Picasso and the Perfectly Bearable Likeness of Being

 

Picasso was, of course, a great and natural draughtsman. Even as a child he had a fluent and steady line, and was capable of capturing a likeness with ease. The ability to do this doesn’t seem too important to the practice of art today, and isn’t, apparently, a skill much valued or taught at art schools.  This undermines, of course, the very reason for existence of The National Portrait Gallery – at least, so one would have thought. But it has long recognised that photography is a relevant art form for their purposes, and later this year, the NPG boasts an exhibition, “Absent Friends,” of Howard Hodgkin’s portraits – which defy definition.  (He has painted portraits of me twice, and I’m told one of them will hang in the forthcoming show.)

Hodgkin’s portraits are a helpful counterpoint to understanding Picasso’s own practice: the former’s portraits are an expression of a particular, often singular, encounter between the artist and the subject, and what is on the support (usually wood) is the rendering in paint of the artist’s memory of the feelings he experienced during the encounter or exchange with the subject. In the past there was some drawing underlying the painted image – I doubt if that’s been the case for a long while now – and in any case, even in the long-ago past the drawing tended to be obliterated by the painted pentimenti. In both portraits of me, there is an identifiable shape – but likeness is somehow not in question.

Picasso was different. Capable of getting a near-photographic likeness of his “sitters,” even the most realist of his portraits are suffused with emotion – on the whole he depicted women he loved; and the few men he drew or painted more than once – for example, Jaume Sabartés – he seemed to love as well. Picasso had another genre for telling you what he thought about his subjects – caricature. He remained a great caricaturist – the last one I spotted in this show dates from 1955. Is every accomplished portraitist perforce a good maker of caricatures? Perhaps the ability to spot the feature that needs to be exaggerated in order to capture the essence of someone’s appearance is the gift all good portraitists need.

However, Picasso’s great contribution to portraiture was not so much expressionist as formal. One of the best things about Elizabeth Cowling’s splendid show here (and going on to the Museu Picasso, Barcelona) is that you can see him evolve the cubist portrait; and sometimes, as in the case of Marie-Thérèse Walter, there are conventional portraits and cubist ones side by side. The 1935 profile of her could almost be a photograph, whereas “Woman with Joined Hands” of 8 January 1938 managed to convey her full-face and in profile at the same time, showing one of her  eyes twice, in different positions on/in her face. It strikes you as a minimal change, yet it’s revolutionary, breathtaking – the more thrilling the longer you look at it.

A few of these pictures are familiar from national collections, here, in the US and especially Spain. But one measure of how special this show is, is the huge number of loans Cowling has managed to secure from private collections. I’ve gone through the lender’s list ticking them off, and it’s damned near half of what’s on show. So do go see “Picasso’s Portraits.” It’s a real accomplishment to have put it together, and you probably won’t get a second bite of this very juicy cherry.