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拍品专文
Filled with bold graphic intent, La mariée illustrates the vitality of Picasso’s artistic vision during the late 1960s. The painting emerged towards the end of March 1969, as Picasso was working intensely on a series of musketeers, dashing figures that hark back to the heroic characters of Rembrandt and Velazquez. As with the musketeers, the bride’s distinctive costume dominates La mariée, transforming the female protagonist into an emblematic character. As such, she becomes a vehicle for the artist’s painterly experimentation – the fabric of her veil is rendered in subtly variegated tones of off-white pigment, vigorously worked onto the support, while her features are summarily described in rapid brushstrokes, as Picasso plays with the colour and opacity of the paints to capture her form.
Picasso had previously explored the bridal character earlier in the decade, in a series of portrait prints of his wife Jacqueline, dating to 1961 (see for example, Jacqueline en mariée, de face, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The majority of these images take a close-up view of Jacqueline’s face, allowing her features to fill the sheet, her head adorned with a crown of flowers and an elegant white veil that frames her visage in a manner similar to the present work. However, while these images were careful studies of Jacqueline’s likeness, portraits that diligently recorded the elegant details of her face, by 1969 Picasso was working in a looser, more spontaneous vein. When he returned to the theme on 19 March that year with La mariée (Zervos vol. 31, no. 104; Private collection) he adopted a strikingly simplified pictorial idiom, creating a more schematic vision of the bride using just a handful of colourful elements. For example, the veil is indicated by two streams of white paint that fall from a trio of circular rosettes; her blue eyes are flattened into ovoids and stacked vertically atop one another; her profile is a thin, undulating black line, and a red X is used to denote her lips.
The present work, also titled La mariée, followed just over a week later, and presents a more elaborated vision of the bride. Working on a piece of card, which he subsequently laid down on canvas, and using a mixture of oil paint, brush and ink, and graphite pencil, Picasso revels in different forms of mark-making throughout the composition, layering and juxtaposing them together to create a dynamic surface. ‘What has to happen, when you finally look at it, is that drawing and colour are the same thing,’ he explained (quoted in H. Parmelin, Picasso, le peintre et son modèle, Paris, 1965, p. 40). The rosy flush of the bride’s cheeks are captured in passages of impastoed pigment, streams of vibrant pink paint running alongside touches of white and a paler peachy tone. The intensity of her gaze, meanwhile, is emphasised through the use of a bright, semi-transparent blue paint, which he encircles with emphatic strokes of grey, both delineating the shape of her irises and her thick lashes. In other areas, quick, fluid strokes of pencil dance across the card, alternatively used to outline the structure of her form, and the decorative detailing of her outfit.
The lively surface of the work traces the impressively physical act of Picasso’s process, even during this late stage of his career, the visceral gesturality of his brushwork and drawing recording his own whirlwind of movement as he worked. Picasso was well aware of the almost archaeological manner in which his own gestures were captured in his compositions, explaining ‘The role of painting is to arrest motion’ (quoted in M.-L. Bernadac, ‘Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model,’ in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate, London, 1988, p. 88).
Picasso had previously explored the bridal character earlier in the decade, in a series of portrait prints of his wife Jacqueline, dating to 1961 (see for example, Jacqueline en mariée, de face, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The majority of these images take a close-up view of Jacqueline’s face, allowing her features to fill the sheet, her head adorned with a crown of flowers and an elegant white veil that frames her visage in a manner similar to the present work. However, while these images were careful studies of Jacqueline’s likeness, portraits that diligently recorded the elegant details of her face, by 1969 Picasso was working in a looser, more spontaneous vein. When he returned to the theme on 19 March that year with La mariée (Zervos vol. 31, no. 104; Private collection) he adopted a strikingly simplified pictorial idiom, creating a more schematic vision of the bride using just a handful of colourful elements. For example, the veil is indicated by two streams of white paint that fall from a trio of circular rosettes; her blue eyes are flattened into ovoids and stacked vertically atop one another; her profile is a thin, undulating black line, and a red X is used to denote her lips.
The present work, also titled La mariée, followed just over a week later, and presents a more elaborated vision of the bride. Working on a piece of card, which he subsequently laid down on canvas, and using a mixture of oil paint, brush and ink, and graphite pencil, Picasso revels in different forms of mark-making throughout the composition, layering and juxtaposing them together to create a dynamic surface. ‘What has to happen, when you finally look at it, is that drawing and colour are the same thing,’ he explained (quoted in H. Parmelin, Picasso, le peintre et son modèle, Paris, 1965, p. 40). The rosy flush of the bride’s cheeks are captured in passages of impastoed pigment, streams of vibrant pink paint running alongside touches of white and a paler peachy tone. The intensity of her gaze, meanwhile, is emphasised through the use of a bright, semi-transparent blue paint, which he encircles with emphatic strokes of grey, both delineating the shape of her irises and her thick lashes. In other areas, quick, fluid strokes of pencil dance across the card, alternatively used to outline the structure of her form, and the decorative detailing of her outfit.
The lively surface of the work traces the impressively physical act of Picasso’s process, even during this late stage of his career, the visceral gesturality of his brushwork and drawing recording his own whirlwind of movement as he worked. Picasso was well aware of the almost archaeological manner in which his own gestures were captured in his compositions, explaining ‘The role of painting is to arrest motion’ (quoted in M.-L. Bernadac, ‘Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model,’ in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate, London, 1988, p. 88).