Praeterita

In the previous post in this series , I talked about the displays of Picasso's cubist, or immediately pre-cubist, era sketchbooks that are displayed at the Musee Picasso in Paris. What you also see from the many personal items on show is that Picasso used anything that was at hand as a thing to draw on. In the photo above, a Cubist sketch of two faces appears on the back of an insurance policy. An interesting biographical side note: this is probably from around 1910, certainly pre-1914, and although Picasso didn't leave the bohemian world of Montmartre for good until 1913, he was clearly earning enough by now, and amassing enough worldly goods, that he felt the need to have something as un-bohemian and positively bourgeois as an insurance policy. I'm also amused by the fact that the policy covers damage to or accidents involving "automobiles and velocipedes."

The Musee Picasso in Paris displays many drawings and works on paper, including sketchbooks from about the time he was working on the Demoiselles d'Avignon, that is 1907. The pencil drawing, above, looks like it might be of the peasant Fontedevila, whom Picasso used as a model when he and Fernande Olivier stayed at Gosol, a Pyrennean village, in 1906. In all of the drawings at this time, we can see how Picasso was striving obsessively to simplify the figure into geometric shapes, in an attempt to synthesize what he saw in African sculptures and in Cezanne's painting "Bathers." When we are now so used to this way of depicting the human figure. when this work by Picasso has been overtaken by so many cycles of art, we find it difficult to imagine how ground-breaking this was back in the early 1900s. Picasso himself was unsure of what he was doing, and he certainly received little encouragement from dealers, who wanted him to stick with the sentimental paintings of...

Me outside the Bateau Lavoir, and (top) the building in about 1905. You know those people that are completely obsessed fans of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, or any other kind of chronicle/team/celebrity/et cetera? The ones who secretly hoard collections of memorabilia, who consume everything created by the object of their obsession or written about it? The ones who, when asked a question about their pet subject, find it hard not to start gabbling wildly, trying to tell everything they know as fast as they can, in a way that makes the person who asked the question freeze with a ghastly smile on their face and wide, unblinking eyes that cannot hide their deep regret at starting a conversation with this complete and utter nutter? That's me, when it comes to Pablo Picasso and his early years in Paris. Picasso on the Place Ravignan, in front of Le Bateau Lavoir, in 1904. Thankfully, it started with his paintings, and later the other kinds of art he made, so at least my ...