Picasso's neoclassic outlines: An archaeology of consciousness

Abstract

She innovations and outlinings in Picasso's critically formative Pink Period, and in his recurrent classicisms, clearly stem from once novel and then fashionably assimilated imagery of Late Archaic and Severe style Greek art (Fig. 1; cf. also Fig. 3). As far as I know, however, nowhere in the vast Picasso literature is mentioned another obvious but pedestrian source for these borrowings: the popular yet archaeologically specialized outline reproductions of tens of thousands of Classical works of art in Salomon Reinach's score of mass produced and inexpensive volumes on Greek and Roman reliefs and paintings (Fig. 2).1 Picasso's facile and voracious exploitation of art historical sources is well known. Some wags have even reckoned him the best art historian of the century. The assimilation and abandonment of his father's academicism; his accomplished productions in Barcelona's popular art nouveau expressionism, which led him briefly to imagery like that of Lautrec and Munch in Paris; and his adoptions of Spanish Medievalist as well as Classical styles, followed by Africanist Cubism a la C4zanne and Matisse, all exemplify an eclectic and kaleidoscopic ravaging of high and low sources carried on until his death.2 That frenzied man (and eye) continually on the run left the spoor and seed of an overcompensating alpha male--which belied his plummy associations and infantile polymorphism.