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Lot Essay
Picasso first saw Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. While the painting immediately struck him, it was not until 1959 that he would embark on a virtually continuous three-year exploration of his predecessor's 1863 succès de scandale. Picasso's incessant reimaginings of Manet's composition would eventually come to encompass, as Susan Grace Galassi has noted, "twenty-seven paintings in oil on canvas, some one hundred and fifty drawings, three linoleum cuts, eighteen cardboard maquettes for sculpture, five concrete sculptures, and several ceramic plaques" (in Picasso's Variations on the Masters, 1996, p. 185). And there is one tapestry, as well, commissioned by Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The present work represents just one of a number of tapestries that the millionaire politician and collector commissioned from Picasso. Many other examples still hang in the underground galleries of Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, New York. The medium allowed Rockefeller to privately enjoy unique versions of images so iconic they were otherwise inaccessible even to him. In addition to the present work, for example, the collector arranged to have Picasso's revolutionary 1907 work Les desmoiselles d'Avignon in tapestry form. A woven version of Guernica has hung at the headquarters of the United Nations Security Council since 1985, a testament to this striking medium's public power that Rockefeller clearly felt. The more emblematic the original work, the more successful its translation would be into a tapestry.
While an edition of three tapestries based on Picasso's painting was planned, only one--the present work--was ultimately executed. Mme Dürrbach completed the 1963 commission in 1967, weaving Picasso's design into wool at the Atelier J. de La Baume-Dürrbach, her workshop in Cavalaire, France.
Picasso's obsessive reworkings of Manet's composition soon led to a "triadic format," in which "he has replaced the foursome with a party of three" (ibid, p. 189). In a canvas from late February 1960 (fig. 2), Picasso clarified this new structure by distilling his forms down to flat, unadorned areas of color. In an interpretation begun in early March (fig. 3), an ornate patterning dominates the composition, foreshadowing the intricate texture later seen in the woven version. Here, the greenery recalls embroidery's stylized designs, the figures' contortions become more elaborate, and the reinstallation of the still life in the lower left corner announces an overall decorative intention. Perhaps it is this particular painting's emphasis on ornamental embellishment that led Picasso to use it as a model for his cartoon, for it is this work which most closely resembles the present tapestry.
If the original shock of Manet's canvas lay in its open-air exposure of an intimate affair, the tapestry, public and monumentally sized, became the ideal medium to embody this work's ultimate canonization, as reinterpreted by the 20th century's greatest master. The medieval roots of tapestry-weaving connect Picasso to a guild tradition that even further precedes his 19th century source material. The present work thus represents the moment of modernism's inception--Manet's painting--as a link between ancient artistic practices and craftsmanships, and the most modern of representational possibilities.
(fig. 1) Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, after Manet, February 29, 1960. Private collection.
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, after Manet, 1960. Musée Picasso, Paris.
The present work represents just one of a number of tapestries that the millionaire politician and collector commissioned from Picasso. Many other examples still hang in the underground galleries of Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, New York. The medium allowed Rockefeller to privately enjoy unique versions of images so iconic they were otherwise inaccessible even to him. In addition to the present work, for example, the collector arranged to have Picasso's revolutionary 1907 work Les desmoiselles d'Avignon in tapestry form. A woven version of Guernica has hung at the headquarters of the United Nations Security Council since 1985, a testament to this striking medium's public power that Rockefeller clearly felt. The more emblematic the original work, the more successful its translation would be into a tapestry.
While an edition of three tapestries based on Picasso's painting was planned, only one--the present work--was ultimately executed. Mme Dürrbach completed the 1963 commission in 1967, weaving Picasso's design into wool at the Atelier J. de La Baume-Dürrbach, her workshop in Cavalaire, France.
Picasso's obsessive reworkings of Manet's composition soon led to a "triadic format," in which "he has replaced the foursome with a party of three" (ibid, p. 189). In a canvas from late February 1960 (fig. 2), Picasso clarified this new structure by distilling his forms down to flat, unadorned areas of color. In an interpretation begun in early March (fig. 3), an ornate patterning dominates the composition, foreshadowing the intricate texture later seen in the woven version. Here, the greenery recalls embroidery's stylized designs, the figures' contortions become more elaborate, and the reinstallation of the still life in the lower left corner announces an overall decorative intention. Perhaps it is this particular painting's emphasis on ornamental embellishment that led Picasso to use it as a model for his cartoon, for it is this work which most closely resembles the present tapestry.
If the original shock of Manet's canvas lay in its open-air exposure of an intimate affair, the tapestry, public and monumentally sized, became the ideal medium to embody this work's ultimate canonization, as reinterpreted by the 20th century's greatest master. The medieval roots of tapestry-weaving connect Picasso to a guild tradition that even further precedes his 19th century source material. The present work thus represents the moment of modernism's inception--Manet's painting--as a link between ancient artistic practices and craftsmanships, and the most modern of representational possibilities.
(fig. 1) Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, after Manet, February 29, 1960. Private collection.
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, after Manet, 1960. Musée Picasso, Paris.