PABLO PICASSO DORA MAAR AU CHAT Oil on canvas 1941

Lopena 6






PABLO PICASSO
DORA MAAR AU CHAT
Oil on canvas 1941


Cecilia Lopena
Professor Sloane Seiden
Western Art 262
April 25, 2012
Paper Term





































Analysis of the painting.
The luminous Dora Maar au Chat was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1941 at the beginning of World War II. Oil on canvas, this is one of many portraits of Dora Maar, his Croatian mistress at the time. It is not excessively large and measures 50.5" by 37.5".
The painting shows Maar sitting majestically in a wooden chair, in a rare three-quarter length pose. It gives the impression that the subject is in a box, like a precious thing. A small black cat is perched on her right shoulder showing curiosity and menacing insolence. Picasso depicted Maar body in faceted planes. Brushstrokes are so powerful and richly layered and they add a sculptural character at the portrait. Picasso chose an extraordinary vibrant palette rich in brilliant colors and an extremely thick and intricate pattern for the model's dress. Blocks of tone such as black are used to paint the outline, white to emphasize the structure of the face and create shadows, bright orange to revitalize the whole painting. Maar is wearing a brooch or a double white button, up on her dress. The setting displays a stimulating composition of shapes, characterized by vertically inclined planes showing the wooden floor in contrast with the shallow inner space in the background that reminds Picasso's early Cubism style. The black cat on the shoulder painted like a shadow character, is a symbol of the feminine aggressiveness and sexual antagonism of the two lovers. Picasso, on his almost ten years long relationship with Maar, once made a reference about Dora's temperament as one of an Afghan cat (Brassai 2002). An additional allusion to feline is the sharp, talon-like nails and the long bony fingers of the model, expressing certain violence like a cat's claws. Dora's most remarkable distinctive feature in real life was her perfect manicured nails. In the painting the nails have taken a more dramatic connotation and bear some resemblance with the hands painted by Velazquez in his Innocent X famous painting. The exceptional care in details is enhanced in Dora's rich hat, an accessory she was familiar with as well as her involvement in the surrealism movement. Picasso depicted her hat like a crown on her head, with the bright red band and vibrant feathers adding more contrast to the rich design of the dress. The way she seated on the chair gives the impression of a goddess on a throne.
Dora is presented slightly on profile and half face, one eye looking at the viewer with the pupil straight out while the other is looking out at the world. Picasso was probably the first painter to show simultaneously two aspect of a face in this shape. Freud wrote about the double self in every person, how human has two sides just as profile and full face. As we get different impressions from the side view and the full view, we also get different effects. The purpose is to please oneself, but one side of the person try to please oneself as related to a part of reality, while the other part prefers to consider oneself apart from reality (Caws 2000).
The abstract forms, the use of three-quarters and Cubism shapes reveal the high tension between Germany and France as well as the stormy relationship between Maar and Picasso that was deteriorating at the time of the painting. This painting has been described as one of the most provocative and intense of his "weeping woman" - a nickname Dora was famous for - surely one of the least hostile of Dora.
This dramatic style was not appropriate for the Nazi idea of art and the canvas was brought to Chicago by a collector, who kept it for almost 40 years. Eventually it was sold for $92.5 million at Sotheby's in 2006.

Pablo Picasso brief biography and psychological portrait.
Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruizy Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was arguably one of the greatest and most leading artist ever. As well as Leonardo and Michelangelo, his artworks were innovative and groundbreaking.
With the exclusion of his physical stature, everything about Picasso was larger than life. He was one of the richest and most creative artists ever lived. In the 20th century he was the co-founder of the Cubist movement together with Georges Braque. Cubism was an avant garde art movement where subjects were broken up, analyzed and reconstructed in an abstract form, removing a coherent sense of depth. Cubism deeply influenced music, literature and architecture of the same time. Les demoiselles d'Avignon, which Picasso painted in 1907, is often considered the dominant example of cubism.
Since childhood, Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent. Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881, he was artistically trained in drawing and oil painting by his father Ruiz, a traditional academic artist. When Pablo reached the age of thirteen, Ruiz felt that his son had surpassed him and decided to give up painting, until his later years. After some years at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, it was clear that Picasso lacked of discipline and disliked formal instruction. He was more attracted by Madrid museums and deeply influenced by Velazquez, Goya and El Greco elongated limbs paintings at El Prado museum (Gilot 1964).
Things changed when Gertrude and Leo Stein, art dealers and collectors, got interested in Picasso artworks and started to collect his art. At Metropolitan Museum in New York City we can admire the eminent Portrait of Gertrude Stein. Critics argued that Gertrude painting was not bearing any resemblance with the person. Picasso then replies "She will" (Stein 1984).
He lived in Paris during War World II, remaining physically neutral but not in his thoughts. During the Spanish Civil war in 1937 expressed his rage and disapproval against Francisco Franco through his artworks. He spent the latest years of his life in the South of France with his wife Jacqueline Roque, where he died in 1973, leaving four children.
His artworks are categorized into periods, beginning with the Blue period and ending with the Synthetic Cubism. He produced an estimated 50.000 artworks, roughly 1885 paintings and 1228 sculptures then ceramics, drawings, prints, etchings even rugs and tapestry.
His groundbreaking style surfaced in 20th century together with the perception of consciousness of human psychology thoughts. In early 1900, Freud's psychoanalysis and later Jung's took Europe by storm. The invention of photography allowed Picasso to respond on the artistic scene with a very personal perspective. Free from every realism constraint, Picasso shifted from the objective portrait to the subjective one. His paintings were oozing affections, sexuality, conflicts and complexities, either intensifying the feeling or just fading away the interest towards the subject. (Wilson 2004).
Picasso dominated art as well as women. He had two wives, five official mistresses and an unknown number of affairs. He was known as a womanizer and for his sexual appetites. Among his lovers, Dora Maar was one of the most cherished woman and artistic companion. There was an intense intellectual partnership and physical passion between them, as Dora was a photographer, fluent in Spanish and shared his political concern. Soon she became his primary model and he incorporated Dora's imagine in countless versions of the same theme. Picasso works of art from late 1930's and early 1940's are among the most powerful and daring of his 75 years career. While he was working on La Guernica, probably his most powerful as well as political and celebrated painting, Dora was the only photographer allowed in the studio throughout the work sessions.
During the Nazi occupation of Paris, their relationship got very tensed and Picasso expressed his frustration by abstracting her image and often painting her in tears. For years she was known as the "Weeping Woman" (Caws 2000).
Picasso once said that a painter has to have an idea of what he is going to do, but it should be a vague idea (Werts 2005). His peculiarity was to always being innovative and a master in breaking the rules, ready to adapt and to evolve in art and in life as a true product of modernity.












Work Cited.

Brassai, 2002, Conversation With Picasso, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Caws, M.A., 2000 Picasso's Weeping Woman, London, Thames and Hudson.
Gilot, F., and Lake, C., 1964 Life With Picasso, New York, Doubleday.
Wilson, M., 2004 From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso, Philadelphia, Taylor and Francis.
Stein, G., 1984 Picasso, US, Dover Publication.
Wertz, L., 2005 Mankind's Wisdom on Art from Plato to Picasso, Arlington, Richer Resources Publication.