Minotaur.” John Szoke Gallery: Works on Paper of Picasso and Munch. http://www.johnszoke.com/essays/the-minotaur [accessed 15 December 2016]

Picasso, Pablo, John Richardson, and . Picasso and Marie- Thérèse: L’Amour Fou. New York, NY: Gagosian Gallery, 2011.

“Pablo Picasso. The Source (Three Women at the Fountain) (La Source [Trois femmes à la fontaine]), 1921, published 1929.” The Museum of Modern Art. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/70105 [accessed 19 December 2016]

“Pablo Picasso, Three Bathers Reclining by the Shore.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/483419 [accessed 19 December 2016]

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“Parian Marble Statue of Venus.” British Museum. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx? objectId=460005&partId=1 [accessed 19 December 2016]

Wye, Deborah, and Pablo Picasso. A Picasso Portfolio: Prints from the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.

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Figures

Fig. 1. Pablo Picasso, Nude Woman in front of a Statue, 4 July 1931, Boisgeloup. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art (Bolliger 6). [colby.edu/museum]

Fig. 2. Pablo Picasso, Sculptor and His Model Before a Window, 31 March 1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art (Bolliger 59). [colby.edu/museum]

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Fig. 3. Statue of Venus, 1st-2nd century BC Roman version of a Greek original of the 4th century BC, Marble. London: British Museum. [britishmuseum.org]

Fig. 4. Pablo Picasso, The Source (Three Women at the Fountain), 1921. Drypoint. New York: Museum of Modern Art. [moma.org]

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Fig. 5. Pablo Picasso, Studies, 1920. Oil on canvas. Paris: Musée Picasso. [Florman 8-9]

Fig. 6. Pablo Picasso, Female bust (Marie-Thérèse), 1932. Plaster. Paris: Musée Picasso. [Coppel 29]

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Fig. 7. Pablo Picasso, Sculptor and Kneeling Model, 8 April 1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art (Bolliger 69). [colby.edu/museum]

Fig. 8. Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt and Woman with a Veil, 31 January 1944. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art (Bolliger 36). [colby.edu/museum]

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Fig. 9. Pablo Picasso, After Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, 1907–1908. Pencil, watercolor, and gouache on paper. Paris: Musée Picasso. [Galassi 35]

Fig. 10. Pablo Picasso, Three Bathers Reclining by the Shore, 1920. Graphite on paper. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [metmuseum.org]

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Fig. 11. Pablo Picasso, Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman, 18 June 1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art (Bolliger 93). [colby.edu/museum]