Picasso portraits - Elizabeth Cowling

From first to last, Picasso's prime subject was the human figure and portraiture remained a
favourite genre. His earliest portraits were done from life and reveal a precocious ability to
catch likeness and suggest
character and state of mind. B y 1900
Picasso was producing portraits
of astonishing variety and thereafter they
reflected the full range of his innovative styles
- symbolist, cubist, neoclassica l, surrealist, expressionist. B ut however extreme his departur e
from representational conventions, Picasso never wholly abandoned drawing from the sitter or
ceased producing portraits of
classic beauty and naturalism. For all his radical originality, Picasso remained in constant dialogue with the art of the past and his portraits often alluded to canonical masterpieces, chosen for their appropriateness to the
looks and personality of his subject. Treating favourite Old Masters as indecorously as his
intimate friends, he enjoyed caricaturing them and indulging in fant asies about their sex lives
that mirrored his own obsession with the interaction of eroticism and creativity. His late suites
of free
' variations ' after Velzquez's
Las Meninas and Rembrandt's
The Prodigal Son , both of
which involve self - portraiture, allow ed him to ruminate on the complex psychological
relationship of artist and sitter, and continu ities between past and present. When Picasso depicted people in his intimate circle, the nature of his bond with them inevitably
influenced his interpretation. T he focus of this book
is not, however, Picasso's life
story but
his creative process, and, although following a broadly chronological path, its chapters are
structured thematically. Issues addressed in depth include Picasso's exploitation of familiar
pose s and formats, his sources of inspiration and identification with favourite Old Masters,
the role of caricature in his expressive conception of portraiture, the relationship between
observation, memory and fantasy, critical differences between his portray al of men and
women, and the motivation behind his defiance of decorum and the extreme transformation
of his sitter's appearance.