Nora Hill AR471 Plesch

Representation and the Artist’s Creative Power in Picasso’s Suite Vollard

Etched during the busy spring of 1933, when Picasso created fifty-five of the one

hundred prints that make up the Suite Vollard in a little over two months, the print known

as Model Leaning on a Painting encapsulates many of the concepts and influences the

artist was grappling with in the Suite Vollard and his other work from that period. The

print fits neatly into the “Sculptor’s Studio” section of the Suite and the theme of artist

and model that Picasso explored throughout his career. Much has been written about

Picasso’s relationships with his models, both in and out of the studio: his passionate

affairs with them, his misogyny, his sexual prowess. A blockbuster exhibition at the

Vancouver Art Gallery earlier this year, Picasso: The Artist and His Muses, and the

accompanying book, chronicled the artist’s depictions of six of his most significant

models and lovers, examining the ways they “influenced his life and contributed to his

creative output” (Vancouver Art Gallery); this is only the most recent of a number of

exhibitions that have focused on the women of Picasso’s life. Noted Picasso scholar

Karen Kleinfelder directly addresses the artist-model relationship and his depictions of

that theme in her book The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze. But the artist-model

relationship is not the only theme in play in this print. The artist also draws on references

to classical mythology and to the Surrealist concept of the androgyne to highlight the

artist’s power to transform the human figure through representation.

Fig. 1. Pablo Picasso, Model Leaning on a Painting, 1933. Etching and drypoint. Waterville: Colby College

Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum] Model Leaning on a Painting is a sort of mise-en-abyme, a representation of

multiple representations. Small details place us in the artist's studio: a palette and jar of

paintbrushes sit on the floor in front of the studio, a cloth is draped over the edge of the

painting, light shines in from a window behind the sculpted head, and the vase of flowers

which appears in seventeen other prints from the Suite Vollard sits on the table. The print

depicts three figures. A large sculpture of a woman's head sits on a table at the left, a

nude model is seated to the right, and, in the center, a painting of a seated figure obscures

much of the model's body. In contemplating the relationships between these three figures,

it is also important to consider what does not appear this print: the artist is nowhere to be

seen.

Stylistically, this print is similar to the others of the “Sculptor's Studio”: thin,

sketchy outlines with minimal shading. In places, it is crude—the model's hands look like

flippers, her right eye seems to protrude out from the side of her head, and her left arm

connects not to her shoulder but to her collarbone. The only shading in the print is in the

head of the painted figure, which is made the focal point of the image through careful

cross-hatching and a tangle of dark, curly hair. Because this technique draws the eye

initially to the figure's delicate facial features, it is easy to assume that it is a woman.

Closer examination, however, reveals that the figure has male genitalia. This raises the

question of who or what this is—man or woman? Is that figure drawn from the model

that it obscures, or is it an idealized human form from Picasso’s imagination?

Fig. 2. Pablo Picasso, Model Leaning on a Painting (detail), 1933. Etching and drypoint. Waterville: Colby

College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

The long, almond shapes of the eyes and the large, distinctive noses, particularly

of the model and sculpture, suggest that at least these two figures represent the same

woman. It is harder to compare the features of the painting to the other two because of the

marked stylistic differences: her face is much more detailed, with thick cross-hatching,

shading, and lines that are drawn and redrawn—looking closely, you can see that the line

of her right cheek has been drawn twice, her lips seem to have been drawn multiple

times, and her eyes are unclear because there are so many lines. Picasso labored over this

face, adding line after line in a confusion of curly hair and cross-hatching. This is in

marked contrast to the other figures, where he drew single, curving lines, not bothering to

try again if a line did not fall exactly where he wanted it (as demonstrated by the odd

break in the line of the model’s left shoulder) and leaving things unfinished (as evidenced

by the models odd, flipper-like hands). However, the shape of the painting’s mouth

closely resembles that of the model, and the curves of her body are similar. Viewed from

afar, where the over-working of the painting’s face is less evident, the eyes do have the

same elongated almond shape, and her nose has a similar length to it. It seems likely that

this print contains one woman, represented three different ways. This leads the viewer to

wonder about the painted figure’s androgyny: does the model also have male genitalia,

hidden behind the canvas, or did the absent artist paint her this way to transform her into

an ideal, complete human creature? Is the painting a true representation of the model?

The complex relationships between the three figures and the artist or viewer are

illustrated through the directions of their gazes. The painted figure looks intently up at the

sculpted head, which gazes impassively out across the frame of the print. The model,

head leaning on her hands, turns away from the two works of art and looks off to the side.

The faces of both the painting and the sculpture resemble that of the model, making this

print a representation of a woman and two other representations of her. Despite her

ideological centrality, however, the model is far from central to the image—she is

relegated to the back, physically blocked by the painting, with her outline drawn so

lightly that she seems to fade into the background. As in many of Picasso’s other

depictions of the artist and model theme, the model is “rendered less tangible than her

image on canvas” (Kleinfelder 80). The true center of this image—physically and

symbolically—is the work of art.

Fig. 3. Brassaï, Picasso in His Studio, 1939. Gelatin silver print. [sothebys.com]

The Sculptor’s Studio is one of the central themes of the Suite Vollard. The figure

of the bearded, muscular Classical sculptor serves as one of Picasso’s avatars,

representing the refined and orderly side of his nature; just as the Minotaur who appears

later in the Suite represents the artist’s violent, chaotic instincts. The sculptor appears in

numerous prints, often reclining on a couch with a nude model, arms around her and eyes

turned to contemplate the sculpture he has presumably just finished. These prints offer a

glimpse into Picasso’s relationships with his own female models. Many of the Sculptor’s

Studio prints, including Model Leaning on a Painting, contain sculptures that closely

resemble the sculpted heads of Marie-Thérèse Walter that Picasso was making as he

worked on the Suite Vollard (fig. 3). Marie-Thérèse was the artist’s mistress and muse

from 1927 to 1935; sex and art went hand in hand for him. It is hardly a coincidence that

the models who appear in in the Sculptor’s Studio prints from the Suite (including Model

Leaning on a Painting) have similar facial features to Marie-Thérèse; during this period,

she was the statuesque model to Picasso’s classical sculptor in the idyllic space of his

studio.

Fig. 4. Pablo Picasso, The

Artist and His Model, 1926. Oil on canvas. Martigny:

Pierre Gianadda Foundation. [pablopicasso.org]

Fig. 5. Pablo Picasso, Painter

and Model, 1927. Oil on canvas. Tehran: Tehran

Foundation of Art. [pablopicasso.org]

Fig. 6. Pablo Picasso, The

Artist and His Model, 1928. Oil on canvas. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

[pablopicasso.org]

The theme of artists and models is one Picasso returned to again and again

throughout his career, including three paintings created during the decade before he

began the Suite Vollard. While these paintings differ significantly in style from each

other and from the Sculptor’s Studio prints, they are remarkably similar in composition:

the painter’s easel divides the image roughly in half, with the nude model on one side and

the painter on the other. In all three, the model’s body is the lightest part of the painting,

highlighting and drawing the viewer’s eye to her naked form. Here, the artist-model

relationship seems strictly professional: they are separated from each other by the

painting on which the artist is working, and their only interaction is his gaze as he

sketches her.

In the Suite Vollard, Picasso treats the artist-model relationship quite differently.

When the sculptor and model appear together, he is not in the act of sculpting her; the

completed sculpture stands nearby (fig. 7). Their relationship is intimate and informal.

They recline together, limbs intertwined. Both are nude, as opposed to the artist being

clothed. Interestingly, in these prints the artist’s gaze is directed not at the model but at

the sculpture; it is as if the work of art has replaced the woman as the object of the artist’s

desire, even as he lies next to her post-coitus.

Fig. 7. Pablo Picasso, Reclining Sculptor and Model with Mask (Bolliger 50),

1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum] Frequently, the model appears without the sculptor but with a work of art (fig. 9);

just as often, the artist himself appears alone with one of his creations (fig. 8). In the

former, it is difficult to tell whether the artist’s gaze (replaced by the viewer’s) is more

directed at the model or the work of art, but the art clearly dominates the composition. In

one print from 1933 (fig. 9), the sculpture of a male head takes up more space than the

model, almost crowding her out of the frame. The work of art similarly outshines the

model in Model Leaning on a Painting, where the painting obscures most of the model’s

body. These prints show a markedly different relationship between artist, model, and

work of art than Picasso’s earlier depictions of this theme. The work of art takes on a

larger role; it is no longer merely a separation between the two people. The artist and

model seemingly become more intimate, but the model must compete with the work of

art for the artist’s attention.

Fig. 8. Pablo Picasso, Young Sculptor at Work

(Bolliger 46), 1933. Drypoint. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

Fig. 9. Pablo Picasso, Model and Large Sculpted Head (Bolliger 61), 1933. Drypoint. Waterville:

Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

This complex power dynamic between artist, artwork, and model is present in

Model Leaning on a Painting even though the artist is absent. As this print is an

exploration of issues of representation, the artist remains essential even when he is not

seen; the inclusion of works of art in the etching “presupposes the presence of something

as well as someone by whom and to whom the representation is made” (Summers 3). The

model is the something that is represented, the invisible artist the “someone by whom,”

and the viewer the “someone to whom” the painted figure is made. Through the

composition of the print and the placement in the artist’s studio, the viewer takes the

artist’s place, standing where he stood as he etched this scene. It is as if the artist stands

next to the viewer, pointing out what he wants them to see.

In her in-depth analysis of Picasso’s many depictions of the artist and model

theme, Karen Kleinfelder notes that there are three central elements: the artist, the model,

and the canvas or easel—the work of art. It is the “network of relations drawn between

these three variables” that communicates the theme (Kleinfelder 69). When the figures

are depicted in profile, she argues, the canvas is a barrier between the artist and model,

but when turned to the front, as it is in Model Leaning on a Painting, is “a bridge linking

artist to model” (Kleinfelder 70). The absence of the painter in this print implicates the

viewer in his place, making the canvas, in Kleinfelder’s analysis, a bridge between

viewer and model. In the sense that the painting offers the viewers the only possibility of

seeing the model in full, the bridge analogy holds true; but it must be remembered that

the painting is a representation created by the artist, so it is still a barrier, as well. It

obscures the model and prevents the viewer from seeing her, allowing only the artist’s

version of her to be seen. The viewer knows that the artist must have looked at a model

while creating the painting, but is prevented from seeing her directly or observing the

process. By leaving himself as artist out of the image and placing the canvas in front of

the model, Picasso makes a statement about what he wants the viewer to see, and about

his relationships to the woman and to the art. For him, the androgynous figure on the

canvas is clearly more important than the human woman; it represents a Platonic ideal,

the male and female halves of humanity united in one being. Picasso seems to be telling

us that by creating an image of the model, he has perfected her; in the artist’s eyes, the

woman can never live up to his own representation of her.

The mythical “Androgyne” was an important concept for the Surrealists, with

whom Picasso was closely associated at the time when the Suite Vollard was created.

According to Platonic myth, humans were originally created as one being with two heads,

four arms, four legs, and both male and female genitalia. In order to create new life,

however, the two halves had to tear themselves apart and then rejoin each other in sexual

intercourse. This concept of violent dismemberment as a prerequisite for

creation appealed greatly to the Surrealists, and the ambiguity that androgynous figures

presented further fascinated them. The androgyne’s “unification of opposites…embodies

the professed aim” of the Surrealists (Grew 5). Marcel Duchamp explored androgyny

through his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy; Leonora Carrington explored issues of

femininity and androgyny throughout her career, most notably describing herself as an

androgyne in the opening lines of a short story published in the Surrealist periodical VVV;

Breton included the myth of the androgyne in the 1942 “First Papers of Surrealism”

exhibition and wrote in Arcane 17 that the artist ought to “jealously appropriate to

himself everything that distinguishes woman from man” (Breton), and Albert Béguin

wrote an article tracing the history of the androgyne for Minotaure in 1938.

Fig. 10. Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, photographed by Man Ray, 1921.

Picasso himself had explored the idea in his work throughout his career. In 1905,

Apollinaire had described the androgynous figures of Picasso’s “Saltimbanques” series as

neither male nor female (Boggs 40); by the 1920s, his depiction of the theme had evolved

so that many of his works featured figures with both male and female genitalia,

sometimes protruding from the figure’s face. The androgynes of this period “are

explicitly both male and female,” much like the figure on the canvas in Model Leaning on

a Painting (Haessly 217); one example is the 1925 painting The Kiss (fig. 12), in which

there is a clearly phallic form on the head of the figure on the right and the place where

the two figures’ mouths meet resembles a vagina. This conflation of the face and the

sexual organs is suggested in the sculpted heads of Marie-Thérèse that the artist made in

the early 1930s (fig. 11), one of which appears in Model Leaning on a Painting.

Numerous scholars and critics have commented on the phallic proportions of the heads’

large noses and the deeply modeled mouths that seem to suggest the vulva; the sculpted

head is “based upon a joining of male and female, of face and genitalia” (Haessly 336). It

would seem, therefore, that two of the three figures depicted in the print—the two that

represent works of art created by the classical sculptor—are explicitly androgynous.

Viewed through the Surrealist understanding of the androgyne as a unification of two

halves, a joining of opposites, the painting and the sculpture etched in this print become

the symbols of both the artist’s creative power to perfect the human figure and the violent

impulses that are illustrated elsewhere in the Suite.

Fig. 11. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1932. Plaster cast. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

[moma.org]

Fig. 12. Pablo Picasso, The Kiss, 1925. Oil on

canvas. Paris: Musée Picasso. [navigart.fr/picassoparis]

Picasso’s fascination with classical civilization and Greek mythology is present

throughout the Suite Vollard. This print and many of the others that depict the sculptor’s

studio call to mind two tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses which have to do with

relationships between the creator and the created. The first is the tale of Pygmalion, the

sculptor who “created an ivory statue, a work of most marvelous art…and promptly

conceived a passion for his own creation” (Ovid X: 316-319). The sculptor of Picasso’s

prints gazes adoringly up at his sculptures, ignoring the model beside him as if he has

also fallen in love with his statue, as if he also feels that the statue has “a figure better

than any living woman could boast of” (Ovid X: 318).

Fig. 12. Pablo Picasso, Metamorphoses, 1931. Etching. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Picasso was undoubtedly familiar with the story: in 1931, he had made prints for

an illustrated edition of the Metamorphoses published by Albert Skira (fig. 12). That set

of prints is done in a similar style to many of the prints of the Suite Vollard—thin lines,

minimal shading, human figures closely intertwined and many details such as hands and

feet left unfinished. The artist was clearly thinking about the Metamorphoses as he

embarked on the Suite Vollard. Perhaps he saw himself as Pygmalion, creating art more

beautiful than any human woman. In mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, grants

Pygmalion’s wish and brings his statue to life to be his bride. Pygmalion could only be

satisfied by a woman of his own creation; Picasso’s romantic history, moving from one

woman to another throughout his long life, suggests that he felt the same way. This desire

is revealed in Model Leaning on a Painting and other prints from the Suite Vollard, as the

works of art dominate, obscure, and crowd out the woman who inspired them.

There is another tale of creation from Ovid’s collection that Picasso references in

the Sculptor’s Studio prints through a small recurring detail. In eighteen of the prints—

almost a fifth of the entire Suite—a vase of flowers appears. The flowers and vase are the

same in each depiction, with rounded petals reminiscent of the blossoms known as

anemones (fig. 12). According to Ovid’s record of classical mythology, Venus created

the anemone from the blood of Adonis. Distraught at the death of her young, virile,

beautiful lover, the goddess cried out that her grief for him “will be remembered forever,

and every year will see reenacted in ritual his death and my lamentation” (Ovid X: 842-

844).

Fig. 13. Left: detail from Model Leaning on a Painting. Right: vase of anemones.

While it is difficult to know what exactly about this story so fascinated Picasso that he

chose to represent it through the recurring symbol of the vase of anemones, there are

many possibilities. Picasso worried greatly about his own mortality and the loss of his

strength and virility as he aged. When he created the Suite Vollard, the artist was already

in his early fifties. The idea of Adonis, a symbol of strength and male beauty, being

allowed to live on after death would likely have been an alluring one for the middle-aged

artist. So, too, would have been the act of transformation that Venus undertakes: through

her passion and grief, she creates something beautiful and immortal from her lover.

Etched during the tumultuous period of his life when he was torn between his wife, Olga,

and his young lover and muse, Marie-Thérèse, the anemones in Model Leaning on a

Painting and other Sculptor’s Studio prints may suggest that Picasso is trying to do what

Venus did: use his passion to make great art from his lover, art that would live on after

both of them had died.

The androgyny of the two works of art depicted within the print, the artist and

model theme, the relationships between artist, model, and art demonstrated through their

arrangement and gazes, and the references to Classical myths about divine creation come

together to tell a story about the power of representation. The androgynous figures

represent perfection and completion in Platonic and Surrealist theory, and so the works of

art are depicted as androgynous—perfected—while the model, as far as the viewer can

see, is distinctly female (and therefore imperfect). The works of art further take

precedence over the model through the painting’s placement in front of her and through

their gazes; the painted and sculpted figures look at each other, while the model is left out

of this relationship. She is not a work of art, in the artist’s eyes. Through allusions to the

tales of Pygmalion and Adonis, Picasso suggests that he, like Pygmalion, can only truly

be satisfied by his art because no human woman will ever be as perfect, and that he, like

Venus, transforms his lovers into something perfect and eternal through his

representations of them.

In the Suite Vollard, Picasso brings together many disparate influences. He

references Rembrandt and quotes classical sculpture, draws on the myths of classical

Greece, and interprets Platonic ideals. His friendship with the Surrealists comes out in

direct references, such as the depiction of a Surrealist object in print 60, and in more

subtle symbols such as his exploration of the idea of the androgyne (fig. 14).

Fig. 14. Pablo Picasso, Reclining Sculptor and

Surrealist Sculpture (Bolliger 60), 1933. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of

Art. [colby.edu/museum]

Fig. 15. Pablo Picasso, Female Bullfighter, III

(Bolliger 23), 1934. Etching. Waterville: Colby College Museum of Art. [colby.edu/museum]

His tumultuous personal life breaks through in the sensuous depictions of Marie-Thérèse

Walter and the anguish of prints like Female Bullfighter, III (fig. 15), in which Anita

Beloubek-Hammer argues that the panicked horse represents his wife while the dying

torero is Marie-Thérèse, and the bull represents Picasso himself (109). These one hundred

prints provide a window into the artist’s artistic, personal, and intellectual states over the

course of one of the most important decades of his career and of the twentieth century, as

Europe moved inevitably towards another World War and the artist achieved great

commercial and critical success, shifting from late Cubism into the Classical and

Surrealist styles for which he would be remembered. All these influences come together

in Model Leaning on a Painting, where Picasso uses the Platonic androgyne and

references to mythical tales of creation and sexual passion to address the familiar theme

of artist and model. In this print, the artist represents his relationships to his models and

to his art, as well as the relationship he perceives between the model and the work of art.

Through this depiction, he also makes a statement about representation, about his own

power as an artist to create and transform.

Works Cited

Béguin, Albert. “L’Androgyne,” Minotaure 11 (1938): 11-14.

Beloubek-Hammer, Anita. Pablo Picasso: Women, Bullfights, Old Masters: Prints from

the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. Berlin: Staatliche Museen, 2013.

Boggs, Jean Sutherland. Picasso and Man. Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1964.

Breton, Andre. Arcane 17. Paris: J. Pauvert, 1971.

Chadwick, Whitney. “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.”

Women’s Art Journal 7.1 (Spring/Summer 1986): 37-42.

Grew, Rachel. “The Evolution of the Alchemical Androgyne in Symbolist and Surrealist

Art.” PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2010.

Haessly, Gaile Ann. “Picasso on Androgyny: From Symbolism through Surrealism.”

PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1983.

Kleinfelder, Karen. The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze: Picasso’s Pursuit of the

Model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Ovid. Metamorphoses (8). Trans. Charles Martin. New York: Norton & Co., 2005.

Summers, David. “Representation.” In Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition.

Ed. Robert Nelson and Richard Schiff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2003. 1-19.

Vancouver Art Gallery. “Picasso: The Artist and His Muses” Explores the Significance

of Six Women in Picasso’s Art and Life. 31 May 2016.