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Francis Picabia The Fig Leaf 1922
Francis Picabia
The Fig Leaf 1922
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002
Household paint on canvas
2000 mm x 1600 mm
The Fig Leaf 1922
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002
Household paint on canvas
2000 mm x 1600 mm
Read transcriptThe Fig Leaf is in fact two works of art painted by Picabia one on top of the other, both vitriolic attacks on the art establishment of 1920s Paris. The bold black and white image of The Fig Leaf is painted in thick layers of oil paint over the raised profile of Hot Eyes (1921), the earlier painting. The many applications of oil paint, rich in medium, have created the extraordinary wrinkling effects which are now so characteristic of this work. Picabia also incorporates numerous tears and damages, merely coating them with a later application of white oil paint, preferring to include them as part of the history of the painting than make them invisible.
Annette King is a Modern and Contemporary Paintings Conservator at Tate. She is currently carrying out research into the Picabia works in the Tate collection and contributing to a research project on Tate's Surrealist paintings.
Detail of Turquoise Paint at the Edge of the Painting
The white paint of The Fig Leaf does not quite extend to the foldover edges of the canvas, and a border of bright turquoise paint remains visible at all the edges. This is possibly the colour of the background to the underlying painting Hot Eyes. At the left of the detail the grey oil ground is visible. To the right there are traces of one of the white layers of The Fig Leaf.
Detail of Green Paint from the Fig Leaf
This is a close up of the paint of the fig leaf itself. The medium rich, green oil paint has wrinkled dramatically when drying and tiny drying cracks have formed on the surface of the wrinkles.
Photo: Tate Photography
Raking Light of The Fig Leaf
This image shows the painting lit from the side, showing the profile of Hot Eyes, the painting beneath the current image. Note the two circles in the upper half of the painting and the curved lines leading down towards a hand beneath the ball, which holds them like a drawing implement. Hot Eyes was partly a linear drawing of what was revealed by "Le Matin" newspaper on 9 November 1921 as an aerial brake turbine which had appeared in a scientific journal in 1920. In raking light you can also see a raised rim of white paint around the black figure and ball, where Picabia painted the white layer up to the edges of the black.