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Lot Essay
In a scene of lustful, voyeuristic contemplation, Buste d’homme et femme nus exemplifies the sensual imagery into which Picasso channeled the extraordinary force of his creativity at the end of his career. Drawn on 2 June 1969, Buste d’homme et femme nus depicts a semi-reclining female nude offering herself to the intent gaze of a male. The man, his arms crossed over his torso, leans in toward the object of his desire, studying her while she responds with stoic complacency. The artist’s confident, bold lines of crayon sublimate the figures’ desire in visual terms.
Themes of sex and passion would appear in many forms in the works of Picasso’s final years. He feverishly depicted females entangled in amorous encounters with bearded musketeers, smoking brigadiers, and the artist in the studio. The present work is one of four drawings executed by the artist in varying media on the same day (Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 226, 228, 231). In all of the works in this series, the female has her eyes closed with a slight smile on her face. In a similar series executed earlier in the year on 30 April 1969 (Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 168-173), Picasso depicts the same female nude, reclining and offering her sex to the male viewer while she closes her eyes and daydreams. In this earlier series, however, the male figure is more animated in his voyeurism; in one drawing, for example, he leans in so far as to obstruct the female’s space, leering, his face distorted and grotesque (Zervos, vol. 31, no. 173). By contrast, in Buste d’homme et femme nus, the space of the male and female is decidedly separate, yet Picasso highly worked the area in between the two figures with vigorous cross-hatching and swirls of color.
Karen Kleinfelder has described "the elemental conflict or psychodrama…that of man confronting woman, self confronting other, the power of the look, and the play of desire... Picasso, in effect, makes us voyeurs of voyeurism. It is the scopic drive, the gazing impulse, the desire to possess through the look that we witness, and by implication, that we engage in as well. In this sense, the male voyeurs that Picasso depicts also mirror the artist, whose controlling gaze staged this recurring spectacle in the first place" (The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze, Picasso's Pursuit of the Model, Chicago, 1993, pp. 186-187).
The present work demonstrates what lies at the heart of Picasso's spectacular flowering of creativity during the final decade of his career: the synergy between man and woman, artist and model, observer and observed. The act of looking that Picasso depicts here is the veritable starting point of creation, and the nude woman represents not only the object of desire but also the eternal subject of painting.
Themes of sex and passion would appear in many forms in the works of Picasso’s final years. He feverishly depicted females entangled in amorous encounters with bearded musketeers, smoking brigadiers, and the artist in the studio. The present work is one of four drawings executed by the artist in varying media on the same day (Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 226, 228, 231). In all of the works in this series, the female has her eyes closed with a slight smile on her face. In a similar series executed earlier in the year on 30 April 1969 (Zervos, vol. 31, nos. 168-173), Picasso depicts the same female nude, reclining and offering her sex to the male viewer while she closes her eyes and daydreams. In this earlier series, however, the male figure is more animated in his voyeurism; in one drawing, for example, he leans in so far as to obstruct the female’s space, leering, his face distorted and grotesque (Zervos, vol. 31, no. 173). By contrast, in Buste d’homme et femme nus, the space of the male and female is decidedly separate, yet Picasso highly worked the area in between the two figures with vigorous cross-hatching and swirls of color.
Karen Kleinfelder has described "the elemental conflict or psychodrama…that of man confronting woman, self confronting other, the power of the look, and the play of desire... Picasso, in effect, makes us voyeurs of voyeurism. It is the scopic drive, the gazing impulse, the desire to possess through the look that we witness, and by implication, that we engage in as well. In this sense, the male voyeurs that Picasso depicts also mirror the artist, whose controlling gaze staged this recurring spectacle in the first place" (The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze, Picasso's Pursuit of the Model, Chicago, 1993, pp. 186-187).
The present work demonstrates what lies at the heart of Picasso's spectacular flowering of creativity during the final decade of his career: the synergy between man and woman, artist and model, observer and observed. The act of looking that Picasso depicts here is the veritable starting point of creation, and the nude woman represents not only the object of desire but also the eternal subject of painting.