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Pablo Picasso - Nude Woman in a Red Armchair

Orientation

The painting shows a woman, naked except for a bead necklance, sitting in an armchair. As we look at the picture, the woman and the chair do not face us squarely, instead they are angled to our left. Her gaze does not meet ours but looks over our left shoulder. The woman's left leg is crossed over her right. Her elbows rest on the arms of the chair and her head rests in her hands. The bottom of the canvas cuts her legs off above the knee. She fills the painting so that we see very little around her, except for a number of lines that we read as skirting boards and dado rails. End of Orientation

After World War I, Picasso's art changed direction, away from Cubism and towards a style inspired by antique sculpture. This Neo-Classical period lasted until about 1925 when his art developed a more personal and expressive style derived from Cubism.

In this painting the blocks of simple colours, repeated shapes and playful ambiguity show the influence of Synthetic Cubism. However, the outlines are now sinuous not geometric and they follow the contours of colours instead of being independent of them. Also, the colours complement each other. These differences and the sensuous subject matter seem to be a response to Matisse's nudes.

The model is Picasso's lover Marie-Thérèse Walter who was his muse during the 1930s. They had met five years earlier when she was 17 and she provided an emotional haven during the acrimonious divorce from his first wife. Marie-Thérèse is painted as a series of fluid curves and circles that echo the shapes of her erotic anatomy. These forms are repeated in different colours, combinations and sizes, like visual rhymes. The most striking feature is her face.

Raised Image 1
The same face is shown twice on this page separated by a dotted horizontal line. The bottom face is made up of a circle, half of which is a solid raised block. The centre edge of this raised area is a face in profile facing to the left. To the right of the nose is a gap, this is the eye. In the non-raised half of the face, at the top, is a horizontal line marking the eyebrow. This line continues down the line of the nose and curls round its tip. Below the eyebrow is the other eye. On either side of the face are two arcs, these denote the shape of her hair as it curves round her face. Once you have familiarised yourself with the way the circle combines both the full face and the profile at once, move up to the top head. This is exactly the same but better represents the painting because the profile is no longer raised and so obvious. It is simply denoted by the central line and the lips are now whole and shared by both faces. End of Raised Image Description

She is shown simultaneously in full face and in profile. Picasso achieves this by using colour to divide her face in half. As we look at her, the right half of her face is a soft violet grey and the left half a much paler violet pink. The centre line of her nose is represented twice. Once as a single black line against the pink, running across the left eyebrow, down the bridge of her nose and around its tip. Next to this, the edge of the violet grey paints her in profile producing a metamorphic or double image.

The centre parting of her hair accentuates the dual image. Marie-Thérèse had a blond bob and to our left it curls round that side of her head in a block of yellow. To our right, the hair is soft green. The violet profile with its green hair can also be read as a second face, leaning over the chair to kiss Marie-Thérèse. In this reading the darker profile would be Picasso and in joining their two faces together he shows them united by love.

By using non-naturalistic colours, we read both faces at once without confusion or question. Also, the soft colours and shapes prevent the effect from being jarring or ugly.

Raised Image 2
In the top right corner of the page is the head. At the bottom of the face, either side, are a series of closely packed curved lines. These are fingers resting against her face. Follow the line nearest the face on the right. It does a complete circuit of this arm, decending down her forearm, bending to the right around the outside of the elbow, curling around the top of the arm, down again to the inside of the bent elbow and then up the arm to the wrist and fingers again. The arm on the left does the same thing although it is bent more tightly. Below and between the two arms is a circle with a dot in the middle and to its left, and pointed cone shape. These are her breasts. Slightly below the circular breast is a small dash, this is her belly button. Below this is the V of her groin which is attached to the line delineating the top of her crossed leg. Either side of this are two big arcs of her thighs. End of Raised Image Description

The undulating curves of her body are emphasised by black outlines. These lines seem to caress her contours and echo the way Marie- Thérèse's own hands brush against her face. Her hands are boneless and look like two wings. Since Picasso sometimes associated Marie-Thérèse with doves this is probably intentional and their romantic and peaceful connotations fit well with the atmosphere of this painting.

Raised Image 3
In this drawing the figure is the same. However surrounding her as solid raised blocks is the chair. To the right and below her head is the right angle of the chair back with the upholstery studs. Below the right arm is the continuation of the back and scrolled arm. Between the arm and the thigh on the left is the other scrolled chair arm. End of Raised Image Description

Her rounded body is contrasted with the chair's straight back. Its dark brown wooden frame and hot red upholstery enhances her luminous colour. The scrolled arms of the chair encircle her in an embrace and mirror the shape of her arms.

On the right of the painting, Picasso plays with the resemblance between her bead necklace and the upholstery studs on the back of the chair. He doesn't paint her shoulder, so the necklace hovers in mid air in front of the upholstery. However, in the same way that the studs outline the shape of the chair, the necklace indicates the lie of her shoulder and we read its outline in our minds.

The colours in this painting create an atmosphere of sensuous intimacy. They also held particular meanings for Picasso and reflect his feelings for Marie-Thérèse. Yellow is the colour of sunlight while violet represents the evening. So it is as if she is the sun and the moon to him. Green is for fecundity and red is traditionally the colour of passion. So this painting is a powerful image of love both personal to Picasso and universal. Here he has successfully turned the cool, calculated methods of Synthetic Cubism to an emotionally charged representation of desire.

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