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Lot Essay
Executed in Paris in the spring of 1909, Buste d'homme illustrates Picasso's maturing pictorial idiom. Picasso had executed Les demoiselles d'Avignon (fig. 1) two years prior, in which he embarked on an investigation of the formal possibilities suggested by African sculpture within a Cézannesque framework. While the appearance of African masks and visages drawn from archaic Iberian sculpture in Les demoiselles jarred his viewers, Picasso was aware that he had not yet arrived at a visually consistent structural transformation, and was instead manipulating form by marrying disparate stylistic elements from unconventional sources. Shock value had to give way to logic, form must be based on a real perception of volume, and to these ends Picasso began to draw lessons from his experimentation with sculpture. His efforts at simultaneously articulating the dual languages of painting and sculpture helped to free his work from the imitative stylization of African art and permitted him to move toward a genuine spatial analysis of weight and form.
In 1906 the Louvre added to their existing collection of primitive art a group of archaic Iberian sculptures that had been recently excavated from sites in Southern Spain. Picasso was impressed by their strong lines and dense proportions, and his work soon came to be dominated by the figurative simplifications and monumental rhythms so explicit in the Louvre's collection. Roland Penrose has commented:
There were many aspects of African sculpture that intrigued Picasso. The simplified features of Negro masks express with force the primeval terrors of the jungle, and their ferocious expressions or serene look of comprehension are frequently a reminder of the lost companionship between man and the animal kingdom. In more formal ways the able use of geometric shapes and patterns produces an abstract aesthetic delight in form. The simple basic shapes created by the circle and the straight line, the only unchanging features of beauty, are applied with startling aptitude. But above all it is the rich variety in which these elements exist and the vitality that radiates from Negro art that brought Picasso a new breath of inspiration...[in which] he found the necessary support to transgress academic prohibitions, to exceed established measures, and to put aesthetic laws in question. (R. Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, Paris, p. 54)
Standing on the verge of cubism, Picasso set down a new vision of the human body. The expressive distortions that Picasso had earlier derived from El Greco and the primitive art of Africa and Iberia have now made way for a more objectively geometric and architectural method, which does no less violence to the traditional view of human form. The suppleness of the body has been recast as massive modeled planes. Picasso successfully devised a painterly mode to render these forms: he used a striated manner of brushing on the paint to effect transitions from light to dark, and to modulate from one plane to the next. His method yields a hard-edged chiaroscuro that lends the figure convincing weight and extraordinary presence.
He strove to articulate sculptural forms within the painting's two-dimensional plane. As Penrose has discussed, "a new architecture of the human form came to life in which classical proportions were a hindrance. Even the expressive distortions of El Greco and the Catalan primitives gave way to a more violent mode based on form that was essentially sculptural" (ibid., p. 137). One can recognize in this work the first signs of a detailed abstraction and geometric analysis of large surfaces, and the angular facial planes foreshadow the faceted canvases of 1910 and the sculpture Tête de femme (Fernande) (fig. 2).
Picasso further pursued this analysis of volume and weight through the use of chromatic contrasts. The transition between adjacent planes is reinforced by the striated manner in which Picasso applied the gouache. This technique allowed Picasso to modulate the planes--to project concave and convex forms, giving the sculptural effect of light traversing the surface of the geometric figure. The application of the medium also allowed Picasso to achieve the effect of chiaroscuro. However, unlike the soft, smoky surfaces of Leonardo da Vinci's religious portraits, Picasso's contrasting of light and dark forms emphasize the hard-edged structural devices within this compositional framework.
In this radical makeover of human form the visage of the sitter is little more than a mask, his face resembling a medieval helmet. Picasso's characterization of his model is intensely conceptual. It has been noted that Picasso's portraits during the early phases of cubism are almost all of men. With folded arms, this muscular figure aggressively and confidently asserts his maleness; a related oil painting is entitled L'athlète (fig. 3). Picasso faces the challenge of imposing a new pictorial language by projecting hardness and strength, and seeks to achieve his aims not by seductiveness or guile, but by sheer force alone.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Les demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme (Fernande), 1909.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, L'athlète, 1909.
Museu de Arte, São Paulo.
In 1906 the Louvre added to their existing collection of primitive art a group of archaic Iberian sculptures that had been recently excavated from sites in Southern Spain. Picasso was impressed by their strong lines and dense proportions, and his work soon came to be dominated by the figurative simplifications and monumental rhythms so explicit in the Louvre's collection. Roland Penrose has commented:
There were many aspects of African sculpture that intrigued Picasso. The simplified features of Negro masks express with force the primeval terrors of the jungle, and their ferocious expressions or serene look of comprehension are frequently a reminder of the lost companionship between man and the animal kingdom. In more formal ways the able use of geometric shapes and patterns produces an abstract aesthetic delight in form. The simple basic shapes created by the circle and the straight line, the only unchanging features of beauty, are applied with startling aptitude. But above all it is the rich variety in which these elements exist and the vitality that radiates from Negro art that brought Picasso a new breath of inspiration...[in which] he found the necessary support to transgress academic prohibitions, to exceed established measures, and to put aesthetic laws in question. (R. Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, Paris, p. 54)
Standing on the verge of cubism, Picasso set down a new vision of the human body. The expressive distortions that Picasso had earlier derived from El Greco and the primitive art of Africa and Iberia have now made way for a more objectively geometric and architectural method, which does no less violence to the traditional view of human form. The suppleness of the body has been recast as massive modeled planes. Picasso successfully devised a painterly mode to render these forms: he used a striated manner of brushing on the paint to effect transitions from light to dark, and to modulate from one plane to the next. His method yields a hard-edged chiaroscuro that lends the figure convincing weight and extraordinary presence.
He strove to articulate sculptural forms within the painting's two-dimensional plane. As Penrose has discussed, "a new architecture of the human form came to life in which classical proportions were a hindrance. Even the expressive distortions of El Greco and the Catalan primitives gave way to a more violent mode based on form that was essentially sculptural" (ibid., p. 137). One can recognize in this work the first signs of a detailed abstraction and geometric analysis of large surfaces, and the angular facial planes foreshadow the faceted canvases of 1910 and the sculpture Tête de femme (Fernande) (fig. 2).
Picasso further pursued this analysis of volume and weight through the use of chromatic contrasts. The transition between adjacent planes is reinforced by the striated manner in which Picasso applied the gouache. This technique allowed Picasso to modulate the planes--to project concave and convex forms, giving the sculptural effect of light traversing the surface of the geometric figure. The application of the medium also allowed Picasso to achieve the effect of chiaroscuro. However, unlike the soft, smoky surfaces of Leonardo da Vinci's religious portraits, Picasso's contrasting of light and dark forms emphasize the hard-edged structural devices within this compositional framework.
In this radical makeover of human form the visage of the sitter is little more than a mask, his face resembling a medieval helmet. Picasso's characterization of his model is intensely conceptual. It has been noted that Picasso's portraits during the early phases of cubism are almost all of men. With folded arms, this muscular figure aggressively and confidently asserts his maleness; a related oil painting is entitled L'athlète (fig. 3). Picasso faces the challenge of imposing a new pictorial language by projecting hardness and strength, and seeks to achieve his aims not by seductiveness or guile, but by sheer force alone.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Les demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme (Fernande), 1909.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, L'athlète, 1909.
Museu de Arte, São Paulo.