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拍品專文
In early 1966, while in Mougins convalescing from surgery that he had undergone some months previously, Picasso re-read Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. He had just begun painting again, and before long a new character entered his work, the musketeer, or the Spanish version of the seventeenth century cavalier, the hidalgo, a rakish nobleman skilled with the sword and daring in his romantic exploits. The heroic figure would come to be one of the most prominent in the artist’s late oeuvre. In the present Tête d’homme, executed in quick brushstrokes that simply delineate each attribute, the musketeer is recognizable by his thickly impasto-ed fraise collar, striped red garment and distinguished moustache. The large-eyed, deep black stare of the sitter is reminiscent of the artist’s famously powerful mirada fuerte—a important reminder that Picasso’s musketeers were not only based on Dumas’ imagination, but also strongly identifiable with the aging artist himself.
Painted in May 1969, Tête d’homme dates from one of the most prolific years of Picasso’s life, a time when he was painting with an irrepressible verve, filling canvas after canvas with bold, gestural and highly colored images. Picasso's musketeer images (and his late works in general) have often been interpreted as a retreat from contemporary life into a world of "backward-looking romantics and nostalgic dreamers," during a time when the United States' war in Vietnam dominated the headlines (Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 82).
The musketeer paintings were the final major series of variations on a theme that Picasso undertook in his career. This subject provided an opportunity to investigate two aspects of art-making that were foremost among Picasso's concerns during his final years: process and tradition. Regarding the former, the artist was increasingly drawn to serial procedure, painting numerous variations on a single theme as a means of examining, assimilating, and re-interpreting a subject or style. In 1956, he told Alexander Liberman, the editor of Vogue magazine, "Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. I search incessantly, and there is a logical sequence in all this research. That is why I number them. It's an experiment in time" (quoted in D. Ashton, ed., Picasso on Art, New York, 1972, p. 72).
Painted in May 1969, Tête d’homme dates from one of the most prolific years of Picasso’s life, a time when he was painting with an irrepressible verve, filling canvas after canvas with bold, gestural and highly colored images. Picasso's musketeer images (and his late works in general) have often been interpreted as a retreat from contemporary life into a world of "backward-looking romantics and nostalgic dreamers," during a time when the United States' war in Vietnam dominated the headlines (Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 82).
The musketeer paintings were the final major series of variations on a theme that Picasso undertook in his career. This subject provided an opportunity to investigate two aspects of art-making that were foremost among Picasso's concerns during his final years: process and tradition. Regarding the former, the artist was increasingly drawn to serial procedure, painting numerous variations on a single theme as a means of examining, assimilating, and re-interpreting a subject or style. In 1956, he told Alexander Liberman, the editor of Vogue magazine, "Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. I search incessantly, and there is a logical sequence in all this research. That is why I number them. It's an experiment in time" (quoted in D. Ashton, ed., Picasso on Art, New York, 1972, p. 72).