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拍品專文
In 1930 Ambroise Vollard commissioned Picasso to create a set of one hundred etchings in exchange for several paintings by Renoir and Cezanne. For the subjects of these works, Picasso drew on Classical imagery and mythology that portrayed dramatic human experiences. Picasso issued no chronological order for the plates, nor did he assign individual titles to the prints. In refraining from this, he encouraged the viewer to see each work in dialogue with related plates, which are often variations on the same - richly symbolic - themes and narratives. Myths such as those of Pygmalion or Theseus and the Minotaur, mirror some of the emotions and moral dilemmas the artist was experiencing in his personal life. Throughout the seven years in which he worked on the series, the artist experienced a passionate love affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, resulting in feelings of guilt and resentment towards his wife Olga Khokhlova. The elicit relationship was eventually discovered by Olga and lead to her ultimate departure from his life, taking their young son with her when fleeing to the south of France.
For Picasso, the dual nature of the minotaur, half man and half beast, represented the conflicting impulses of human nature, torn between instinct and reason. The mythical creature became symbolic of his own troubled feelings of desire, guilt and rage. Specifically in Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night Picasso re-interprets the Grecian myth in the light of his personal circumstances. By casting himself in the role of the Minotaur, he transforms this fearsome creature into a figure of pathos. In a reversal of the Greek myth, according to which Ariadne helps Theseus to destroy the monster, Picasso's little girl holding a white dove is gently leading the blinded Minotaur. The girl's features explicitly identify her as Marie-Thérèse. The Minotaur's reliance on her suggests the artist's dependence on the woman he loves and the power she has over him. While other plates in the Suite Vollard reveal the sensuality of their relationship or allude to its destructive effect on Picasso's marriage to Olga, Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night evokes a vision of muted hope, of the transformative potential of love. The scene is witnessed by a young sailor on the left, and by two older, bearded fishermen at the right, who are hauling in their net and pulling down the white sail. This seemingly insignificant detail is weighted with symbolic significance. In the original myth, Theseus sails home and neglects to change his ship's black sails for white ones, the pre-arranged signal for a victorious outcome. His aged father, Aegeus, on seeing the black sails, casts himself from a cliff to his death in grief. Picasso's alteration of this detail suggests an alternative outcome - of tragedy averted and hope fulfilled.
Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night is an extraordinary example of Picasso's mastery of printmaking and his ability to match content and technique. By employing burnished aquatint, a method akin to mezzotint, Picasso lends the scene a dream-like, haunting quality. Starting with a plate prepared with aquatint, he scraped and burnished the image into the dense overall tone, working from dark to light, thereby creating middle tones and bright highlights. The scene is illuminated from the left, the figures thrown into sharp relief against the star-punctured night sky. The effect is magical and the subject is rightly regarded as one of the most important plates of the Suite Vollard and a masterpiece of Picasso's graphic oeuvre as a whole.
For Picasso, the dual nature of the minotaur, half man and half beast, represented the conflicting impulses of human nature, torn between instinct and reason. The mythical creature became symbolic of his own troubled feelings of desire, guilt and rage. Specifically in Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night Picasso re-interprets the Grecian myth in the light of his personal circumstances. By casting himself in the role of the Minotaur, he transforms this fearsome creature into a figure of pathos. In a reversal of the Greek myth, according to which Ariadne helps Theseus to destroy the monster, Picasso's little girl holding a white dove is gently leading the blinded Minotaur. The girl's features explicitly identify her as Marie-Thérèse. The Minotaur's reliance on her suggests the artist's dependence on the woman he loves and the power she has over him. While other plates in the Suite Vollard reveal the sensuality of their relationship or allude to its destructive effect on Picasso's marriage to Olga, Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night evokes a vision of muted hope, of the transformative potential of love. The scene is witnessed by a young sailor on the left, and by two older, bearded fishermen at the right, who are hauling in their net and pulling down the white sail. This seemingly insignificant detail is weighted with symbolic significance. In the original myth, Theseus sails home and neglects to change his ship's black sails for white ones, the pre-arranged signal for a victorious outcome. His aged father, Aegeus, on seeing the black sails, casts himself from a cliff to his death in grief. Picasso's alteration of this detail suggests an alternative outcome - of tragedy averted and hope fulfilled.
Blind Minotaur led by a little Girl in the Night is an extraordinary example of Picasso's mastery of printmaking and his ability to match content and technique. By employing burnished aquatint, a method akin to mezzotint, Picasso lends the scene a dream-like, haunting quality. Starting with a plate prepared with aquatint, he scraped and burnished the image into the dense overall tone, working from dark to light, thereby creating middle tones and bright highlights. The scene is illuminated from the left, the figures thrown into sharp relief against the star-punctured night sky. The effect is magical and the subject is rightly regarded as one of the most important plates of the Suite Vollard and a masterpiece of Picasso's graphic oeuvre as a whole.