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拍品专文
The present drawing, executed on 29 February 1968, depicts a female nude flanked on her right by an elegantly-clad musketeer, the artist's primary persona-of-choice during the last years of his career. The seated nude rests her head atop manicured hands on her knees. The focus of the scene is partially her exposed vulva, referencing the graphic nudity of the series of etchings, Suite 347, that Picasso executed the same year as the present drawing. Inspired by Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers, which Picasso re-read in 1966, the figure of the 17th century cavalier—worldly, adventurous, and virile—preoccupied the aging artist, whose own sexual prowess was on the wane.
The impetus for the emergence of the mousquetaires in Picasso's oeuvre may be traced to early 1966, when the artist was undergoing a long convalescence from surgery at his home in Mougins. Unable to work, he passed the time by opening for the first time or re-reading many classics, including the works of Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega and other masters from Spain's Siglo d'Oro. He spent long hours with the novels of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers. Picasso knew the adventures of Dumas's famous characters, Aramis, Porthos, Athos and their young protégé D'Artagnan, practically by heart. Over that year, Picasso had also been pouring over the plays of Shakespeare. When Pierre Daix asked the artist about the sudden appearance of so many mousquetaires in his recent work, Picasso replied: "It's all the fault of your old pal Shakespeare" (quoted in P. Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 355).
Inspiration for the mousquetaires was only in part literary. During this period, Picasso had been intently studying Otto Benesch's six-volume catalogue of Rembrandt's drawings, as well as illustrated books of the paintings. Picasso would project slides of Rembrandt's The Night Watch onto the walls of his studio. John Richardson believes that Rembrandt was "an all-powerful God like figure whom Picasso had to internalize before he died" (quoted in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 34). Picasso's fascination with the baroque cavalier had the advantage of connecting him with an entire network of old masters: besides Rembrandt, Frans Hals and others of the Dutch school, there was Diego Velázquez and his compatriots from the golden age of painting in Spain, Picasso's own native tradition.
Dakin Hart has written, "As a force, Picasso's musketeers are a kind of multinational, transhistorical hippie army engaged in a catalogue of alternatives to fighting—from the many sorts of soldierly procrastination to small gestures of reconciliation, scenes of amity, and an embrace of life in the forms of lovemaking and domesticity. Behind the screen of drooping swords, avidly smoked pipes, tipsily raised glasses, fondled nudes, and other sublimations of impotency—drinking, smoking, making music, and canoodling—they represent a fictional universe Picasso developed to explore his credo: life not death, peace not war" (Picasso Mosqueteros: The Late Works, 1962-1972, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, pp. 256-257).
The impetus for the emergence of the mousquetaires in Picasso's oeuvre may be traced to early 1966, when the artist was undergoing a long convalescence from surgery at his home in Mougins. Unable to work, he passed the time by opening for the first time or re-reading many classics, including the works of Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega and other masters from Spain's Siglo d'Oro. He spent long hours with the novels of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers. Picasso knew the adventures of Dumas's famous characters, Aramis, Porthos, Athos and their young protégé D'Artagnan, practically by heart. Over that year, Picasso had also been pouring over the plays of Shakespeare. When Pierre Daix asked the artist about the sudden appearance of so many mousquetaires in his recent work, Picasso replied: "It's all the fault of your old pal Shakespeare" (quoted in P. Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 355).
Inspiration for the mousquetaires was only in part literary. During this period, Picasso had been intently studying Otto Benesch's six-volume catalogue of Rembrandt's drawings, as well as illustrated books of the paintings. Picasso would project slides of Rembrandt's The Night Watch onto the walls of his studio. John Richardson believes that Rembrandt was "an all-powerful God like figure whom Picasso had to internalize before he died" (quoted in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 34). Picasso's fascination with the baroque cavalier had the advantage of connecting him with an entire network of old masters: besides Rembrandt, Frans Hals and others of the Dutch school, there was Diego Velázquez and his compatriots from the golden age of painting in Spain, Picasso's own native tradition.
Dakin Hart has written, "As a force, Picasso's musketeers are a kind of multinational, transhistorical hippie army engaged in a catalogue of alternatives to fighting—from the many sorts of soldierly procrastination to small gestures of reconciliation, scenes of amity, and an embrace of life in the forms of lovemaking and domesticity. Behind the screen of drooping swords, avidly smoked pipes, tipsily raised glasses, fondled nudes, and other sublimations of impotency—drinking, smoking, making music, and canoodling—they represent a fictional universe Picasso developed to explore his credo: life not death, peace not war" (Picasso Mosqueteros: The Late Works, 1962-1972, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, pp. 256-257).