Hey Baby, You Want to Come Up and See My Etchings?

Minotauromachy, Etching by Pablo Picasso, 1935 (19 7/16 x 27 3/16 in.)

Minotauromachy/Minotauromachie: A young girl, holding flowers, shines a dim light on a beast that is partly human. The beast has stretched its hand out toward the light. Blocking the light? Figures from above, two women with birds, a man climbing a ladder, and a face in the far wall, are observing the scene. Below, between the girl and the monster, a woman and a horse ( a human and an animal) are suffering.

Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with His Muzzle, June 18, 1933

Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with His Muzzle: A naked beast is straddling a sleeping woman in her bed. The implications are sexually powerful.

Historically, the image of the Minotaur represents violence. The story weaves back through time and grows out of the prehistoric practice of human sacrifice, both of young men and young women, performed traditionally by a priest disguised in a bull-headed mask and includes references to sexual relations between a beast and a woman, producing the bull-headed man or man-headed bull in different depictions.

I’ve heard it said that, at some level, all art is self-portrait. Every time I think about that, I think about my own recent frenzy of painting, and decide that can only be true at some certain but undetermined skill level. So, in my own life, I would grant the assumption more credibility when it refers to my writing than my painting at this time. But, the development of self-expression is a major goal that I am consciously  trying to develop in my painting. I grant the assumption.

Picasso is the master craftsman. His work does, consistently pop and make me pay attention, even though I have often been left somewhat confused about the exact reason for my reactions. This time, regarding these works from the LACMA exhibition, Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time, the implications are clear, and disturbing.

 

 

Picasso

In late October 2015, I wrote about Andy Warhol when Byron told me Warhol is often considered the most important Twentieth Century artist. I don’t care for Warhol’s work, repeatedly walk right by it in museums. It seems shallow and elementary, and now that I think about this again, I remember concluding at the time, that greatness in Warhol’s work might lie only if he was reflecting a shallow and garish culture.

I haven’t, up until now, taken that subject further. Larry Tolle commented on that earlier post this way. It is Picasso who’s collective work consistently pops and makes you pay attention to his mastery. 

I remembered Larry’s comment, and my failed attempts to write about Picasso at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Sunday afternoon when we saw the current Picasso/Rivera Exhibition on display there. Minotauromachie, seen below, is referred to in the museum’s description as the most important, “work on paper from the Twentieth Century,” a fact which gives credibility to the claim for Picasso as that century’s greatest artist.

Minotauromachy, Etching by Pablo Picasso, 1935 (19 7/16 x 27 3/16 in.)

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937

Minotauromachie is cited as inspiration for Picasso’s great painting, Guernica, a response to the violent and deadly bombing of that city during the Spanish Revolution. I’ve never seen Guernica in person. But, even though I understand the symbolism, as it is usually described, the painting has never moved me much. I found that smaller, paper etching very powerful and moving.

But, two small pieces included in a group of drawings on loan from a private collection made me gasp when I saw them.

Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with His Muzzle, June 18, 1933

According to the material provided by the museum, Picasso identified with the Minotaur as a character of complex emotions, driven by aggressive lust, and sorrow. He once remarked: “If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a Minotaur.”