拍品专文
This painting has been requested for the exhibition Picasso and the War: 1937-1945, to be held at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Oct. 1998-Jan. 1999, and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Jan.-April 1999.
The war created many hardships for Picasso, as it did for other Parisians. Shortages of food and coal were common and the scarcity of fuel made it impossible for Picasso to heat his studio in winter, with the result that he could not use it during those months; canvas and bronze were also in short supply. In addition, Picasso's Guernica (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 65; Museo del Prado, Madrid) had made him internationally recognized for his anti-fascist views, and at the request of the Spanish ambassador Picasso was forbidden to exhibit. Despite these many difficulties, the artist elected to remain in Paris, declining offers to move to the United States and Mexico.
The severe winter of 1940-41 was particularly miserable. Paul Eluard, Picasso's close friend, later recalled, "Harsh winter, that one of 1940-41. Because of the cold, we went for a month without opening the shutters" (quoted in M. Goggin, Picasso and his Art during the German Occupation: 1940-1945, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1985, p. 80). Picasso made little art at this time. Virtually the only thing we know of from him during this period is the short Surrealist play, Le dsir attrap par la queue, which he wrote in three days, January 14-17, 1941. The characters in this play are obsessed with hunger, cold, and physical discomfort. The artist made a small gouache on wood on January 25; and there are just three more known works--two drawings and another gouache on wood--from early 1941. He may have been modelling sculptures at the time, but we cannot be sure.
Then in May the artist began to work with a burst of energy: there are five oil paintings, one gouache, and forty drawings from this month. Painted on May 10, 1941, Nature morte au boudin may well be the first oil on canvas that Picasso made in Paris during the Nazi Occupation.
The still-life depicts the ingredients for a humble meal: artichokes, sausage, wine, and a boxed cheese nestled in a partially unwrapped newspaper; a large knife rests on the edge of the table; and a drawer, filled with forks and knives, is open in the immediate foreground, its key thrusting towards the viewer. One low lamp illuminates the scene. According to Sidney and Harriet Janis, writing in 1946, the painting represents a table at the restaurant Le Savoyard. During the Occupation, Picasso also made still-lifes at another favorite restaurant, Le Catalan (e.g. Zervos, vol. 13, no. 27; Muse des Beaux Arts, Lyon).
The dark cast of the picture reflects the gloom of war. As Roland Penrose, Picasso's friend and biographer, has remarked:
The same sinister background of war and privation makes itself felt in many of the still-lifes of this period. Just as music in the form of guitar-playing and songs had been the theme of many cubist paintings in the days before the First World War, so food in its more humble forms, such as sausages and leeks, together with skulls of animals and the dim light of candles and shaded lamps recur throughout Picasso's paintings of the Second World War. Even the cutlery, sharp-pointed gleaming knives and hungry forks, repeats the same uneasy theme. (R. Penrose, op. cit., p. 342)
Penrose illustrated this passage with the present still-life.
Leo Steinberg has discussed the wartime still-lifes in much the same terms:
Picasso's still lifes of the early 1940s are extraordinary-- craggy and stark, and the few edibles on the table assembled under powerful stresses... These dire pictures profess none of the noble delights Picasso spread forth in the still lifes of the 1920s; none of the spirited elegance that distinguished those of Synthetic Cubism. The fare on his wartime tables is not rhythmically patterned within the picture plane, but trapped in an unbreakable web, held down as if to forestall resistance. The objects within these spaces--a small roasted bird, lean vegetables, spiked flowers or ears of wheat, baskets of eggs, and green pellets of fruit--one can sense that they matter. (L. Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, New York, 1972, pp. 213-214)
The objects in the present picture have an agitated air of sufferance. In his poetry, as in his paintings, Picasso attempted to imagine the spiritual and emotional life of inanimate objects. Marie-Laure Bernadac has observed a number of parallels between the present still-life and passages in Picasso's writing:
Like an enchanted beholder, [Picasso] witnessed the "great interior dance of household objects" (February 2, 1937), "bowing very respectfully before all the kitchen utensils" (April 30, 1939). He rendered the "shocking feasts of imprisoned objects and illiterate vegetables" (February 5, 1937), aware of the "dangers of knives that get away" (November 8, 1935), and attentive to the "stifled cries of the forks and spoons" (February 20, 1937). One should keep these words in mind when looking at the knives and forks peeking out of the drawer in the Nature morte au boudin of 1941. (M. Bernadac, exh. cat. op. cit., Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1992, p. 23)
Regarding the present picture, Picasso is reported to have said, "The knives and forks are like souls out of Purgatory." (Quoted in H. and S. Janis, op. cit., opposite pl. 60). Indeed, the forks seems to reach up like the hands of the resurrected in a painting of the Last Judgment. Jean Sutherland Boggs has commented on Picasso's description:
It is appropriate that Picasso should have used the word purgatory to describe an aspect of the painting because most of his works from the wartime years suggest that he found the Occupation exactly that--a life that was confined, without changes, and without hope. (J. S. Boggs, exh. cat., op. cit., Cleveland, 1992, p. 268)
The artist's daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, has pointed out that the Germans confiscated cutlery and that knives such as the large one lying on the table were consequently regarded as especially precious. She remembers her father honing theirs in the apartment on the Boulevard Henri IV that she shared with her mother.
It is likely that while at work on the present picture Picasso was thinking of his proto-Cubist still-lifes; the painting has an exceptionally high viewpoint, with the result that the table seems to recede up the picture plane. This is an uncommon feature in Picasso's later works; but there are many precedents for it in the early still-lifes, such as Le compotier (fig. 1) and Poissons et bouteilles (Zervos, vol. 2, no. 126; Muse d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve), both from 1908. Moreover, in the present painting, the composition is dominated by the triangle of light falling from the lamp and extending to the front corners of the table. To be sure, Picasso based the composition of many of his paintings on a triangle of this kind, but proto-Cubist still-lifes (fig. 2) also are certainly a precedent. In his proto-Cubist period Picasso explored the pictorial potential of a dark palette; this is seen not only in Le compotier, but also in the 1908 Fruits et verre (fig. 3).
In its tonal range, Nature morte au boudin is one of Picasso's darkest still-lifes. Painted entirely in black, grey and white, the picture is in a particularly ashen grisaille. Picasso often used grisaille for pictures dealing with war and its effects; Guernica and Le charnier (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 76) are the most notable examples of this, but even they have more color. Picasso said of the present picture that it has "an atmosphere like Philip II, dark and dismal" (quoted in H. and S. Janis, op. cit., opposite pl. 60). While Picasso may have been referring to the repressive character of Philip II's rule, it is also possible that he was thinking of the great Spanish tradition of bodegones (fig. 4). These pictures often featured humble fare arrayed on a simple table; moreover, they tended to have dark palettes rich in brown and black. Picasso, of course, knew this tradition very well; indeed, along with the work of Czanne, it was the principal source for his still-lifes around 1908. Moreover, he once stated, "The only real color is black. The Spaniards understood this. Look at Velzquez's blacks;" and "If you don't know what color to take, take black" (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I (1881-1906), p. 417).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Le compotier, 1908-09
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Vase, gourde, fruits sur une table, 1909
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
John Hay Whitney, B.A. 1926, Hon. M.A. 1956, Collection
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Fruits et verre, 1908
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 4) Diego Velzquez, Deux jeunes gens table (detail), circa 1622
The Wellington Museum, London
The war created many hardships for Picasso, as it did for other Parisians. Shortages of food and coal were common and the scarcity of fuel made it impossible for Picasso to heat his studio in winter, with the result that he could not use it during those months; canvas and bronze were also in short supply. In addition, Picasso's Guernica (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 65; Museo del Prado, Madrid) had made him internationally recognized for his anti-fascist views, and at the request of the Spanish ambassador Picasso was forbidden to exhibit. Despite these many difficulties, the artist elected to remain in Paris, declining offers to move to the United States and Mexico.
The severe winter of 1940-41 was particularly miserable. Paul Eluard, Picasso's close friend, later recalled, "Harsh winter, that one of 1940-41. Because of the cold, we went for a month without opening the shutters" (quoted in M. Goggin, Picasso and his Art during the German Occupation: 1940-1945, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1985, p. 80). Picasso made little art at this time. Virtually the only thing we know of from him during this period is the short Surrealist play, Le dsir attrap par la queue, which he wrote in three days, January 14-17, 1941. The characters in this play are obsessed with hunger, cold, and physical discomfort. The artist made a small gouache on wood on January 25; and there are just three more known works--two drawings and another gouache on wood--from early 1941. He may have been modelling sculptures at the time, but we cannot be sure.
Then in May the artist began to work with a burst of energy: there are five oil paintings, one gouache, and forty drawings from this month. Painted on May 10, 1941, Nature morte au boudin may well be the first oil on canvas that Picasso made in Paris during the Nazi Occupation.
The still-life depicts the ingredients for a humble meal: artichokes, sausage, wine, and a boxed cheese nestled in a partially unwrapped newspaper; a large knife rests on the edge of the table; and a drawer, filled with forks and knives, is open in the immediate foreground, its key thrusting towards the viewer. One low lamp illuminates the scene. According to Sidney and Harriet Janis, writing in 1946, the painting represents a table at the restaurant Le Savoyard. During the Occupation, Picasso also made still-lifes at another favorite restaurant, Le Catalan (e.g. Zervos, vol. 13, no. 27; Muse des Beaux Arts, Lyon).
The dark cast of the picture reflects the gloom of war. As Roland Penrose, Picasso's friend and biographer, has remarked:
The same sinister background of war and privation makes itself felt in many of the still-lifes of this period. Just as music in the form of guitar-playing and songs had been the theme of many cubist paintings in the days before the First World War, so food in its more humble forms, such as sausages and leeks, together with skulls of animals and the dim light of candles and shaded lamps recur throughout Picasso's paintings of the Second World War. Even the cutlery, sharp-pointed gleaming knives and hungry forks, repeats the same uneasy theme. (R. Penrose, op. cit., p. 342)
Penrose illustrated this passage with the present still-life.
Leo Steinberg has discussed the wartime still-lifes in much the same terms:
Picasso's still lifes of the early 1940s are extraordinary-- craggy and stark, and the few edibles on the table assembled under powerful stresses... These dire pictures profess none of the noble delights Picasso spread forth in the still lifes of the 1920s; none of the spirited elegance that distinguished those of Synthetic Cubism. The fare on his wartime tables is not rhythmically patterned within the picture plane, but trapped in an unbreakable web, held down as if to forestall resistance. The objects within these spaces--a small roasted bird, lean vegetables, spiked flowers or ears of wheat, baskets of eggs, and green pellets of fruit--one can sense that they matter. (L. Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, New York, 1972, pp. 213-214)
The objects in the present picture have an agitated air of sufferance. In his poetry, as in his paintings, Picasso attempted to imagine the spiritual and emotional life of inanimate objects. Marie-Laure Bernadac has observed a number of parallels between the present still-life and passages in Picasso's writing:
Like an enchanted beholder, [Picasso] witnessed the "great interior dance of household objects" (February 2, 1937), "bowing very respectfully before all the kitchen utensils" (April 30, 1939). He rendered the "shocking feasts of imprisoned objects and illiterate vegetables" (February 5, 1937), aware of the "dangers of knives that get away" (November 8, 1935), and attentive to the "stifled cries of the forks and spoons" (February 20, 1937). One should keep these words in mind when looking at the knives and forks peeking out of the drawer in the Nature morte au boudin of 1941. (M. Bernadac, exh. cat. op. cit., Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1992, p. 23)
Regarding the present picture, Picasso is reported to have said, "The knives and forks are like souls out of Purgatory." (Quoted in H. and S. Janis, op. cit., opposite pl. 60). Indeed, the forks seems to reach up like the hands of the resurrected in a painting of the Last Judgment. Jean Sutherland Boggs has commented on Picasso's description:
It is appropriate that Picasso should have used the word purgatory to describe an aspect of the painting because most of his works from the wartime years suggest that he found the Occupation exactly that--a life that was confined, without changes, and without hope. (J. S. Boggs, exh. cat., op. cit., Cleveland, 1992, p. 268)
The artist's daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, has pointed out that the Germans confiscated cutlery and that knives such as the large one lying on the table were consequently regarded as especially precious. She remembers her father honing theirs in the apartment on the Boulevard Henri IV that she shared with her mother.
It is likely that while at work on the present picture Picasso was thinking of his proto-Cubist still-lifes; the painting has an exceptionally high viewpoint, with the result that the table seems to recede up the picture plane. This is an uncommon feature in Picasso's later works; but there are many precedents for it in the early still-lifes, such as Le compotier (fig. 1) and Poissons et bouteilles (Zervos, vol. 2, no. 126; Muse d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve), both from 1908. Moreover, in the present painting, the composition is dominated by the triangle of light falling from the lamp and extending to the front corners of the table. To be sure, Picasso based the composition of many of his paintings on a triangle of this kind, but proto-Cubist still-lifes (fig. 2) also are certainly a precedent. In his proto-Cubist period Picasso explored the pictorial potential of a dark palette; this is seen not only in Le compotier, but also in the 1908 Fruits et verre (fig. 3).
In its tonal range, Nature morte au boudin is one of Picasso's darkest still-lifes. Painted entirely in black, grey and white, the picture is in a particularly ashen grisaille. Picasso often used grisaille for pictures dealing with war and its effects; Guernica and Le charnier (Zervos, vol. 14, no. 76) are the most notable examples of this, but even they have more color. Picasso said of the present picture that it has "an atmosphere like Philip II, dark and dismal" (quoted in H. and S. Janis, op. cit., opposite pl. 60). While Picasso may have been referring to the repressive character of Philip II's rule, it is also possible that he was thinking of the great Spanish tradition of bodegones (fig. 4). These pictures often featured humble fare arrayed on a simple table; moreover, they tended to have dark palettes rich in brown and black. Picasso, of course, knew this tradition very well; indeed, along with the work of Czanne, it was the principal source for his still-lifes around 1908. Moreover, he once stated, "The only real color is black. The Spaniards understood this. Look at Velzquez's blacks;" and "If you don't know what color to take, take black" (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I (1881-1906), p. 417).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Le compotier, 1908-09
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Vase, gourde, fruits sur une table, 1909
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
John Hay Whitney, B.A. 1926, Hon. M.A. 1956, Collection
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Fruits et verre, 1908
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 4) Diego Velzquez, Deux jeunes gens table (detail), circa 1622
The Wellington Museum, London