Picasso went to Paris for the first time in 1900, at this time, influenced by Toulouse Lautrec, he began to paint café and racecourse scenes. Then, he began to paint more tragic themes, this is what we call his blue period, then he painted paintings inspired by the life of the sinltabanques. It was in 1901, when he was only 19 years old, that Picasso's first exhibition took place at the home of a certain Ambroise Vollard. He happens to be a very well-known art dealer and gallery owner, he was notably Cézanne's art dealer. It was Ambroise Vollard who suddenly acquired the entire collection of Picasso's blue period for only 2000 francs. Vollard will become Picasso's art dealer in the same way that we were Cézanne or Matisse. Their collaboration lasted a very long time and experienced some complexity, particularly during the almost abstract phase of Picasso's work, a period during which he painted the portrait of Vollard. This portrait is currently stored at the Pushkin Museum after having remained with its original owner I. Molokox who bought it from Vollard for the sum of 3000 francs. We can ask ourselves: How does the portrait of Ambroise Vollard highlight Picasso's portraitist follies as well as his relationships with personalities of the 20th century? First of all, we will see that “Picasso is a great criminal” then we will see that this portrait witnesses a complex relationship.
I- “Picasso is a great criminal”
“Picasso is a great criminal” Elie Faure
Elie Faure was a critic, in no way the enemy of Picasso on the contrary he was one of the only ones to be appreciated by the artist, he also had the right to his portrait (Portrait of Elie Faure, June 14, 1922).
“It is from him,” explained Elie Faure, “that young people decided to look within themselves to imagine the outside, instead of, like their elders, looking outside to imagine themselves. And since they didn’t see much in them, we know what happened.”
a) 1910: the beginning of what we call CUBISM
At the beginning of the 20th century photography established itself in art because it offers a better mimicry of reality than painting or sculpture. Commissions for pictorial portraits are becoming increasingly rare in favor of photographic portraits. What appeared to be the beginning of the painting's loss actually allowed it to break free.
Cubism is one of these new pictorial styles with a very avant-garde style and therefore perfectly illustrates this artistic liberation.
Picasso is the major artist of this movement, undoubtedly the most decisive in the history of modern art.
What is Cubism?
Cubism is an artistic movement inheriting Cézanne's research into the creation of a pictorial space which is no longer a simple imitation of reality. Cubism was also inspired by primitive arts. As we can see on the young ladies of Avignon with the two women on the right who seem to be wearing primitive masks. (influence of Negro art)
Cubism includes several stages:
Cézannien Cubism, takes place between 1908 and 1910, during the period he raises the question of the unity of the canvas and the treatment of volumes in 2D.
Analytical cubism took place between 1910 and 1912, once the autonomy of the painting had been conquered, the question of space became clearer to become a sort of total deconstruction. It is in this period that the portrait of Ambroise Vollard is located.
Synthetic cubism, after having come close to total abstraction, the artists reintroduce signs of readability into their canvas like papers and glued objects.
The Portrait of Ambroise Vollard is a perfect example of Picasso's Cubism. Thanks to an advanced study of the construction of the face of Ambroise Vollard Picasso offers us a very geometric face divided into multiple facets. It is a new vision of space that Picasso introduces here, it is still a real vision but it is no longer mimetic.
The artist introduces a lot of new things into his painting, this geometric aspect with all these facets, or even this question of space, because ultimately the painting focuses enormously on the face of Ambroise Vollard and therefore does not offer us any real decor, the space therefore seems restricted.
Picasso is the author of several revolutions in art. Break between the relationship of the painter to his model in relation to tradition. It is in himself that he looks before imagining.
Despite this great avant-garde of the painting, Picasso does not seem completely free in his representation.
a) A double-faceted portrait
One of the important stages of Cubism is called Cézannian Cubism, which allows us to see that Picasso and other Cubist artists were inspired by the work of Cézanne. For Picasso, this proximity to the artist Cézanne is very present in the portrait of Ambroise Vollard because Cézanne is also made a portrait of the art dealer, who was also his art dealer.
Cézanne was interested in simplifying natural forms into their essential geometric forms. He wanted to treat nature through the cylinder, the sphere and the cone.
The Great Bather strongly inspired Picasso, because in this painting loses its perspective and it is therefore the bodies which draw the landscape.
These explorations of geometric simplification and optical phenomena strongly influenced Picasso's work.
Therefore, this portrait had to be as similar as that of Cézanne with whom it implicitly competes. For his painting Picasso must paint from a photograph that he took himself, in fact, Ambroise Vollard who has already posed for Cézanne does not want to relive his because Cézanne had him pose for whole hours to finally say that he was quite satisfied with the top of Vollard's shirt. Picasso is therefore not completely free in the representation of Vollard, because he wants his painting to resemble that of Cézanne. Everything places the portrait of Picasso under the sign of Cézanne: the chromatic range as well as the construction by planes.
Despite everything, we can see that his painting is really more abstract than that of Cézanne, in fact, Picasso wanted to show the big merchant that his process of cutting the model into facets is perfectly successful.
Picasso won his bet because some time after the completion of the work Ambroise Vollard said:
“The son of one of my friends, a four-year-old kid, finding himself in front of the canvas, placed a finger on it and said without hesitation: That’s Voyard. »
Picasso did not only paint Ambroise Vollard, and was distinguished by his way of painting numerous portraits.
b) Picasso or the art of portraiture.
Around 1910, Picasso was in full Cubism with Braque, who did not paint portraits. Picasso, on the other hand, is attached to the human figure. He therefore needs models who are willing to pose for a long time.
Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, one of his dealers, will lend himself to it, Picasso was able to go with him as far as he wanted, drowned in the multiplied facets of the construction which made him practically unrecognizable. The situation is different with Vollard who does not wish to pose (painting made from a photo) because he has already suffered the draconian demands of Cézanne in 1899. Furthermore, Picasso and Vollard do not have the same type of relationship. Kahnweiler in particular expects a lot from Picasso, while the very wealthy Vollard no longer depends on artists, especially since he does not particularly like Picasso's analytical Cubist period. Kahnweiler was not spared, that of Vollard must be. Another of his dealers takes part in the portrait game, Uhde. His painting is much less abstract than that of Kahnweiler and much clearer than that of Ambroise Vollard. Uhde was an art collector, he notably organized exhibitions showing the work of Picasso, which is how Kahnweiler knew him.
The way Picasso paints his painting dealers is very different depending on the relationships he has with them.
Picasso conceptualizes his models in his portraits. Picasso paints from memory, reinvents the portrait (abstract, on reality, classic, expressionist), he abandons realism, he does not give it a privileged place.
Picasso returned to portraiture at a time when his style was more abstract. We note that during this period he mainly painted men.
A mix between cubism and realism, a sort of illusion. Picasso was a caricaturist which Braque was not, which allowed him to be more comfortable emphasizing the features of these models and adding his modifications.
II-A portrait of a relationship.
a) A portrait reflects a personality
Picasso made a choice to leave a certain realism and in the painting the painter used dark colors. Picasso represents a powerful, rich and charismatic man.
Picasso represents him with a closed face, in fact his eyes are closed, he shows it this way perhaps because when Picasso painted this painting when the two men were at odds, in fact Vollard does not appreciate at all the period after the Picasso's pink period. This is also perhaps why there are a multitude of facets like a breakup, to show the breakup of their relationship.
Picasso does not paint what he sees, but what he feels, so according to the representation of this portrait, Picasso must have seen Vollard as a man full of charisma and imposing because in the portrait the man seems tall and strong but also a man full of coldness.
But under the tight mesh of the facets, we still recognize the face of a man. The process that Picasso engaged in his portraits by deconstructing the form will take him further and further. On the one hand, there is an intellectual, pictorial approach, which obeys the mechanism of the painting: an abstract grid of lines, of facets. On the other side, there is the real model to paint. The conflict is more and more ambiguous, tense: should we save the form?
b) The Ambroise Vollard paradox.
In the early days of the painter Vollard appreciated the work of Picasso, it was the art dealer who offered him his first exhibition but a change in Picasso's work will call this collaboration into question. Indeed, Vollard appreciates less and less the work of Picasso which is on the limit of abstraction and hermeticism, Vollard preferred his pink and blue periods of which he had acquired a certain number of works. This period therefore led to a detachment between the two men because Vollard no longer understood the artist, despite everything Vollard appreciated the portrait that Picasso made of him and the two men still remained in contact and friends. Indeed, in 1931, Vollard suggested that Picasso illustrate Balzac's unknown masterpiece. Picasso does not make this illustration an original representation, especially when we look at that of Pierre Vidal. This illustration clearly shows the paradox of their relationship because even if the two men no longer get along artistically speaking, Vollard still offers Picasso things although this illustration is very representative of Picasso's work. He therefore encouraged Picasso to make series of engravings, certainly the most beautiful of the 20th century such as the Vollard suite which bears the name of the art dealer and which includes around a hundred engravings or even Buffon's natural history.
c) An artist in perpetual research
Picasso's work has continued to evolve, and his relationships with personalities of the 20th century have contributed greatly to this.
Picasso is inspired by many painters for his paintings. Besides, the portrait of Vollard, which is a strong inspiration of that of Cézanne. Picasso is always inspired by artists who are all more different than the others, which shows that the artist sought to evolve throughout his career.
For the major painting of his career, which is Les demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso, it is inspired by a painter who is a thousand miles from his pictorial style, it is Ingres and his Turkish bath. Indeed, Picasso uses in his painting the still life present in that of Ingres, the size of the Turkish bath means that it forms a square, Picasso will also use this principle for his painting. The curtain, in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, recalls the round curtain of the Turkish bath and therefore the fact that the scene is certainly a private scene that we should not see, a scene of voyeurism.
Later Picasso continued his research into Cubism, and in the 1960s he reproduced Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. In his version he shows the desire to understand what Manet wanted to represent and therefore reproduces in his painting several times to thus show the great study he did on the original painting and thus show how he perceived it.
Conclusion: Through his work, Picasso shows that he is capable of producing a new style, especially in the way of painting portraits. this way of painting is directly linked to the relationship that Picasso had with personalities of the time, in particular his art dealers. maintaining different relationships with each of them, these relationships are perceived in the portraits he makes of them, particularly with Vollard, the one with him must have had the most complex relationship, a relationship which is felt in his portrait. In addition, Picasso was able to draw inspiration from influential artists of the time for his works. He too was very influential, in fact, because with Braque they created a decisive movement in the history of modern art, Picasso continues to inspire even today, notably the artist David Hockney who makes photomontages by dividing the portraits he makes into facets as Picasso did. Moreover, even less artistic areas are influenced by Picasso such as the Citroen firm which created a car called PICASSO but the influence does not stop there, their advertising also deals with the art of Picasso.
© Fine Art Expertise LLC - translated from French.
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