Lot Essay
The present painting belongs to a series of canvases portraying the Artist and Model theme executed by Picasso in the early 1960s.
Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so
many times in his life that, as Michel Leiris has
remarked, it almost became a genre in itself, like
landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he
painted almost nothing else: the painter, armed
with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas
on an easel, mostly seen from the side, like a
screen, and the nude model, seated or reclining, in
a space which presents all the characteristics of
an artist's studio: the big window, the sculpture on
a stool, the folding screen, the lamp, the divan,
etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with
Picasso's real situation; he always painted without
a palette and without an easel, directly on to a
canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a
record of his own work as an 'epitome of a profession'.
(M.L. Bernadac, Late Picasso, London, 1988, p. 74)
Speculating on the connection between Picasso's final works and his sexual life Marie-Laure Bernadac noted:
For while Picasso's sexual powers may have waned, his
artistic ones had done nothing of the sort. Whatever
he may have felt about the onset of impotence, the
compensatory pattern that the artist diagnosed
enabled him to see sex and art as metaphors for each
other. The tools of the artist's trade - his brushes -
became surrogates for sexual parts to be used on a
canvas that was a surrogate for the model. Apropos
his work for the Diaghilev ballet, Picasso told Clive
Bell in 1960 that 'when it comes to the point, one
generally has to paint the dress on the dancers'.
And he later recalled the first night of Tricorne,
when he wanted to make some last-minute alterations
to Lopokova's costume. 'Little Lydia was abominable.
She couldn't sit still for a moment. She wriggled
and giggled and messed everything up,' he told Bell,
who checked the story with Lopokova. 'Oh, yes, I
should think so,' she said, 'tickled my nipples with
his brush.' Lopokova apparently told Picasso to
behave, that she wasn't one of his canvases or one
of his girls. (Ibid., p. 30)
Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so
many times in his life that, as Michel Leiris has
remarked, it almost became a genre in itself, like
landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he
painted almost nothing else: the painter, armed
with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas
on an easel, mostly seen from the side, like a
screen, and the nude model, seated or reclining, in
a space which presents all the characteristics of
an artist's studio: the big window, the sculpture on
a stool, the folding screen, the lamp, the divan,
etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with
Picasso's real situation; he always painted without
a palette and without an easel, directly on to a
canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a
record of his own work as an 'epitome of a profession'.
(M.L. Bernadac, Late Picasso, London, 1988, p. 74)
Speculating on the connection between Picasso's final works and his sexual life Marie-Laure Bernadac noted:
For while Picasso's sexual powers may have waned, his
artistic ones had done nothing of the sort. Whatever
he may have felt about the onset of impotence, the
compensatory pattern that the artist diagnosed
enabled him to see sex and art as metaphors for each
other. The tools of the artist's trade - his brushes -
became surrogates for sexual parts to be used on a
canvas that was a surrogate for the model. Apropos
his work for the Diaghilev ballet, Picasso told Clive
Bell in 1960 that 'when it comes to the point, one
generally has to paint the dress on the dancers'.
And he later recalled the first night of Tricorne,
when he wanted to make some last-minute alterations
to Lopokova's costume. 'Little Lydia was abominable.
She couldn't sit still for a moment. She wriggled
and giggled and messed everything up,' he told Bell,
who checked the story with Lopokova. 'Oh, yes, I
should think so,' she said, 'tickled my nipples with
his brush.' Lopokova apparently told Picasso to
behave, that she wasn't one of his canvases or one
of his girls. (Ibid., p. 30)