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MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:57 Página 51 MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:57 Página 51 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS 51 Claustre Rafart i Planas [ 6. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERIES Picasso’s Las Meninas is a series formed by 58 oils divided into: 44 interpretations alluding directly to Velázquez’s painting, 9 scenes of his pigeon loft, 3 landscapes and 2 free interpretations. Picasso understood them as a set and donated them to the Museu Picasso de Barcelona as such. Velázquez’s tableau vivant is turned into a dyna- mic series, full of stimuli and incitements, projected as a great stage play, with open dramatic art, whose actors are directed by a director who is a lover of freedom and improvisation. Throughout the series Picasso sets forth, as formerly Velázquez had done, the ambiguity of outer reality and pictorial reality, the coexistence of two inseparable worlds: the world of life and the world of art. The serial form of these variations means that the canvases emerged correlatively from 17th August, when Picasso started the series, to 30 December when he com- pleted it. On one day he might work on one or more paintings. After the first seven- teen alluding directly to the original work, the same day as he painted the Infanta, he worked on two out of the nine pigeon canvases he was to produce. Then he returned to the paraphrases of the palace studio. Later he paused again briefly and painted three landscapes. Two free interpretations enrich the series which ends with the menina Isabel de Velasco taking her leave of the public after the performance of this great theatrical production. [ 6.a. Paraphrases alluding directly to Velázquez’s Las Meninas Picasso begins the series with the full scene. He puts all his cards on the table and generously shows the original impulse for his research. After the introduction he MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:57 Página 52 52 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS Claustre Rafart i Planas presents the characters, individualised or in groups, with whom he proceeds to develop the plot combining association and transgression. On 17 August the first work was born, the great canvas which opens the series (fig. 1). It is the largest canvas painted by Picasso after the Guernica and largest of all the paraphrases in the Meninas series. Picasso displays great respect for the original, keeping the scene and its characters, although he changes the vertical format for a horizontal one. He also takes some liberties which give a new reading to the work, slightly moving the central figures to the right of the viewer and giving some of them new dimensions, as we shall see. Another variant of Picasso’s great canvas is that he opens all the shutters of the spacious palace room looking onto the little plaza, so that his paintings are im- pregnated with the brilliant Mediterranean light. Picasso keeps all Velázquez’s characters in their places. The two main trios, one formed by the Infanta of Spain Margarita Maria of Austria, the menina Maria Agusti- na Sarmiento and the painter himself, Diego Velázquez de Silva; the other by the menina Isabel de Velasco, the macroencephalic dwarf of German origin Maribárbola and the Italian dwarf and king’s valet Nicolasito Pertusato who is poking the dog with his foot. Here Picasso takes the liberty of replacing the Habsburgs’ noble court mastiff with Lump, the dachshund given to him as a gift by his friend the photo- grapher David Douglas Duncan. Further back are Marcela de Ulloa, head of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and beside her the chamberlain identified by some as Diego Ruiz de Ancona. In the background on the threshold is the queen’s quarter- master José Nieto. MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 53 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS 53 Claustre Rafart i Planas 1. LAS MENINAS (group) Unsigned. Dated 17.8.57 on the back (Cannes) Oil on canvas 194 x 260 cm MPB 70.433 © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 54 54 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS Claustre Rafart i Planas 2. LAS MENINAS 3. LAS MENINAS (infanta Margarita María) (María Agustina Sarmiento) Unsigned. Dated 20./8./57 Unsigned. Dated 20./8./57 on the back (Cannes) and 57 (erased), and 26 on the back Oil on canvas (Cannes) 100 x 81 cm Oil on canvas MPB 70.434 46 x 37,5 cm © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, MPB 70.435 Barcelona © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 55 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS 55 Picasso began the series with great economy of colour and dyed the canvas grey. Claustre Rafart i Planas The black and white allowed him to structure the space more comfortably and to better study the placement of the figures. He had previously painted some can- vases as grisailles, for example the Painter and his Model in the Musée Picasso of Paris mentioned above, his contemporary and complementary oil The Fashion Designer’s Studio in the Centre Georges Pompidou / Musée National d’Art Modern, in Paris, and the Guernica, to which he now referred by keeping some aspects of its com- position formed by a central triangle and two vertical panels. In the great Las Meni- nas oil he did not skimp on nuances or gradations. These give the room a hand- some spectacular monochrome filled with light and enriched in some areas with light notes of pinkish colour, of great subtlety and visual beauty, which he main- tained in the canvases immediately following. In the midst of the interpretative period, exceptionally, he showed the work to his friend Pignon who was staying at the villa. Pignon told Hélène Parmelin, also staying there: “The Meninas is an enormous grey canvas around which light circulates in total silence and the most surprising thing of all is the painter himself, Velázquez, constructed violently, almost in cubist style and painted before his easel in a warm grisaille. He looks like a monk (...)” Picasso worked the whole series with an analytical spirit. He carefully observed the formal language of Velázquez. In the grip of an unprecedented pictorial canni- balism, he studied the great canvas, assimilated it, decomposed it and recomposed it to the point of satiety. He treated the space in a cubist manner by means of super- imposed planes, giving a structured view of the palace room which maintains the depth of the original. Before the viewer there appears an amalgam of structures which to the right diminishes in favour of elliptical scantily worked forms. He links characters such as the lady-in-waiting Marcela de Ulloa and the court chamberlain MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 56 56 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS Claustre Rafart i Planas with the architecture of the room in such a way that they become real pieces in a puzzle. The centre of the composition continues to be the Infanta Margarita Maria, who shares with the two meninas this historical triangle whose longevity is perpetuated over the centuries. The triangle however is distorted by Picasso who moves these central figures to the right, to the point of almost superimposing the menina Isabel de Velasco on Maribárbola. This slight shift turns the equilateral triangle marked in Velázquez’s work by the Infanta’s head, José Nieto in the doorway and the mirror into an isosceles triangle in Picasso’s version. In the background, on the threshold, we see the queen’s chamberlain José Nieto, whose bent arm is made by some into the centre of the perspective of the spatial composition. Here Picasso portrays him in the reverse position to how Velázquez painted him, and so his left leg, if prolonged, becomes a line dividing the Infanta’s body lengthways. The court chamberlain shares with the painter the view of the monarchs, both the natural reality and the pictorial fiction, since he can see the can- vas being painted by the artist. The ‘door opener’ plays a key compositional role with the Infanta, the centre of the canvas and, with the mirror that is the centre of the room, Velázquez masterfully used the baroque fascination for creating movement and different focal points. By shifting the central figures, Picasso links the Infanta and the court official in a more tense composition. In Las Meninas, the gaze takes on a basic role by linking some of the figures with one other, while others direct their gaze outside the pictorial frame, to the space be- MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 57 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS 57 Claustre Rafart i Planas 4. LAS MENINAS 5. LAS MENINAS (infanta Margarita María) (infanta Margarita María) Unsigned. Dated 21./8./57. Unsigned. Dated 22./8./57. on the back (Cannes) on the back (Cannes) Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm 33 x 24 cm MPB 70.436 MPB 70.437 © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona Barcelona MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 58 58 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS Claustre Rafart i Planas 6. LAS MENINAS 7. LAS MENINAS (infanta Margarita María) (infanta Margarita María) Unsigned. Dated 26./8./57, and Unsigned. Dated 27./8./57. 27 (erased) on the back (Cannes) on the back (Cannes) Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 41 x 32,5 cm 40,5 x 33 cm MPB 70.438 MPB 70.439 © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, © Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona Barcelona MEN ANG 051-110 14/2/07 19:58 Página 59 PICASSO’S LAS MENINAS 59 fore them, which causes “as many models as viewers” to be accepted, as Foucault Claustre Rafart i Planas notes when describing the gaze of Velázquez.
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