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Lot Essay
Painted on the 6 May 1945, just days before Europe celebrated the end of the Second World War, Pablo Picasso’s Crâne, lampe, poireaux, pichet offers an intriguing and multi-layered meditation on the timeless subject of the still life. Last seen at public exhibition over twenty-five years ago, it is a modern vanitas constructed from an arrangement of carefully selected items from the artist’s studio, the composition plays with visual metaphors and symbolic allusions to create an image that simultaneously pays homage to the history of the genre and the historical moment of its creation.
Picasso had chosen to remain in France following the outbreak of the conflict, settling into a life of relative isolation in his studio at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins—as he later explained, it seemed ‘there was nothing else to do but work seriously and devotedly, struggle for food, see friends quietly, and look forward to freedom’ (quoted in H. Janis & S. Janis, Picasso: The Recent Years, 1939-1946, New York, 1946, p. 4). His paintings during these years of darkness and uncertainty reflect the realities of life under Occupation, in which restrictions and rationing hit food, electricity and artist supplies across the city. Humble foods such as sausages and leeks appeared regularly in these works, occasionally alongside animal carcasses, their forms bathed in the dim glow of the candles that the artist used to punctuate the enveloping darkness. Coffee pots, an abundance of spring vegetables and small bowls of rare treats such as fresh cherries made sporadic appearances, their presence suggesting the sudden joyful appearance of longed for items, either through the lively black market or in the small gardens that dotted the neighbourhood around Picasso’s studio.
These familiar, quotidian items continued to play a central role in Picasso’s still-life compositions after the liberation of Paris by Allied forces in the late summer of 1944. The months immediately following the end of the Occupation were exceptionally busy for the artist, leaving him little time to paint. Hailed as an icon of not only survival but also artistic resistance in the face of oppression, Picasso was inundated with visitors to his studio—old friends and colleagues, Allied soldiers and foreign journalists, writers, collectors and art lovers alike all flocked to pay their respects to the great Spanish artist. In October, numerous examples of Picasso’s work from the War years were included in the landmark Salon de la Libération, a grand exhibition designed as a celebration of the French victory and a bold presentation of the triumph of culture and art over the Fascist persecution. As a result, the artist only completed one new painting between August and the end of the year—the celebratory Coq de la libération (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 40; Milwaukee Art Museum).
Picasso returned to painting the following spring with an impassioned energy, exploring many of the themes which has sustained him through the darkest days of the conflict—still lifes, portraits, and occasionally, views of the great monuments of Paris. On 10 March, he embarked upon a concentrated series of compositions that focused on the pairing of a skull and a jug or vase on a simple wooden table in his studio (Zervos, vol. 14, nos. 87, 88, and 93-100), revisiting a compositional theme that he had initially explored during the early 1940s. This time, instead of the dramatic planes of the sheep’s head that had been requisitioned by the artist in his earlier paintings, he chose to depict an impression of a human skull, using his roughly hewn sculpture Tête de mort (Musée national Picasso Paris) as inspiration. Conceived in 1943 and cast surreptitiously by the artist and his collaborators during the War, this haunting object invoked the presence of death within his everyday environment. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has noted, by focusing on the skull in these compositions, Picasso ‘represents the same issues of life and death as The Charnel House, but far more symbolically’ as he grappled with the lasting consequences of war, even after the hostilities have ended (Picasso and Things, exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 291).
While initially the artist focused solely on this pairing of cranium and jug, on 13 March he added a trio of leeks to the table, their long, tubular forms, bright green palette and straggly roots increasing the dynamism of the arrangement. During a visit to Picasso around this time, Françoise Gilot noted the presence of these simple vegetables in his latest still-life compositions: ‘From the point of view of form, the leeks replaced the crossbones that traditionally accompany a skull, their onion-like ends corresponding to the joints of the bones,’ she recalled (F. Gilot and C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 120). When she quizzed the artist about them, Picasso responded, ‘What have leeks got to do with a skull? Plastically, they have everything to do with it. You can’t keep on painting the skull and crossbones, any more than you can keep on rhyming amour with toujours. So you bring in the leeks instead and they make our point without forcing you to spell it out so obviously’ (quoted in ibid.).
Arranged in loose, overlapping configurations, the naturally soft, organic forms of these vegetables acted as an intriguing counterpoint to the more solid, hardened, man-made forms of the pitcher and sculpture. In Crâne, lampe, poireaux, pichet, they also surround the base of a large, coal-oil lamp, which has been placed at the centre of the table, its imposing form towering over the other objects, and suggesting the artist was working late into the night. Unlike other works from this period, where the open window served as the primary light source for the scene, here Picasso allows the warm golden glow of the lamp’s illumination to flood the studio, creating a dynamic play of light and shadow across the various objects and the wall behind, framing the still-life arrangement in a series of sharp, geometric planes.
Picasso had chosen to remain in France following the outbreak of the conflict, settling into a life of relative isolation in his studio at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins—as he later explained, it seemed ‘there was nothing else to do but work seriously and devotedly, struggle for food, see friends quietly, and look forward to freedom’ (quoted in H. Janis & S. Janis, Picasso: The Recent Years, 1939-1946, New York, 1946, p. 4). His paintings during these years of darkness and uncertainty reflect the realities of life under Occupation, in which restrictions and rationing hit food, electricity and artist supplies across the city. Humble foods such as sausages and leeks appeared regularly in these works, occasionally alongside animal carcasses, their forms bathed in the dim glow of the candles that the artist used to punctuate the enveloping darkness. Coffee pots, an abundance of spring vegetables and small bowls of rare treats such as fresh cherries made sporadic appearances, their presence suggesting the sudden joyful appearance of longed for items, either through the lively black market or in the small gardens that dotted the neighbourhood around Picasso’s studio.
These familiar, quotidian items continued to play a central role in Picasso’s still-life compositions after the liberation of Paris by Allied forces in the late summer of 1944. The months immediately following the end of the Occupation were exceptionally busy for the artist, leaving him little time to paint. Hailed as an icon of not only survival but also artistic resistance in the face of oppression, Picasso was inundated with visitors to his studio—old friends and colleagues, Allied soldiers and foreign journalists, writers, collectors and art lovers alike all flocked to pay their respects to the great Spanish artist. In October, numerous examples of Picasso’s work from the War years were included in the landmark Salon de la Libération, a grand exhibition designed as a celebration of the French victory and a bold presentation of the triumph of culture and art over the Fascist persecution. As a result, the artist only completed one new painting between August and the end of the year—the celebratory Coq de la libération (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 40; Milwaukee Art Museum).
Picasso returned to painting the following spring with an impassioned energy, exploring many of the themes which has sustained him through the darkest days of the conflict—still lifes, portraits, and occasionally, views of the great monuments of Paris. On 10 March, he embarked upon a concentrated series of compositions that focused on the pairing of a skull and a jug or vase on a simple wooden table in his studio (Zervos, vol. 14, nos. 87, 88, and 93-100), revisiting a compositional theme that he had initially explored during the early 1940s. This time, instead of the dramatic planes of the sheep’s head that had been requisitioned by the artist in his earlier paintings, he chose to depict an impression of a human skull, using his roughly hewn sculpture Tête de mort (Musée national Picasso Paris) as inspiration. Conceived in 1943 and cast surreptitiously by the artist and his collaborators during the War, this haunting object invoked the presence of death within his everyday environment. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has noted, by focusing on the skull in these compositions, Picasso ‘represents the same issues of life and death as The Charnel House, but far more symbolically’ as he grappled with the lasting consequences of war, even after the hostilities have ended (Picasso and Things, exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 291).
While initially the artist focused solely on this pairing of cranium and jug, on 13 March he added a trio of leeks to the table, their long, tubular forms, bright green palette and straggly roots increasing the dynamism of the arrangement. During a visit to Picasso around this time, Françoise Gilot noted the presence of these simple vegetables in his latest still-life compositions: ‘From the point of view of form, the leeks replaced the crossbones that traditionally accompany a skull, their onion-like ends corresponding to the joints of the bones,’ she recalled (F. Gilot and C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 120). When she quizzed the artist about them, Picasso responded, ‘What have leeks got to do with a skull? Plastically, they have everything to do with it. You can’t keep on painting the skull and crossbones, any more than you can keep on rhyming amour with toujours. So you bring in the leeks instead and they make our point without forcing you to spell it out so obviously’ (quoted in ibid.).
Arranged in loose, overlapping configurations, the naturally soft, organic forms of these vegetables acted as an intriguing counterpoint to the more solid, hardened, man-made forms of the pitcher and sculpture. In Crâne, lampe, poireaux, pichet, they also surround the base of a large, coal-oil lamp, which has been placed at the centre of the table, its imposing form towering over the other objects, and suggesting the artist was working late into the night. Unlike other works from this period, where the open window served as the primary light source for the scene, here Picasso allows the warm golden glow of the lamp’s illumination to flood the studio, creating a dynamic play of light and shadow across the various objects and the wall behind, framing the still-life arrangement in a series of sharp, geometric planes.