How to Look #2: Picasso in New York

Perhaps more so than any other place in the world – the mention of New York can elicit a certain emotional response, the excitement of opportunity and possibility, in those who have never even visited the city. The mythos surrounding New York has made it the subject of countless literary and film explorations into the meaning of individuality, independence, culture, and survival. It is quite simply the place to be if you want to “be” anyone. I was once told, “if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.”

When I first moved to New York, I would happen upon a place, which also might be the setting of a film, play, or poem, and I would feel a strong sense of familiarity, a weird sense of nostalgia. I would sink into a deep emotional response to a place I had not actually been before, my mind having created a sort of false memory. Hadn’t I walked down this street before? Eaten in this restaurant? Lived in this gorgeous Upper West Side brownstone? Was I not a smart, wholesome bookseller who unwittingly fell in love with the owner of the corporate monster threatening to shut down my bookstore?

No?

Ok. But this is a GREAT FILM.

My romantic perception of New York quickly wore off due to a series of cringe-worthy experiences trying to navigate my first few months in the city. (Stories for another time.) Nonetheless, I became more interested in this strange, false sense of familiarity and nostalgia wandering around the Met and MOMA. I soon realized that not only did I recognize scenes in Central Park or the Village as if I had my own personal experiences with these places, I did the same with paintings.

In the age of the Internet, we have access to so many images, so many ‘versions’ of a work. It is no longer necessary to visit a museum or purchase a textbook or coffee table text in order to see high quality reproductions of a work. A thumbnail image on a google search will do to give you a sense of the color and shape of a work. Through several years of art history courses and independent reading, I studied and wrote about hundreds of works I had never had the privilege of seeing in person. As a modernist especially, I wrote about how these works reflected the moment of their creation, revealing the complexities of the artist and the turbulence of the 20th century. When I moved to New York and finally had the opportunity to view some of my most beloved pieces in the flesh, it was always a joyful but startlingly experience – one of simultaneous recognition and confusion.

During my very first trip to the Met I quickly became overwhelmed by the scope of the museum, constantly debating how to conserve my energy while seeing as much as possible. I finally made my way up to the 18th and 19th century pictures gallery. It was delightful – I found the portrait of Misia Sert by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec that graced the cover of my favorite Misia biography and made sure to note the Scandinavian landscape artists I hadn’t previously heard of. As I walked through gallery after gallery, I caught sight of one of my very favorite works by a young Pablo Picasso, tucked into the inside frame of one of the last galleries.

“At the Lapin Agile,” was created by Pablo Picasso in 1905. At the time, the 24-year-old artist was living in Paris, his first experiences with the impoverished Bohemian lifestyle of an artist. It was his life in Montmatre, Paris that led him to be captivated by the image of the Harlequin, a street performer, and to imagine himself as a creator of all sorts. Picasso’s work is deeply autobiographical, his canvases are the spaces in which he worked out complex artistic, psychological, and emotional experiences. In this piece, Picasso is seated next to Germaine Pichot inside a popular Montmatre nightclub. Pichot became the young artist’s lover but was previously the love interest of his friend, Carles Casagemas. It is Pichot who caught my eye in that moment at the Met. In my studies, I had always focused on Picasso as Harlequin in this image, I tried to understand his subtly self-conscious pose. He stands a bit too upright – while Picasso’s other Harlequin’s are more relaxed, their bodies reflecting the gentle fluidity of a performer’s movements. This Harlequin however, is seated but awkwardly, turned away from his companion. It made me wonder whether this Harlequin, as a stand in for Picasso, was confident in his abilities as a performer but perhaps not as a lover? Was this Harlequin a metaphor for a young artist confident in his growing artistic abilities, but extremely lonely, unsure of his place in the world?

When I stood in front of the painting however, I was captivated not by Harlequin, but by his companion, Germaine Pichot. The structure and the scale of Pichot in this image was not anything like the reproductions I had seen. I was most struck by the brushstrokes the artist used to render her lips and fingernails. Picasso’s complicated relationship with women (and as must be noted, his abuse of women) is clear throughout his artistic oeuvre. Often Picasso would use the fashionable traits of women to emphasize what he perceived to be the psychological aspects of his relationships. I was reminded immediately of Hamlet’s line in Act 3, “I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.” Picasso painted Pichot’s lips and fingernails in blood red, the rough short brushstrokes elevated off the canvas, visibly textured as to draw the viewer in. The way Picasso paints her makeup is aggressive, perhaps a tactile expression of Picasso’s mistrust of Pichot and guilt over the death of his friend. Casagemas loved Pichot but his emotional and physical problems disrupted the relationship. Picasso, who previously shared an intimate friendship with Casagemas as the two young men struggled to become artists in Barcelona and Paris, began a relationship with Pichot. A distraught, emotionally disturbed Casagemas would later take his own life in the presence of Pichot, Picasso, and their friends. This experience deeply affected the young artist. While he could not be blamed for the extremely tragic end to Casagemas’ life, he surely never was able to reconcile his betrayal of his friend. For me, Pichot’s lips became the natural center and focal point of the painting. Harlequin’s uneasy grasp of the cup on the table, another place where lips might touch, forced me to reinterpret the painting far differently than I had before. Her lips are a manifestation of his anxiety and a way to project the pain of his actions onto Pichot, instead of himself. Despite the playful moments of the Rose period when Picasso most commonly worked with the trope of Harlequin – was the artist exorcising complicated feelings over the fate of his friend? The painting is first a scene of modernity- of urban life at the turn of the century in Paris. It is easy to at first feel the bright use of color and the exhilaration of a night club. But quickly the viewer reads the dark side of this - a sense of loneliness and anonymity in the painting. By having the opportunity to stand and look at this painting, my relationship with the work changed, causing me to reintroduce the personal into the work. As a newcomer in an busy metropolis, it caused me to wonder: while we may think that urbanity and modernity numb our sense of individuality and feeling – perhaps it does the opposite. Instead does it intensify our personal anxieties? The loneliness is the painting is overwhelming, brought into sharp focus by a select few brutalized brushstrokes.

One of my favorite scenes in the film, Mona Lisa Smile, is Julia Roberts’ first class as a professor at Wesleyan. She teaches the class as she has been instructed to by the rigid guidelines of the university. She casts images on a screen through the use of what feels like ancient technology – an old slide projector. The images begin with cave drawings, a narration of the development of art. (Read “Western Art”) Before she can begin to discuss an image however, her students raise their hands and proceed to - with attitude- rattle off facts about the works, demonstrating their technical knowledge and mastery of the class syllabus. In the next class, she begins to discuss modern art with her students, focusing on a Picasso and thereby challenging them to disrupt their notions of what art is and consider what meaning can be assigned to different works. The young women at first struggle to look past the technical aspects of the piece. Can they develop an intellectual and emotional relationship with a work that extends beyond simple mastery of basic facts?

The reason that I love art, and the reason I believe the power of the visual arts endures is that certain works can not only function in our larger societal consciousness, but they can become deeply personal. Not only can a painting or a sculpture represent our membership in society, connecting us to something bigger than ourselves, but we can develop our own relationships with a work. A masterpiece does not only stand the test of time amidst a team of museum experts – a masterpiece evolves with us individually, and as we grow it reveals more of itself to us, and in turn allows us to achieve a deeper understanding of ourselves.

"At the Lapin Agile" came to my mind often during a difficult first year in New York. I think we often have a perception of loneliness as dull and gray. By standing in front of this painting, I came to realize that is instead often bright red and razor-sharp.

If you would like to read more about these early moments in Picasso's career, I would recommend John Richardson's series on the artist. You can find volume one here