Page 36 - Studio International - May 1970

a material; for this reason the wooden con-
structions strike me as being by far the
strongest of the group. In the metal pieces the
crudity of the folding disturbs in a way the
crudity of the carpentry in the wooden pieces
does not. The continuous metal sheet is too
reminiscent of the picture plane, and is not
sufficiently differentiated into separate parts
by the making process, and so Picasso has to
mark them off by garish colour or texture.
Similarly, the to me overrated Glass of Absinth
retains the flabbiness of the wax from which
it was originally modelled, in contrast to the
wooden structures of the same year, 1914,
which are admittedly more pictorial, but
seem fundamentally more daring and original.
The cutting, shaping and fixing of the
elements of wood and other materials, and the
persistence of given reality elements—dice,
glass, guitar, etc.—provide a natural extension
to the kind of process that emerged from
collage. Sawing, cutting and fixing provided
a closer analogy than folding to the process of
conceptual reconstruction of reality involved
in drawing. Most importantly the process
involves the bonding of separate parts each of
which has or is given individual character by
the artist. The wood pieces also score in that
the material is not only more various and
more adaptable, but that it has a degree of
thickness, of volume, whereas the paper and
metal constructions have only plane. The
wood works simultaneously as structure; as
plane, representing fragments of the dis-
membered picture plane; as volume both
illusioned, that is to say representing deeper
volume, and real, as where the rectangular
cicmcnt at the bottom of Musical Instrument
thrusts straight out at the spectator. The com-
plexity and density of space and reference that
has been noted in Picasso's collage proper,
are in these pieces even more greatly inten-
sified.
Apart from their richness and power as in-
dividual pieces these wooden constructions
demonstrate the object-nature of modern
sculpture. They take as subject matter,
objects, still-life; they are constructed of the
same material and in the same way as made
objects in the world; and they have a com-
pleteness, an object-quality in themselves, an
autonomy of structure and internal relations
that gives them an independence of any
model in reality.
By comparison the sculptures of Picasso's
second period of construction (1929-31), in
collaboration with Julio Gonzalez, have
received far more attention and were much
more influential in their immediate effect.
Such sculptures as the Woman in the Garden of
1929, the Construction in Wire of 1930, the
Figure of 1930-2, and the Woman's Head of
1931 are more obviously ambitious, more
memorable as images, than the cubist con-
structions, besides being 'true' sculptures,
rather than reliefs. Nonetheless, despite their
inventiveness and historical importance in