.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Picasso executed the following two drawings of a young nude woman arranging her hair (lots 137 and 138) as he entered the final phase of his Rose period. Both works display the spring-like felicity and sensuality that began to resurface in Picasso's painting in late 1904, and were in full bloom by 1906, as the artist put behind him the wintry melancholia, pathos and the icy tonal austerity of the Blue period. Picasso fittingly drew both of these studies with a diluted red ink, which he applied with a brush and heightened with delicate washes to create a rosy glow. The tan hue of the paper enhances this warmly luminous effect.
Picasso's interest in the subject of the coiffure was a recent development in his work. Degas had treated this theme in his late pastels and drawings; this bachelor artist had to create these scenes with the use of paid models, whose figures and poses he depicted in a realistically modern context. Picasso's approach, by contrast, was lyrical and stylized, as seen in the gouache Femme à la toilette et arlequin à l'enfant, painted in early 1905 (Zervos, vol. 1, no 298; private collection), in which Harlequin gazes on his nude wife as she holds a mirror and arranges her hair. Picasso, then not yet 25 years old, had been living with his mistress Fernande Olivier since late 1904. She was the first great love of his life, and they would remain together for the next six years. Picasso was attracted to what John Richardson has described as Fernande's 'voluptuous looks' (in A Life of Picasso, Vol. I, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 315). She had long auburn tresses, which required much brushing and care, even if, in fashion of the period, she wore it pinned up in a knot atop her head, and covered it with a hat or kerchief when she appeared in public. Picasso was now privy to a woman's intimate ritual of dressing and arranging her hair, with its titillating suggestion of sensual self-absorption. This casual access to the boudoir, and a woman at her toilette, encouraged Picasso to play the voyeur, a role that he enjoyed and put to good use in his work throughout his career, and allowed him the opportunity to observe a prosaic yet seemingly mysterious feminine routine which has long held fetishistic interest for the curious male gaze.
There was another catalyst for Picasso's fascination with this subject. The 1905 Salon d'Automne, held in October-November that year, featured special exhibitions devoted to the work of Ingres and Manet. Richardson noted, 'Even more of a revelation than the Manets was the Ingres retrospective, which included sixty-eight works... Both Picasso and Matisse were overwhelmed by the linear mastery of Ingres's drawings, the formal invention of his paintings, above all the forgotten masterpiece Le Bain Turc (fig. 1)... Matisse even went to so far to state that he preferred Le Bain Turc to Manet's Olympia, when the two paintings were hung together in the Louvre (1907)' (ibid., p. 421). Many years later, having a spent a lifetime quoting, re-imagining and reconfiguring the many nude poses that Ingres devised for his seraglio scene and in other works, Picasso declared 'One must paint like Ingres. We must be like Ingres' (quoted in J. Richardson, 'L'époque Jacqueline', Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 36).
An odalisque having her hair perfumed sits at the center of Le bain turc; her presence appears to have stimulated Picasso's already growing preoccupation with the coiffure theme. Picasso painted, perhaps in the early spring of 1906, the Ingresque Nu à la chevelure tirée (Z., vol. 1, no. 259; fig. 2). The first of the present drawings, Femme nue se coiffant (lot 137), is clearly related to this gouache -- it shares a similar full-bodied figure with Fernande-like facial features, and was probably done around this time. The fleshier female form seen in the gouache and this drawing is related to the nudes in Le bain turc, and also recalls the models that Picasso used during his stay in Holland during June and early July of the previous summer. Richardson observed, 'The girls of School had a decisive influence on Picasso's work. We need only compare these fleshy milkmaids reared on local cheese with the skinny denizens of Montmartre living on ether and absinthe to see that the artist was developing a taste for earthier, heftier women' (ibid., p. 381).
Fernande's luscious figure, which had been ill-suited for employment in the lean and under-nourished figures at the end of the Blue period, was now especially attractive and useful, and she became the preferred model in the emergence of this new female body type in Picasso's work. One may also detect the influence of the figures in the South Seas paintings of Gauguin, an artist whom Picasso had especially admired during the past several years. Picasso viewed Gustave Fayet's extensive Gauguin collection in mid-April 1906. Moreover, as if to remind Picasso of Gauguin's Southeast Asian sources, there hung on one wall of the café Le Lapin Agile, Picasso's favorite watering hole during the Rose period, a large cast of a Javanese wall relief (illustrated in Richardson, pp. 373 and 427), which shows a thick-waisted figure with heavy thighs, and whose tall headdress resembles the piled-up coiffure of Parisian women.
The second drawing offered here, Femme se coiffant, vue de dos (lot 138) was very likely executed during the same session as the first, the artist having turned his model or moved around her. Both drawings anticipate, in their subject, poses, and the use of a red and ochre tonality, the female nudes that Picasso executed within the next couple of months during his sojourn in the Pyrenean town of Gósol, where he and Fernande stayed from late May through July 1906. The hairdressing theme became central to Picasso's work in Gósol, as seen in Le harem (Z. vol. 1, no. 321; The Cleveland Museum of Art) and La toilette (Z., vol. 1, no. 325; fig. 3). When Picasso returned to Paris he completed two paintings that had been months in the making, the painting La coiffeuse and his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein (Z., vol. 1, nos. 313 and 352; both in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). As Picasso entered his Iberian period, which set the stage for the ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 (Z., vol. 2*, no. 18; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), he continued to paint women arranging their hair in a reddish tonality. These powerful and increasingly sculptural figures, which appear as if they had been shaped from clay dug from the Iberian landscape, were the latest progeny in a rapid stylistic progression that evolved, in the space of less than a year, from the two nude studies offered here.
J.S.
Picasso's interest in the subject of the coiffure was a recent development in his work. Degas had treated this theme in his late pastels and drawings; this bachelor artist had to create these scenes with the use of paid models, whose figures and poses he depicted in a realistically modern context. Picasso's approach, by contrast, was lyrical and stylized, as seen in the gouache Femme à la toilette et arlequin à l'enfant, painted in early 1905 (Zervos, vol. 1, no 298; private collection), in which Harlequin gazes on his nude wife as she holds a mirror and arranges her hair. Picasso, then not yet 25 years old, had been living with his mistress Fernande Olivier since late 1904. She was the first great love of his life, and they would remain together for the next six years. Picasso was attracted to what John Richardson has described as Fernande's 'voluptuous looks' (in A Life of Picasso, Vol. I, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 315). She had long auburn tresses, which required much brushing and care, even if, in fashion of the period, she wore it pinned up in a knot atop her head, and covered it with a hat or kerchief when she appeared in public. Picasso was now privy to a woman's intimate ritual of dressing and arranging her hair, with its titillating suggestion of sensual self-absorption. This casual access to the boudoir, and a woman at her toilette, encouraged Picasso to play the voyeur, a role that he enjoyed and put to good use in his work throughout his career, and allowed him the opportunity to observe a prosaic yet seemingly mysterious feminine routine which has long held fetishistic interest for the curious male gaze.
There was another catalyst for Picasso's fascination with this subject. The 1905 Salon d'Automne, held in October-November that year, featured special exhibitions devoted to the work of Ingres and Manet. Richardson noted, 'Even more of a revelation than the Manets was the Ingres retrospective, which included sixty-eight works... Both Picasso and Matisse were overwhelmed by the linear mastery of Ingres's drawings, the formal invention of his paintings, above all the forgotten masterpiece Le Bain Turc (fig. 1)... Matisse even went to so far to state that he preferred Le Bain Turc to Manet's Olympia, when the two paintings were hung together in the Louvre (1907)' (ibid., p. 421). Many years later, having a spent a lifetime quoting, re-imagining and reconfiguring the many nude poses that Ingres devised for his seraglio scene and in other works, Picasso declared 'One must paint like Ingres. We must be like Ingres' (quoted in J. Richardson, 'L'époque Jacqueline', Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 36).
An odalisque having her hair perfumed sits at the center of Le bain turc; her presence appears to have stimulated Picasso's already growing preoccupation with the coiffure theme. Picasso painted, perhaps in the early spring of 1906, the Ingresque Nu à la chevelure tirée (Z., vol. 1, no. 259; fig. 2). The first of the present drawings, Femme nue se coiffant (lot 137), is clearly related to this gouache -- it shares a similar full-bodied figure with Fernande-like facial features, and was probably done around this time. The fleshier female form seen in the gouache and this drawing is related to the nudes in Le bain turc, and also recalls the models that Picasso used during his stay in Holland during June and early July of the previous summer. Richardson observed, 'The girls of School had a decisive influence on Picasso's work. We need only compare these fleshy milkmaids reared on local cheese with the skinny denizens of Montmartre living on ether and absinthe to see that the artist was developing a taste for earthier, heftier women' (ibid., p. 381).
Fernande's luscious figure, which had been ill-suited for employment in the lean and under-nourished figures at the end of the Blue period, was now especially attractive and useful, and she became the preferred model in the emergence of this new female body type in Picasso's work. One may also detect the influence of the figures in the South Seas paintings of Gauguin, an artist whom Picasso had especially admired during the past several years. Picasso viewed Gustave Fayet's extensive Gauguin collection in mid-April 1906. Moreover, as if to remind Picasso of Gauguin's Southeast Asian sources, there hung on one wall of the café Le Lapin Agile, Picasso's favorite watering hole during the Rose period, a large cast of a Javanese wall relief (illustrated in Richardson, pp. 373 and 427), which shows a thick-waisted figure with heavy thighs, and whose tall headdress resembles the piled-up coiffure of Parisian women.
The second drawing offered here, Femme se coiffant, vue de dos (lot 138) was very likely executed during the same session as the first, the artist having turned his model or moved around her. Both drawings anticipate, in their subject, poses, and the use of a red and ochre tonality, the female nudes that Picasso executed within the next couple of months during his sojourn in the Pyrenean town of Gósol, where he and Fernande stayed from late May through July 1906. The hairdressing theme became central to Picasso's work in Gósol, as seen in Le harem (Z. vol. 1, no. 321; The Cleveland Museum of Art) and La toilette (Z., vol. 1, no. 325; fig. 3). When Picasso returned to Paris he completed two paintings that had been months in the making, the painting La coiffeuse and his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein (Z., vol. 1, nos. 313 and 352; both in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). As Picasso entered his Iberian period, which set the stage for the ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 (Z., vol. 2*, no. 18; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), he continued to paint women arranging their hair in a reddish tonality. These powerful and increasingly sculptural figures, which appear as if they had been shaped from clay dug from the Iberian landscape, were the latest progeny in a rapid stylistic progression that evolved, in the space of less than a year, from the two nude studies offered here.
J.S.