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Lot Essay
Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
As Picasso became increasingly involved and occupied with sculpture during the late 1920s and 1930s, while attending with no less dedication to his painting, drawing and printmaking, it seemed only a matter of time before he would cross every conceivable boundary that had traditionally existed between the various art forms, and create hybrid works that were purely neither one kind nor another, but nonetheless sit very comfortably between the two or even more types. Construction--following Webster's English language definition--"a sculptural creation that is put together out of separate pieces of often disparate materials," describes the present artwork well enough. That Picasso should take such a novel approach to the still-life, a genre that for most its history occupied a low rung in the traditional hierarchy of an artist's subjects--as in the case of the present combination of a simple bottle and flower--is a winning proposition for all, especially the viewer, for whom this approach casts a revelatory light on old distinctions between art and reality. In doing so, Picasso has immeasurably enhanced the significance of the objects presented, and he has created, best of all, a visually meaningful and felicitous result.
The château at Boisgeloup had previously been Picasso's base of operations for making sculpture; he had long needed a large, open space in which to make big, heavy works of this kind, and the great stables at Boisgeloup proved useful, if somewhat under-equipped, for this purpose. The availability of a country retreat had allowed Picasso access to much needed privacy, and even more importantly, the strict secrecy that his adulterous liaison with Marie-Thérèse Walter, his young mistress, had come to require--Boisgeloup means "screened" or "hidden wood." Picasso would work at Boisgeloup whenever he needed to, but week days were best--he could get away from Olga and summon Marie-Thérèse to come join him. On weekends he resumed being the outwardly dutiful husband and father, and entertain Olga's and his friends as well.
This feasible routine came to an end in 1935, when instead of divorcing Olga, a final resolution to their marital issues that Picasso feared would cost him too heavily in his art-assets, he opted instead for a legal separation. He had to give up Boisgeloup to Olga as part of the agreement. Ambroise Vollard stepped forth in late autumn 1936 to offer Picasso a farmhouse he owned at Le Tremblay-su-Mauldre which could serve as the artist's new country studio. "There was a fine barn which could serve as a studio, with a large window looking on to the garden," Roland Penrose has written. "Picasso at once appreciated the possibilites of this new retreat which was free from associations of his separation from Olga, which haunted Boisgeloup" (Picasso: His Life and Work, Berkeley, third ed., 1981, p. 295). Le Tremblay would also provide a secluded refuge for Marie-Thérèse and their infant child Maya, born the year before, shielding them from Olga's prying eye and, and worse, her unyielding wrath.
"In this substitute for Boisgeloup," Pierre Daix has written, "Picasso used the happenstances of moving--the fortuitous appearance of this or that object--for assemblages. And into these, as with the dolls he made for Maya, he put all the skill at his command" (Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 245). These few works, a handful in all that have been documented and published--the present Construction à la fleur and four others (figs. 1-4; left to right: Spies nos. 168, 169, 170 and 178)--joined the more numerous still-lifes that Picasso painted at Le Tremblay in oil colors alone. "These paintings are characterized by brilliant color and by the charm of homely objects," as Penrose described them, "such as jugs, plates, saucepans, cutlery, fish, fruit and flowers...breathing an air of rural charm" (op. cit., p. 295). In their treatment of humble, everyday objects, these canvases recall the paintings of Chardin, the 18th century founder and, among the moderns, a much admired practitioner of the French tradition of the nature morte. A Spaniard like Picasso would have also considered the austere still-life compositions of the 17th century Spanish painter Zurbarán.
Because Picasso possessed both a luxurious Hispano-Suiza automobile and a personal chaffeur, and could thus travel as easily as he pleased between Le Tremblay and Paris, it is usually impossible to tell if a particular still-life was done in one location or the other, unless it happened to be inscribed accordingly. Because these still-lifes usually share a similar idyllic character, that quality of "rural charm," most are presumed to have been done in Le Tremblay, and this may pertain as well to Construction à la fleur and the four related works, as Jean Sutherland Boggs has suggested in Picasso & Things (exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, pp. 246-251).
Painting the still-life pictures provided welcome respite from the grueling effort Picasso put into his more public works, such as Guernica and the "Weeping Women," which were his response to the Spanish Civil War and the endless stream of bad news coming out of Barcelona and Madrid for the Loyalist Republican cause, with which the artist had sided. Many of these "private" Le Tremblay still-lifes went unrecorded in Zervos, as is also the case with the present Construction, and a number of them came to light only with the publication of David Douglas Duncan's book Picasso's Picassos in 1961.
Artists generally practice still-life painting as an arrangement of various objects for descriptive or formal purposes; they may furthermore attach personal, symbolical and allegorical significance to their choice of objects. Picasso painted still-lifes as a coded form of autobiography--he in effect anthropomorphized and personalized his still-lifes, holding up objects as the embodiment of thoughts and feelings, or associating them with people and events in his life. Picasso revealed to Françoise Gilot in 1944, "The objects that go into my paintings are common objects from anywhere a pitcher, a mug of beer, a bowl a plain common table. I want to tell something by means of the most common object; for example, a casserole, any old casserole, the one everybody knows. For me it is a vessel in the metaphoric sense, just like Christ's use of parables" (in F. Gilot, with C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 74).
In light of Picasso's comments, the presence of the artificial flower in Construction is probably emblematic of Marie-Thérèse, whom Picasso often depicted in pink, lilac or lavender tones. The now faded cloth leaves of the flower were perhaps originally yellow--a sunflower--judging, too, from the disk of florets at its center. Brigitte Léal characterized Marie-Thérèse as "having incarnated a wild beauty, a sporty and healthy 'beautiful plant'" (Picasso & Portraiture, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 387). Picasso's amour is here, as she was at Le Tremblay, metaphorically embraced, protected and nurtured within the glass Picasso fashioned for her from a crushed metal container, which he nailed to canvas. He is the bottle at left, a piece of wood stuck into a cut section of pipe, all painted black, save for the white reflection of the light which emanates from the femme-fleur at his side.
The idea of constructing a composition from found objects, which the artist has altered in some way, then affixes to his canvas, and then paints over, will of course be familiar to devotees of the post-war art scene: one only has to consider the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, or the flowers embedded in the thickly encrusted paintings, which may also include molten lead, of Anselm Kiefer. As in so many other instances concerning art of the last century and the present, Picasso is the precedent: he was the man who got there first.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte au masque, 4 March 1937. National Gallery of Canberra. BARCODE: NGA_352158_DHR
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte au verre, 1938. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857129
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte à la pomme, February 1937. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857112
(fig. 4) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte, verre et bouteille, 10 April 1938. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857143
As Picasso became increasingly involved and occupied with sculpture during the late 1920s and 1930s, while attending with no less dedication to his painting, drawing and printmaking, it seemed only a matter of time before he would cross every conceivable boundary that had traditionally existed between the various art forms, and create hybrid works that were purely neither one kind nor another, but nonetheless sit very comfortably between the two or even more types. Construction--following Webster's English language definition--"a sculptural creation that is put together out of separate pieces of often disparate materials," describes the present artwork well enough. That Picasso should take such a novel approach to the still-life, a genre that for most its history occupied a low rung in the traditional hierarchy of an artist's subjects--as in the case of the present combination of a simple bottle and flower--is a winning proposition for all, especially the viewer, for whom this approach casts a revelatory light on old distinctions between art and reality. In doing so, Picasso has immeasurably enhanced the significance of the objects presented, and he has created, best of all, a visually meaningful and felicitous result.
The château at Boisgeloup had previously been Picasso's base of operations for making sculpture; he had long needed a large, open space in which to make big, heavy works of this kind, and the great stables at Boisgeloup proved useful, if somewhat under-equipped, for this purpose. The availability of a country retreat had allowed Picasso access to much needed privacy, and even more importantly, the strict secrecy that his adulterous liaison with Marie-Thérèse Walter, his young mistress, had come to require--Boisgeloup means "screened" or "hidden wood." Picasso would work at Boisgeloup whenever he needed to, but week days were best--he could get away from Olga and summon Marie-Thérèse to come join him. On weekends he resumed being the outwardly dutiful husband and father, and entertain Olga's and his friends as well.
This feasible routine came to an end in 1935, when instead of divorcing Olga, a final resolution to their marital issues that Picasso feared would cost him too heavily in his art-assets, he opted instead for a legal separation. He had to give up Boisgeloup to Olga as part of the agreement. Ambroise Vollard stepped forth in late autumn 1936 to offer Picasso a farmhouse he owned at Le Tremblay-su-Mauldre which could serve as the artist's new country studio. "There was a fine barn which could serve as a studio, with a large window looking on to the garden," Roland Penrose has written. "Picasso at once appreciated the possibilites of this new retreat which was free from associations of his separation from Olga, which haunted Boisgeloup" (Picasso: His Life and Work, Berkeley, third ed., 1981, p. 295). Le Tremblay would also provide a secluded refuge for Marie-Thérèse and their infant child Maya, born the year before, shielding them from Olga's prying eye and, and worse, her unyielding wrath.
"In this substitute for Boisgeloup," Pierre Daix has written, "Picasso used the happenstances of moving--the fortuitous appearance of this or that object--for assemblages. And into these, as with the dolls he made for Maya, he put all the skill at his command" (Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 245). These few works, a handful in all that have been documented and published--the present Construction à la fleur and four others (figs. 1-4; left to right: Spies nos. 168, 169, 170 and 178)--joined the more numerous still-lifes that Picasso painted at Le Tremblay in oil colors alone. "These paintings are characterized by brilliant color and by the charm of homely objects," as Penrose described them, "such as jugs, plates, saucepans, cutlery, fish, fruit and flowers...breathing an air of rural charm" (op. cit., p. 295). In their treatment of humble, everyday objects, these canvases recall the paintings of Chardin, the 18th century founder and, among the moderns, a much admired practitioner of the French tradition of the nature morte. A Spaniard like Picasso would have also considered the austere still-life compositions of the 17th century Spanish painter Zurbarán.
Because Picasso possessed both a luxurious Hispano-Suiza automobile and a personal chaffeur, and could thus travel as easily as he pleased between Le Tremblay and Paris, it is usually impossible to tell if a particular still-life was done in one location or the other, unless it happened to be inscribed accordingly. Because these still-lifes usually share a similar idyllic character, that quality of "rural charm," most are presumed to have been done in Le Tremblay, and this may pertain as well to Construction à la fleur and the four related works, as Jean Sutherland Boggs has suggested in Picasso & Things (exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992, pp. 246-251).
Painting the still-life pictures provided welcome respite from the grueling effort Picasso put into his more public works, such as Guernica and the "Weeping Women," which were his response to the Spanish Civil War and the endless stream of bad news coming out of Barcelona and Madrid for the Loyalist Republican cause, with which the artist had sided. Many of these "private" Le Tremblay still-lifes went unrecorded in Zervos, as is also the case with the present Construction, and a number of them came to light only with the publication of David Douglas Duncan's book Picasso's Picassos in 1961.
Artists generally practice still-life painting as an arrangement of various objects for descriptive or formal purposes; they may furthermore attach personal, symbolical and allegorical significance to their choice of objects. Picasso painted still-lifes as a coded form of autobiography--he in effect anthropomorphized and personalized his still-lifes, holding up objects as the embodiment of thoughts and feelings, or associating them with people and events in his life. Picasso revealed to Françoise Gilot in 1944, "The objects that go into my paintings are common objects from anywhere a pitcher, a mug of beer, a bowl a plain common table. I want to tell something by means of the most common object; for example, a casserole, any old casserole, the one everybody knows. For me it is a vessel in the metaphoric sense, just like Christ's use of parables" (in F. Gilot, with C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 74).
In light of Picasso's comments, the presence of the artificial flower in Construction is probably emblematic of Marie-Thérèse, whom Picasso often depicted in pink, lilac or lavender tones. The now faded cloth leaves of the flower were perhaps originally yellow--a sunflower--judging, too, from the disk of florets at its center. Brigitte Léal characterized Marie-Thérèse as "having incarnated a wild beauty, a sporty and healthy 'beautiful plant'" (Picasso & Portraiture, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996, p. 387). Picasso's amour is here, as she was at Le Tremblay, metaphorically embraced, protected and nurtured within the glass Picasso fashioned for her from a crushed metal container, which he nailed to canvas. He is the bottle at left, a piece of wood stuck into a cut section of pipe, all painted black, save for the white reflection of the light which emanates from the femme-fleur at his side.
The idea of constructing a composition from found objects, which the artist has altered in some way, then affixes to his canvas, and then paints over, will of course be familiar to devotees of the post-war art scene: one only has to consider the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, or the flowers embedded in the thickly encrusted paintings, which may also include molten lead, of Anselm Kiefer. As in so many other instances concerning art of the last century and the present, Picasso is the precedent: he was the man who got there first.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte au masque, 4 March 1937. National Gallery of Canberra. BARCODE: NGA_352158_DHR
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte au verre, 1938. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857129
(fig. 3) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte à la pomme, February 1937. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857112
(fig. 4) Pablo Picasso, Nature morte, verre et bouteille, 10 April 1938. Private collection. BARCODE: 28857143