Page 22 - Studio International - July/August 1967

Looking at Picasso's sculptures relieved occasionally by a device such as the frame
in the Man of 1958 (Cat. 141), the texture of plaster
cast off corrugated cardboard as in the Standing
Figure of 1944 (Cat. 82) and other, pieces, linear in-
cisions on volumes, the varied use of a preformed
material throughout a structure, as in the Construction
in Wire of 1930 (Cat. 26) which could signify an aware-
ness that sculpture might be something more than an
amusing metaphor for the real world.
Sculptures by Picasso, shown earlier this year at the Petit Palais, Paris, are now Nöemi Gerstein
on exhibition at the Tate, and will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
I started with the sculptures, and as I entered the
this autumn. Rather than contribute to the massive general coverage of Picasso's
room and felt myself surrounded by the works, a
work which flowed from the Paris retrospectives, Studio International invited three
very important period of my life returned. I was back
artists - the painter Ceri Richards, the sculptor William Tucker, and the Argentinian in Paris, in 1951, at the Maison de la Pensée, which
sculptress Nöemi Gerstein - to comment on his sculptures. was holding an exhibition of sculptures by no less
painters than Picasso, Braque and Matisse, sur-
prisingly sculptors all three, and particularly the first.
But I had already received the first impact in the
Ceri Richards outside to pluck a tall flower which he then inserted summer of 1950 at Vallauris, where I stayed for se-
into the right-hand form of the figure. veral weeks with some fellow Argentinian friends and
The Picasso show at the Tate Gallery is magnificent. The bronze, real as it is, is innocent of that delightful also the Mexican painter Tamayo and the very Spanish
The cool environment of light and whiteness has also performance. Manolo Angeles Ortiz. On a September morning my
been designed to give ample space for the exhibits. The folded découpé divertimenti have now been friends and I paid a visit to Picasso's workshop and
The Paris showing of his sculpture might, in com- given the firmness of folded sheet iron. They still have were taken round by him. I had met Picasso at the sea-
parison, have been overcrowded but it was sumptuous a fragile, delicate character even so. I find them side, where he was playing with his son Claudio, and
—it also had a full complement of over 200 drawings attractive, light-hearted and lovely in colour. was astounded at the extraordinary vitality which he
and a larger section of ceramics. Many artists now work in series in order to discover always seems to exude. On our tour of the workshop
I missed seeing the drawings again, although they possibilities, one way or another, and sometimes in we saw his latest works; an oil-painting based on
might have confused the category of sculpture. One order to establish personal signs. Picasso achieved El Greco's self-portrait, his small children Claudio and
can feel the proliferation and the serial element in the this years ago. We can see how the improvizations Paloma, a remarkable cockerel, pottery in the course
drawings and how it discovered for him the experience match the character of his temperament. Because of of completion, and even the hearth for baking.
of possibilities, such as preparations for a later the use of the pleasure principle his work has a That day I had two particular experiences which
moment of something more substantial in other magical quality. affected me profoundly. On opening the door to one
mediums, for example, the l'Homme au Mouton is like of the rooms, Picasso announced 'mes potteries
a gigantic wash drawing which has spontaneously William Tucker grecques'. There were long rows of pottery with
emerged in a solid form out of the great number of black and white designs on red earthenware, a hand-
drawings which have explored the feeling and design The exhibition has the quality of a vast hoard of some collection indeed which I sought in vain at the
of this motive. It has the same momentousness and numbered trivia, the pedantically inventoried accu- Petit Palais and have never seen again, even in
experience existing in the drawings, and, of course, mulation of a human magpie. It is art out of art with a reproductions, since that day at Vallauris.
we are told it was made in one day. vengeance: African and Egyptian carving, Greek pots, The second experience was when, for the first time,
All the different phases of his sculpture have pro- Matisse, etc, etc, are given the master's touch, and I came face to face with that monumental goat (and
duced superb individual pieces. I have always admired transformed into banal curiosities. by monumental I am not referring to its size), the
the iron constructions of 1929-31. There are three Only, drab and modest, the collages (cat. nos. 243, bronze version of which now looked down at me and
magnificent works here, especially the superb Woman 244, 245) and the constructions that developed from which then, in its recently completed state, had held
in the Garden. I remember seeing the Woman's Head them (cat. nos. 18, 19, 20, 21, 23) have a tautness, an between' its plaster haunches everything Picasso had
(no. 57) from the Boisgeloup period in the Paris intensity, which indicate their source in a struggle been able to lay hands on and use in the ensemble:
Exhibition of 1937, when it was exhibited with the with actuality: to give a constructed world the com- wicker -baskets, terracotta jars, lids of tins, shafts of
Guernica. Also another large concrete sculpture of a pleteness and variety of the real. These structures palm leaves and a host of other objects which I was
woman holding a vase, which I have not seen since. are utterly unimpressive as images (in reproduction only able to recognize after a while, having forfeited
These are amongst his very fine monumental works. they lose, where practically everything else Picasso their identity on becoming embodied in that sculpture.
Picasso's incredible audacity in the use of mixed has done is enhanced) but their physical presence Nearby, then in plaster, now in bronze, The Pregnant
media of objects and trivia is fascinating, but I find asserts an autonomy, an internality, that corresponds Woman, a figure as monumental in its assertion as
that the resulting image when translated into bronze to their historical importance. El hombre del cordero which I also saw that summer
is often disappointing, for the consistency of the same There is little indication here that Picasso ever again when it had just been planted, like a tree which has
material seems to reduce and change the character caught up with the revolution in sculpture he initiated. taken root, in Vallauris' delightful little square.
of the image. I think that the spontaneity and per- Sculpture demands a submerging of the artist's Going now through these rooms and seeing his
formance which brings these things together is very identity in a continued relation with the world as bristling cats, his bronze cockerels, his welded iron-
important, and it would be marvellous to see these substance, the nature, of process and the nature of work, his excellent bathers made with old timber and
metamorphic assemblages in their initial guise. matter, that Picasso was unwilling to attempt. Others, broom handles, or his tentacular nudes, and those fat
Some of them, of course, would be fragile and im- of less facile talent, and less sublime confidence, women with small round heads, those assemblies of
permanent but Picasso may not have meant them to without that need to impress an audience, stimulated cones and spheres, that bicycle seat and crank handle
be otherwise. The skill and wit is always delightful. by him or plundered by him, Gonzalez, Laurens, or those small duplicated toy cars which only needed
Maybe they are like happenings that should not have Calder, Smith, lost themselves, put themselves at to be taken out of anonymity to become sculptures,
been made into such permanent things. risk in sculpture to a degree Picasso never allowed we experience the outbursts of an unbounded genius
I feel disappointed in The. Child Skipping bronze, himself to do after 1915; their achievement will come who has not allowed a single idea to pass by without
because I remember seeing a photograph of this work to be seen as central, his as marginal. taking pleasure in bringing it to fulfilment.
in the course of construction which gave one such a The concept of the artist as performer cannot be If we add to this his enormous silhouettes made from
strong feeling of the imaginative use of very different reconciled with the concept of the autonomy of the cement, his murals drawn on cement with a paint
materials and objects. object. In Picasso the relation of the object to the sprayer or his designs in space with moving lights for
La Madame (no. 77) recalls for me a Picasso film in his world depends solely on likeness, and the recognition one of his films, we can only conclude by re-stating
Vallauris studio where he assembled this image spon- of likeness by the spectator. If the reference is re- the obvious fact that Picasso has opened up all the
taneously on the floor out of pottery stilts and ceramic moved or ignored nothing is left but the obsessive routes which sculptors, even those of the present day,
paraphernalia, and then after looking at it finally went and unresolved manipulation of this or that material, have been travelling for the past fifty years.
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