Museum Berggruen: Picasso & Les Femmes d’Alger Wall texts
Ground floor:
Entrance:
Les Femmes d’Alger, or Women of Algiers in English, is the title of 15 paintings that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) painted in the winter of 1954–55. The series, which marks the start of his late work, not only occupies a central place in Picasso’s oeuvre but is also notable in the context of the 1950s. While the new generation of artists in Europe and North America was painting predominantly abstractly and avoided depicting figures and objects in their works, Picasso stuck to representational subjects and painted one of the most classic motifs of the history of Western art: female nudes, which Picasso of course rendered using his own stylized formal vocabulary. He experimented with human anatomy, stretching it beyond naturalistic limits, and grappled with issues in painting that he had not yet solved to his satisfaction in the course of a painting career already over 60 years long. As revealing as it would thus be to see all paintings from the series, labelled “A” to “O,” and the more than 100 preliminary drawings and prints together, the opportunity to do so rarely arises since they have been scattered to every corner of the earth. The Museum Berggruen is the only public collection in Europe that features one of the oil paintings from the series, namely, version L. With the overview, the museum invites you to trace the development of the series step by step – as if you were watching the artist at work.
Femmes d’Alger was not the brainchild of Picasso but of Eugène Delacroix, who committed the subject to canvas in the nineteenth century in not just one but two world-famous paintings. Other artists before and after Picasso have also taken on this motif. On the first floor, we present the works that served as models and inspiration for Picasso’s series; on the second, a significant part of the series; and, on the third floor, the history of its reception as well as works by contemporary artists. Almost 200 years old, Femmes d’Alger accompanied larger historical processes that we can now consider in retrospect. The result is that our view of these works is shaped by our understanding of history – in this case, Algeria’s colonial history, but also the evolution of gender relations in art and society in general. The exhibition examines these issues through the works on display and its texts. Our aim is to invite our public on an exciting journey as they walk through the museum and to encourage many different possible interpretations, casting the artworks in an even richer and more complex light.
We would like to give special thanks to the Berggruen family, without whose unfailing support and financial assistance this exhibition would not have been possible. We also warmly thank all our lenders, in particular the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
Delacroix:
In June 1832, Eugène Delacroix visited Algiers on his way back to France from a trip to Morocco. The city had come under French rule in 1830, and a colonial official introduced him to a local dignitary, who invited him to his home. What made the most lasting impression on the painter were the women he witnessed in their rooms, not least because he was aware that strangers were normally prohibited from seeing this. He drew the women in his sketchbook and wrote down their names (right wall). He later painted two versions, which he presented at the 1834 and 1849 exhibitions at the Paris Salon; the later version is on view in this room. The motif quickly became famous, propelled by a strong interest among European audiences in glimpses of distant worlds and especially orientalist subjects, that is, depictions – often freely invented or exaggerated for sensational effect – of scenes in predominantly Muslim countries.
Henri Fantin-Latour, an admirer of Delacroix, made a smaller copy of the 1834 Louvre version (the one Picasso studied intensively) after the latters death. It is presented here to show the compositional differences between Delacroix’s two versions – in particular the shifting of the women to the middle ground of the image. This copy is one of the first in a long line of artworks that engage in dialogue with Delacroix. While Delacroix had tried out different arrangements of the figures in his two versions, Picasso would completely reshuffle them in his 15 paintings. His interest in the motif can be traced to as early as 1940, almost 15 years before he painted his series. He sketched all the figures in Delacroix’s painting on separate pages, still concerned at that point with faithfully reproducing the originals.
1954
In late 1954, a confluence of several events led Picasso to follow up his 1940 sketches based on Femmes d’Alger with his own oil paintings:
• His encounter with Jacqueline Roque, his future second wife, who visually bears a strong resemblance to the Algerian woman depicted in profile by Delacroix in 1834. She is usually recognizable by her distinctive long neck. In one of his first studies dated 21 December 1954, Picasso places her on the right together with the Femmes d’Alger.
• The death of Picasso’s longtime friend and artistic rival Henri Matisse on 3 November 1954. Picasso was devastated; for him, a vital part of tradition and art history disappeared with Matisse. His series is not only a tribute to Delacroix but also to Matisse and many other painters from the history of art, whose work he would reference.
• The beginning of the Algerian War of Independence on 1 November 1954. The significant media attention to Algeria and political discussions in Picasso’s circle reminded him of Delacroix’s painting and of his desire to work on the subject himself.
“When Matisse died he left his odalisques to me as a legacy”:
With these words, in 1955, Picasso presented the Femmes d’Alger series he was developing to visitors to his studio. Odalisques, from the Ottoman word for chamber, oda, refer to depictions of seated or reclining, usually scantily clad women in an intimate, oriental interior. As a subject of painting, odalisques were especially popular in the nineteenth century. Even artists not known primarily for orientalist depictions, such as J.-A.-D. Ingres or Édouard Manet, tried their hand at them. Henri Matisse, who visited Algeria and Morocco several times, worked with the motif of the odalisque above all in the 1920s, furnishing his studio with oriental carpets and fabrics and portraying his models in ornamentally patterned garments and harem pants. Even though Picasso’s Femmes d’Alger were not about the depiction of a supposed “Orient,” with his series he consciously inserted himself into the history of modern Western art, seeing himself in the tradition of Delacroix and Matisse.
First floor:
Beginning:
On 13 December 1954 – 120 years after Eugène Delacroix and almost 15 years after his own sketches – Picasso once again took up the motif of the “women of Algiers.” He produced two oil paintings in one day, version A in color and version B in grisaille, that is, in shades of gray. The ways in which they differ from Delacroix’s original are striking. Delacroix presented the women, dressed in traditional Arab clothing, and their surroundings in great detail. Picasso, on the other hand, focused on the anatomy of the figures and, unlike Delacroix, painted them with bare breasts. Details such as the niche with the rounded Moorish arch on the left, the water pipe, and clothing are rendered as abstractly as possible. Picasso omitted Delacroix’s fourth figure, the odalisque on the far left, showing only three women, the two seated in the center and the servant behind them, who has been redesignated as a waitress.
After painting these two very similar versions, did Picasso already have a more extensive series in mind? We don’t know. In any event, two weeks later, on 28 December, he assembled four female figures for the first time in version C, like in Delacroix’s original. However, in compositional terms, rather than drawing closer to the original, Picasso moved further away: it is impossible to say with certainty which figure corresponds to which of Delacroix’s, and the posture of the woman on the far right is more suggestive of a yoga studio than a harem. Art historian Susan Galassi has identified work by Henri Matisse as the model for the upside-down female nude (left wall). The legs stretched upwards also appear in all the other versions. At the beginning of the new year, Picasso continued to experiment with this constellation.
Variations:
In mid-January 1955, Picasso painted two more variations, E and F, this time again with only three figures. While the narrow central figure from version C has disappeared, the one on the right spreads out, taking up almost the entire foreground. One of her breasts points downwards; in version E it is blue – an homage to Matisse’s Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), painted in 1907 as a reminder of his trip to the Algerian desert town of Biskra. The next day Picasso painted version F. Like in the painting from the previous day, the round arch wraps around the head of the woman sitting on the left like a halo. But here Picasso painted her face, which is reminiscent of the Femme fleur, the flower woman, a round face surrounded by blossoms, with which Picasso often depicted his former partner Françoise Gilot. The next day, Picasso dedicated an individual portrait to the servant, once again in grisaille
Bodily Contortions:
One week later, between 24 and 26 January 1955, Picasso executed three more paintings – this time in a significantly larger format. What will be the main concern of the series, according to art historian Leo Steinberg, gradually crystallizes here: Picasso wanted to depict the woman on the right in such a way that she could be read as lying both on her stomach and on her back at the same time. The upper body of the reclining woman in Version J, in this room, is clearly divided horizontally. If one looks only at the lower half and the head, it looks as though she were lying on her stomach; yet the upper breast, navel, and position of the leg indicate a body resting on its back.
Picasso had been working on anatomical contortions of this kind for a long time. The painting Grand nu couché (Large Reclining Nude) from 1942 shows a woman who appears to be lying on her back. On closer inspection, however, one can also make out a spine. The lower half of the body is even more confusing: the top foot can be clearly identified by its toes as the left one – but it is attached to the right leg
Matisse:
Regarding his Femmes d’Alger series, Picasso explained that he inherited the odalisques from Matisse. The reclining nude as a painting (as presented on the floor below) or as a sculpture (as seen in this room) was in fact one of Matisse’s specialties. Art historian John Elderfield suspects that Femmes d’Alger is a dialogue between the two painters – a dialogue that Picasso had to conduct alone, since his friend had already died. According to this interpretation, the previous, color-intensive compositions would be Picasso’s paintings “à la Matisse.” The subsequent paintings, on the other hand, are strongly reminiscent of Cubism, which Picasso had invented and which Matisse never took on – in other words, they are Picasso’s answer to Matisse. In somewhat simplified terms, one could say that Matisse’s domain is color, or coloring, while Picasso’s strength is disegno, drawing or design. In reality things are not always black and white: Picasso’s watercolor in this room is reminiscent of Matisse, while Matisse’s drawing Les trois soeurs (The Three Sisters), composed exclusively of contours, recalls Picasso’s skills as a draftsman.
Pyramid Woman:
After a ten-day break, Picasso began three more paintings in February 1955. While he had used light colors in the preceding paintings, he now painted in shades of gray. These works are reminiscent of Cubism, the style of painting Picasso had developed with Georges Braque around 1910 and whose main characteristic is the fragmenting of forms into many individual facets. Picasso payed special attention to the woman sitting on the left, to whom he dedicated a large-format individual portrait, version L. Like a pyramid, her figure tapers towards the top – a composition associated above all with depictions of the Madonna from the Renaissance. But Matisse also used it for a seated odalisque presented here, and Henri Laurens, the “sculptor of Cubism,” had already created a sculpture of a squatting, pyramidal woman in 1922. A study by Picasso dated 28 December 1954 shows that he clearly had not planned the predominantly symmetrical structure of the woman in version L from the outset.
Culmination:
Since mid-December, Picasso had devoted himself almost exclusively to the Delacroix-inspired Women of Algiers. They had all, both individually and as an ensemble, undergone many transformations. It is only in the last two versions that the four women take up their definitive positions. The one on the right, who according to Leo Steinberg can be seen as lying both on her stomach and on her back, works even better because Picasso has refrained from executing her face, so that her hands are resting either on her forehead or on the back of her head. Where, despite the return to color, the figures in Version N still follow the “Cubist” structure of the previous paintings, Version O brings together all the contrasts between color and form: the most figuratively rendered woman in all 15 paintings sits on the left, while an abstract construction lies on the right. Here Picasso is clearly and convincingly showing us the possibilities of painting – as though mischievously asking us which of the figures is more real. Steinberg points to their respective volumes, explaining that the representational one is as flat as a queen of hearts on a playing card, while the abstract one shows as much depth as an origami figure. Picasso synthesizes seemingly irreconcilable opposites into a harmonious whole. Art historian Yve-Alain Bois consequently sees this last painting as the ultimate tour de force with which Picasso came to terms with his grief over Matisse’s death.
Afterlife:
On 14 February 1955, Picasso painted version O, the last painting in the series. Many interpretations claim to recognize Jacqueline’s facial features in the female figure on the left – it was made on Valentine’s Day. Whatever the case may be, in November 1955, Picasso dedicated a series of individual portraits to his new partner and future wife in Turkish or Oriental costume, which can be seen as a continuation of the Femmes d’Alger, in particular version O. And almost 15 years later, Picasso was still depicting anatomically overstretched representations of women in an implied orientalist decor. The drawing Le Bain turc (The Turkish Bath), however, is based on the painting by the same name in the Louvre by Ingres – Delacroix’s great rival in the nineteenth century.
Second floor:
Victor + Sally Ganz:
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who was Picasso’sgallerist since before World War I, organized the great traveling exhibition of 1955, intended both to boost Picasso’s fame and increase sales. As art historian Michael FitzGerald later discovered, Kahnweiler had told the American collectors Victor and Sally Ganz that Picasso would only sell the 15 paintings of Femmes d’Alger en bloc; yet when they asked Picasso about it years later, he knew nothing about it. Since Kahnweiler refused to negotiate and the price was high, shortly after they acquired the works the collectors transferred ten of them to the Saidenberg Gallery, which resold them individually. The five versions that the Ganzes kept in their living room must have been a sight virtually unimaginable today, given their high value. After the couple’s death, they were auctioned in 1997 at a sale of their estate at which Heinz Berggruen could acquire Picasso’s Grand nu couché (Sleeping Nude, 1942), which today is part of the museum’s collection.
Exhibition History:
The Femmes d’Alger were exhibited for the first time as the final highlight of the 1955 exhibition Picasso. Peintures 1900–1955 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. It was organized by curator Maurice Jardot with the help of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and even the participation of Picasso himself. The designations “A” through “O” were introduced to distinguish the individual paintings, as the exhibition catalogue and an archival image show.
The comprehensive exhibition moved on to Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg. In all three cities, the majority of the public encountered for the first time the original works by the “painter of the century,” resulting in record numbers of visitors. Through 1962, other major exhibitions in the United States followed, and then there were none again until this century, albeit never featuring all 15 paintings. The exhibition in Berlin is the first devoted exclusively to the series.
Assia Djebar:
Since the 1960s, Picasso’s relationship with women has been the subject of much debate. While some celebrate him as a genius and insist on separating his work form his life, others reject his depictions of sexualized violence and condemn his toxic relationship to women. His series Les Femmes d’Alger traces its origins to an Orientalist subject that suggests the sexual availability of women to the male viewer. Did Picasso align himself with this tradition, or are his highly abstracted depictions no longer harem scenes and the women in them no longer odalisques? From a Western perspective, it is difficult to read the series as a feminist manifesto. Yet this is the interpretation that the writer Assia Djebar, one of the first Algerian women to study at an elite French university, arrived at in her 1980 novel Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement. According to her, Delacroix’s painting is a prison in which women are condemned to wait silently. Picasso, on the other hand – who, unlike Delacroix, depicts the women undressed – had removed their veils and liberated them: “It moves me to think that the Spanish genius presides in this manner over changing times.” Djebar saw Picasso’s series as a visualization of her wish that voiceless Muslim women rise up and figuratively abandon the harem. This reading shows how much a work’s reception can vary depending on one’s point of view.
Djamila Boupacha:
Eugène Delacroix painted his first version of Femmes d’Alger in 1834, at the start of French colonial rule in Algeria (1830–1962). Picasso’s response to it came 120 years later – at the beginning of the Algerian War of Independence. Was Picasso’s series a political comment or even a statement in support of Algeria?
A commissioned work reinforces this view: In 1961, a year before independence, Picasso painted a portrait of the young Algerian freedom fighter Djamila Boupacha, who was accused of an attempted bombing. Captured by the French army, she was tortured and raped to obtain her confession, for which she was sentenced to death. The lawyer Gisèle Halimi, and later also the writer Simone de Beauvoir, took up the case, which became emblematic of human rights violations during the war. For their campaign, they asked Picasso, already famous at the time, to paint a portrait geared toward the media. Boupacha’s death sentence was in fact delayed, and she was released after the war.
Despite his support for Boupacha’s case, seeing Picasso as an ardent fighter for Algerian independence would doubtless be going too far; the painter refrained from making political statements about the Algerian War. Instead, his portrait of Boupacha is in the tradition of his anti-war paintings, beginning with Guernica (1937), and his commitment to human rights in general.
Femmes d’Alger Today:
Long after Picasso, the Femmes d’Alger continue to live on in the work of contemporary artists. The Mexican artist Jose Dávila further developed the subject iconographically: in 2016, he created a series of 13 works based on Roy Lichtenstein’s painting Femme d’Alger (1963), itself a reinterpretation of Picasso’s series, progressively cutting out individual surfaces until in the end only the outlines remained. His reduced and partially cut-out response to Picasso’s version L can be seen in this room.
There are no iconographic references to Delacroix or Picasso in Djamel Tatah’s painting Les Femmes d’Alger. In 1994, during the Algerian Civil War, the French-Algerian artist presented an image of women standing hand-in-hand in confident solidarity. These contemporary “women of Algiers” are thus very different from those of Delacroix and Picasso, who were always shown lying or sitting down.
In her series Mémoire dans l’oubli (Memory in Oblivion), the French-Algerian photographer Halida Boughriet stages women as odalisques, revealing the voyeuristic foundation of this type of image: while the odalisques in nineteenth-century paintings are often scantily clad, young, and seductive, Boughriet depicts older women who lost their husbands in the Algerian War of Independence (1954– 62). Rather than suggesting a libidinous invitation, Boughriet’s “odalisques” are a tribute to these women’s lives.
Video Zoulikha Bouabdellah:
In her work, French-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah often deals with questions of traditional gender roles in Arab and Western societies. For Les Hommes de la plage II, she filmed a stretch of beach in Casablanca (Morocco) in 2016. The camera is static, there are almost no cuts, and it gradually becomes clear that only men are enjoying leisure activities here. While the large-scale projection makes it seem like we are standing on this beach ourselves, the stylistic devices of slow motion, black-and-white images, and dissolves create distance to the scene; the often half-naked men seem unapproachable and at the same time erotically charged. Thus, this work stands in striking contrast to most of the others in this exhibition: a female artist presents us with male bodies that move about freely against an open horizon. And the women – where are they? Are they still waiting, as in Delacroix’s work, somewhere in a closed interior?
Baya:
The Algerian painter Baya Mahieddine (1931–98) also depicts “women of Algiers” – but again from a completely different point of view than Picasso or Delacroix. Baya, known by her first name, is one of Algeria’s most famous women painters. Her gouaches exclusively show women, usually in flowing dresses and with colorful hair that seems to be teased high, and strikingly large eyes shining forth from their distinctive faces.
After losing her parents when she was five years old and being adopted by a French woman in Algiers, Baya encountered the work of Picasso, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse. Early on, she herself also began to paint and sculpt figures out of clay. In 1947, when Baya was just 16, Aimé Maeght discovered her work and dedicated an exhibition to her in his Paris gallery with André Breton contributing a text. The following summer, she worked next door to Picasso at the Madoura ceramics workshop in Vallauris – a fact that continues to this day to fuel the legend that the young artist inspired Picasso to create his series Les Femmes d’Alger. There is no evidence to support this.
After this brief but intense immersion in the French art scene, Baya returned to Algeria, where she married and bore six children. Only a few French institutions own works by her; she is almost completely unknown in Europe.