Nora Hill AR471 Plesch

Representation and the Artist’s Creative Power in Picasso’s Suite Vollard

Etched during the busy spring of 1933, when Picasso created fifty-five of the one hundred prints that make up the Suite Vollard in a little over two months, the print known as Model Leaning on a Painting encapsulates many of the concepts and influences the artist was grappling with in the Suite Vollard and his other work from that period. The print fits neatly into the “Sculptor’s Studio” section of the Suite and the theme of artist and model that Picasso explored throughout his career. Much has been written about

Picasso’s relationships with his models, both in and out of the studio: his passionate affairs with them, his misogyny, his sexual prowess. A blockbuster exhibition at the

Vancouver Art Gallery earlier this year, Picasso: The Artist and His Muses, and the accompanying book, chronicled the artist’s depictions of six of his most significant models and lovers, examining the ways they “influenced his life and contributed to his creative output” (Vancouver Art Gallery); this is only the most recent of a number of exhibitions that have focused on the women of Picasso’s life. Noted Picasso scholar

Karen Kleinfelder directly addresses the artist-model relationship and his depictions of that theme in her book The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze. But the artist-model relationship is not the only theme in play in this print. The artist also draws on references to classical mythology and to the Surrealist concept of the androgyne to highlight the artist’s power to transform the human figure through representation.

Fig. 1. , Model Leaning on a Painting, 1933. Etching and drypoint. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

Model Leaning on a Painting is a sort of mise-en-abyme, a representation of multiple representations. Small details place us in the artist's studio: a palette and jar of paintbrushes sit on the floor in front of the studio, a cloth is draped over the edge of the painting, light shines in from a window behind the sculpted head, and the vase of flowers which appears in seventeen other prints from the Suite Vollard sits on the table. The print depicts three figures. A large sculpture of a woman's head sits on a table at the left, a nude model is seated to the right, and, in the center, a painting of a seated figure obscures much of the model's body. In contemplating the relationships between these three figures, it is also important to consider what does not appear this print: the artist is nowhere to be seen.

Stylistically, this print is similar to the others of the “Sculptor's Studio”: thin, sketchy outlines with minimal shading. In places, it is crude—the model's hands look like flippers, her right eye seems to protrude out from the side of her head, and her left arm connects not to her shoulder but to her collarbone. The only shading in the print is in the head of the painted figure, which is made the focal point of the image through careful cross-hatching and a tangle of dark, curly hair. Because this technique draws the eye initially to the figure's delicate facial features, it is easy to assume that it is a woman.

Closer examination, however, reveals that the figure has male genitalia. This raises the question of who or what this is—man or woman? Is that figure drawn from the model that it obscures, or is it an idealized human form from Picasso’s imagination?

Fig. 2. Pablo Picasso, Model Leaning on a Painting (detail), 1933. Etching and drypoint. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

The long, almond shapes of the eyes and the large, distinctive noses, particularly of the model and sculpture, suggest that at least these two figures represent the same woman. It is harder to compare the features of the painting to the other two because of the marked stylistic differences: her face is much more detailed, with thick cross-hatching, shading, and lines that are drawn and redrawn—looking closely, you can see that the line of her right cheek has been drawn twice, her lips seem to have been drawn multiple times, and her eyes are unclear because there are so many lines. Picasso labored over this face, adding line after line in a confusion of curly hair and cross-hatching. This is in marked contrast to the other figures, where he drew single, curving lines, not bothering to try again if a line did not fall exactly where he wanted it (as demonstrated by the odd break in the line of the model’s left shoulder) and leaving things unfinished (as evidenced by the models odd, flipper-like hands). However, the shape of the painting’s mouth closely resembles that of the model, and the curves of her body are similar. Viewed from afar, where the over-working of the painting’s face is less evident, the eyes do have the same elongated almond shape, and her nose has a similar length to it. It seems likely that this print contains one woman, represented three different ways. This leads the viewer to wonder about the painted figure’s androgyny: does the model also have male genitalia, hidden behind the canvas, or did the absent artist paint her this way to transform her into an ideal, complete human creature? Is the painting a true representation of the model?

The complex relationships between the three figures and the artist or viewer are illustrated through the directions of their gazes. The painted figure looks intently up at the sculpted head, which gazes impassively out across the frame of the print. The model, head leaning on her hands, turns away from the two works of art and looks off to the side.

The faces of both the painting and the sculpture resemble that of the model, making this print a representation of a woman and two other representations of her. Despite her ideological centrality, however, the model is far from central to the image—she is relegated to the back, physically blocked by the painting, with her outline drawn so lightly that she seems to fade into the background. As in many of Picasso’s other depictions of the artist and model theme, the model is “rendered less tangible than her image on canvas” (Kleinfelder 80). The true center of this image—physically and symbolically—is the work of art.

Fig. 3. Brassaï, Picasso in His Studio, 1939. Gelatin silver print. [sothebys.com]

The Sculptor’s Studio is one of the central themes of the Suite Vollard. The figure of the bearded, muscular Classical sculptor serves as one of Picasso’s avatars, representing the refined and orderly side of his nature; just as the who appears later in the Suite represents the artist’s violent, chaotic instincts. The sculptor appears in numerous prints, often reclining on a couch with a nude model, arms around her and eyes turned to contemplate the sculpture he has presumably just finished. These prints offer a glimpse into Picasso’s relationships with his own female models. Many of the Sculptor’s

Studio prints, including Model Leaning on a Painting, contain sculptures that closely resemble the sculpted heads of Marie-Thérèse Walter that Picasso was making as he worked on the Suite Vollard (fig. 3). Marie-Thérèse was the artist’s mistress and muse from 1927 to 1935; sex and art went hand in hand for him. It is hardly a coincidence that the models who appear in in the Sculptor’s Studio prints from the Suite (including Model

Leaning on a Painting) have similar facial features to Marie-Thérèse; during this period, she was the statuesque model to Picasso’s classical sculptor in the idyllic space of his studio.

Fig. 4. Pablo Picasso, The Fig. 5. Pablo Picasso, Painter Fig. 6. Pablo Picasso, The Artist and His Model, 1926. and Model, 1927. Oil on Artist and His Model, 1928. Oil on canvas. Martigny: canvas. Tehran: Tehran Oil on canvas. New York: Pierre Gianadda Foundation. Foundation of Art. Museum of Modern Art. [pablopicasso.org] [pablopicasso.org] [pablopicasso.org]

The theme of artists and models is one Picasso returned to again and again throughout his career, including three paintings created during the decade before he began the Suite Vollard. While these paintings differ significantly in style from each other and from the Sculptor’s Studio prints, they are remarkably similar in composition: the painter’s easel divides the image roughly in half, with the nude model on one side and the painter on the other. In all three, the model’s body is the lightest part of the painting, highlighting and drawing the viewer’s eye to her naked form. Here, the artist-model relationship seems strictly professional: they are separated from each other by the painting on which the artist is working, and their only interaction is his gaze as he sketches her.

In the Suite Vollard, Picasso treats the artist-model relationship quite differently.

When the sculptor and model appear together, he is not in the act of sculpting her; the completed sculpture stands nearby (fig. 7). Their relationship is intimate and informal.

They recline together, limbs intertwined. Both are nude, as opposed to the artist being clothed. Interestingly, in these prints the artist’s gaze is directed not at the model but at the sculpture; it is as if the work of art has replaced the woman as the object of the artist’s desire, even as he lies next to her post-coitus.

Fig. 7. Pablo Picasso, Reclining Sculptor and Model with Mask (Bolliger 50), 1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

Frequently, the model appears without the sculptor but with a work of art (fig. 9); just as often, the artist himself appears alone with one of his creations (fig. 8). In the former, it is difficult to tell whether the artist’s gaze (replaced by the viewer’s) is more directed at the model or the work of art, but the art clearly dominates the composition. In one print from 1933 (fig. 9), the sculpture of a male head takes up more space than the model, almost crowding her out of the frame. The work of art similarly outshines the model in Model Leaning on a Painting, where the painting obscures most of the model’s body. These prints show a markedly different relationship between artist, model, and work of art than Picasso’s earlier depictions of this theme. The work of art takes on a larger role; it is no longer merely a separation between the two people. The artist and model seemingly become more intimate, but the model must compete with the work of art for the artist’s attention.

Fig. 8. Pablo Picasso, Young Sculptor at Work (Bolliger 46), 1933. Drypoint. Waterville: Colby Fig. 9. Pablo Picasso, Model and Large Sculpted College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum] Head (Bolliger 61), 1933. Drypoint. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

This complex power dynamic between artist, artwork, and model is present in

Model Leaning on a Painting even though the artist is absent. As this print is an exploration of issues of representation, the artist remains essential even when he is not seen; the inclusion of works of art in the etching “presupposes the presence of something as well as someone by whom and to whom the representation is made” (Summers 3). The model is the something that is represented, the invisible artist the “someone by whom,” and the viewer the “someone to whom” the painted figure is made. Through the composition of the print and the placement in the artist’s studio, the viewer takes the artist’s place, standing where he stood as he etched this scene. It is as if the artist stands next to the viewer, pointing out what he wants them to see.

In her in-depth analysis of Picasso’s many depictions of the artist and model theme, Karen Kleinfelder notes that there are three central elements: the artist, the model, and the canvas or easel—the work of art. It is the “network of relations drawn between these three variables” that communicates the theme (Kleinfelder 69). When the figures are depicted in profile, she argues, the canvas is a barrier between the artist and model, but when turned to the front, as it is in Model Leaning on a Painting, is “a bridge linking artist to model” (Kleinfelder 70). The absence of the painter in this print implicates the viewer in his place, making the canvas, in Kleinfelder’s analysis, a bridge between viewer and model. In the sense that the painting offers the viewers the only possibility of seeing the model in full, the bridge analogy holds true; but it must be remembered that the painting is a representation created by the artist, so it is still a barrier, as well. It obscures the model and prevents the viewer from seeing her, allowing only the artist’s version of her to be seen. The viewer knows that the artist must have looked at a model while creating the painting, but is prevented from seeing her directly or observing the process. By leaving himself as artist out of the image and placing the canvas in front of the model, Picasso makes a statement about what he wants the viewer to see, and about his relationships to the woman and to the art. For him, the androgynous figure on the canvas is clearly more important than the human woman; it represents a Platonic ideal, the male and female halves of humanity united in one being. Picasso seems to be telling us that by creating an image of the model, he has perfected her; in the artist’s eyes, the woman can never live up to his own representation of her.

The mythical “Androgyne” was an important concept for the Surrealists, with whom Picasso was closely associated at the time when the Suite Vollard was created.

According to Platonic myth, humans were originally created as one being with two heads, four arms, four legs, and both male and female genitalia. In order to create new life, however, the two halves had to tear themselves apart and then rejoin each other in sexual intercourse. This concept of violent dismemberment as a prerequisite for creation appealed greatly to the Surrealists, and the ambiguity that androgynous figures presented further fascinated them. The androgyne’s “unification of opposites…embodies the professed aim” of the Surrealists (Grew 5). Marcel Duchamp explored androgyny through his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy; Leonora Carrington explored issues of femininity and androgyny throughout her career, most notably describing herself as an androgyne in the opening lines of a short story published in the Surrealist periodical VVV;

Breton included the myth of the androgyne in the 1942 “First Papers of ” exhibition and wrote in Arcane 17 that the artist ought to “jealously appropriate to himself everything that distinguishes woman from man” (Breton), and Albert Béguin wrote an article tracing the history of the androgyne for in 1938.

Fig. 10. Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, photographed by Man Ray, 1921.

Picasso himself had explored the idea in his work throughout his career. In 1905,

Apollinaire had described the androgynous figures of Picasso’s “Saltimbanques” series as neither male nor female (Boggs 40); by the 1920s, his depiction of the theme had evolved so that many of his works featured figures with both male and female genitalia, sometimes protruding from the figure’s face. The androgynes of this period “are explicitly both male and female,” much like the figure on the canvas in Model Leaning on a Painting (Haessly 217); one example is the 1925 painting The Kiss (fig. 12), in which there is a clearly phallic form on the head of the figure on the right and the place where the two figures’ mouths meet resembles a vagina. This conflation of the face and the sexual organs is suggested in the sculpted heads of Marie-Thérèse that the artist made in the early 1930s (fig. 11), one of which appears in Model Leaning on a Painting.

Numerous scholars and critics have commented on the phallic proportions of the heads’ large noses and the deeply modeled mouths that seem to suggest the vulva; the sculpted head is “based upon a joining of male and female, of face and genitalia” (Haessly 336). It would seem, therefore, that two of the three figures depicted in the print—the two that represent works of art created by the classical sculptor—are explicitly androgynous.

Viewed through the Surrealist understanding of the androgyne as a unification of two halves, a joining of opposites, the painting and the sculpture etched in this print become the symbols of both the artist’s creative power to perfect the human figure and the violent impulses that are illustrated elsewhere in the Suite.

Fig. 12. Pablo Picasso, The Kiss, 1925. Oil on Fig. 11. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1932. canvas. Paris: Musée Picasso. Plaster cast. New York: Museum of Modern Art. [navigart.fr/picassoparis] [moma.org]

Picasso’s fascination with classical civilization and Greek mythology is present throughout the Suite Vollard. This print and many of the others that depict the sculptor’s studio call to mind two tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses which have to do with relationships between the creator and the created. The first is the tale of Pygmalion, the sculptor who “created an ivory statue, a work of most marvelous art…and promptly conceived a passion for his own creation” (Ovid X: 316-319). The sculptor of Picasso’s prints gazes adoringly up at his sculptures, ignoring the model beside him as if he has also fallen in love with his statue, as if he also feels that the statue has “a figure better than any living woman could boast of” (Ovid X: 318).

Fig. 12. Pablo Picasso, Metamorphoses, 1931. Etching. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Picasso was undoubtedly familiar with the story: in 1931, he had made prints for an illustrated edition of the Metamorphoses published by Albert (fig. 12). That set of prints is done in a similar style to many of the prints of the Suite Vollard—thin lines, minimal shading, human figures closely intertwined and many details such as hands and feet left unfinished. The artist was clearly thinking about the Metamorphoses as he embarked on the Suite Vollard. Perhaps he saw himself as Pygmalion, creating art more beautiful than any human woman. In mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, grants

Pygmalion’s wish and brings his statue to life to be his bride. Pygmalion could only be satisfied by a woman of his own creation; Picasso’s romantic history, moving from one woman to another throughout his long life, suggests that he felt the same way. This desire is revealed in Model Leaning on a Painting and other prints from the Suite Vollard, as the works of art dominate, obscure, and crowd out the woman who inspired them. There is another tale of creation from Ovid’s collection that Picasso references in the Sculptor’s Studio prints through a small recurring detail. In eighteen of the prints— almost a fifth of the entire Suite—a vase of flowers appears. The flowers and vase are the same in each depiction, with rounded petals reminiscent of the blossoms known as anemones (fig. 12). According to Ovid’s record of classical mythology, Venus created the anemone from the blood of Adonis. Distraught at the death of her young, virile, beautiful lover, the goddess cried out that her grief for him “will be remembered forever, and every year will see reenacted in ritual his death and my lamentation” (Ovid X: 842-

844).

Fig. 13. Left: detail from Model Leaning on a Painting. Right: vase of anemones.

While it is difficult to know what exactly about this story so fascinated Picasso that he chose to represent it through the recurring symbol of the vase of anemones, there are many possibilities. Picasso worried greatly about his own mortality and the loss of his strength and virility as he aged. When he created the Suite Vollard, the artist was already in his early fifties. The idea of Adonis, a symbol of strength and male beauty, being allowed to live on after death would likely have been an alluring one for the middle-aged artist. So, too, would have been the act of transformation that Venus undertakes: through her passion and grief, she creates something beautiful and immortal from her lover.

Etched during the tumultuous period of his life when he was torn between his wife, Olga, and his young lover and muse, Marie-Thérèse, the anemones in Model Leaning on a Painting and other Sculptor’s Studio prints may suggest that Picasso is trying to do what

Venus did: use his passion to make great art from his lover, art that would live on after both of them had died.

The androgyny of the two works of art depicted within the print, the artist and model theme, the relationships between artist, model, and art demonstrated through their arrangement and gazes, and the references to Classical myths about divine creation come together to tell a story about the power of representation. The androgynous figures represent perfection and completion in Platonic and Surrealist theory, and so the works of art are depicted as androgynous—perfected—while the model, as far as the viewer can see, is distinctly female (and therefore imperfect). The works of art further take precedence over the model through the painting’s placement in front of her and through their gazes; the painted and sculpted figures look at each other, while the model is left out of this relationship. She is not a work of art, in the artist’s eyes. Through allusions to the tales of Pygmalion and Adonis, Picasso suggests that he, like Pygmalion, can only truly be satisfied by his art because no human woman will ever be as perfect, and that he, like

Venus, transforms his lovers into something perfect and eternal through his representations of them.

In the Suite Vollard, Picasso brings together many disparate influences. He references Rembrandt and quotes classical sculpture, draws on the myths of classical

Greece, and interprets Platonic ideals. His friendship with the Surrealists comes out in direct references, such as the depiction of a Surrealist object in print 60, and in more subtle symbols such as his exploration of the idea of the androgyne (fig. 14).

Fig. 14. Pablo Picasso, Reclining Sculptor and Fig. 15. Pablo Picasso, Female Bullfighter, III Surrealist Sculpture (Bolliger 60), 1933. (Bolliger 23), 1934. Etching. Waterville: Colby Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum] Art. [colby.edu/museum]

His tumultuous personal life breaks through in the sensuous depictions of Marie-Thérèse

Walter and the anguish of prints like Female Bullfighter, III (fig. 15), in which Anita

Beloubek-Hammer argues that the panicked horse represents his wife while the dying torero is Marie-Thérèse, and the bull represents Picasso himself (109). These one hundred prints provide a window into the artist’s artistic, personal, and intellectual states over the course of one of the most important decades of his career and of the twentieth century, as

Europe moved inevitably towards another World War and the artist achieved great commercial and critical success, shifting from late Cubism into the Classical and

Surrealist styles for which he would be remembered. All these influences come together in Model Leaning on a Painting, where Picasso uses the Platonic androgyne and references to mythical tales of creation and sexual passion to address the familiar theme of artist and model. In this print, the artist represents his relationships to his models and to his art, as well as the relationship he perceives between the model and the work of art.

Through this depiction, he also makes a statement about representation, about his own power as an artist to create and transform.

Works Cited

Béguin, Albert. “L’Androgyne,” Minotaure 11 (1938): 11-14.

Beloubek-Hammer, Anita. Pablo Picasso: Women, Bullfights, Old Masters: Prints from

the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. Berlin: Staatliche Museen, 2013.

Boggs, Jean Sutherland. Picasso and Man. Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1964.

Breton, Andre. Arcane 17. Paris: J. Pauvert, 1971.

Chadwick, Whitney. “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.”

Women’s Art Journal 7.1 (Spring/Summer 1986): 37-42.

Grew, Rachel. “The Evolution of the Alchemical Androgyne in Symbolist and Surrealist

Art.” PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2010.

Haessly, Gaile Ann. “Picasso on Androgyny: From Symbolism through Surrealism.”

PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1983.

Kleinfelder, Karen. The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze: Picasso’s Pursuit of the

Model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Ovid. Metamorphoses (8). Trans. Charles Martin. New York: Norton & Co., 2005.

Summers, David. “Representation.” In Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition.

Ed. Robert Nelson and Richard Schiff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2003. 1-19.

Vancouver Art Gallery. “Picasso: The Artist and His Muses” Explores the Significance

of Six Women in Picasso’s Art and Life. 31 May 2016.