Pablo Picasso, the supreme avatar of Modernism, died 30 years ago this April, and even though our Postmodern period plays by a more relaxed set of rules, in one important way Picasso remains daunting: During 80 years of activity, a fierce restlessness kept him from the kind of ease represented by what we call a signature style.
Picasso had not one style but many and worked in more than one concurrently. That, we tell ourselves, is the way it’s supposed to be with great artists. But it has been more common for them to arrive at a mature style and stick with it — to advantage especially in the marketplace, which thrives on an artist’s most “typical” examples.
Picasso, on the other hand, was ever-changing, and today we trace how one of his styles led to a particularly fine example that long has been in Chicago and recently became the subject of a legal dispute.
“Femme en blanc” (“Woman in White”) is a picture of a monumentally proportioned female seated holding a book. Picasso painted it in 1922. Its financial value is estimated at $10 million. We show something of where the artist came from to get to the painting and how what he achieved in it influenced for a time what he did thereafter. That constitutes the painting’s actual value.
Following World War I, artists in France recoiled from the most avant-garde tendencies; poet Jean Cocteau termed it a “call to order.” Picasso was on the way as early as 1914 when he sought escape from the radical geometrics of Cubism that he and Georges Braque had originated. But it took much longer for the way to become distinct.
Picasso started doing theater designs in 1916. The first, for the ballet “Parade,” took him to Italy, where direct experience of Roman antiquity seems to have encouraged a personal form of classicism. This fit in perfectly with the general desire for an art of serenity and balance.
Picasso married dancer Olga Koklova in 1918 and assumed a new way of life that also represented stability. Even so, he continued to explore a form of Cubism as he worked toward a classicism of massive figures in various groupings of peasants, dancers and outdoor bathers.
For clarity, we have isolated some of his seated females to indicate the development both before and after the “Woman in White”; in reality, Picasso treated many different subjects in different styles. The idea, however, is to show how “Woman” is of a subtlety and refinement that was not immediately arrived at. The dispute over the painting is, of course, about something else, but if the picture were any less artistically, it might have been pursued differently, for this is a masterpiece of Picasso’s classical period.
BEFORE
“SEATED WOMAN HOLDING A BOOK” 1916, drawing
Picasso never created an abstract picture but came close in the Cubism that faceted objects and fragmented forms in 1911. He soon shrunk back from that, and in this drawing five years later explores a more decorative form of Cubism, in which the woman, her chair and book are reduced to essential lines and flattened like a collage of cut blank papers that nonetheless maintains clear ties to the world of appearance.
“ITALIAN WOMAN” 1919, oil
In 1917 Picasso went to Rome for eight weeks. There he met his future wife, and took side trips to Naples and Pompeii. The ancient wall decorations at Pompeii impressed him, and he immediately wrote of creating his own “Pompeiian fantasies.” Later paintings show him inflating figures inspired by the frescoes like balloons. That has begun to happen — notice the hands — in this painting of an Italian woman created long after the trip, in Paris.
“WOMAN READING (BUST)” 1920, oil
The motif of a woman reading returns, monumentalized by Picasso’s treatment of the figure’s head and hands. Her coiffure also begins to resemble that of classical sculptures, and unlike the previous examples of seated females, the figure now wears a robe that looks back to earlier centuries. The serene atmosphere characteristic of antique art is furthered by the woman’s absorption in her book.
“WOMAN IN AN ARMCHAIR” 1921-22, oil
The head and dress of this figure again seem to have come directly from classical sculpture. However, Picasso’s monumentalizing tendency has disappeared, and the figure has the leanness of an ancient goddess — or the New Woman of the 1920s. Nothing in the style of the painting is forced. Even as it refers to earlier art, it convincingly brings classicism to an armchair in Right Bank Paris.
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AFTER
“BUST OF A WOMAN IN A SHIRT” 1922, oil
The gravity of “Woman in White” is recaptured through just the head and shoulders of the figure. The monumentality of the earlier torso is gone; only a heavy-liddedness persists. The inward-looking gaze is freed from any external prop. As with the Cubist “Seated Woman Holding a Book,” this, too, is a special kind of distillation.
“WOMAN IN AN ARMCHAIR” 1922-23, oil
Here is Picasso’s most relaxed treatment of the theme. The fullness of the figure again is evident in the face, and she is once more in classical dress. An armchair wraps around her. One arm is draped in the folds of a robe. The atmosphere has, however, lightened. Would this degree of apparent naturalness have been possible without “Woman in White”?