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Lot Essay
A tremendous surge of creative energy and urgency compelled Picasso to produce a rich and vast body of work in the last years of his life. Picasso actively utilized his sketchbooks in his final years, which, paired with his feverish, prolific output, bears testament to the artist’s constant search for innovation as he abandoned himself into a final stage of pure, almost childlike, experimentation.
During this late Indian summer in Picasso's career, the artist remained preoccupied with his favorite subject of eroticism, now brought into the realm of unearthing fantasy. In the present work, the artist fuses several of his recurring motifs: a voluptuous, sculptural nude is the object of several voyeurs’ affection–including a hedonistic mousquetaire, perhaps a stand-in for the artist himself. The female nude's colorful, reclining body fills up the entirety of the left side of the sketchbook page, as the enlarged view of her central voyeur takes up the right side. His grotesque features protrude into her space in a way that alludes, none too subtly, to the penetrative desires of his gaze. Four more viewers peer out of the top corners of the page with a varying degree of near-comical expressions. The artist even permits himself a certain playfulness in the different shapes and sizes of these figures’ noses in regard to their corresponding reactions to the sight before them.
In Nu et têtes d’hommes, Picasso is not mourning the loss of his former energy so much as reviving it, if only in pictorial form. When he visualizes these erotic scenes later in life, these representations become his way of vicariously participating. This sense of invocation is as apparent in the subject matter as it is in the vivid and vivacious style with which Nu et têtes d’hommes has been drawn. There is an almost violent sense of activity apparent in his application of color and frenzied use of directional line. Here, the artist’s use of color is strategic: it is concentrated almost solely on the woman’s body, taking up most of the sketchbook page, as her voyeurs remain in the periphery of the page in black contours. The hatches and sways of Picasso's line cover almost every inch of the sheet, and create a pulsating energy that guides the viewer’s eye around the scene, from woman to voyeur, and back again. Here, in his late age, Picasso himself has become a voyeur, and in his technical manipulations of the composition, he has cleverly relegated us, as viewers, into complicit voyeurs as well.
During this late Indian summer in Picasso's career, the artist remained preoccupied with his favorite subject of eroticism, now brought into the realm of unearthing fantasy. In the present work, the artist fuses several of his recurring motifs: a voluptuous, sculptural nude is the object of several voyeurs’ affection–including a hedonistic mousquetaire, perhaps a stand-in for the artist himself. The female nude's colorful, reclining body fills up the entirety of the left side of the sketchbook page, as the enlarged view of her central voyeur takes up the right side. His grotesque features protrude into her space in a way that alludes, none too subtly, to the penetrative desires of his gaze. Four more viewers peer out of the top corners of the page with a varying degree of near-comical expressions. The artist even permits himself a certain playfulness in the different shapes and sizes of these figures’ noses in regard to their corresponding reactions to the sight before them.
In Nu et têtes d’hommes, Picasso is not mourning the loss of his former energy so much as reviving it, if only in pictorial form. When he visualizes these erotic scenes later in life, these representations become his way of vicariously participating. This sense of invocation is as apparent in the subject matter as it is in the vivid and vivacious style with which Nu et têtes d’hommes has been drawn. There is an almost violent sense of activity apparent in his application of color and frenzied use of directional line. Here, the artist’s use of color is strategic: it is concentrated almost solely on the woman’s body, taking up most of the sketchbook page, as her voyeurs remain in the periphery of the page in black contours. The hatches and sways of Picasso's line cover almost every inch of the sheet, and create a pulsating energy that guides the viewer’s eye around the scene, from woman to voyeur, and back again. Here, in his late age, Picasso himself has become a voyeur, and in his technical manipulations of the composition, he has cleverly relegated us, as viewers, into complicit voyeurs as well.