Art Eyewitness Book Review: Great Art Explained by James Payne

Great Art Explained

By James Payne

Thames & Hudson/320 pages/$39.95

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The first great work of art which I ever saw was likely the greatest I ever will see. 

The date was 1964 and the place was the New York World's Fair. The "great" work of art was The Pieta by Michelangelo. Loaned by the Vatican for the World's Fair and transported with elaborate safety measures, it was truly a moment in art history. Upon its safe return to Rome, The Pieta was declared too precious - and fragile - to ever travel again. 

Michelangelo's The Pieta at the New York World's Fair, 1964 

Viewing The Pieta today is an experience recalling the Resurrection when Christ declared to Mary Magdalene, "Noli me tangere" ("touch me not"). Following a horrifying act of vandalism in 1971, the restored Pieta is now protected by bullet-proof glass.

For those unable to travel to Rome, Michelangelo's portrayal of martyrdom and grief can only be appreciated at second hand, via the pages of a well-illustrated book or an art video. Increasingly, such "noli me tangere" moments apply to masterpieces closer to home, like Starry Night on a crowded day at MOMA.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019)

Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, with

 Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night,1889, in the background

For those craving a less harried look at The Pieta, Starry Night and other "icons" of art, there is also the option of Youtube, notably the popular programs hosted by James Payne.

Payne's YouTube series, Great Art Explained in 15 Minutes, is a fantastic success. It currently offers seventy-seven insightful presentations and is closing-in on two million subscribers. Now, Payne is pursuing the more traditional method of the written word to further his efforts to "demystify" masterpieces for art lovers around the world.

Great Art Explained: the Stories behind the World's Greatest Masterpieces is published by Thames & Hudson. This is significant for two reasons. T&H has been "demystifying" art for scholars and general readers for over seventy-five years. Moreover, the signature format of T&H books, especially the World of Art paperbacks, is the close integration of word and image, precisely what Payne is doing on YouTube.

Author and publisher are brilliantly matched in a book of exceptional merit. Great Art Explained will surely please Payne's Youtube audience, as well as readers who have yet to tune in to his series. Great Art Explained succeeds on every level of art scholarship and appreciation  - and shear enjoyment.

Payne begins explaining art by examining one of the greatest works of Asian art. This is the extraordinary handscroll, Along the River during the Qingming Festival, attributed to a Chinese artist named Zhang Zeduan. 

Measuring 17 ft x 10 in. (5 metres x 25.5 cm.), Along the River dates to China's Song dynasty. It was created sometime between 1085-1145, the high point of Song rule in Northern China. 

Detail from a copy, c. 18th century, after Zhang Zeduan's Along the River during the Qingming Festival, Song Dynasty, 1085-1145

Zeduan's painting, ink on silk and paper, is a tribute to prosperity and  political stability, real or imagined. The throng of tiny citizens may inhabit an idealized depiction of the city of Bianjing, but this is the ideal upon which civilizations are based.

Along the River during the Qingming Festival has been regarded as a national treasure of China almost since its completion. Numerous copies have been made over the centuries. One of these, a colorized version, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

By contrast, there are only two protagonists - and two reflected figures - in Payne's next selection, The Arnolfini Portrait. Painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434, this is a work of startling immediacy. Rich fabrics, a brass chandelier, the ornate mirror, expensive oranges ripening on the window sill point to a comfortable, untroubled middle class life style. Or, after a second glance, maybe not.

Detail of the mirror in Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait. The reflected figure, dressed in blue, is believed to be Van Eyck.

The Arnolfini Portrait is one of the most mysterious works of art ever created. The symbolic meanings of its profusion of brilliantly articulated details have been endlessly debated. Nearly six hundred years after he painted it, Van Eyck is still keeping us guessing. 

Is this a marriage portrait, as was once widely believed? If so, is the lady in green gathering her robe to suggest - or conceal - that she is pregnant? Why is there a bed in the living room? What does the hand raised in benediction signify? One radical theory holds that this gesture reveals Giovanni Arnolfini was a member of a secret religious sect.

With a palette full of insights, Payne paints a different perspective. Instead of celebrating married life or esoteric rituals, The Arnolfini Portrait is a mournful tribute to the green-clad lady of the house. Costanza Trenta married Giovanni Arnolfini in 1426, dying in 1433 - one year before Van Eyck painted their dual portrait. 

Payne concludes that this enigmatic work is actually a memorial painting for Costanza. He then proceeds to discuss a wide range of details underscoring the sad fact of her demise. He notes, for instance, that the frisky dog in the painting likely references "the common practice of placing dogs at the feet of women on late medieval tomb effigies."

The clinching argument regarding this elegiac work of art is the touching gesture at the very center of the painting. 

Payne writes of the way that Arnolfini grasps the hand of his wife:

Yet perhaps the most compelling evidence is the tentative way in which he holds her hand, as if she is on the brink of slipping away from his grasp. Ultimately, the painting can be said to embody the essence of a love that transcends even death itself.

Payne's empathetic examination of The Arnolfini Portrait is indicative of the way he treats all thirty of the works of art "explained" in his book - and the artists who created these masterpieces.

From a Renaissance allegory like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus to Hilma af Klint's pioneering Abstract works, from Hokusai's ukiyo-e print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa to the polished marble of Rodin's The Kiss, Payne expertly guides us to better appreciate these familiar images. Along the way, he pinpoints visual details we never noticed before, influential trends and ideas of which we were only dimly aware.

       

Works of Art included in Great Art Explained.

 Clockwise, from top left,  Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, 1485; Hilma af Klint's Group X,No. 2. Altarpiece, 1915; Rodin's The Kiss, 1882; Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa, 1830-33.

Payne surveys these thirty masterpieces with a judicious blend of story-telling, technical analysis and social commentary. An amazing number of little known facts are added to the mix, which enable readers to see these works of art in a new light. 

Michelangelo's Pieta is a case in point. Today, The Pieta has become a defining image of the Italian Renaissance. However, the artistic motif of the dead body of the crucified Jesus being held by his mother, Mary, originated over a century before in Germany. This motif created problems for Italian artists, who found it awkward to pose the body of a grown man in the arms of his aged mother.

Disregarding precedent, Michelangelo solved the problem by reducing the stature of Christ's body to that of an adolescent youth. Mary's physique and her billowing robes were increased in order to support the body of her dead son. 

Michelangelo's The Pieta on view in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

Most people, viewing The Pieta hardly notice these anatomical alterations. Michelangelo was able to transform this scene of suffering, making it appear graceful and poignant - and believable. How did the 24-year old sculptor achieve this incredible balance of attributes?

Michelangelo's technical mastery is obviously the prime determinant of success. But he was able to create an emotional bond between the sculpted-marble Mary and Jesus which exists in the living hearts and souls of all humankind. 

When we behold a tragic scene such as this, we do feel pity for the stricken mother and child. But we are moved to a very great degree by a sense of identification. Viewing their tragedy, we feel a tug on the emotional umbilical chord linking ourselves and the women who gave us life.

The Pieta succeeds by directly involving the viewer in the primal human drama of love and loss. So does a vastly different work of art which Payne brilliantly probes, though the principal emotion in this painting is lust.

We are referring, of course, to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019)

Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC,

 showing Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Payne's "you-are-there" analysis of Les Demoiselles deserves a brief quotation, in order to show the very high caliber of his insights and narrative skill. 

Payne notes that Picasso's original design of the "Bordel d'Avignon" included two male clients - which he discarded in the finished painting. 

Payne writes:

By eradicating the men and focusing exclusively on female figures, Picasso explores a more complex relationship between sex, power, desire, the male gaze and artistic representation. With the female figures' attention directed away from the clients and towards us, the viewer, we are implicitly cast in the role of a potential client, transforming our viewing experience into an uncomfortable encounter with the act of looking and consuming the female body.

If Picasso was unsparing in shoving viewers through the brothel door- where they may or may-not wish to go - Payne responds in kind. He judges the Spanish painter with uncharacteristic severity for his personal conduct, as the "artist's deplorable treatment of women left behind a trail of destruction."

In the case of all the other artists included in Great Art Explained, there is a palpable sense of empathy between author and subject. This is especially true for the eight women artists in the book. Not only is this a significant percentage of the total number of artists "explained" by Payne, but he has included Suzanne Valadon and Hilma af Klint, along with more familiar figures like Frida Kahlo.

Valadon and af Klint were two female painters of exceptional talent, who only a decade or so, ago, scarcely merited a mention in a survey of art for general readers like Great Art Explained. 

Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923

I was privileged to be able to review one of the recent exhibitions which helped to bring Valadon's oeuvre to a wider audience. This was at the Barnes Foundation in 2021 where the painting selected by Payne for focused study, The Blue Room, was prominently displayed. Payne chose wisely including Valadon and The Blue Room in Great Art Explained.

However, it is a rare art book which can escape some measure of carping criticism for picking this or that artist over one who really "deserves" to be included. Why was Monet selected rather than Manet? Turner rather than Constable? Etc., etc.

For my part, I have to question why Payne chose four Renaissance works, separated by only a few short years. Even if they were created by Botticelli,  Hieronymus Bosch, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, this seems a bit like stacking the deck. Couldn't he have found space for a painting or sculpture from the Mannerist era of the mid-1500's?

Agnolo Bronzino, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, 1545

After all, if ever a painting needs to be "explained", it is Agnolo Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. I've been trying to figure-out that one for years - and I'm not even close.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved. Original photos by Anne Lloyd and Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Introductory Image: Anne Lloyd, Photo (2017) Gallery view of Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nov. 2017-Feb. 2018.

Michelangelo's The Pieta at the New York World's Fair, 1964. Vatican Slide, D-1. http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/vatican.htm

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, with Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, 1889, in the background.

Cover art of Great Art Explained by James Payne, 2025. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

Copy after Zhang Zeduan's Along the River during the Qingming Festival, Song Dynasty, 1085-1145. Copy attributed to the 18th century. Handscroll; ink and color on silk: 11 3/4 in. x 33 ft. (29.8 x 1004.6 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jan van Eyck (Flemish, c. 1390-1441) The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. Oil on wood: 82.2 × 60 (32 3/8 × 23 5/8). © The National Gallery, London.

A Sampler of Art Works included in Great Art Explained: Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus,1485. 172.5 × 278.5 (68 × 109 6/8) © Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence; Hilma af Klint's Group X, No, 2. Altarpiece,1915. Oil and metal leaf on canvas, 238 ×179 (93 3/4 × 70 1/2). © Hilma af Klint Foundation; Auguste Rodin's The Kiss (copy) displayed at the Rodin Museum, Philadelphia; Hokusai's     Under the Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji,  c. 1830-33.

• Woodblock print; ink and color on paper: 10 x 15 in. (25.4 x 38.1 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art

Michelangelo (Italian, 1475-1564) The Pieta, 1499. St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican. Marble sculpture: 174 cm × 195 cm (68.5 in × 76.8 in) Original photo by Stanislav Traykov, 2008, Creative Commons. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_(Michelangelo)

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, showing Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907. Oil on canvas: 8' x 7' 8" (243.9 x 233.7 cm) Museum of Modern Art.

Ed Voves, Photo (2021) Suzanne Valadon's The Blue Room, 1923. Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne/CCI, Paris, on deposit to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges. Photo taken at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 2021.

Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503-1572) Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time,1545. Oil on wood: 146.1 x 116.2 cm.  © The National Gallery, London. 

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Picasso: the Self-Portraits by Pascal Bonafoux

Picasso: the Self-Portraits

By Pascal Bonafoux

Thames & Hudson/$45/223 pages

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Often times, when a great writer, actor or artist of advanced age dies, the  reaction is a bemused exclamation, "I didn't know he (or she) was still alive."

When Pablo Picasso died a half century ago, on April 8, 1973, that was not the response. No one thought of Picasso in the past tense, but rather with shock that he could die.

Yes, Picasso had lived a very long time, 1881-1973. Yes, many of his best works were already on museum walls years before his passing. Picasso, however, was such a legendary figure, an artist of genius caliber, that it was hard to conceive of the art world without him.

Fifty years on, art historians are still grappling with the legacy of Picasso. Museums around the world have announced exhibitions to mark the anniversary of his death - and his continuing importance. While these upcoming exhibits will doubtless provide new insights, museum curators are already facing stiff-competition from an impressive new book, Picasso: the Self-Portraits, written by the French art historian, Pascal Bonafoux.

There are a number of surprising aspects to this outstanding book. Perhaps the most glaring one is the fact that this is the first systematic study of Picasso's self-portraits. Considering the exhaustive treatment of Picasso's oeuvre, it is a bit perplexing that this trove of revelatory art has been little regarded by scholars, at least as a body of work - and an extensive one at that.

Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait (detail), 1906

Picasso: the Self-Portraits examines 170 paintings, drawings and photos. Beginning with an 1894 drawing of himself, aged thirteen, Picasso continued to record - and in some cases, disguise - his features up until a few months before he died. 

Most of these self-portraits, however, were created before 1918. In November of that year, Picasso heard the shocking news that his great friend, Guillaume Apollinaire, had just died during the Influenza pandemic. According to legend, Picasso was shaving when the message arrived and could not bear looking into a mirror after that terrible moment. Doing so reminded him of the painful passing of Apollinaire - and of his own mortality.

The second surprise factor is the curiously "old-fashion" look to the present volume. The book opens with the text, eighty-plus pages of solid print, en bloc. Then come the pictures, treated with superb fidelity whether color, sepia or black and white, but lacking explanatory captions. Given that the publisher is Thames and Hudson, who practically invented the process of closely integrating pictures with text in art books, this arrangement did come as a bit of shock when I first leafed through the pages.

Any doubts about Picasso: the Self-Portraits vanished by the time I finished reading the first couple of paragraphs. It was a master-stroke to use Bonafoux's brilliant narrative to engage the reader's imagination, followed by the pictures. Bonafoux is an exceptional writer, a French intellectual whose scholarship is tempered with warm human empathy and philosophic insight. 

In many ways, Bonafoux's text is a meditation on life, Picasso's and ours. Quoting a remark by Picasso that "a painting only lives through the person looking at it," Bonafoux invites us to join in this silent dialog. 

Alone. I am alone before Picasso's self-portraits. You are alone before these same self-portraits... And perhaps that is the purpose of a self-portrait, to make us examine our own solitude.

So let the words and the images of Picasso: the Self-Portraits speak for themselves without constant referring back and forth. The best way to use this intriguing book is to savor the text and images as complementary essays. 

Bonafoux begins his narrative by relating how he met Picasso's widow, Jacqueline, at a dinner party. Bonafoux's specialty in art scholarship is the study of self-portraits from the Renaissance to the contemporary world.

Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1917

During their discussion about art, Jacqueline Picasso asked if Bonafoux had referred to Picasso's self-portraits in his research. Bonafoux replied by mentioning the mirror incident, which the photographer Brassai had related. Jacqueline Picasso contradicted Brassai's account, telling Bonafoux that Picasso had continued to create self-portraits after 1918. This exchange launched Bonafoux on a forty-year exploration of how Picasso came to depict himself in paintings and drawings over the course of his life.

Later, Jacqueline showed Bonafoux a self-portrait by Picasso, (above) dated to 1959. The 1959 date referred to the occasion when Picasso presented it to her. The drawing was actually created in 1917. 

The Self-Portrait is exceptionally crisp and well-delineated, worthy of the classical style of French drawing, especially the portrait sketches of Jean Auguste Ingres (1780-1867). Picasso executed several more in this manner, but almost all before the end of World War I. The self-portraits he created in the years that followed the war were few in number and very varied in composition. Apparently, there was an element of truth in both what Brassai and Jacqueline Picasso had stated.

Bonafoux discounts a shattering event like Apollinaire's death (which was certainly upsetting to the artist) as having any real effect on Picasso's production of self-portraits.

For Picasso, self-portraits were more documents of experimentation than documentation. That is why most of the self-portraits were created when Picasso was very young. He was finding his way in the world, especially when he made the decision to settle in France, despite the vibrant culture of Barcelona and the fellow-artists whose friendship he celebrated in a poster for the fabled cafe, Els Quatre Gats. 

Pablo Picasso, Poster for Els Quatre Gats with self-portrait, 1902

Picasso is shown in the foreground, with Pere Romeu’s dog

The self-portraits of Picasso's early years how him in many guises: dressed as a top-hatted Parisian boulevardier (despite being nearly destitute); sporting a mustache, making him look much older than his age in 1901; even a rather silly pose, wearing the crown of an Egyptian Pharaoh, in a composite drawing.

Pablo Picasso, Picasso with a Woman, 1901

 Pablo Picasso, Profile, 1901

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait as a Pharaoh, 1903-4

Many of these early self-portraits would be of little interest today except that Picasso had created them. But create them he did, as he investigated the life around him and within, with abundant explorations of sexuality as evidenced by the accompanying nude sketches on Self-portrait as a Pharaoh. 

Bonafoux notes that a constant factor in Picasso's life was his devotion, indeed obsession, to change. From early on, he set himself to oppose the established conventions of art, summed-up under the disparaging term, style. This leads Bonafoux to the "paradoxical conclusion" that "it is the very changeability of Picasso's work that makes it endure."

"Perhaps," Bonafoux muses, "we should therefore view Picasso's self-portraits as symbols of these changes that look like him... When he paints himself, he is not so much seeking to represent Picasso as he is seeking to be a Picasso."

If many of the early self-portraits merely reflect the "changes that look like him," several were major, monumental likenesses. The haunting, 1901 Blue Period Self-Portrait and the 1906 "Iberian" Self-Portrait from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art are works which evoke Picasso's moods and interests at the time he painted himself on these canvases. But both works probe deeply below surface details, into Picasso's soul and psyche. Together these self-portraits forecast the mature Picasso's role as the Magus of Modern Art.

Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1906 

Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection

None of the self-portraits which Picasso created during the inter-war years, 1918-1939, or the period following the Second World War, approached these early works in skill or interest. Some are technically significant, others little more than sketches.

This takes us back to the "mirror image" question. This time, we can safely say that Picasso now had little need to represent himself. He was now painting and drawing "Picasso" in each and every one of his works. The painter of Guernica had little need to limit himself to autobiography. 

Only very late in life, when Picasso was indeed confronting his mortality, did he return to a serious focus on self-portraits. In 1972, only months before he died, Picasso created several skull-like depictions of himself, looking like apparitions from beyond the grave. These leave little doubt as to where his thoughts were directed.

In one of the most poignant reflections in his compelling narrative, Bonafoux affirms that the real, lasting value of self-portraiture is the way it encourages, indeed insists, that artists remain true to themselves:

The only model who is always available to a painter, the only model who they can be sure will never recoil, offended or disappointed, on seeing the final portrait, is themselves. Their own image is what artists have always measured themselves against, time and again, to establish their visual identity.

Delete the words "painter" or "artist' from these wise words and forget about Pablo Picasso for the moment. Apply Pascal Bonafoux's sage reflection to ourselves. This I think will make for a very telling experience, the next time we look into a mirror. 

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved. Original photography by Anne Lloyd, all rights reserved. 

Images of works by Pablo Picasso, courtesy of Thames and Hudson

Introductory Image: Cover art of Picasso: the Self-Portraits, by Pascal Bonafoux, courtesy of Thames and Hudson, 2023.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Pablo Picasso's Self-Portrait, 1906. Oil on canvas: 36 3/16 inches x 28 7/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Photo by Anne Lloyd, 2020)

Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1917, pencil on paper, 34 x 23.5 cm. Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2022

Pablo Picasso, Poster for Els Quatre Gats with self-portrait, 1902, pen and ink on paper, 31 x 34 cm. In the foreground, the artist and Pere Romeu’s dog; background, from left to right, Pere Romeu, Rocarol, Fontbona, Àngel F. de Soto, Sabartés. Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2022

Pablo Picasso, Picasso with a Woman, 1901, ink and watercolor on paper, 17.3 x 13 cm. Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2022

Pablo Picasso, Profile, 1901, ink on paper, 21 x 13 cm. Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2022 

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait as a Pharaoh, 1903-4, Chinese ink and colored pencils on paper, 26 x 36 cm. Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2022

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change at the Barnes Foundation

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change

 

Barnes Foundation - February 21– May 9, 2016

Columbus Museum of Art - June 10 – September 11, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The First World War entered its first full year in January 1915. Gone was the nearly universal belief of August 1914 that the war would be a short and glorious campaign.

To mark the occasion of the grim New Year of 1915, the French Minister of War, Alexandre Millerand, declared, "There are no more workers' rights, no more social laws. There is nothing now but war."

A world defined by mass, industrialized slaughter was the setting for Pablo Picasso's Great War years. The decade between 1914 to 1924 witnessed a career-changing shift from Picasso's "periods" and his dedicated allegiance to Cubism toward a restless, multi-faceted approach to art that would continue for the rest of his life.      

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change brilliantly explores this time of transformation in Picasso's art. This major exhibit is now on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It will appear at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio later in June 2016.

One of the signature works in the Picasso: The Great War exhibit is a star of the Columbus Museum's collection. This is Still Life with Compote and Glass,1914–15, which Picasso painted around the time of Alexandre Millerand's "nothing now but war" chant. 

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914–15

Still Life with Compote and Glass represents the apogee of pre-World War I Cubism. It combines the major elements of the two phases of Cubism. Here we can see the interlocking of geometric planes of Analytical Cubism combined with the enhanced use of color and concrete imagery in Synthetic Cubism. The contribution to Cubism of Picasso's Spanish countryman, Juan Gris, is apparent in the representational tone of this work. Still Life with Compote and Glass shows how Cubism would likely have developed had Europe not plunged into war in August 1914.

Europe did go mad and Picasso could only paint Still Life with Compote and Glass because he was a Spanish neutral. He did not have to dodge bullets and shrapnel like his Cubist compatriot, Georges Braques, who was seriously wounded in 1915. 

Picasso later defended his greatest work, Guernica, declaring that painting "is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness."

The art works presented in the Picasso: The Great War exhibit may not be overtly anti-war like Guernica. But the masterpieces on view at the Barnes certainly attest to Picasso's creative and compassionate response to Millerand's "nothing now but war" proclamation.

Cubism joined the casualty list of the Great War, seriously wounded if not killed. The Barnes exhibit includes a provocative short film which explores how the French government during World War I viewed Cubism as subversive and unpatriotic. 

This bizarre theory was based, at least superficially, on the fact that German art enthusiasts were among the first to embrace Cubism. The German-born Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) was the art agent for both Picasso and Braques. Kahnweiler's Paris gallery, located at 28 rue Vignon, became a rallying point for avant garde artists like Picasso, whom the German art dealer loyally supported.

In August 1914, Kahnweiler had to flee to Switzerland and his stock of paintings was seized by the French government. At the same time, German authorities impounded a collection of Matisse's paintings owned by the Stein family which was part of an art exhibit in Berlin. The Steins, even though the U.S. was not yet in the war, had to sell their paintings at a loss to a Danish collector. Kahnweiler's art was auctioned by the French to support the "nothing now but war" effort.

The "Great" War was a war on art. Cubism and all other forms of independent thought and expression were thrown into the furnace of militarism. But Picasso, the Spanish non-combatant, could resist this mindless, soul-consuming tyranny - and he did.

Picasso retained Cubism as the dominant style of his painting during the early war years. His greatest work during 1915 was the Harlequin so admired by Henri Matisse and now on display at the Museum of Modern Art. Yet Picasso, like so many great artists, admired the portrait sketches of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). In 1915, Picasso began doing a series of portrait sketches of fellow artists like his friend Max Jacob, some of which are on view in the Barnes Foundation exhibit.

Pablo Picasso, Olga Picasso, Seated, 1918

  

It is no exaggeration to say that the exquisite portrait sketch of Olga Picasso, created in 1918, bears a comparison with those of Ingres from a century before. This work is such an astonishing demonstration of the ideals of classical composition that a passing glance might well mislead a viewer to think that the drawing was from the hand of the French nineteenth century master rather than the Spanish modernist.

The real significance of Picasso's "rediscovery" of Ingres lies in the 1915 date of his first efforts like the portrait of Max Jacob. Picasso returned to classicism in 1915 before the controversial debut of Les demoiselles d'Avignon at the 1916 exhibition organized by André Salmon,  before he ventured to Italy in 1917, before the famous "call to order" by Jean Cocteau in 1918.

All of these events have figured prominently in accounts of Picasso's return to realism from Cubism.The Picasso: The Great War exhibit shows that Picasso never entirely abandoned Cubism nor did he completely embrace classicism.

The Barnes Foundation, Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation & Change, 2016 

On view in the exhibit is a major Cubist work from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Harlequin with Violin (Si Tu Veux), painted in 1918. Displayed next to it is a realist depiction of the other mainstay of the Commedia della’arte, Pierrot. This too was painted in 1918.  

To underscore Picasso's ability to engage in seemingly contradictory forms of art, the exhibit curators positioned another Cubist work, a portrait of the celebrated Spanish dancer, Blaquita Suarez (1917), to the right of Pierrot.

Interestingly, the piece of sheet music held by the Cubist Harlequin with Violin is entitled Si Tu Veux or If You Like. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Picasso was including the viewer in an open secret: he, Picasso, painted the way he wanted to, when he wanted to, because he was Picasso.

Another significant work on display in Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change is Studies, dating to 1920.  Life-like oil sketches of a head and hands share the canvas with Cubist still-life studies. It is an ensemble effort, with Picasso preparing for a future work before he had decided upon the style he wanted to paint.

Pablo Picasso, Studies, 1920

If there was a motivating factor for Picasso's embrace of classicism - beyond his own creative impulses - it was his friendship with the poet, artist and film producer, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). Cocteau introduced Picasso to the ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev, and in 1917, Picasso traveled to Italy to collaborate on a modern ballet called Parade.

Parade was a meeting of minds and work of genius. The script was written by Cocteau, the music by Erik Satie, the choreography by Leonide Massine and the stage curtain and costumes designed by Picasso.  Misia Sert, the queen of Paris society and Diaghilev's muse, provided the money. Parade debuted at a benefit performance for wounded Allied soldiers on May 18, 1917.

The premier of Parade became the stuff of legend. The opening was more of a "Friday night fight" than a cultural event. It was greeted by jeers on one side and cheers on the other. Cocteau and Satie commenced an ugly quarrel with a hostile dance critic that landed Satie in jail and left Cocteau nursing bruises from a police baton. Picasso, at least initially, emerged unscathed, marrying one of the ballerinas, Olga Khokhlova.

The Barnes Foundation, Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation & Change, 2016  

Echoes of the mythic events surrounding Parade are very evident in the galleries of the Barnes Foundation. Large format photos of Picasso with the team of painters who assisted him and of the finished stage curtain are powerful reminders of the labor involved and the scale of this storied production. 

Picasso's continuing fascination with Cubism is evident in the reconstructions of several of the costumes from Parade. One costume, that of the Chinese Conjuror, is an actual survivor from the original ballet.

Pablo Picasso, Costume for the Chinese Conjuror from Parade, 1917

The romance with Olga Khokhlova, begun during Parade, certainly propelled Picasso along the path of classicism for the remainder of the war years and into the early 1920's.
 It was a measure of Picasso's idea of the woman he set out to marry that he produced such an amazing portfolio of portraits of Olga. Given his infamous remark that women were either goddesses or doormats, I think the 36-year old Picasso had set his heart on a goddess. Olga Khokhlova looked, acted and indeed possessed the virtuous and strong-minded character to fit the role. 

The courtship and early married life of Picasso and Olga Khokhlova was an attempt to transform the ideal into reality. If their marriage ended in disaster, it produced some of the most beautiful portraits of a woman created during the twentieth century. It also inspired a remarkable series of works evoking the primal, nurturing female principle. Only Picasso could have  achieved this creative triumph - even as his marriage was headed toward the rapids.

Pablo Picasso, Olga Khokhlova with a Mantilla, 1917

Picasso painted Olga Khokhlova in a Mantilla in 1917 and presented it to his mother, Doña María. It is a beautiful, haunting work, a tribute to the great Spanish portrait masters, Velasquez and Goya. It says something about the ironclad formalities of Spanish society that Picasso created this magnificent work to please his mother, rather than his bride-to-be.

Picasso married Olga Khokhlova in 1918 and their son, Paolo, was born in 1921. During these sunny years of their marriage, Picasso painted some of the most extraordinary evocations of motherhood ever created. The Barnes exhibit has one of these on view, albeit without a child in the mother's arms, as is usually the case with these distinctive works.

The large, nurturing "earth mother" is not conventionally beautiful, certainly not by 1920's standards. Instead Picasso's "mothers" radiate strength and love, and, in this case, are marked by anxiety for their children's welfare. 

Pablo Picasso, Seated Woman, 1920

Picasso, in fact, created images of motherhood in the way that very young children experience their mothers. Children see and depend upon their mothers as the providers of unstinting, unquestioning love. Mothers are the arms that hold, the hands that caress, the faces that reassure.

After the horror of the trench warfare of World War I, society in Europe and America craved the "normalcy" of tradition, a "return to order" as Cocteau proclaimed. And the survivors of the Great War yearned for the kind of nurturing that Picasso depicted with his "earthbound" maternal angels. That state of desperate desire is where the superb exhibit at the Barnes Foundation concludes.

For Picasso and his world, however, there would be no lasting "return to order." Picasso's marriage foundered. Yet, he would not agree to a divorce that would cost him half his property. Olga Picasso lingered, married but unloved, until she died in 1955. Picasso, tormented by his inner demons, came to see himself like the fabled Minotaur of antiquity, half-man, half-beast.

And then war came again, in 1936. This time armed conflict shattered Picasso's beloved Spain. Bombs rained down upon a vulnerable, undefended city called Guernica. Pablo Picasso took up his paint brush and once more matched his awesome talent and creative vision against the forces of brutality and darkness, in a world reduced again to "nothing now but war."      

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Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images courtesy of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia 

Introductory Image: 
Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Harlequin Musician, 1924. Oil on canvas, 51 3/16 × 38 1/4 in. (130 × 97.2 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.2 © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 - 1973). Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914–15. Oil on canvas, 25 x 31". 1931.087. Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH. © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York | Gift of Ferdinand Howald
Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Olga Picasso, Seated, autumn 1918. Pencil on paper, 14 3/8 × 10 13/16 in. (36.5 × 27.5 cm). Private collection Courtesy, Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte Photo: Marc Domage © FABA © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation of Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, 2016. #11 Image © 2016 The Barnes Foundation

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Studies, 1920. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. (100 x 81 cm). MP65. Musée Picasso, Paris, France. © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso /  Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY / René-Gabriel Ojéda

Installation of Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, 2016. #10 Image © 2016 The Barnes Foundation

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Costume for the Chinese Conjuror from Parade, 1917. Silk satin fabric with silver tissue, 65 5/16 × 59 1/16 × 19 11/16 in. (176 × 150 × 50 cm). Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Museum no. S.84&A&B-1985 Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Olga Khokhlova with a Mantilla, Barcelona, summer–autumn 1917. Oil on canvas, 25 3/16 × 20 7/8 in. (64 × 53 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. Photo: Gasull © FABA© 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso, Pablo (Spanish, 1881-1973) Seated Woman, 1920. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 25 9/16 in. (92 × 65 cm). Musée Picasso, Paris, MP67 Photo: J.G. Berizzi. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY © 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York