Picasso

This article allows us to reexamine an important work from Pablo Picasso's youth: The Harem. This oil on canvas from 1906, whose size-154.3 x 109.5 cm¬- is atypical for its time, is held at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Long before Leonard C. Hanna Jr. bequeathed this work, John Quinn had purchased it from the artist in 1923, 17 years after it was painted. This American lawyer was a prominent patron of contemporary art, sponsoring the New York Armory Show in 1913. The piece was first shown at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1928 as part of the 27th International Exhibition. This large canvas showed a new direction in Picasso's work-one that would soon develop further with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The piece truly marked a turning point and lends itself to multiple interpretations. 

The vertically oriented canvas shows six characters in an empty room; the walls and the floor are an almost hazy, powdery shade of rose. In the foreground we see a seated man leaning on the wall, his legs outspread and a porrón wine jug in his hand. He is looking at four nude women who are washing themselves and combing their hair. From the back of the room, an old woman watches over the scene. The atmosphere is calm; the bodies are relaxed. Warm colors prevail, contrasting with those of the blue period. Here the treatment of the bodies is realistic, providing certain freshness to the female figures and a sense of grandeur to the seated man. The composition hinges on a diagonal rising from the left, following the male figure's gaze, skimming past the tops of two women's heads to rest upon the figure delicately stretching her arms. 

In May 1906, Picasso and Fernande Olivier arrived in Gósol, a small village in the Spanish Pyrenees. They were able to afford their stay thanks to the 2,000 francs Picasso had received for the sale of one of his paintings through Ambroise Vollard. The couple decided to stop over in Barcelona to visit the artist's family and then traveled on to spend several weeks in the mountain village.
Several sources of inspiration have been posited for this work. Pierre Daix highlighted Picasso's interest in Ingres's The Turkish Bath, shown in the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris. But the opulence we see in the French master's painting is absent in the Spaniard's: the modest still life of bread and sausage in the foreground and the sobriety of the entire room convey an ordinary setting, with simple people, like the place where Picasso was staying when he produced the many preliminary sketches and the painting itself. The reference to Degas's pastels from his "suite of nudes" comes to mind. It was during Picasso's first visit to Paris, in October 1900, that he saw works depicting nude women in everyday private settings; but it was over the summer and fall of 1904 that the theme of women bathing truly made its appearance in Picasso's production. Hence, this painting could be a reference not only to Ingres's The Turkish Bath, but also to Degas's monotypes that reveal the world of brothels.
Conxita Boncompte suggests other sources related to the Classical world and its religions. The artist had in fact spent a year studying Pompeian frescoes, whose color palette he adopted. The event that triggered this interest was the auction of the frescoes from the Boscoreale villa in Pompeii and their exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1903. Although Picasso was in Barcelona at that time, the exhibition catalogue was widely distributed and there were other frescoes that could be seen in Paris, at the Louvre. In the picturesque village where Picasso had chosen to stay, in contact with the peasants, he integrated the ancient agricultural rites of pagan origin and the local Romanesque art¬-such as the polychrome wood Madonna and child figures that liken him to Gauguin and his relationship to Tahiti. 
The Harem allowed Picasso to gather all his sketches inspired by Fernande in their private life, particularly when she washed herself. The breakdown of her gestures is achieved by the juxtaposition of four Fernandes and shows how the entire rite unfolds. Josep Palau i Fabre referred to this composition as "the great ode to Fernande's body." The presence of the man, in all his virility, and of the old woman, who looks like a midwife or even a procuress, change the initial meaning of Fernande's presence; a scene from a harem comes to mind, and we imagine the four young women with their distinct personalities. The phallic attributes and the emphasis on his companion's body alongside them could also suggest Picasso's desire to become a father. The two protagonists are fulfilling clearly defined roles. In this initiation, Picasso becomes Bacchus or a Bacchic priest, and officiates at the rite of Fernande's initiation. The liturgical objects are shown by his side, and the basin containing the purifying water is in its place. Fernande, the initiand, is subjected to the different rites in the ceremony, and invades the space in a wild dance of sorts, seemingly in the midst of a trance. Therefore, this canvas conveys the rite of Fernande's initiation and a certain divination through the figures of this beautiful nude woman.