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Art
Stealing beauty
How much did Picasso's paintings borrow from African art? As
a new exhibition places the two side by side, Andrew Meldrum
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finds out

Andrew Meldrum
Wed 15 Mar 2006 10.14 GMT

82

I
n 1907 Pablo Picasso was 26 and had been living in Paris for three years. One of
several promising artists in the French capital, the young Spaniard had already
attracted some attention with his blue monochrome paintings and then the
work of his "rose period". Intense and ambitious, he was searching for a new
source of inspiration, something that would rock the art world and vault him to the
front of the avant garde. He found it in African art.

Picasso was visiting Gertrude Stein at her Paris apartment in the spring of 1907
when Henri Matisse stopped by with an African sculpture he had just purchased.
According to Matisse, the two artists were enthralled by its depiction of a human
figure. Soon afterwards, Picasso went to the Trocadero Museum of Ethnology (now
the Musée de l'Homme) with another artist friend, André Derain. That visit, Picasso
later claimed, was pivotal to his art.

"A smell of mould and neglect caught me by the throat. I was so depressed that I
would have chosen to leave immediately," Picasso said of the museum. "But I forced
myself to stay, to examine these masks, all these objects that people had created
with a sacred, magical purpose, to serve as intermediaries between them and the
unknown, hostile forces surrounding them, attempting in that way to overcome
their fears by giving them colour and form. And then I understood what painting
really meant. It's not an aesthetic process; it's a form of magic that interposes itself
between us and the hostile universe, a means of seizing power by imposing a form
on our terrors as well as on our desires. The day I understood that, I had found my
path."

That path led Picasso to what he called his "periode nègre" (black period) or African
period. It lasted just a couple of years, to 1909 - but it turned Picasso into an avid
collector of African art, masks and sculptures that inspired him for the rest of his
career.

The importance to him of this art is the focus of Picasso and Africa, a
groundbreaking show now drawing sell-out crowds in Johannesburg, and soon to
transfer to Cape Town. Jointly curated by the Musée Picasso in Paris and the Iziko
South African National Gallery, it brings together 84 works by Picasso with 29
African pieces similar to the 100 or so he collected, giving the viewer a chance to see
at first hand the crucial links between African art and Picasso's creations.

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According to Laurence Madeline, curator of the Musée Picasso: "This is the first
show anywhere in the world to focus on the African influence on Picasso's work."
The exhibition has been arranged to show the close relationship between the two,
particularly in his studies and drawings. The African masks and sculptures are
grouped together in the centre of the gallery, surrounded by Picassos. One's eye is
drawn from one to the other, and the parallels are evident. Faces are symbols. Eyes,
mouths, noses and genitals are placed for impact, not naturalistic representation.
Human figures are flat planes and geometric shapes.

The Picassos are shown chronologically, beginning with studies the artist did for the
1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. It's here that African influences emerge
for the first time, as two of the painting's five female figures have faces like
fearsome, warlike African masks. "Picasso created something so ugly that it startled
people, frightened them," says Madeline. "He got that from African art - it was a
different way of looking at the power of art, and that set his art free."

Although Matisse, Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Braque were all
attracted to African art, the exhibition's curators argue that it was only Picasso who
transcended the influence to create something unique and new. "Picasso never
copied African art, which is why this show does not match a specific African work
with a Picasso," says Marilyn Martin, curator of the Iziko South African National
Gallery. "He took its point of view to express his own art. In his drawings we can see
three sketched antelopes which come very close to the Bambara sculptures of
antelopes. But then he creates a metamorphosis in which he creates something
phenomenal and new."

The paintings collected here illustrate how Picasso progressed from using various
African techniques, such as reversing concave and convex lines in a face or figure, to
a reduction of figures to geometric shapes that led directly to cubism. Then there is
the white sculpture Head of a Woman (1929-30), which provides one of the most
arresting links with African art. It is similar in scale and construction to the guardian
figures from Gabon, which he collected, in which abstract head figures perch on leg-
like pedestals. It also borrowed the African idea of employing ordinary objects to
make sculptures; here, Picasso used colanders and springs to fashion a head.

Martin points out that, towards the end of his life, Picasso surrounded himself with
African works in his studio. He never stopped being inspired by them: a year before
he died in 1973, Picasso produced Musician, an oil painting with a fierce face that
packs a powerful graphic punch, much like the African Grebo masks he owned.

And yet, little attention was paid to his collection after his death. A photograph in
the exhibition catalogue shows the works pushed together in the corner of a
warehouse. Although the collection was dispersed, the Musée Picasso managed to
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retrieve more than 20 pieces from it; sadly, they were too fragile to travel, so the
curators assembled comparable African works from several South African
collections for the show.

Exhibiting these works alongside the Picassos, says Martin, affords them a status
previously denied - indeed, she says, with this show, the "unknown artists who
made the masks and sculptures are validated". It's this that gallery-goers seem to be
responding to with most enthusiasm.

"All South Africans need to see this show," said one visitor, Mothibedi Lecage. "They
will see how others are inspired by our culture. We copy European or American
culture too much." Another, Johan van Zyl, agreed: "It's eye-opening to see how the
leading artist of the past century was influenced by African art." He plans to return
with students from his design class.

This, too, is important, says Martin, who hopes that the show will inspire new art. In
Johannesburg, the gallery's parking garage has already been enlivened with Picasso-
inspired wall paintings by young black artists. In Cape Town artists have been
invited to make works inspired by Picasso for an exhibition to be held in September.
"To show our young, developing art students these magnificent Picassos and for
them to see how he was influenced by African art - that is what is most exciting
about this show," says Martin. "Picasso was inspired by African art and now African
artists will be inspired by Picasso. It is full circle"

· Picasso and Africa is at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, until March 25,
then at the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, from April 13 until May
20

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Pablo Picasso / features

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