At the close of the Second
World War in 1945, Pablo Picasso, at the age of 63, enjoyed his
recognition as one of the leading painters, sculptors and graphic
artists of the 20th century. He was hailed for his steadfast support of
the French Resistance and his refusal to collaborate with the German
occupiers. He had been acclaimed as a young romantic painter-- (Blue
and Rose Periods); celebrated as a revolutionary formal innovator
(Cubist painting and sculpture); lauded as co-inventor of open-form
welded metal sculpture (with fellow Spaniard, Julio Gonzalez),
recognized for having studied and mastered the encyclopedic collections
of the Louvre, and praised as a prolific master of etching, drypoint
and aquatint printing techniques. He was soon to enter into an
ambitious series of lithographic studies--The Bull; Portraits of
Francoise; Arcadian revels of centaurs and Bacchantes; and homages to
Lucas Cranach, which would make it clear that he was equally
resourceful and virtuosic in the lithographic medium. Picasso
epitomized the Renaissance ideal of an artist, working in every medium
with skill, intelligence and energy.
He vacationed at Golfe-Juan, on the
Mediterranean in 1945 and again in 1946--his first visits since the
war. In Summer 1946, while attending an exhibition of local handcrafts
in nearby Vallauris, he met Georges and Suzanne Ramie, owners of the
Madoura Pottery. He asked permission to make a few works and was
willingly assigned a spot at the bench, where he shaped three pieces.
In September, at Golfe-Juan, he complained to the Curator of the Musee
d'Antibes (Grimaldi Palace), M. Dor de la Souchere, that he had never
been offered a great surface to paint. On the spot, the curator told
him that he could have a studio in the Museum. Picasso promptly
ordered materials--sheetings of asbestos and plywood, and a supply of
marine paints--(all that could be obtained at that post-war time). In
less than four months--September through December--Picasso created all
but one of the 25 paintings, 33 drawings, and 11 oils on paper, now on
view at the Grimaldi-Picasso Museum, Antibes. His Mediterranean
subjects included fish, urchins, squid, fishermen, hungry eaters of
fish, and high spirited centaurs and faunsenacting and celebrating the
Joie de Vivre.
When Picasso returned to Vallauris
in Summer 1947, he was pleased to find his three earlier ceramic
experiments, and he carried with him a packet of drawings which he
thought might come to life in clay. His pleasure in working with clay
and with the owners and staff of the Madoura Pottery resulted in a
working environment familiar to him from his experience in etching and
sculpture workshops.The Ramie's and staff were delighted to apply their
knowledge and technical skills to help Picasso realize his projects. He
devoted increasing amounts of time to the work, including a large part
of 1947, and intermittently during vacations for 25 years, but never
became capable of throwing a pot on the wheel, or solving the technical
problems of glazes and multiple firings. He began directly with a lump
of clay to model a bird, a pigeon, an owl, a dove. He was given advice
and assistance with colors, glazing and firing.
He asked for a supply of Spanish
Platters (rectangular plates with rounded corners), which he decorated
simply in a long and inventive series of face plates treated like
canvasses with sgrafito, colored fields, borders, and decorative
reinforcements. He turned to common pignate (casserole forms) from
stock, and decorated numbers of them with delightful friezes of dancing
figures. He selected pitchers from stock to decorate--emphasizing their
globular character with both the chosen colors and the decorative
graphic geometry.
As he worked, Picasso learned to ask
for more specific ceramic pieces: round and oblong dishes, plates both
standard and turned, round, square, oval and round/square. He used vase
forms, both standard and turned, floor tiles, wall placques in tile,
and earthenware, round, rectangular and hexagonal, and occasionally
inverted dishes to work on the reverse in shaping convex wall plaques.
He came upon discarded fire bricks and occasional shards of broken pots
which inspired him to recycle and redeem these suggestive forms in an
unprecedented fashion. In his nearly twenty five years at Vallauris he
produced, invented, and discovered literally thousands of unique
creations.
Picasso was a quick worker, decisive
in mind and hand, who remembered the Ramies’ teachings and suggestions,
and began to communicate in their ceramic language. He devoted long
hours to developing ideas and multiple
variations upon them. Soon he began to find among his accumulating
works, pieces which embodied a vitality which he felt might be produced
in an edition. He discussed with the Ramies how such editions might be
made, and as a result they evolved a series of positive stamps for the
underside of such works, which proclaimed the work as an original, an
authorized copy, or a numbered and/or signed example of "Picasso
Editions" made from a plaster original plate, and imprinted in the
manner of an edition of multiple original etchings. The Ramies
developed technical procedures to insure precision of form and accurate
rendering of the drawn designs and colors. A genuine replica of an
original by an accurate model of the exact contour and coloring,
created by hand and using materials and methods of which very precise
reference notes were made, at the time the original piece was created.
The successful work received the proper impressed stamp of
authenticity. Picasso retained most of the unique works, making
occasional presents to friends and to the Muses d'Antibes, along with a
few major sculptures. After his death an important gift of ceramics was
made to the Picasso Museum, Paris, with the remainder divided between
his heirs.
Picasso soon learned that he could
cap a tall vase or bottle and freely manipulate its shape into
proportions reflective of a female figure--amplify a hip, squeeze a
waist, shape the breasts and throat, prior to color-glazing and firing.
He named these lyrical female figures "Tanagras," with reference to the
elegant 3rd century B.C. ceramic female figurines in flowing robes
found at that location in Greece. His "Tanagras" were, of course,
unique and retained for his own collection. His next innovation
was to assemble wheel thrown elements to produce new un-pot-like pieces
such as Wood Owl Woman, 1951, Vase with Two High Handles, 1952; --King,
1952 and --Queen, 1953, with figure balancing handles, Ice Pitcher,
1952, and Large Bird (Picasso), 1953. These "assembled works" were
hardly different in kind from his Cubist assemblages, his found-object
bronzes, or bike seat and handlebar Head of Bull. He then built even
more extravagant works such as Vase: Femme a I' Amphore, 1947, Grey and
Black Bird. 1947, Large Roosting Bird (Four elements), 1947, a long
series of Owls, 1952, a Centaur, 1953, Animal Form with Handle and Four
Feet, 1954, and countless owls, bulls, kids, condors, and invented
animals, which sprung to life under his hands,
The pottery student requested that a
large pitcher form be turned and modified to his specifications. He
then launched a series of designs--sometimes inscribing a contradictory
form, such as a slender vase of flowers in color upon the outer
surface, so that the pitcher's silhouette and the vase-and-flower image
were set in constant dialogue. In other pitchers he inscribed
calla lilies, parrots, a landscape with a two-story building, a series
of four nude or clothed figure set out upon the pitcher's four faces,
Arcadian scenes with centaurs and fauns, male and female heads. These
turned and formed volumes offered irregular convex surfaces for his
imagination as well as a memorable pitcher profile. In many cases these
works were never used in domestic service, but were displayed on a
sideboard, table, or vitrine, as prestigious collectors’ items.
Oftentimes he would sign them boldly and/or inscribe the work's
date--day, month and year. There can be no doubt that Picasso valued
these inventive pieces as enduring works of art.
Recognizing that in utility some
shoppers for ceramics might seek sets of plates for serving a table of
guests, he worked to form a service of twelve "black plates," twenty
fruit plates, and twenty-four fish plates, plus related serving
platters and tureens. Many of his forms tended toward the three
dimensional and are therefore in part non-utilitarian: plates decorated
with a whole fish in relief; three sardines in high relief; half a
watermelon with knife and fork; or a breakfast of two eggs, bacon and
black pudding. In many other cases, when the depicted subject is not in
high relief, Picasso would nevertheless decorate the surface with
patterns of ridged lines and bumps, as in the two plates titled Goat’s
Head in Profile, 1952, Hands with Fish, 1953. Big-Eyed Face, 1954, the
white on white Disheveled Woman, 1963, and many dancers and birds in
relatively low relief. It must be remembered that many of the works
which we may know by a single example actually are part of a short
series of three or more variations. Picasso focused all of his
knowledge from all of his arts on his ceramic outpourings, and found
numbers of ways to re-examine a given design: a blind stamp into red
terra cotta: a blind stamp into terra cotta after a white glaze, a
number of differing color-glaze treatments, which might result in a
series of four or more quite different plates derived from a single
image.
It seems fair to conclude that
Picasso's ceramic adventures had profound influences, enlarging his
field of invention, stimulating his imagination, and enriching his
painting, sculpture and graphic output in the post-war period. The
turned pitcher form with a series of four females derived from
plant forms, with petal-heads and breasts (1948), was arrived at after
his painted portrait of his new love, Francoise Gilot--Femme-Fleur, 5
May 1946. His series of light-hearted Arcadian subjects appeared in
ceramics shortly after those in the Grimaldi paintings and drawings,
and soon found expression in subsequent etchings and lithographs. In
some cases ceramic experiments influenced the artist's next works in
bronze. Picasso was so broadly experienced in two and three dimensions
that he succeeded in achieving his powerful effects with minimal means,
moving back and forth with ease. His esthetic effects are complex,
combining intellectual daring, technical skill, economy, and impish
humor.
As early as 1951 Picasso devised a
sculptural pot-form which involved a spherical pot body, a short neck,
an equally short pedestal, plus a secondary cylindrical "pigtail"
protruding from the base of the body. He utilized this form, in many
witty variations, to create Wood Owl Woman, 1951, Mat Wood Owl, 1958,
The Wood Owl, 1969, among others. In the first named, he used a white
glaze and simple black calligraphy to evoke a woman's head. In the
"owl" pieces he found new integrations of the neck and tail feather
elements to form owls with knife engraving in black on red in the
first, and a layering of black, white and red in the second--all from
the identical form. In Ice Pitcher, 1952, he chose a globular pitcher
form with a small filter-spout and a large mouth to the rear of the
handle. Decorated with oxide colors and engraved in blue on white
enamel, it became a female portrait. Vase with Two High Handles, 1952,
and 1953, have the same foundation shape in earthenware, but the glazes
and engraved decorations tend to differentiate them until seen side by
side. Large Bird, Picasso, 1953, is a memorable and imposing abstract
pot sculpture, which offers a form which the artist revisited over a
number of years. Each viewer enjoys discrete experiences in studying
these ceramics which draw upon a wide range of ceramic forms. Woman's
Head Crowned with Flowers, 1954, is strongly sculptural, begun from a
pitcher form but shaped to emphasize the brow, cheek bones and hair.
The example included is rendered in stark white, with the only
embellishment Picasso's bold signature beneath the Woman's left ear. It
is a tour de force in editioned ceramic art.
Picasso's ceramic oeuvre may seem
frivolous to some, particularly where the emphasis upon his painting
and sculpture has tended to keep his long involvement in ceramics in
the shadow of his other work. His ceramic activity has been extremely
ambitious and encompassing. It embodies his imagination and wit, his
enthusiasm for making much from little. It employs his understanding of
the mytho-poetic power inherent in simple table utensils as they serve
their role in the sacraments and ceremonies of daily meals taken en
famille. As exemplified by capacious and generous serving dishes, bowls
and pitchers, Picasso’s splendid forms relate to the comfort and
reassurance one finds in one’s warm hearth and to the physical
well-being associated with the pleasures of the table. It is his
ceramic oeuvre that fostered the artist’s witty variations on the
religious and mythic tales of God’s use of clay to create a human
likeness and all the birds and beasts; to transform one form into
another, as bird into spirit, God into bull; and to relive the magical
realization of plates that are never empty and jugs that are always
full.
Gerald Nordland
Chicago, Summer 1998
Mr. Nordland is an independent
curator and noted author.
He was previously Director of the San
Francisco Art Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, The Wight
Gallery, UCLA, and the Washington, (D.C.) Gallery of Modern Art.
He has authored books on Gaston Lachaise, Frank Lloyd Wright and
Richard Diebenkorn and others. Mr. Nordland has also curated numerous
exhibitions including an exhibition of 20th Century Master Ceramics for
the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Suggested reading list:
Picasso / His Life and Work, Roland
Penrose. N.Y.: Schocken Books, 1958
Picasso in Antibes, Dor de la
Souchere. London: Lund-Humphries, 1960
The Picasso Museum, Paris, Bozo,
Besnard-Bernadac, Richet & Seckel. N.Y.; Abrams, 1996
Picasso / Catalogue of the Edited
Ceramic Works. 1947-1971, Alain Ramie. Madoura: Galerie Madoura,
France, 1988
