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Sex and Violence in the Studio - The Open College of the Arts

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Sex and Violence in the Studio


“There is no past or future in art,” said Picasso, adding that all art must live in the present “if it is to be considered at all”. In this series of 100 graphic works made between 1930 and 37 for his art dealer Ambroise Vollard, on now at the British Museum, Picasso draws on an intense and sustained engagement with tradition. He draws on classical sculpture, Greek vase paintings, Etruscan bronze mirrors, Ingres, Rembrandt (some examples of all these also shown in exhibition) – but also on his own life and especially his relationship with his young mistress Marie Therese Walter – to produce powerful images of sex, art, violence , aging and death.
They are mainly etchings with some aquatints, but using a huge range of techniques: sinuous single lines (as in the Etruscan works on show) to define nudes or beasts, heavy crosshatching, blotty sugar aquatints – endlessly inventive. They range from the sensual and sunny to the dark and violent. The series is a struggle or a dialogue between the two poles of Picasso’s art, the Apollonian and the Dionysiac: Apollo is the god of clear, calm classicism, the figure of the bearded sculptor but also the serene sculptures within the etchings and the models who pose for them or next to them. Dionysus, god of wine, is ecstatic but also violent – the Greek god whose followers tore apart live animals in drunken frenzy. Here he is equated with satyr and minotaur – the beast that represents unconscious desires – half man, half bull. In the most violent images the Minotaur is a rapist. They make uncomfortable viewing. In other images the Minotaur reclines (humorously I think) in bed with a beautiful woman beside him and a glass of wine in his hand, like some bizarre playboy, lacking only a velvet smoking jacket!
Picasso is both sculptor and Minotaur, artist and satyr. The identification is clear. In one scene it is definitely his face (at a younger age – oh vanity!) on the figure of a young man disrobing a sleeping naked woman. Images of voyeurism like this are juxtaposed with images of sculptor and model looking at sculptures: art is voyeuristic. The sculptured female head often has Marie Therese’s features. The artist transforms the girl into art so he can look on her voyeuristically. In many scenes it is impossible to see which is the work of art and which is the live model. Teasingly Picasso defines both with a single sensuous line, an economy of means. The sculptor is bearded, aging but venerable. Is there a touch of self parody here? Picasso as far as I know never had a beard, but here the artist looks like a classical sculpture of Hercules and of course Picasso often indulged in strong man machismo in art as well as life – but in art he had his tongue firmly in cheek.
The minotaur ages too and in the last images is led helpless, blind (emasculated?) through the darkness by a young girl. Perhaps she is the same young girl who, was among a group of children terrified by a monstrous winged bull a few etchings before. Is this later treatment of the Minotaur, blind and helpless, a punishment -Picasso punished because of his affair with Marie Therese who was more than 20 years his junior. The last images seem to well up out of the crosshatched darkness like nightmares from the unconscious: “Minotaur” was, after all, the title of the Surrealist magazine which Picasso illustrated, and they knew a thing or two about dreams. As if to poke fun at the movement, though, Picasso has several etchings in which the sculptor looks at a strange and comic surrealist sculpture he has created, seemingly as puzzled as gallery goers of the thirties were in front of similar works. This is a rare openly humorous note, but there is, in many scenes, a kind of ironic tone, almost self-parody.
So is the suite just self indulgent, Picasso indulging in wish fulfilment and voyeurism made possible by his dazzling skill and inventiveness? Are they just examples of dodgy sexual politics and sensationalism created by a show-off? I don’t think so. I think Picasso says a lot in this series about art and how it is made, and its relation to life as it is lived. As always in his art, metamorphosis and transformation are a central theme: life is transformed into art, artist into minotaur or satyr or old man, beautiful girl into beautiful sculpture. There are several etchings on the Pygmalion story. The beautiful female sculpture is brought to life by the skill of the artist. The series also says a lot about how modern art, contemporary art, is always drawing on tradition – no work of art or artist is an island isolated in time, no art is just contemporary. All the past art is in the present art as Picasso implied. These images seem to be drawn from a stream of creativity reflecting darkness and light. If you haven’t already seen them I urge you to go and make up your own mind.


Posted by author: David Knapp

One thought on “Sex and Violence in the Studio

  • The psychology behind much of Picasso’s art is fascinating. You mention Apollo and Dyonisis as reflections of parts of Picasso’s psyche and also how he related himself to the minotaur. I wonder how we, as artists, are aware of how we imbue images with parts of our own personality and how we may censor them. How much of this is conscious and how much unconscious?

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