Je Suis le Cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso
Edited by Arnold Glimcher and Marc Glimcher
Atlantic Monthly Press, 349 pages, $65.
One of the biggest artistic events of the year was an exhibition of sketchbooks by Pablo Picasso. Organized by the Pace Gallery in New York, the show included 45 of the 175 sketchbooks left by the artist at the time of his death in 1973.
Four of the books already had been published in facsimile editions and a fifth had been dismantled, exhibited and sold; a couple more also were in the collections of the Picasso museums in Barcelona and Paris. The rest were apportioned among the artist`s heirs and proved unfamiliar even to scholars.
Accompanying the exhibition–which the Art Institute is negotiating to bring to Chicago next summer–was a handsome slipcased volume that sold for $80. Each of six scholars wrote on a sketchbook of his or her choosing; the book then was reproduced in its entirety. Selections from 30 more sketchbooks plus a catalogue raissone completed the volume.
The trade edition lacks a slipcase but otherwise is essentially the same. It is likely to serve as the main source on the sketchbooks until every page from them is published. The advantage it has, even over the exhibition, is that it shows the images of six books in sequence. Picasso`s order is essential for an understanding of his variety.
There are sketchbooks from 1894 to 1967 and they function throughout the whole of the artist`s career as a working diary. Some entries are complete in themselves, being related to no other work. Others precede a canvas, developing toward it. Still others were done afterward, to extend or elaborate ideas found in the painting.
Sketchbook No. 35, for example, is one of three that relate to the 1904-1905 ”Family of Saltimbanques” that now can be seen at the National Gallery in Washington. E.A. Carmean, who chose it to write about, found all the drawings working toward the canvas, that is, relating to various states he had determined in an independent study of 1980. The sequence of the images in the sketchbook is part of a clear development.
Sketchbook No. 59, on the other hand, shows a simultaneous cultivation of two opposing styles: cubism and naturalism. Picasso alternates between them and occasionally renders the same subject in both. Overall, however, he moves from a nearly abstract form of cubism to naturalistic designs for the ballet
”Parade.” From all the drawings Theodore Reff has titled his essay
”Picasso at the Crossroads.”
But not everything important in the sketchbooks is visual. The artist also wrote in names and addresses, expenses and inventories. Some of these jottings appear in sketchbook No. 42, relating to the pathbreaking canvas,
”Les Desmoiselles d`Avignon.” Art historian Robert Rosenblum tells us that one note has Picasso mentioning painter Georges Braque six months earlier than scholars thought he knew him. Another shows a somewhat surprising acquaintance with collector Eugene Rouart.
The Rouart family was close to Edgar Degas, whose set of monotypes on brothel themes Eugene owned. Given that his name is found in the 1907 sketchbook, Rosenblum wonders if Eugene showed the monotypes to Picasso. If so, they could very well have influenced ”Les Desmoiselles” and the connection might underlie Picasso`s purchase of them more than a half-century later.
The sketchbooks prompt such detective work, and already there have been satisfying answers. Take the entries that do not look like Picasso`s own. The catalogue raisonne lists a number of them. But longtime companion Francoise Gilot writes how Picasso urged her to work with him, saying, ”Let`s create enigmas for posterity.” Her images are the ”enigmas” in sketchbooks 115 and 116.
Of the remaining contributors, Gert Schiff is good on the book that shows Picasso developing his treatment of the rape of the Sabines, Sam Hunter cogently traces the impact of World War II, and Claude Picasso`s foreword offers a telling glimpse into the artist`s studio. Only Rosalind Krauss is a disappointment, slighting the sketchbooks in favor of doing a star turn.
Pages from the complete sketchbooks are reproduced faithfully, though when writers require supplementary illustrations, they are shown in a format much too small. Similarly, the selections from other sketchbooks are reproduced large enough to admit considerable detail, whereas all
reproductions in the catalogue raissone are crowded at the top of each page and, for reasons of design, again are miniscule.
Matthew Marks` catalogue descriptions are necessarily detailed. However, it would have been helpful to have identifications appended, for while a reader may recognize Mme. Eugenia Errazuriz as Picasso`s Chilean patroness, connections with the likes of the Princesse de Broglie are far less specific. In other words, if you have to turn to Stravinsky`s memoirs to discover the significance of the entry ”Ragtime”–Picasso designed the cover for the composer`s piano version of the score–you know this catalogue could have been better.
