Picasso's bull: art history in reverse - Pablo Picasso

Art in America, March, 1993 by Irving Lavin

More to the point, in my view, is the implicit identification, through the historical process, of the individual self with human nature at large. This seems to me the ultimate meaning of Picasso's luminous notion, in the statement quoted earlier, that the record of the metamorphoses of a work of art might help to "discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream." Picasso made this point explicit in explaining why he dated his work, paradoxically linking - through the history of art, particularly his own - human creativity and science, subjectivity and objectivity, personal and collective awareness:

Why do you think I date everything I do? Because it is not sufficient to know an artist's works - it is also necessary to know when he did them, why, how, under what circumstances ... Some day there will undoubtedly be a science - it may be called the science of man - which will seek to learn more about man in general through the study of the creative man. I often think about such a science, and I want to leave to posterity a documentation that will be as complete as possible. That's why I put a date on everything I do ...(40)

(1.) The basic catalogue of Picasso's lithographs is F. Mourlot, Picasso lithographe, Paris, 1970; trans. J. Didry, Picasso Lithographs, Boston, 1970.

Brief but illuminating comments on the bull series may be found in two relatively rare publications: Picasso. The Bull, National Gallery of art, facsimile edition, introduction by Andrew Robinson, Washington, D.C., n.d.; F. Deuchler, Picasso: Themes et variations, 1945-46, Une Collection Picasso II, Geneva, 1974 (an unpaginated, partial catalogue of the collection of Marie-Therese Walter, including three intermediate states and two reverse impressions of the bull not listed by Mouriot, of which evidently only single trial proofs were made). Deuchler notes [24 fn. 8] that Picasso produced only 27 lithographs from 1919 to 1930 and none thereafter until the series with Mourlot. Indeed, Picasso seems previously to have disliked lithography, see p. 89 below. (2.) Picasso's work at Mourlot's is vividly described in Helene Parmelin's introduction (unpaginated) to Mourlot's catalogue; for the passage given here, in which she quotes the printer Jean Celestin, see p. [3].

Mourlot himself gave an account in his Graves dans ma memoire, Paris, 1979, 11-37; see also the preface by Sabartes to vol. 1 of the first edition of F. Mourlot, Picasso lithographe, 4 vols., Monte Carlo, 1947-64; F. Gilot and C. Lake, Life with Picasso, London, 1964, 88ff.; F. Mourlot, Souvenirs and portraits d'artistes, Paris, 1973, 104ff. All convey Picasso's passionate involvement with the lithographic process and his revolutionary breaks with the traditional limitations of the medium. (3.) The fruits of Picasso's affair with lithography are gathered in Mourlot, 1970, 15-44; important emendations by B. Baer, Picasso the Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, exhib. cat., Dallas, Texas, 1983, 127-31. (4.) Brassai, Conversations avec Picasso, Paris, 1964; trans. F. Price, Picasso and Company, New York, 1966, 182 (July 10, 1945); idem, 1964, 224. (5.) There is no comprehensive study of the development of seriality in modern art, but see generally, J. Coplans, Serial Imagery, exhib. cat., Pasadena, Calif., and New York, 1968, 7-30, and the introductory chapters of G. Seiberling's study of the series paintings of Monet, Monet's Series, New York and London, 1981, 1-38; on the latter, see further P.H. Tucker, Monet in the 90's, exhib. cat., New Haven, Conn., and London, 1989. Deuchler, 1974, also emphasized the novelty of Picasso's lithographic series, contrasting them with Monet's cathedrals, where only the color changes, not the forms, and with Mondrian's trees, where the forms become completely abstract. (Further to this point below, p. 79). (6.) For Picasso's graphic works generally, see B. Geiser, Picasso: Peintre-graveur, 4 vols., Bern, 1933-86; G. Block, Pablo Picasso: Catalogue de l'oeuvre grave et lithographie, 1904-67, Bern, 1968. (7.) Quoted in A.H. Barr, Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, New York, 1939, 13f; cf. C. Zervos, "Conversation avec Picasso," Cahiers d'art, X, 1939, 173.