22 Picasso and Music

PICASSO AND MUSIC ural of artistic gestures – the line. why bother doing it?” Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was an Cubism in many ways defined artist of such extraordinary vision and 20th century modernism, represent- originality that it is impossible to imag- ing a seemingly definitive break with ine the 20th century without him; his romanticism of the previous century. forceful personality laid claim to the Radically diverse factors contributed time in which he lived. Singularly pro- to cubism’s development: painterly re- lific, both in quantity of output and di- action to the work of Cezanne; a new versity of styles, Picasso worked in all awareness of non-European tribal art; the artistic media of his day, from draw- utilization of the vernacular and the in- ing, painting, sculpture, and printmak- vention of collage. ing to ceramics, tapestry and photog- Discovery of the masks and sculp- raphy. He also wrote poetry, published tures from Africa and Pacific Islands two plays, and created stage designs was essential to Picasso’s work in the and costumes for ground-breaking the- century’s first decade, as boldly evi- An encounter with a Picasso exhibit atrical productions. No matter what denced in his Cubist masterpiece of can be overwhelming, the hyperac- the genre, Picasso left his mark. Like 1907, Les demoiselles d’Avignon. The tive imagination and virtuosity dazzle a genie that morphs into the shape of result of multiple sketches, outlines, one so. The artist dominates us imme- his vessel, Picasso seems to magically compositional edits and redos, this is a diately, almost takes us by force. The project himself into each medium that work that is truly rehearsed and staged: electricity of the paintings radiates out. he tackles. the painting’s interior scene of a Span- Hence the delight of entering the Me- Born in Malaga, Spain to a bour- ish brothel reveals five nude women, nil Collection’s exhibition of drawings, geois family, Picasso arrived in Paris as appropriately framed by a curtain. Picasso The Line. Absent the bold col- the new century began. In the coming There are two studies for Demoi- ors, the imposing canvasses. Instead, decades, the city thrived as a cosmopol- selles from 1907 on view at the Menil: we enter a space of quiet intimacy. itan hotbed of international cross-pol- in the first, a compositional sketch, Drawings invite dialogue. The Self- lination. Emigré painters, composers, the essential curtain is present, cross- Portrait of 1918 on the back wall of the writers and performers mingled with hatched, and pulled back by a semi- exhibit beckons, the intent gaze of the the native French, and a radical new robed woman standing with left arm artist draws us closer. It is a gaze we modernism emerged that left no stone upraised; the other four nude women know well from painted self-portraits unturned. Visual art, literature, theater, are also placed in poses analogous to both earlier and later, from photos of dance and music were each the staging the final painting. But, the drawing Picasso throughout his life – those im- ground of revolutions that would im- includes at its center a sixth figure, a posing eyes with their magnetic pull. pact artists for the next 100 years and seated interloper. Despite the absence But here, in this drawing, all process beyond. of facial features, we feel, in the tilt of is exposed. The erasures, the soft faint- From the ateliers of Montmartre, the head and the forward lean of this ness of shadow, the sharper lines that where the painter worked in proxim- body, the voyeuristic male gaze. The are retraced; the darkening around the ity to Juan Gris and Georges Braque, paper reveals layers of erased lines, left eye, which intensifies the young to expatriate Gertrude Stein’s rue de evidence of movement and thought; man’s stare. We feel the presence of Fleurus salon, Picasso was at the nexus the five women are decisively outlined the artist’s hand, and this immediacy of this creative activity. Between 1904 with a heavy hand, but the seated male redefines our relationship to both work and the 1920’s, Picasso’s work evolved is not. It is as though we can see the art- and creator. with startling rapidity, moving through ist removing him from the final com- Drawings leave nowhere to hide. the varying stages of cubism to the position before our eyes. Picasso’s sleight-of-hand virtuosity in stylistic turn towards neo-classicism. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon other media can have the artifice of Sometimes within the span of one year broke radically with the tradition of staged theater. Stripped of the formal- radical contrasts of style co-exist, as the female nude. Softness and sensu- ity of painting, Picasso with pencil in each visual discovery leads the artist to ality have been replaced by defiance, hand leads us into his studio; we find respond with yet another. Continuous angularity and a sense of impending ourselves miraculously one-on-one invention was Picasso’s mode of exis- danger. In the painting, two central with the master, alone in a room, fol- tence. As the artist would put it, “If you women stare out at us boldly, unsmil- lowing the most spontaneous and nat- know exactly what you are going to do, ing and lewd; the other three faces are 22 23 a rite of the sacri- Spring. Years later, when I sat down to ficial virgin, but learn the composer’s arrangement for we don’t need to piano duet, I was struck with wonder know the story that this visceral work could be con- in order to feel tained within dots and lines on a page. the primal sub- Performing the piano version of ject of the music. The Rite of Spring, which was created The work boldly by Stravinsky for the Ballets russes announced a rehearsals, brings this massive work modernism with down to the size of four-hands. The ex- ties to a mythic, perience is much like seeing the com- unknown past. position of a large painting outlined on Stravinsky repeat- paper. Just as color, scale and texture edly described are absent in Picasso’s 1907 study for the compositional Demoiselles, the piano version of The process for the Rite removes Stravinsky’s brilliant and work as intuitive, seductive orchestration, leaving us, unconscious. In simply, with musical lines. The pitches a concern that and rhythms remain unchanged, but would continue the color and dynamic scale are dra- to occupy modern matically reduced as instrumental tim- Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, artists throughout bres are replaced by the homogenous 8’ x 7’ 8” (243.9 x 233.7 cm) (Museum of Modern Art, New York) the century, both sound of the piano. The Rite and Dem- Most composers work at the piano, fierce, mask-like and unknowable. The oiselles evoke art as shamanism. The using the keyboard instrument much confrontation with the viewer is direct. provocative quality of “otherness,” and as a painter may use pencil and pa- In an act of genius – to which the draw- its resultant confrontational relation to per. The first score of a large orches- ing makes us witness – Picasso has the public would become a defining as- tral work is usually written within the transferred the gaze of the male figure, pect of modernism, but there is simul- staves of piano music, with penciled at the center of the 1907 sketch, to our taneously, in the shock of the new, a notations for future orchestration. And own: outside the canvas, peering into summoning of ancient powers. so listening to the piano version, with the curtained interior, we are the voy- When I was a student at the Curtis instrumental colors removed, brings eur. Institute of Music, the Spanish conduc- unexpected insights – beyond the fun The musical equivalent of Picas- tor Rafael Fruhbeck du Burgos came to for the audience of watching two pia- so’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon is Igor lead a performance of The Rite of Spring nists scramble to produce the equiva- Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps with the conservatory’s orchestra. Only (1912). The infamous succès du scan- the pianists were left out of the proj- dale of the work’s premiere – a riot ect, as the scoring has no piano, but I at the Theatre du Champs-Elysee due attended rehearsals daily. With each as much to Nijinsky’s risqué choreog- generation, the rhythmic challenges of raphy as to the music itself, at times this complex work are met more easily, barely audible through the din of cat- but its demands for instrumental virtu- calls and fist-fights in the audience – osity and tight ensemble are high. The the orchestral masterpiece is the most orchestral magic of individual sounds influential musical work of the century. merging into the great whole is some- The Rite of Spring shares much with thing a pianist never truly experiences, the cubist aesthetic of Les demoiselles and I never felt this loss of experience d’Avignon. Angularity, primitivism, and as greatly as during those days hear- savage eroticism dominate. Rhythmic ing The Rite of Spring, as I listened dynamism is at the foreground, and to the progression from the first ner- one could say the same for Picasso’s vous rehearsal to a coherent yet edgy masterpiece, with its jagged edges and performance. The piece carries with it raw sexuality. tremendous aura. No musician forgets The scenario for the ballet involves his/her first performance of The Rite of Igor Stravinsky 23 lent sounds of 100 musicians.

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