{"id":1253,"date":"2016-10-11T13:49:15","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T13:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2016-10-12T10:50:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T10:50:24","slug":"picasso-and-the-perfectly-bearable-likeness-of-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2016\/10\/picasso-and-the-perfectly-bearable-likeness-of-being.html","title":{"rendered":"Picasso and the Perfectly Bearable Likeness of Being"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Woman<\/a>

Woman with Joined Hands (Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter) by Pablo Picasso<\/strong> (Private Collection)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u2019t seem too important to the practice of art today, and isn\u2019t, apparently, a skill much valued or taught at art schools.\u00a0 This undermines, of course, the very reason for existence of The National Portrait Gallery \u2013 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, \u201cAbsent Friends,\u201d of Howard Hodgkin\u2019s portraits \u2013 which defy definition. \u00a0(He has painted portraits of me twice, and I\u2019m told one of them will hang in the forthcoming show.)<\/p>\n

Hodgkin\u2019s portraits are a helpful counterpoint to understanding Picasso\u2019s own practice: the former\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 I doubt if that\u2019s been the case for a long while now \u2013 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 \u2013 but likeness is somehow not in question.<\/p>\n

Picasso was different. Capable of getting a near-photographic likeness of his \u201csitters,\u201d even the most realist of his portraits are suffused with emotion \u2013 on the whole he depicted women he loved; and the few men he drew or painted more than once \u2013 for example, Jaume Sabart\u00e9s \u2013 he seemed to love as well. Picasso had another genre for telling you what he thought about his subjects \u2013 caricature. He remained a great caricaturist \u2013 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\u2019s appearance is the gift all good portraitists need.<\/p>\n

However, Picasso\u2019s great contribution to portraiture was not so much expressionist as formal. One of the best things about Elizabeth Cowling\u2019s 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-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, there are conventional portraits and cubist ones side by side. The 1935 profile of her could almost be a photograph, whereas \u201cWoman with Joined Hands\u201d of 8 January 1938 managed to convey her full-face and in profile at the same time, showing one of her \u00a0eyes twice, in different positions on\/in her face. It strikes you as a minimal change, yet it\u2019s revolutionary, breathtaking \u2013 the more thrilling the longer you look at it.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve gone through the lender\u2019s list ticking them off, and it\u2019s damned near half of what\u2019s on show. So do go see \u201cPicasso\u2019s Portraits.\u201d It\u2019s a real accomplishment to have put it together, and you probably won\u2019t get a second bite of this very juicy cherry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  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\u2019t seem too important to the practice of art today, and isn\u2019t, apparently, a skill much valued or taught at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blogroll-2","8":"category-elsewhere","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Picasso-Woman-with-Folded-Hands.jpg?fit=1920%2C2625&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-kd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}