Lot Essay
"Picasso now chose to work with isolated figures, archetypes, and concentrated on the essential nude, the couple, man in disguise or stripped bare: it was his way of dealing with the subject of women, love, and the human comedy.
"After isolating the painter in a series of portraits, it was logical that Picasso should now paint the model alone: that is to say a nude woman lying on a divan, offered up to the painter's eyes and to the man's desire. It is characteristic of Picasso, in contrast to Matisse and many other twentieth-century painters, that he takes as his model - or as his Muse - the woman he loves and who lives with him, not a professional model. So what his paintings show is never a 'model' of a woman, but woman as model. This has its consequences for his emotional as well as his artistic life: for the beloved woman stands for 'painting', and the painted woman is the beloved: detachment is an impossibility. Picasso never paints from life: Jacqueline never poses for him: but she is there always, everywhere. All the woman of these years are Jacqueline, and yet they are rarely portraits. The image of the woman he loves is a model imprinted deep within him, and it emerges every time he paints a woman, just as whenever he paints a man he thinks of her father, Don José.
"In the series of large Reclining Nudes of 1964, the artistic references are indirect: 'Venus, Maja, Olympia', writes Christian Geelhaar, quite correctly. The posture of the woman with arms raised, showing her armpits, recalls Goya's Maja Nude." (Marie-Laure Bernadac, "Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model", in Late Picasso, London, 1988, p. 78)
"After isolating the painter in a series of portraits, it was logical that Picasso should now paint the model alone: that is to say a nude woman lying on a divan, offered up to the painter's eyes and to the man's desire. It is characteristic of Picasso, in contrast to Matisse and many other twentieth-century painters, that he takes as his model - or as his Muse - the woman he loves and who lives with him, not a professional model. So what his paintings show is never a 'model' of a woman, but woman as model. This has its consequences for his emotional as well as his artistic life: for the beloved woman stands for 'painting', and the painted woman is the beloved: detachment is an impossibility. Picasso never paints from life: Jacqueline never poses for him: but she is there always, everywhere. All the woman of these years are Jacqueline, and yet they are rarely portraits. The image of the woman he loves is a model imprinted deep within him, and it emerges every time he paints a woman, just as whenever he paints a man he thinks of her father, Don José.
"In the series of large Reclining Nudes of 1964, the artistic references are indirect: 'Venus, Maja, Olympia', writes Christian Geelhaar, quite correctly. The posture of the woman with arms raised, showing her armpits, recalls Goya's Maja Nude." (Marie-Laure Bernadac, "Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model", in Late Picasso, London, 1988, p. 78)