Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)


Tête d'homme et tête de femme signed and dated 'Picasso 31 31.3.68.' (lower right); dated 'Dimanche 31.3.68.' (on the verso)pen and ink, crayon, and felt-tip pen on paper 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 in (31.1 x 24.2 cm)Executed on March 31, 1968
|The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Claude Picasso.ProvenancePrivate collection (acquired by 1989, and sold: Christie's, New York, November 2, 2011, lot 125).Acquired at the above sale.Tête d'homme et tête de femme is an exemplary work from Picasso's late period that exudes the frenetic energy of the artist's final years. While recovering from prostate surgery in 1965, Picasso had an incredible outpour of artistic energy as he became increasingly aware that his last years were approaching. Retreating to the secluded village of Mougins, he began using every creative medium at his disposal, approaching his work with a renewed interest in linearity. He also engrossed himself in the classical literature of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Honoré de Balzac. When Picasso resumed painting a couple years later, it was the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas that undoubtedly impacted his subject matter the most. Executed in 1968, Tête d'homme et tête de femme incorporates Picasso's favored persona: the musketeer- a revered motif that would appear throughout the rest of his artistic oeuvre.Left impotent from his surgery, Picasso sought to visually express the vigor for life and sexual passion that he yearned for. The spirit of the musketeer symbolized adventure, chivalry, and youth- the life of a bon vivant that Picasso so desperately craved as he knowingly approached his final years. In Tête d'homme et tête de femme, Picasso presents a male figure stemmed from both imagination and reality, a frequent tendency of the artist that is popularly interpreted to serve as a surrogate for Picasso himself. With his curly beard and brown hair, the figure resembles Picasso's chauffeur Maurice Bresnu. From 1966 until Picasso's death in 1973, Bresnu served as the artist's chauffeur and confidant, and, Bresnu's facial features surface frequently in the Picasso's later works. In the figure at present, the Bresnu-like features allow Picasso to present himself as a younger and burlier man of modernity. However, the white ruffled collar and elegantly curled mustache are in the spirit of Rembrandt's musketeers. Hélène Parmelin recalled how Picasso would jest about his various appropriations of the figure. Standing in front of his own canvases he would say, "With this one you'd better watch out. That one makes fun of us. That one is enormously satisfied. This one is a grave intellectual. And that one, look how sad he is, the poor guy. He must be a painter" (quoted in Picasso: Tradition and Avant-garde (exhibition catalogue), Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2006, p. 340). The combination of Bresnu's features and the Musketeer motif project the artist's ultimate desire to reclaim his heroic, machismo self during the last years of his life. As Marie-Laure Bernadac describes the figures, "with their bearded, elongated faces, their huge questioning eyes, their long hair with or without hats, these 'Heads' represent one last concession on the painter's part to the 'all too-human.' By contrast with the musketeers who all have the same face- these are true portraits, strongly characterized and individual...Picasso's confrontation with the human face, which makes him into the great portrait-painter of the twentieth century, brings him back to a confrontation with himself, the painter, young or old" (M.L. Bernadac, 'Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as a Model,' in Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, 1953-1972 (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, pp. 82-3). The figure of the musketeer has a long history in visual art and is frequently represented in works by Frans Hals, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, El Greco, Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya. Picasso returned to the portraits of Rembrandt numerous times throughout the end of his career to align himself within the Western canon of traditional art, but also to incorporate his own personality and fantasies into these characters. Tête d'homme et tête de femme demonstrates Picasso's frequent use of the mirada fuerte, the strong gaze culturally interpreted as the male gaze, used frequently by old master artists. The striking and beguiling gaze of the main figure, created by the simple swirls of ink, is a common characteristic of Picasso's works that endows the male figure with a haunting and powerful strangeness. The frenzied brushstrokes and singular shades of color welcome the viewer into the frantic and ominous imagination of the artist. Knowing he was approaching his end, Picasso focused on the act of creating rather than finalizing an image, reflecting: "I have less and less time, and I have more and more to say" (ibid, p. 85). To the right of the male figure we see the visage of Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's final wife and muse. Jacqueline's features are reduced, her minimal profile transmitting a universal feminine reality. The ambiguous setting, clear isolation between the two figures, and fantastical combination of swirling color and lines, lead the viewer directly into Picasso's imagination. The scene is one of lustful contemplation and latent eroticism, yet the hysteria that radiates from the work reveals Picasso's own sexual frustration and desire for primal power. Picasso expressed this frustration to the photographer Brassaï, who intimately captured Picasso's final years: "Whenever I see you, my first impulse is to...offer you a cigarette, even though I know that neither of us smokes any longer. Age has forced us to give it up, but the desire remains. It's the same with making love. We don't do it anymore but the desire is still with us!" (quoted in J. Richardson, 'L'Époque Jacqueline,' in Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 1953-1972 (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 29). This desire is perfectly encapsulated in Tête d'homme et tête de femme, a work that evokes Picasso's urgency to paint without restraint, finalizing his rightful placement as a master artist within the tradition of the Western canon.