And so to the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik, where an exhibition of Picasso graphics was about to close. This was nothing less than a revelation for me, revealing the extent of Picasso’s draughtsmanship, his command of different forms and – most strangely – his sense of humour. It was a world away from the sometimes forbidding cubism for which he became famous, and the better for it – I’ve always found cubism to be a bloodless exercise. I can see how it works, how it captures something that realism never could, but that doesn’t make it speak to me.
The exhibit included three sets – Suite Vollard, Suite 156 and the Tauromaquia. Suite 156 was the most familiar, with cubist elements in place, drawn out at the end of Picasso’s life. It was in 156 that his sense of humour came out most, with sly digs at other paintings, other painters and even at himself – with pieces like “Old Man and Woman with Athlete and Dwarf”, how could it be otherwise? This lightheartedness was countered by the sequence of etchings depicting Rape, in which themes found in the Suite Vollard thirty years previously – the Minotaur on the woman, the female toreador on the bull – were echoed, but with far more venom. The rapist looks almost placid, his expression blank in the classical style seen in other parts of the suite, while the woman contorts beneath him in barely-human positions. I found them difficult to look at, but not as difficult as the Tauromaquia.
The Tauromaquia is a sequence of pictures depicting the exact sequence of a bullfight, a subject close to Picasso’s heart. Like all fans of the corrida, he clearly sees a beauty there which will escape me forever; I cannot overcome my feelings of injustice enough to enjoy these drawings much.1 I can appreciate the technical skill displayed, however. Each of the pictures is a miniature composed of nothing more than brief, narrow strokes – there is no detail, no perspective and no movement to be seen, yet each picture is a perfect snapshot of a precise moment of the event, from the arrival at the stadium to the final departure of the toreador on the shoulders of his admirers. My sympathy remains with the bull; the picture that stands out most is titled “Dragging out a bull that is not belligerent enough”; make love, not war.
Make love is exactly what the bull – or at least the minotaur – does in the Suite Volland, when he’s not being blinded and lead around by a young girl. The Suite divides into roughly three sections. The bulk of it is neoclassical studies of the sculptor and his models, the sculptor being both Picasso and Zeus, the models being both powerful and dominated. A significant remainder shows the minotaur, taking the place of the sculptor with his models, then being injured, then walking blinded through unwelcoming city streets. The text reminds us that this was a novelty, the minotaur, traditionally a symbol of virile aggression, laid low by the weapons of man. The cheers of the bullring echo in the minotaur’s ears as he picks up the stick that will be his guide for the rest of his life.
The third section is simple: three portraits of Picasso’s sponsor, Ambroise Vollard. These were added to complete the suite up to 100 pictures, but they were done in a much more naturalistic style than the others. Lined up in a row on the wall, at the heart of the museum, they look like nothing less than Andy Warhol working in pencil; an identical pose repeated with variations only in shading and tone. They look nothing like we’d expect a portrait by Picasso to look, but they show the essence of a painter, the need to capture somebody at that moment in time. Vollard didn’t just commission this particular suite; he was responsible for Picasso’s initial financial success, the security that made his later work possible.
These portraits could easily show the money, the respect that the money paid for, the debt of the painter to the patron; but they just show a man, plain and simple, sketched out lightly and frowning slightly at us through our many years of over-exposure to Picasso, reminding us of the simple skill of the artist.
- Yet I’m aware that my reaction towards these is more extreme than my reaction to the rape pictures, which is of course both mystifying and unacceptable to me. [↩]