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Lot Essay
In May 1912 Picasso affixed a piece of oil-cloth printed with a chair-caning design to a painting on an oval-shaped canvas, which he framed with a piece of rope. This Nature morte à la chaise cannée (Zervos, vol. 2*, no. 294; Musée Picasso, Paris) is renowned as the first collage. Braque made the first papier collé in early September 1912 by cutting up pieces of a simulated wood-grain paper and pasting them on a sheet of paper, and drawing over and around them. Within weeks Picasso also began to experiment with this new technique. The use of flat, cut-out forms soon completely altered the structure and appearance of cubist painting, as the complex and often ambiguous planar faceting of analytic Cubism gave way to the simpler and more clearly delineated shapes seen in the synthetic style, an approach that fully acknowledged and purposely exploited the inherent flatness of the picture plane.
By the spring of 1914, when Picasso executed the present Nature morte à la guitare, the practice of papier collé, collage and conventional painting methods were flourishing side by side in a game-like process of ingenious and endlessly unfolding invention. Note that here, instead of applying a piece of imitation wood-grain paper on the right side, as in a regular papier collé, Picasso has painted in this form, so that it resembles a cut and pasted paper. This is the artist's manual rendering of a printed version of a simulated pattern derived from actual wood-grain; it is meant to signify the wood surface of a guitar, but it does so in a way that is thrice removed from the real thing. John Richardson has written: 'Papier collé provided an outlet for the artist's sardonic sense of paradox and wit. Picasso had often leavened his imagery with puns and double entendres. However, now that he -- not to mention Braque -- had established an artist's right to do whatever he liked with whatever material he liked, he was able to exploit humor more overtly and to far greater effect than ever before; he could also assume the mantle of poet. Seemingly simple arrangements of cut paper turn out to be booby-trapped with ironical asides, in-jokes and poetic contrivances' (in A Life of Picasso, Volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 289).
There are indeed interior meanings to be discovered in the outwardly simple imagery of this still-life, whose oval shape (akin to the famous collage-painting of 1912) comprises a guitar, a wine bottle and glass, and a fragment from the masthead of the Paris newspaper Le Journal. The pinched waist of the guitar recalls the hour-glass figure of a woman, with the 'X' as her navel. The guitar represents Picasso's mistress at this time, Eva Gouel. The artist depicted her in this way at the very beginning of their relationship, in Guitare ('J'aime Eva'), painted in Sorgues during the summer of 1912 (Z., vol. 2*, no. 352; Musée Picasso, Paris). Eva was 'Ma Jolie,' the title of a popular love song of the day, as seen in a painting done soon after the present work (Z., vol. 2**, no. 525). Picasso enjoyed a pleasing physical relationship with Eva, and often made allusions to her sexuality in works of this period. The artist may have inserted himself in the present composition in the phallic form of the pink wine bottle. 'Jou' is a pun on 'jour,' a day, and 'jouer,' to play. This delightful play on words suggests the warmth and tenderness that daily filled the lives of these lovers.
The objects in Nature morte à la guitare also appear in Guitare, masque et journal, 1914 (Z., vol. 2**, no. 450; Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve d'Ascq), to which Picasso added an ominous element, the flattened image of a skull. Richardson believes that this somber painting on the vanitas theme may have been done around Ash Wednesday or during Lent. Eva is thought to have undergone her first operation for cancer, possibly of the lung, early that year. In this light, the repeated references to Le Journal serve as a poignant reminder of the fragile and ephemeral nature of life. These fateful developments notwithstanding, Picasso and Eva happily spent the summer of 1914, the final months before the outbreak of the First World War, in Avignon. The appealing choice of objects and the fanciful play of color and forms in Ma Jolie amply attest to the artist's high spirits and hopeful outlook. Jean Sutherland Boggs has written, 'It was an effervescent year for Picasso's work. He was never more inventive, more cheerful, more delighted with color and pattern, more curious about small things and happier animating them in his work. In addition, his paintings, sculpture and drawings sparkled with those small dots that have been described as bubbles, confetti, fireworks, even sequins. Many of the objects and paintings he made were… extremely private pleasures' (in Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 132)
By the spring of 1914, when Picasso executed the present Nature morte à la guitare, the practice of papier collé, collage and conventional painting methods were flourishing side by side in a game-like process of ingenious and endlessly unfolding invention. Note that here, instead of applying a piece of imitation wood-grain paper on the right side, as in a regular papier collé, Picasso has painted in this form, so that it resembles a cut and pasted paper. This is the artist's manual rendering of a printed version of a simulated pattern derived from actual wood-grain; it is meant to signify the wood surface of a guitar, but it does so in a way that is thrice removed from the real thing. John Richardson has written: 'Papier collé provided an outlet for the artist's sardonic sense of paradox and wit. Picasso had often leavened his imagery with puns and double entendres. However, now that he -- not to mention Braque -- had established an artist's right to do whatever he liked with whatever material he liked, he was able to exploit humor more overtly and to far greater effect than ever before; he could also assume the mantle of poet. Seemingly simple arrangements of cut paper turn out to be booby-trapped with ironical asides, in-jokes and poetic contrivances' (in A Life of Picasso, Volume II: 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 289).
There are indeed interior meanings to be discovered in the outwardly simple imagery of this still-life, whose oval shape (akin to the famous collage-painting of 1912) comprises a guitar, a wine bottle and glass, and a fragment from the masthead of the Paris newspaper Le Journal. The pinched waist of the guitar recalls the hour-glass figure of a woman, with the 'X' as her navel. The guitar represents Picasso's mistress at this time, Eva Gouel. The artist depicted her in this way at the very beginning of their relationship, in Guitare ('J'aime Eva'), painted in Sorgues during the summer of 1912 (Z., vol. 2*, no. 352; Musée Picasso, Paris). Eva was 'Ma Jolie,' the title of a popular love song of the day, as seen in a painting done soon after the present work (Z., vol. 2**, no. 525). Picasso enjoyed a pleasing physical relationship with Eva, and often made allusions to her sexuality in works of this period. The artist may have inserted himself in the present composition in the phallic form of the pink wine bottle. 'Jou' is a pun on 'jour,' a day, and 'jouer,' to play. This delightful play on words suggests the warmth and tenderness that daily filled the lives of these lovers.
The objects in Nature morte à la guitare also appear in Guitare, masque et journal, 1914 (Z., vol. 2**, no. 450; Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve d'Ascq), to which Picasso added an ominous element, the flattened image of a skull. Richardson believes that this somber painting on the vanitas theme may have been done around Ash Wednesday or during Lent. Eva is thought to have undergone her first operation for cancer, possibly of the lung, early that year. In this light, the repeated references to Le Journal serve as a poignant reminder of the fragile and ephemeral nature of life. These fateful developments notwithstanding, Picasso and Eva happily spent the summer of 1914, the final months before the outbreak of the First World War, in Avignon. The appealing choice of objects and the fanciful play of color and forms in Ma Jolie amply attest to the artist's high spirits and hopeful outlook. Jean Sutherland Boggs has written, 'It was an effervescent year for Picasso's work. He was never more inventive, more cheerful, more delighted with color and pattern, more curious about small things and happier animating them in his work. In addition, his paintings, sculpture and drawings sparkled with those small dots that have been described as bubbles, confetti, fireworks, even sequins. Many of the objects and paintings he made were… extremely private pleasures' (in Picasso & Things, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, p. 132)