Given that the Fauness sculpture in turn follows the model of the botijo, to which the ring-like handle, the body made up of an assemblage of elements previously thrown by the potter, and the unique foot are direct references, it is a piece suggesting the image of a vessel. It shows Picasso’s cunning play on images that are culturally consolidated in the memories of his viewers to create a sculpture resembling a popular vessel that is widely present in the Spanish collective imagination. In addition, he links the sculpture to the tradition of plastic vases –the sirens produced in Boeotia from 550 to 500 BC and held in the Musée du Louvre’s collection[1]– in a filiation that is clearly expressed in his sketches. The gesture of the Fauness holding her bulging belly, depicted in black enamel painted over a white ground, suggests that she is pregnant, referring in turn to the iconographic tradition of plastic vases, which we see, for example, on an anthropomorphic Cypriot fired clay pot at the Musée National de la Céramique in Sèvres.[2]
As in the case of the piece portraying a bull, for the Fauness Picasso used the method of assembling several elements thrown on the potter’s wheel and incorporating allusions and references to both folk and ancient pottery traditions, while the base and the lack of functionality of the vase-shaped elements in the assemblage place it in the realm of sculpture. In doing so, Picasso achieves the tour de force of linking this type of ceramic pieces to his own previous artistic output in sculpture and to the age-old plastic vase tradition.[3]
Polychromy in sculpture had interested Picasso since cubism; the characteristic volumes defined by using a potter’s wheel to throw the constituent parts of these sculptures opened up a new range of possible combinations and interactions between painting and three-dimensional shapes.[4] The use of prefabricated or “found” objects to create new figurations –either through assemblage, by transforming them with painting, by reshaping them, or by a combination of these processes, resulting in the duality of object and image– was a method the artist had been using ever since the Glass of absinthe series (1914) and the Woman in the Garden sculpture (1927), and which culminated with the execution of Bull’s Head in 1942, an assemblage of a bicycle seat and handlebars.[5]
After the collages from his cubist period, Picasso had adopted an anti-mimetic approach in his artistic pursuits: instead of imitating the visible signs of reality by representing it with the traditional mediums of drawing, painting or sculpture, he emphasized the use of materials, textures and pre-existing objects that had been chosen and removed from their ordinary contexts to act as equivalents of the form that the artist wished to represent.[6]
The difference and the novelty here are that the plastic vases and the sculptures made of elements thrown by the potter and assembled according to Picasso’s drawings are neither mere parts of a sculptural assemblage nor ready-mades (despite a nod to Duchamp) that have been anthropomorphized by mere designation and isolation from their functional-utilitarian context, like Picasso’s Venus of Gas, dated January 1945, made with a found object –a gas stove burner– mounted on a base.[7]
The ambivalence of the image and the vase, both of which “share” the same body, enables Picasso to increase the potential for signification and interpretation. The metaphor of the body as a vessel here is the main reference to an age-old votive and ritual, conjuring, and apotropaic practice.[8] In addition, with the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic ceramics based on preparatory sketches, the structure of the vessel/object is identical to the image created by Picasso; the duality between the object and the image is integrated within the same unit, thus activating a broader range of possibilities for signification and interpretation than that of the realm of sculpture, limited by the canons of artistic disciplines within the context of fine arts –which, by definition, are devoid of any possible utilitarian function.[9]
[1] Harald Theil, “Les vases plastiques de Picasso – Survivances et renouveau de la céramique méditerranéenne,” in the Picasso céramiste et la Méditerranée exhibition catalogue, Aubagne-Sèvres 2013-14, Gallimard, Paris, 2013, p. 67, Fig. 37.
[2] Ibid., p. 67, Fig. 36.
[3] Ibid., p. 64-79; Harald Theil, “Object and image: Picasso’s ‘Plastic metaphors’”, exhibition catalogue, Picasso. Object and Image, Museo Picasso Málaga, 2007, p. 30-38.
[4] Object and Image: Picasso’s ‘Plastic metaphors’, op. cit., p. 52-55.
[5] Spies 36 a-f, Spies 72 I, Spies 240 I.
[6] For example, Oiseau, Spies 201; La grue, Spies 461 I; La guenon et son petit, Spies 463 I; La femme enceinte, first state proof, Spies 349 I, see Harald Theil, “Picasso et les objets,” in the Picasso à l’œuvre – Dans l’objectif de David Douglas Duncan exhibition catalogue [Museo Picasso Málaga 2011; Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Münster, 2011; La Piscine-Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent, Roubaix, 2012; Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, 2013], Paris, Gallimard, 2012, pp. 59-61.
[7] Spies 302A.
[8] Harald Theil, “Les vases plastiques de Picasso – Survivances et renouveau de la céramique méditerranéenne,” op. cit., pp. 76-79.
[9] Harald Theil, “Un nouveau regard sur les céramiques originales uniques de Picasso :
La Femme à l’amphore,” in Actes du colloque Revoir Picasso, March 25, 2015, Paris, Musée national Picasso-Paris: http://revoirpicasso.fr/processus-creatifs/un-nouveau-regard-sur-les-ceramiques-originales-uniques-de-picasso-la-femme-a-lamphore-theil/, pp. 2-4.
White earth, oxide decoration on white background, patina, wax reserve, partial transparent glaze.
Private collection. © Succession Picasso 2020.
6 / 10
Summary