Picasso’s Women: Relationships and
Representation
It is said that
behind every great man there is a patient woman. For Pablo Picasso there were
many, but they weren’t always patient. Over his career he entertained six
long-term relationships whose infamous characters and stories are tightly woven
into his work. It is impossible to
study Picasso’s oeuvre without taking a closer look at the evolution of the
representation of women in his paintings and sculptures. Between the years of 1918 and 1935, as
he waltzed from his wife Olga, to his mistress Marie-Therese, to his
distraction Dora Maar, the depiction of women in his paintings under go many
metamorphoses. Giant Greco-roman figures became tortured deconstructed
carcasses and later were reborn as sleeping beauties. Despite the variety of
dispositions, however, throughout the progression the women remain posed
objects under observation, never ascending to the status of an autonomous
subject. For Picasso, his women were his.
There was no easier guarantee of possession than to immortalize them in his
paintings.
1918: The Beginning:
Olga
Seven Ballerina, Pablo Picasso, 1919, paper 62.2 x 50 cm, Musée Picasso,
Paris, France
In 1916, the midst
of the cubist artistic regime in Paris, Picasso was approached by Jean Cocteau
to work on Diaghilev’s latest Russian Ballet Parade. In accepting this project, despite rampant criticism from
his fellow artists, Picasso made his official departure from Cubism. Not only
was this a new leaf in his art but a new chapter in his life, for it is in
Parade that he will meet his future wife Olga Koklova. Between the multiple
runs of Parade and when Olga and Picasso married in
1918 we find many depictions of ballerinas in his work. But they are hardly the
dainty delicate figures often used to represent dancers. Seven Ballerinas (1919), for example, is a drawing based on a
picture of the Russian ballerina’s, in which Olga is positioned front and
center. Their bodies are large, beefy and cumbersome. Their hands are heavy and
masculine yet their poses are traditionally serene and graceful. This
counterintuitive depiction of dancers will set the stage for his complete
inversion in The Dance. But before he
make the jump to those mutilated figures, he continued to add weight and
testosterone to his women as seen in Seated
Woman (1920). Here the body is made even bigger and more hulking. By
alluding to Greco-Roman style, the she seemed to be amassed from stone. A
nearly identical representation occurs in Three
Women at a Fountain (1921) where, although in motion, the women are as
dynamic as statues.
His
bulking and distortion of the feminine form in this post cubist period can be
seen in his work as early as 1918 in The
Bathers. In a setting that demands leisure and comfort, the three women are
contorted and precarious. They are again brutish rather than sexy. Whispers of Guernica originate here in the standing
figure’s violently twisted neck.
The Bathers, Pablo
Picasso, 1918, Oil on canvas, 26.3 x 21.7 cm
Seated Woman, Pablo
Picasso, 1920, Oil on Canvas
Three Women at a Fountain, Pablo Picasso, 1921, Oil on
Canvas, 203.9 x 174 cm
Picasso at
Jean Le Pins, 1924, Photography by Man
Rey.
Where
are is this masculinity coming from? One wonders when comparing them to
Matisse’s voluptuous odalisques of the same period. Perhaps his was Picasso’s
preference for large women. Perhaps it was Olga’s pregnancy in 1920 and the
birth of his son in 1921, the period that marks the deterioration of their
relationship. In which case perhaps the weight of the relationship was bearing
heavily upon him, no longer carefree and fun, it had become heavy and
tormenting. Whatever the reason may be, it is hard not to find Picasso’s
likeness within these figures. His barrel chest and full round facial features
are nearly identical to that of the Seated Woman. Implanting himself in these portraits can be seen as a
assertion of his perceived dominance or vanity. As if to say, “This painting
may be of you, but it’s really about me.”
1925: The Breakdown: Three Dancers and The Crucifixion
Three Dancers, Pablo
Picasso, 1925, Oil on Canvas, 215 x 142cm
If the ballerinas of
1918 were a counter intuitive exploration, the Three Dancers are an
antithesis, “a vivid and dramatic rearrangement of the human figure.” (Timothy
Hilton, Picasso) Here the dancers are
aggressive, sharp and dismantled, everything but graceful. All are in simultaneous
agony and celebration. Pain and pleasure, much like that of the relationship
with his own dancer. His palette is hot and harsh as if bursting with every
kind of passion, tragic and triumphant. “The calm and the replete poise of the
figures the women and classical youths are replaced by emaciated, tortured
figures that might be of either sex.” (Timothy Hilton, Picasso) This is an
expressionist piece, that marks the beginning of phase commonly known as “the
attack on the human figure”, and directly channels the experience of his
current relationship with Olga. At this time, their son Paulo now 3, she had
become an increasing source of unhappiness and irritation in his life. Born into the lower echelon of Russian
nobility, Olga assumed when she married Pablo, at that time on the lower echelon
of Artistic nobility, they would lead a “soft, pampered, upper-crust life.”
(Francoise Gilot, My life with Pablo) But Pablo, dedicated to his art and his
life style, maintained his vie boheme and remained independent. On a visit to
his mother in Barcelona before their marriage she warned Olga against the
marriage, “[Don’t] do it under any conditions. I don’t believe any woman could
be happy with my son. He’s available for himself but for no one else.” (
Francoise Gilot, My Life with Picasso) Stubborn and determined Olga continued
to attempt to pull Pablo to her will, a crusade we can imagine only pulled her
closer into Pablo’s force field of control.
(Left) Seated Woman,
Pablo Picasso, 1927, Oil on Canvas
(Right) Large Nude in
a Red Arm Chair, Pablo Picasso, 1929, Oil on Canvas,
By 1927 Picasso is
no longer giving her the luxury of a backbone, she is rather a wailing pile of
flesh and genitalia as in Large Nude in a
Red Arm Chair (1927). “We very
often find that the figure, in these paintings, is looped in and trapped by the
very line which defines it.” (Timothy Hilton, Picasso, 164) This practice is true of Seated Woman (Olga) (1927) as well as Three Dancers (1925). Perhaps this representation should come as no
surprise because, after all, it was Picasso
who defined Olga. Or rather he held the line that could either bind her to him
or let go of and unravel her. And so he did, in 1935 when he left her for his
mistress Marie Therese and his new born child Maya.
But
this split did not come before perhaps the most agonized of paints during their
relationship. In 1930 he chooses a traditional subject infinitely visited in
the history of art and western civilization; a crucifixion. Despite the
unavoidable religious connotation of the subject, Picasso himself was not religious,
in face he was an atheist. If not Christ, who then is being crucified? The same
wailing open mouth we see in The Large
Nude in a Red Arm Chair (1927) appears here as well. But here, it more
strongly resembles the form of a praying mantis, an insect known for the female
eating its mate alive after sexual intercourse. Is the figure on the cross a wailing female? Or a crucified
Picasso being eaten alive by his mate?
La Crucifixion, Pablo
Picasso, 1930, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 65.5 cm
1931: The Dream:
Marie Therese
Woman with Yellow
Hair, Pablo Picasso, 1931, Oil on Canvas
Beginning in 1931
we begin to see a more supple gentle figure dominating his work, a sleeping
beauty at peace. Picasso met Marie Therese Walter in 1930 on the street in
Paris when she was just 17 years old. “Je suis Picasso,” he told her “vous et
moi, allons faire de grandes choses ensemble” (Picasso, 1930) and thus began
their affair. With an arresting face, Grecian profile, and full athletic build
she was Picasso’s idea of perfection. Not only physically perfect, but psychologically as well. “She was
the luminous dream of youth, always in the background but always within reach
that nourished his work.” (Francoise Gilot, My
Life with Picasso) In Marie Therese Picasso could escape from the public
life, the intellectual life and
most of all his life (with Olga) and all was calm because she was an escape. The first portrait of her
is hardly a portrait at all, but rather a still life with a secret subtext. Great Still Life of a Pedestal Table (1931)
is blooming with soft joyous colors, as stark contrast from the firey reds of The Crucifixion. Within the rounded forms of the table,
vase, and fruit we see Marie Therese’s form emerge. The two pieces of fruit on
the table can be either her eyes or breasts, as the tables legs become her
limbs. The red crooked form on the right resembles the bent elbow she often
rests her drowsy head on in later portraits like Woman with Yellow Hair. She is always represented in a beautiful light,
but she is also always being watched over. She is on his terms. He watches her
as she dreams because she is his dream, not the other way around. We see this
in The Mirror (1932) she is being
watched over from two angles, the reflection of her broad shoulders in the
mirror behind her, and from Picassos gaze as he paints her. She is his from all
angles. “She was a dream and the reality was someone else. He continued to love
her because he hadn’t taken possession of her.” (Francoise Gilot, My Life with Picasso) Her portraits are
composed whimsically as if she is always at risk of a night breeze blowing her
away. As in anything too good to be true, the perfection is fleeting and
delicate, prone to evaporate into thin air.
(Left) Great Still Life on a Pedestal Table, Pablo Picasso, 1931, Oil on
Canvas.
(Right) The Mirror, Pablo Picasso, 1932, Oil on Canvas
1937: The War: Marie
Therese and Dora Maar.
Though unable to official divorce her
without forfeiting half of his work, Picasso left Olga in 1935 and their
separation allowed for Marie Therese to finally assumed publically the premier place in his heart. But it
wasn’t long after they were freed from the secrecy of the affair that the reality
of their relationship began to set in. Now that she was fully his, in his
possession, and she was no longer a dream or imaginary. The mundane inherent
difficulties of relationships arrived- fatherhood, responsibilities, jealousy,
misunderstanding- difficulties he had formerly been able to avoid in his double
life. At this point he needed another distraction, and so entered Dora Maar in
the same year. While Marie Therese
was gentle, passive and obedient, Dora was intelligent, bold, and head strong.
A photographer herself, Picasso took a great interest in her as “someone he
could carry on a conversation with.” (Picasso, My Life With Picasso)
Picasso painted
many portraits of his two lovers, each with their own distinct style. Often the
two women are depicted together as in Seated Woman
in Front of a Window (1937) to represent the simultaneous presence
they had on his life during that time. In these portraits Marie Therese
maintains her round, lyrical form but her unhappiness and jealousy of this
period tint the figure more sober shades of blue and green. Dora Maar is
usually represented by wild colors, and angular jagged shapes.
(Left Crying Woman (Dora Maar), Pablo Picasso, 1937, Oil on Canvas
(Right) Sleeping by the Shutters (Marie Therese), Pablo Picasso, 1936, Oil
on Canvas
As one can
imagine, the two women did not take lightly to sharing a lover and a great
conflict arose between them. Far from disrupting Picasso, this constant
friction stimulated him creatively. “This phase of his painting, which seems to
alternate between happiness and unhappiness, needed them both for
completeness.” (Francoise Gilot, My Life
with Picasso) He enjoyed the dichotomy of the two women’s personalities and
enjoyed even more the intoxicating power he had over them.
“I remember one
day while I was painting Guernica… Dora Maar was with me. Marie Therese dropped
in and she found Dora there, she grew angry and said to her, “I have a child by
this man. It’s my place to be here with him. You can leave right now.” Dora
said, “ I have as much reason as you have to be here. I haven’t borne him a
child but I don’t see what difference it makes.” I kept on painting and they
kept on arguing. Finally Marie-Therese turned to me and said, “ Make up your
mind. Which one of us goes?” It was a hard decision to make I liked them both,
for different reasons: Marie Therese because she was sweet and gentle and did
whatever I wanted her to do, and Dora because she was intelligent. I decided I
had no interest in making a decision. I was satisfied with things as they were.
I told him they’d have to fight it out themselves. So they began to wrestle.
It’s one of my choicest memories.”
-Pablo
Picasso
Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937,
Oil on Canvas
Guernica was historically painted
in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque country by the Germans and
Italians during the Spanish Civil War. But it also can be seen as an
expressionist representation of the war going on 7 Rue des Grands Augustins. The
large female head flowing out the window is clearly Marie Therese and Dora
Maar, as she often was, is the “wailing woman.” And there in the corner we is
Picasso, the shorting bull. In Guernica, we
see his progression of women parading and trampling over the dismembered bodies
on the ground. The experiments and representations he chose 17 years prior
continue to appear. The distorted
immense female form of the Olga days is present in the bottom right. The
violent neck twist of Three Bathers
(1920) gives the wailing women her despair. The looping lines that make up the horse’s figure in the
middle, are the very same that formerly defines Olga. Marie Therese face is
still beautiful, albeit quite unhappy.
Had it not been
for the impatient women in Picasso’s life many of his best and most revolution
works would not exist. They entertained him, bore him children, went mad for
him, fought over him, lived for him. Far from doting, affectionate and
romantic, it is clear Picasso his believed his role in the relationship to be
that of the possessor. The women forfeited their autonomy upon falling in love,
but they sold their souls when he painted them. In his paintings he owned them
by immortalizing their likenesses and temperaments through his gaze. Known to
be a collector of objects and things that inspired him, Picasso collected
women. Until his death they all remained an active presence in his life because
he kept them there, tugging on the lines he once defined them with and never
setting them free.
