I n n u u \.:I" ~ .o:tC. r - " . r ..- . .. r'O.
_ _
H A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
IN THEORY
WITH A MODEL OR WITHOUT
D uring the last two decades of his life, starting in 1953 when abstract expres~
sionism had clearly emerged as the leading force in modern art, the aging
Picasso did a surprising thing: he returned to the model. At least, it appeared
that way in the many drawings, prints, and paintings he created during this pe-
riod on the theme of the artist and his model. This apparent return to the model,
at a time when the artist had grown old, must have seemed all the more surprising
since, according to Gertrude Stein, it was Picasso who earlier in the century had
made the crucial break from the model and thus opened the way for abstraction.
In the nineteenth century painters discovered the need of always having a
model in front of them, in the twentieth century they discovered that they
must never look at a model. I remember very well, it was between 1904-
1908, when people were forced by us or by themselves to look at Picasso's
drawings that the first and most astonishing thing that all of them and that
we had to say was that he had done it all so marvelously as if he had had a
model but that he had done it without ever having had one. And now the
young painters scarcely know that there are models. Everything changes
but not without a reason.'
When we look at the late work and see that Picasso has once again problematized
the relation of the artist to his model, we realize that everything does indeed
change, even the reasoning that equates "a return to the model with a return to
the pasto But why would Picasso, whose name had virtually become synony-
mous with modernity, deliberately choose to revive a subject that had beco me
an anachronism? Had the aging artist turned reactionary? Or might his treatment
of the theme of the artist and model be more subversive than anyone has yet
suspected?
Despite Picasso's early advancement of abstraction during his cubist period,
he was never to forsake the subjectj- he would merely displace it, shifting the
model from a perceptual to a more overtly conceptual plane. In creating the artist
and model scenes of the late period, Picasso never actually worked from a live
model anymore than he had worked from one in the early drawings to which
Gertrude Stein alludes. The model plays an active role only in his subject matter,
not in his working method.> Thus, in his actual studio practice, Picasso managed
to bypass the very issue of imitation or specific reference that seems so central to
the narrative of his artist and model theme. Any effort to trace his pictured model
as a referent to someone real collapses in on itself; she "exists" only as a repre-
sentation of an abstract idea.:' Any effort to trace Picasso's "return" to the model
threatens to collapse in on itself as well, for in his late works the theme of the
artist and model deconstructs into a reflexive analysisof the creative act itself: it
becomes a representation of representation.
In his nearly obsessive attempt to exhaust all the possible variations on the
artist and model theme, the aging Picasso seems like a modern day Penelope,
undoing in his late style what he had in his youth so effectively wrought, what
indeed had come to be considered the very basis of the modernist advancement:
that of the ascendancy of form over contento And yet, if Picasso's much earlier
cubist period reveled that form has a content in and o~ later artist
and model works actually continue the cubist project more than they con~~~t
it, for they show us the flip side of this same issue: that is, that content ha~~s
own form or structural dimension. "The characters are types of discourse," Ro-
land Barthes has pointed out in another context, "and, conversely, the discourse
is a character like the others." 5 As a discursive practice, Picasso's figurative use
of the artist and model in his late period can hardly be termed reactionary or retro-
gressive, a return to the outmoded mimetic conventions that Stein equates with
a nineteenth-century menrality. On the contrary, Picasso's renewal of the artist
and model therne proves to be revisionist in the self-reflexive sense that is so
characteristic of the twentierh century; Picasso is, in effect, making art about art.
Gertrude Stein's statement, therefore, calls for a revisionist reading in itself.
The strategy of her own writing offers the key to what she saw as the significant
break between nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. Again and again in her
writing, Stein stages the same "primal scene": that of the break between sign and
CHAPTER ONE
4. Pablo Pica~
Gertrude Stei
referent, with its consequent foregrounding of form over content, surface over
Copyright 19'
depth. Characteristic of her writing is a prose style that commences simply
SPADEM. Ti
enough but compoundingly entangles itself into syntactic knots. Complex sen- Museum of A
tence structures amass from the buildup of sim ple clauses that continually pivot Gertrude Steii
off one another, tightly interweaving the surface of her prose. In the seesawing
Ali rights rese
push and pull of her phrasing, Stein resists any straightforward convergence on
Metropolitan
her subject; rather, she circumvents it by the artful maneuverings of a dialectic
that continually eclipses itself,
In the passage I quoted at the offset, the binary opposition Stein puts into
play is actually rooted in a traditional dichotomy: that of the classical distinction
between perception and conceptual thought. The nineteenth-century artist's so-
called dependence on working directly from the model ascribes to his art a de-
pendence on the phenomenal world, on raw sensory matter, and on perception
as the artist's mo de of apprehending nature, that is, reality. The twentieth-
century artist, who in Stein's portrayal shuns his model and shuts his eyes to all
external references, declares instead art's ontological independence Irom direct
sensory experience of the empirical world. This discovery of freedom from the
model, in other words, art's freedom from mimesis, claims new boundaries for
art inscribed within the intellect. If we are to follow Stein's line of reasoning,
nothing less than a complete shift from observation to cognition, from sight to
insight, from trompe-l'oeil to trompe-l'esprit is to be implied by the shift in the
relation of the artist to his model at the juncture of the nineteenth and rwentieth
centuries.
In Stein's view, nothing marked this shift more graphically than the portrait
of her Picasso began in 1905 (see figo 4). Indeed, Stein goes so far as to imply
that it was in painting her portrait that Picasso grew up and became a mano

The first picture we had of his is, if you like, rose or harlequin, it is The
Young Girl with a Basket of Flowers, it was painted at the great moment
of the harlequin period, full of grace and delicacy and charm. After that
little by little his drawing hardened, his line became firmer, his color more
vigorous, naturally he was no longer a boy he was a man, and then in
1905 he painted my portrait."
According to Stein's account, she posed for Picasso some eighty times until he
claimed he could not look at her anymore. He then painted out the head and left
town, returning to Spain, to the village of Gosol, to be exact, where his work
began to show the influence of prirnitive Iberian sculpture. When he carne back
to Paris after a period of some months in Spain, Picasso immediately resumed
work on Stein's portrait, painting in the head before even seeing her again, finish-
ing the portrait, thus, without the further use of his model.
Stein never felt sidestepped by this decisive move on Picasso's part. Her own
reactio!1 to her portrait clearly indicates how closely she identified with the im-
CHAPTER ONE
age: " ... for me, ir is I, and it is the only reproduction oF me which is always I,
for me." 8 What Stein articulates in this shifting back and forth between personal
pronouns-from the objective case, "me," to the nominative case, "I," and to
the third person "it"-is an agreemem between object, subject, and the "it"-
the only "it" -that can stand for either. One can only condude that a conven.
tional mimetic likeness would be too one-sided and fixed to ever characterize the
whole person; more "true" to character in Stein's opinion was Picasso's ab-
stracted portrayal of her. It is as if by abandoning the model he had found some-
thing more essential.
The resulting portrait, appropriately enough, could almost be termed schizo-
phrenic in style. Picasso registers his break with the mo del by literally doing an
abrupt about-face in matters of style and pictorial convention, To emphasize the
imposing presence of Gertrude Stein, he broadly blocks out the massive form of
her body in dark tonalities that provide a sense of weightiness, a sense of mag-
nitude. By eliminating all unnecessary details, he makes the dark overcoat that
drapes her body register more as a solid expanse, contributing to the density of
her formo Her bulky, darkly covered frame also has the effect of setting off her
face and hands more praminently, which further adds to the forcefulness she
commands as she seems to lean intently forward out of her chair. And yet, the
brushwork in the background, especially in the faint suggestion of the brocaded
cushion behind her head, is more subtle and delicate in touch, like a last, linger-
ing gesture of the Rose period fading fram view. The contrast between this paint-
erly passage and the blocky, massive figure in the foreground is wrenching, but
by far the most startling contrast results Irom the metamorphosis undergone by
the face. In repainting the head, Picasso stylized the features, most notably the
eyes, which end up resembling the lozenge-shaped eyes that characterize Iberian
sculpture. Unlike the volumetric bulk of the body below, the flattened plane of
the face looms forward like a mask. Stylistically, thus, there is a schism berween
the abstract schematization of the face and the plastic ilIusionism of her support-
ing frame, a schism that metaphoricalIy alIudes to a separation of mind and body,
a separation, in other words, of concept and percept.
This binary opposition that polarizes ilIusionism Irom abstraction is predi-
cated on a privileging of concept over percept and it underscores not only
Gertrude Stein's thinking at the turn of the century, but that of many of her
contemporaries, as well. The vast majority of criticism contemporaneous with
the emergence of cubism in the first two decades of the twentieth century reflects
a corresponding schism, which in large part is nothing more than a carryover of
nineteenth-century philosophical idealismo Central to this theoretical construct
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
is Kant's eighteenth-century epistemological schema, which divides human
knowledge along a similarly aligned dual axis: that which is derived directly
through the senses, constituting our knowledge of the phenomenal world, and
rhat which can only be apprehended through pure reason, thraugh the rational
process of making judgments, this being our only possible means of inquiry imo
the true essence behind appearances, imo the true nature of a noumenal reality
rhat can never be known directly.
Clearly, a hierarchy is implied by Kant's categorical system; knowledge of the
phenomenal world is not assigned the same truth value as knowledge of nou-
menal reality. The senses are thereby held suspect, being considered ephemeral
and fleeting, and even falsely misleading at times. This same prejudice against
perception is echoed in the early cubist criticism, as well.
... we know that nothing is so false as sense-data-alI the philosophers
have demonstrated this .... Therefore they [the Cubists] no longer imi-
tate the misleading appearances of vision, but the truer ones of the mind.
It would be pointless to quote many references on this subject, but let us
remember that Pheidias, according to Cicera, did not look for his models
among men but in his mind-'in ipsius mente.' And again, Bossuet said: 'I
cannot see a chiliagon, but I can conceive it perfectly welI' ... 9
The ruling preoccupation of the [Cubist] artists is with cutting into the
/ essential TRUTH of the thing they wish to represeRt~~e
external and passing aspect of this truth . . . AlI their works should carry,
as their motto, a phrase of Rmy de Gourmont's: 'Everything that I think
is real. The only reality is thought. The outside is relative. Everything is
transitory except thought.'!?
This privileging of concept over percept was not limited solely to the critical
discourse; many artists used the same rhetoric. But no one made the point more
succinctly than Picasso's dose friend, the painter Georges Braque, when he de-
clared, "The senses deform, the mind forms. Work to perfect the mind, There is
no certaimy except in what the mind conceives." II
Probably the most consistem and thorough praponent of a Kantian aesthetic
among the early critics of cubism was Maurice Raynal. The title of an article he
/
wr?te in 1912, "Conception and Vision," dearly echoes Kant's dialectic. Raynal
qUlckly establishes his point of view in the opening sentence: "The need to depict
/
/
wh~t one sees is an instinct and, in consequence, the antithesis of the higher
as .
plratlons of the mind." He goes on to say,
/
 CHAPTER ONE
Painting based solely on external perceptions is, therefore clearly inade-
quate. If art is required to be not merely a means of flattering the mind
and senses but more the means of augmenting knowledge, its function will
only be served by painting forms as they are conceived in the mind . . . In
painting, if one wishes to approach truth, one must concentrate only on
the conceptions of the objects, for these alone are created without the aid
of those inexhaustible sources of erro r, the senses. 12
Raynal concludes by directly quoting Kant. In a later article of 1919 that folIows
the same line of reasoning, he again bases his argument on a Kantian logic:
Education and traditional doctrine have taught us, in fact, that it is not
possible to assign an absolute value to the injunctions of the senses. Ever
since Antiquity, philosophy has taught us this, and with the best will in
the world modern philosophy cannot prove the contrary. "The truth is
not in our senses," said Malebranche, "but in the mind," and Helmholtz-
and indeed Bossuet before him-showed that the senses tell us nothing
but their own sensations. Finally, Kant said very rightly that "the senses
give us simply and solely the matter of knowledge, while on the contrary
the understanding gives us its form." ... We can thus agree with Plato
that "the senses perceive only that which passes, the understanding that
which endures."1J
The rhetoric of early cubist criticism is quite clear-cut, thus, in the division it
draws between perception and conception and in the corresponding distinction
in value that can be inferred from that division. But how accurate is the criticism?
Do the images themselves reflect the same bias, the same dialectical tension? ls
the line drawn between percept and concept as clearly defined in the paintings as
in the criticism? To test the theory against the visual evidence, it is necessary at
this point to turn to the images themselves. A survey of cubist paintings, how-
ever, even if selective, would take us too far from our theme of the artist and
model without bringing us close enough to the more subtle complexities of the
interplay between percept and concept. lnstead, 1 want to focus on a single com-
parison that will be explored in some depth so that the theory extracted wiU
come from a close reading of the images themselves. The unlikely pairing consists
of Alfred Stevens's The Studio of 1869, which will serve as a paradigm of the
nineteenth-century mimetic ideal, and Picasso's 1928 version of the same subject,
which draws heavily upon the abstract vocabulary of synthetic cubism. What
unfolds in the exchange is a dialectic waged less in the tensions between the
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
nineteenth-century image and its twentieth-century counterpart than in the ten-
sions locked within each image, within the formal relations that keep perception
and conception in continual interplay.
THE POSING OF A STUDIO PROBLEM
Alfred Stevens, The Studio, 1869
Fixing his eyes on the canvas before him, the painter sits with his back turned
away from the open window directly overhead (see figo 5). Sunlight floods in and
illuminates his figure from behind, projecting a halo effect of humble, natural
origino This is, however, as far as nature will reach within the interior confines
of the painter's studio; artifice then takes over, keeping the outside world at a
distance, bracketed off by a window frame as if this view into "nature" were
nothing other than another landscape painting hung on the wall. Though the
painter within the picture looks only at the canvas before him, his limited focus
is eclipsed by the more encompassing field of vision projected by the painter
from without, whose eye not only takes in the painted painter gazing at his
canvas, but so much more besides: the model who bends down to adjust the
flowing train of her elegant gown, the sumptuous period furniture that decorates
the roam in high style, the diverse colIection of paintings that cover the walls,
down to the clock that even documents the time of -~-ten minutes.after five,
to be exact. The visual spectacle offered to the viewer is almost more tha~ny
one eye can absorb as a whole. As if to temper somewhat the painter's pictorial
extravag.ance, one's tendency is to view the scene one detail at a time, an almost
endless procedure considering the wealth of detail on display within this intimare
COmer of a studio.
Even the picture within the picture is minutely detailed. 1 refer here not to
~he canvas placed on the easel; only the painter within the picture is privy to its
irnage due to the profiled angle of its placement. Directly behind the easel, how-
ev~r, hangs a prominent painting of a landscape, its image cut off in part by the
pamter's canvas, which eclipses our view. It appears almost as if the one canvas
extends directly out of the other, as if the two pictures were actualIy one in the
same, or joined somehow, intersecting at right angles. This coupling of the two
canvases implies a bond between their two painters, as welI. The winter land-
s~ape which hangs on the wall is rendered in sufficient detail, despire its crop-
pmg, to be clearly identified as The Census Taking at Bethlehem of 1566 by the
Flemish rnaster Pieter Bruegel, whose renown had only recentlybeen revived
 THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME

as Bruegel's rightful artistic heir. ln effect, the Belgian-born Stevens was attempt-
ing nothing less than to designate an honored place for himself within his native
northern tradition.
The strategic placement of the model helps to further strengthen this associa-
tion. Posed opposite the Bruegel painting, she partially blocks our vision of the
canvas on the easel situated directly behind her. For the moment, at least, she
stands just outside the painter's view. We see her, in effect, before he does, while
she is still adjusting her pose, still waiting to be seen, like any other artifact
decorating the luxurious chamber. Ever so elegantly, her head extends forward
so that her idyllic profile is silhouetted against the dark tonalities of the Bruegel
painting. The graceful sweep of her body, however, aligns itself with the painter's
canvas on the easeI. Thus paired with both paintings, she is caught up within
their fold, a liaison linking the past to the present. By extending the sloping line
of her inclined head upwards to the left, a diagonal alignment can also be traced
between the model and the open window. This connection is further reinforced
by the brilliant radiance of her golden gown, which rivals the natural sunlight let
in through the unshuttered window directly opposite. Prominently placed as she
is, the model seems to outshine all else, virtually glowing amidst the deeper,
darker tonalities of the studio, which, like the Bruegel painting, set her off to
effect. Flanked on each side by an alternating play of complementary colors-the
red sofa to the left and the green silk chair to the right, the bright green foliage
peeking through the open window in the upper left and the su~ea-red wall til e
above the chair on the right-the model, wirh her golden. aura, modulates be-
tween these two contraries, neutralizing any discord, striking the keynote that
makes the colo r harmonics fall into place. For the viewer, she is perhaps the
primary focal point; yet, for the painter within the picture, she remains some-
what displaced, outside the direct line of his vision.
The brushes clutched in one hand by the painter lead us in the direction of
his gaze. We can follow their trajectory, but we cannot share his vision; we can-
not see around the canvas edge to the image on the other side. The painter's point
of view, thus, excludes our own: he sees only the image on his canvas, which is
the one thing that we cannot see at all. No viewer looking in from outside will
e:er be able to see the image seen by the painter fram within the picture. For the
Vlewer, the image on the painter's canvas will always remain a blind spot.
after years of neglect. By placing this painted reference to Bruegel in close prox- For a painting with a "realistic" style that seems to suggest a primary reliance
imity to his own self-portrait, Stevens was trying to establish a link to the past; on p~rception, on the artist's eye, vision is thus surprisingly cornered at every /
in the spatial contiguity, we are to read a temporal continuity, as welI. Through turn 10 this composition: we behold the outside world of nature the painter does
the close bond he constructs by means of this metonymy, Stevens posits himself nor see' he vi
views t h e pamtmg
.. t h at we cannot o b serve; t hee pamter
oainter' s canvas bl oc k s
CHAPTER ONE

the Bruegel painting from full view; the model, in turn, partially obscures both
the canvas on the easel and the framed painting hung behind it; neither the artist
nor his model make direct eye contact with the viewer or each other ; the painter's
face is cIouded over in shadow, his gaze tumed away from the model; her face,
by contrast, is highly illuminated, but her eyelid is lowered, her gaze downcast.
Spotlit, thus, at the very center of this visual spectacle is the model's nearly closed
eye-an image of vision tuming in on itself. It seems almost a contradiction in
terms, but this highly mimetic image, which appears to mirror reality so directly,
reflecting a faithful, unmediated observation so convincingly, is, on closer in-
spection, highly composed and mannered in its alignments, in its colo r relation-
ships, and in its metonymic pairings. Not only the placement of the model, but
the cornposition as a whole has been carefully calculated. One shuttered window
may open up, but the scene of the painter's studio will remain sealed off within
its own formal tensions; illusionism, it would seem, is always framed by artifice.

Pablo Picasso, The Studio, 1928

Seated before his canvas, the painter raises his brush to outline a face on its
surface (see figo 6). The image that emerges takes on the form of a classical pro-
file, which then looks back on its creator. Brought face to face, image and artist
are seen to be opposites: the elegantly rendered profile is highly articulated by a
smoothly flowing, well-defined contour; the painter's configuration, by con-
trast, cannot be deciphered with comparable ease. The curvature of his head is
sharply edged, gouged out at the crown and split down the center by a pointed
arrow shaft. Lined up, one on top of the other, are his features: two eyes, each
staring straight ahead, above a gaping orifice, menacingly flanked on either side
by a set of needlelike "teeth" or prickly hairs.!' The organic inflection of rhe
malleable line that "curves" out the silhouette on canvas is rigidly redirected in
the assembly of the painter's rectilinear body parts. Rodlike and taut, his figure painter directly opposite, especially in the vertical alignment of her eyes, one 6~ablo I

is scaffolded like an easel, intersecting the canvas at oblique angles; in fact, it a.bove the other above yet another-a total of three eyes altogether. Her body, Mo~el. P.

becomes highly problematic at some points to determine just where the painter
ends and the painting begins. Despire their apparent contrary natures, image and
artist intermingle identities in the ambiguous spatial network that fuses and con-
fuses the painter with his canvas.
like that of the painter's, also proves difficult to "read": are we mea~t to see her canys, .5
as a s~atue-bust, or as a Iull-length figure? Picasso's skeletal notation suggests Collrtlo
~oth lllterpretations, y~t supports neither definitively, Outlined in black on. a ~otern,
ectangular field of white, framed by a gray strip to the left and a black margm Sid eyal

The mo dei is detached somewhat from this conjunction of the painter and his to the right, the figure of the model is again analogous to the image on the )lectiC
canvas, yet she can be related to each individually. Shown in profile, she is mir- ~anvas, in which the profiled face is aiso outlined in black against a white ground. S, N.

rored in pose by the silhouetted face on canvas; in her angular, sharply incised Sch~matical1y conceived as a two-dimensional design, the model is explicitly lin-
configuration, however, she resembles more closely the hard-edged vis age of the ear III nature with no softly modulated chiaroscuro or shading of any kind to
CHAPTER ONE
round out her formo Her curving frame resembles a twisted, misshapen coat
hanger more than the contrapposto of a fully embodied figure in space. Para-
doxically, the image pictured on the canvas appears to have more plasticity and
dimension than does its implied referent, the model, who is posed outside the
pictorial plane of the sign-image in that supposed three-dimensional realm that
lies on the other side of the canvas divide.
At no point, however, within the canvas image or without, does the spatial
field open up to a depth perspective; all spatial extensions dead-end on the sur-
face, interlocking with the flat picture plane in a coordinated systern of align-
ments and overlays. The painter's canvas, for instance, lines up on the left with
the window ledge directly behind it. Window and canvas coalesce even more
closely in the continuous expanse of blue sky, seen through both the window
and the transparent canvas surface. Trying to determine the distance and differ-
ence between window and canvas, thus, is like trying to sort one's way through
an inextricable maze.
Adding to the confusion is the intervening presence of the painter, who be-
comes literally entangled in his work. The large curving palette he extends for-
ward like an erect phallus is linked by proximity and form to the other
organicalIy shaped objects pictured on canvas: the profiled face, with its pliable
contour, and the circular fruit-Iorm, dotted in the center, thereby doubling as a
breast, as well. Spatial articulation is complicated, thus, by at least three strate-
gies that undermine a reading of depth: the alignments of disparate planes, the
interfacing of superimposed planes, and the synthetic fusing of shared shapes
and formal affinities dispersed between planes. The spatial field evolves as the
spatial envelope devolves. Any illusionistic projection that could possibly evoke
depth flattens into a rich mosaic patterning that subdivides the surface, trans-
forming the picture plane into a colorful grid network, as if a Mondrian had been
crossed with a Matisse. The flat, floral design of the painter's curving chair makes
a direct reference, in fact, to the ornamental motifs characteristic of Matisse.
Edged by a row of fringe, the chair becomes a composite of swerving arabesques
and strictly ordered symmetries. The organic, the decorative, and the geomet-
ric-three diverse discourses of pictorial style ranging from the naturalistic to
the abstract-are all interwoven within the complex spatial syntax of this plural-
ist "text" that reads like a catalog of the various modes of representation.
In the "background," just to the left of the painter's centered canvas, Picasso
has inserted another picture within the picture. An oblong rectangular field with
no distinct image, this framed "picture" suggests another possible reading: that
of a mirror. A parallel in both a literal and figurative sense to the window/canvas
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
analogy formulated by the central conjunction of the painter's canvas and the
window situated directly behind it, the framed picture/mirror pairing similarly
brings into play a traditional metaphoric alIusion. The picture as a mirror reflec-
tion, like the picture as a window view, has a long-standing history within artistic
representation, but in Picasso's schematic diagram, where sign and referent do
not match up, the metaphor is subverted. In the slippage between the model and
the image on the canvas, the picture no longer functions as a mirror held up to
reality. Instead, it only mirrors its own system of representation, as the image
becomes more self-reflexive than reflective.
For a painting with an "abstract" style that seems to suggest a primary reli-
ance on conception rather than perception, on the artist's mind rather than his
eye, vision plays a surprisingly pivotal role in Picasso's composition. In Stevens's
more "realistic" version of the subject, the model's eye is centered in the com-
position, but her lid is lowered, her gaze downcast; Picasso's model, by con-
trast, is pictured with three eyes, all open and staring outward, directly at the
viewer. In the very center of the composition, inside the picture within the pie-
ture, Picasso has positioned the schematized fruit/breast symbol.!' This dotted
circle can also be read as an additional eye, which has been targeted for our gaze,
like a bull's eye. It may be disembodied, but it is not displaced, for as the nucleus
of the composition, the eye is posited as the source or focal point for alI else.
Like Czanne's pivotal apple, it is the keystone of the composition, the starting
point and the endpoint of the pictorial labyrinth. Though a mimetic reflection
does not characterize Picasso's point of view in this painting, theact of seeing
does constitute, his primary focus. ~
Within this patchwork assemblage of styles, what.Picasso makes visible iS't~
closed-circuit play of representation. From the abstract head of the model to the
realistic profile on canvas, the image remains inscribed within the codes of rep-
resentarion, no one style privileged over any other. Linked by the compositional
grid network, the mimetic ideal and the three-eyed abstract mo de! become two
points on the same continuum; perched somewhere in between is the painter,
the curved back of his chair doubling as a curled corkscrew tail in a visual
pun-the abstract artist turned into an ape of nature.
If Stevens's "naturalism" is actualIy a painting of facades, masking a highly
contrived artifice, then Picasso's abstraction offers us the image in reverse: an
unmasking of pictorial strategies ranging from the mimetic to the abstract. As
wirh most opposites, the two images ultimately mirror each other more than
they cancel each other out. In both we see how the percept is implicated in the /
concept, and conversely, how the concept is implicated in the percept." After
CHAPTER ONE
examining the images, it thus becomes clear that one cannot dissociate percept
from concept in strictly either/or terms, though much of the early cubist criti-
cism was predicated on making just such a distinction. The images, as we have
seen, tell a different story. Rather than choosing sides on the issue, Picasso
chooses to focus on the dialectical play between percept and concept. This be-
comes his true subject as he uses the setting of the artist's studio to survey the
field of representation that opens up between painter and model.
THE ARTIST PICTUREO FROM
WITHIN ANO WITHOUT
Inevitably, the therne of the artist and model doubles over upon itself and be-
comes the object of its own narrative. Inherent to any representation of artist
and model is a self-reflexive questioning into the nature of representation itself.
Consider how the scenario unfolds: an artist is shown in the act of representing
a model; meanwhile, an artist not shown directly is nonetheless as transparently
engaged in an act of representation, for the artist who is shown representing is
himself the representation of this other artist, who in turn is "shown" (in the
sense of being revealed) through his own action of representing an artist who is
representing. And, thus, the plor thickens. The artist not pictured directly can-
not help but implicate himself in the circuitous play of his own artifice whenever
he stages the artist and model as his subject. This is because the act of represem-
ing representation always winds up following the same plot line: that of the mise-
en-abyme. The pictured act of representation is always embedded in another act
of representation, the stated subject being underscored by the actual praxis.
Thus, the act of representation becomes the object of the action of representing
in a dual declension; representation thereby functions as both direct object and
transitive verb on twin relational axes that meet at right angles. If Michel Fou-
cault is correct in assessing that "representation in its peculiar essence is always
perpendicular to itself," 17 then any representation that explicitly thematizes the
act of representation is self-referential twice over, the act of representation play-
ing a dual rale as both signified and signifier. Situated at the poim of intersection
between these two coordinates is the image, precariously balanced between the
framed figuration and the enframing metafiguration. Caught within this system
of crass-reference, the artist pictured within and the artist picturing fram with-
out mirror each other directly and obliquely, bound as they are in a reciprocal
exchange by a representational act that folds in on itself while paradoxically du-
plicating its processo .
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
One should not infer, however, that the self-reflexivity inherent to the artist
and model therne must then take the form of self-portraiture. The artist pictured
within is not necessari1y a direct transcription of the artist picturing fram with-
out. Few of the diverse painters depicted in Picasso's late representations of the
rherne can be properly designated as self-portraits, if by that we mean to imply
a deliberare, literal presentation of the self as subject. And yet, all of Picasso's
fictitious painters do emerge as personas of their maker insofar as aU portrayals
of artists by artists must necessari1y reflect a dimension of self-portrayal, a self-
conscious probing, in other words, of what it means to be an artist. Should we
then conclude that the artist pictured within and the artist picturing from with-
out are one in the same? Can the creator's identity ever be neatly folded imo that
of his creation without some slippage occurring?
It can be argued that all fiction (and poetry and philosophy and painting)
ultimately constitutes autobiography, the artist inventing whatever the
purported aim of his creation, only a series of metaphors for the self.
Conversely, one can maintain that all autobiography is fiction, the imposi-
tion of form and the discovery of meaning automatically converting life
imo its imitation.18
The difficulties of separating the man from his mask, the maker from.his meta-
phorical construct, or the autobiographical from the y-GtOnal are compounded
all the more whenever an artist chooses an artist as his subject.
Picasso, however, is far less concerned with matters of pinpointing any indi-
vidual's particular physiognomy or personality than he is with transposing the \
figure of the artist imo a type or stock character, one whom Picasso himself
would often refer to fondly as that "poor chap" 19 or the "Little Man." 20 Subject
to Picasso's satiric blend of humor and homage, the "Little Man" is an ambivalent
character, part buffoon and part hero, not unlike Charlie Chaplin's "Little
Tramp." Picasso gives us a better understanding of who the "Little Man" is by
telling us who he is not: he is not just another professional painter, that all-too-
common type of artist Picasso clearly did not respect.
There have always been Little Men who wanted to sculpt in their own
way, and no other. People cut them down. But they grew again. Like a
woman's love for children. Later on, there were professional painters who /
made paimings, professional sculptors who made sculptures. Luckily, all
their works haven't survived; they would have reached the moon! They
were always easy to make out, unfortunately. If they hadn't been, maybe
CHAPTER ONE

they would have been better. ... But, no, really-hideous! Disgusting.
And then, from time to time-but without fail-there carne a Little Man.
Sometimes a tramp. Sometimes a rich mano Respected. A friend of the
king's: Velsquez, Rubens. After them, Rembrandt Rich or poor, but
always a little mad, right? There were no women Do you know what
I sometimes think? It amuses me: I'm superstitious. I think that each one
is always the same Little Man. Ever since the cave paintings. He keeps
returning, like the Wandering Jew .... Painters are necessarily reincar-
nated as painters.

Whether or not Picasso believed that he himself was this "Little Man" is a ques-
tion that even Picasso could not, or would not, answer with certainty.

On the other hand, there are all the images that people concoct. Piles of
them! Huge piles of them! Even huger piles of them! ... On the other
hand, there is the Little Man. All alone. He watehes the prafessional
painters, He waits until they've finished. But they never finish. 50 he
makes a comeback. He returns. He returns again. Maybe it's me-how
do we know? He loves bullfights, naturally .... 21

Perhaps Picasso saw himself as playing both parts: that of the prolific profes-
sional painter ever in danger of copying himself and that of the "Little Man"
who, from time to time, makes a comeback.
At his own suggestion and under his own direction, Picasso once playfully
posed as the prafessional painter for a photograph taken by Brassa (see figo 7).
Holding a palette in one hand and raising a brush in the other, his little finger
poised and elevated in an affected gesture, Picasso struck a calculated, satiric
pose, exaggerating the clich mannerisms associated with the professional "ar-
trava] 01 the professional painter 'o be ironic: B";':'
called i, a "caCatU~.
addmg how hard they all laughed "at the attitudes he [PlcassoJ struck m the ~rti~
B,

tiste." 5erving as the painter's canvas was a rather large, imposing painting that
Picasso had procured fram an antiques dealer. Academic in style, the subject of
the painting was a voluptuous nude conventionally posed in a recumbent posi-
tion, her arms folded overhead and her torso twisted forward to more prorni-
nently display her body. At Picasso's urging, the actor Jean Marais played the role
of the artist's model by duplicating as best he could the seductive pose of the
painted nude. According to Brassa's account, zz this staged farce proved all the
more amusing precisely because Picasso, like Marais, was playing against type.
As was well known to all who were in attendance that day, it was not Picasso's
practice to use either a model or a palette; nor was he in the practice of painting
canvases in so conventional a manner. Clearly, then, Picasso intended this por-
atternpr to imitate the artist in his studio." ~~
By playing the part of the professional painter in such an overstated manner, Phof
what Picasso was actually attempting to emphasize was his own distance from COPJ
any such affectations. Brassa makes it quite clear that Picasso wanted to disso- 1991.
ciate himself eompletely from the so-called professional painters.
The 'professional artist!' It often seems that nothing gives him [PieassoJ
greater pleasure than holding this coneept up to ridicule. He lets himself
go eompletely. His voice becomes mocking, his laughter almost shrill.
There is nothing he abhors so mueh as the 'artistic' attitude toward life, /
toward people and things. In his effort to communieate with reality-with
CHAPTER ONE
alI reality, the truest and most immediate, the most ordinary and the least
picturesque-the 'artistic' point of view seems a poor and shabby thing.
How many times have I heard him say: 'I do what I can do ... Iam not a
professional artist .. .'; as if he were claiming innocence of a slander. 23
In a similar vein, Picasso was fond of exclaiming, "What a pity that one's not a
painter!" 24
From Brassa's remarks, we can infer that the professional painter signified
for Picasso not only a lack of originality and an art bound by convention, but a
certain fraudulence and affected artfice as well. "Enough of Art. It's Art that
kills uso People no longer want to do painting: they make Art .... But the less
Art there is in painting the more painting there iS."25The professional painter,
in Picasso's estimation, is the person who turns out "Art" rather than true paint-
ing. Looked upon in this disparaging way, the image of the professional painter
seems as much a pose as any of those adopted by the model. As a counterpart to
the professional painter, Picasso posits the "Little Man" who has no talent for
making Art.
Sometimes, looking in the window of a galIery at paintings of sunsets,
moonlight scenes, little cows or clumps of trees reflected in the mirror of a
lake, Picasso will exclaim: "How it would amuse me to paint like that!
You can't imagine how much it would amuse me! ... Ah! if one were
only a painter .. ." 26
But if one is Picasso, we are to infer, then one can never be "only a painter."
Picasso's lament, mocking though it may welI be, is his way of linking himself to
the "Little Man" instead of to the professional painter.
Though Picasso clearly designates artists as falIing into one camp or the other
within the sharply divided terms of his rhetoric, it is not readily apparent how one
is to distinguish between the professional painter and the "Little Man" within
Picasso's representations of the artist. Ambivalent in terms of self-reference, the
artists Picasso depicts appear equally ambivalent in terms of type: some are old,
balding, myopic, or literally diminutive, often dressed as clowns or court cava-
liers, ranging in pose from the pretentious to the pathetic, while others reflecr
some degree of idealization in terms of countenance, demeanor, or power over
the model or over an audience of onlookers. Are they all to be viewed as facets
of Picasso's allegorical construct, the "Little Man," or might not a few (perhaps
more than a few) professional painters rank among their number? An element of
parody seems consistently at play in Picasso's treatment of the artist, but deter-
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
mining just who or what Picasso is satirizing proves difficult to pin down with
any precision. Is it the professional painter who mistakenly thinks of himself as
a "true'; artist? Or are Picasso's parodies more a masked form of paying homage
to the "Little Man," the authentic artist, whose vision is all toa often mocked
and misunderstood by his own generation? The thrust of the satire shifts radi-
cally in accordance with the perspective adopted: the artist will be interpreted as
either the subject of ridicule or respect, depending on whether or nor a sympa-
thetic stance is said to underlie the caricature.
The questionable identity of the artist Picasso ponrays in these equivocal
representations becomes more problematic when we consider an additional pos-
sibility: might it be Picasso hitnself-the living legend, the man hailed as the
most famous artist of the century-whom Picasso is mocking when he calls the
artist "that poor chap"? If the satire is intended to, at least in part, be self-
directed, it paradoxically serves as a way of circumventing self in addition, for
the ironic stance presupposes a distance between the subject of the satire and the
subject who satirizes. Though Picasso implicares himself when he casts the artist
as a buffoon, he does so from a privileged position: that of the satirist who places
himself above the object of his mockery. In effect, Picasso may be playing against
himself by playing the artist for a fool, but in so doing, he indirectly assumes the
role of the wise fool, one who is more knowing than he presents himself to be.
Self-mockery, by this curious twist of logic, becomes a form of self-exultation.
Picasso pokes fun at his own cult-image, that of the grand Old Master, only to
subversively reinscribs this identity under the new heang(;"fth~~an,"
Picasso's designation for the authentic artist who starrds not only apan from,b~
also above all the imposters, all those professional painters who may be sane-
tioned by society, but who nonetheless are lacking in true genius.
Thus, even though Picasso's parodies of the artist at times appear aimed di-
rectly at undermining the romantic conception of the artist-genius, they at the
sarne time indirecrly end up complying with the very tradition they supposedly
mock, for at no time does Picasso relinquish the value placed on genius by the
romamics. For Picasso, as much as for the nineteenth-century romantic, genius
is the essence of the true artist; it alone is the measure of the "Little Man," that
which sets him apart from the ever proliferating number of professional painters.
Bur whar, then, constitutes the essence of genius? Picasso's satiric depictions
of the anist repeatedly seem to pose this question rather than to answer it, No
transcendem porrrair of the "true" artist emerges from the synthesis of Picasso'/
aSSortedponrayals. Instead, the successive turnover of artists suggests an end-
less, linked series of personas that remove one mask only to reveal another. Th
CHAPTER ONE
ultimare irony, it would seem, ends up being directed at the viewer who would
attempt to pin down the identity of Picasso's artists to any single interpretation.
I wish to promote no one reading over any other, but prefer instead to place
emphasis on the irreducible ambiguity of the depicted artist as a signifier. By
asserting that there is no way to resolve this identity problem, I am left with two
possible ways of viewing this ambiguity: either positively, in which one would
want to affirm the signifying plenitude or richness that results from not being
limited to any one set identity at base, or, more negatively, to stress that this
.seemingly endless chain of personas is merely self-canceling, that the supposed
plenitude is all-too-empty because there is no grounding in any conclusive iden-
tity at origino Not even Picasso's concept of the "Little Man" can serve as an
unequivocal point of origin, an irreducible essence that is reincarnated in every
true artist in accordance with Picasso's proclaimed superstitions, for the "Little
Man" is himself suspect, an ambiguous signifier, a figure of parody, who may or
may not be traceable to Picasso as a personally directed referem, who may in
fact represem nothing more than the romantic artist-genius in disguise.
Since Picasso's "Little Man" remains an ambiguous signifier rather than a sig-
nified essence, he gains definition not through the presence of any intrinsic traits
but rather through the differemial play that distinguishes him from other signi-
fiers, such as the model. No matter how variable Picasso's portrayals of the
"Little Man" might prove to be from one image to the next, the figure of the
artist always remains recognizable by his actions, that is, by the painting act itself
and his endeavor to create an image after a living model, She, by contrast, is
characterized less by her actions than by her nature, which in and of itself seems
always more mutable and organic than the working role assigned to the artist.
Looked at in terms of this gender-defined stereotyping, Picasso's artist and
model begin to lose their ambiguity, and along with it, their infinite variety. In
fact, they become all too predictable. The nude female model is cast as the very
embodiment of nature;" while the male painter personifies culture through his
activity of making art. It is precisely in the tension between these two
poles-between model and maker, nature and art, body and mind, as well as
female and male-that Picasso plays out his variations on the theme.
But if the traditional coupling of the female nude with nature is all too clear-
cut in these images, pinning down the "essence" of what connotes her "nature"
proves as elusive in terms of the model as it was for the artist. Here is where the
stereotype breaks down, whether Picasso intended ir to or noto Here is where
the "wornan as nature" is eclipsed by the "woman as a sign of nature," a cultural
construct that cannot be "naturalized." Intended to signify life and nature and
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
all that ultimately transcends art, the pictured model ends up instead signifying
rhe artistry of the entire signifying practice. Even 50, within the differential terms
of how Picasso plays the model off the artist, her role is to embody the very
essence of "Essence," while the "Little Man" is the mark of the authentic genius
ever in search of that essence. In this context, art is clearly defined as a masculine
quest, with the female model posed as the sphinxlike riddle that he alone rnust
solve.
As this mythic quest might indicate, Picasso's approach to both artist and
model proves in the final assessment to be more allegorical in traditional gender-
biased ways than poimedly autobiographica!. There is danger, thus, in treating
these images as "True Confessions" of either "The Secrets of the Studio" or "The
Man behind the Myth." More often than not, Picasso uses the pictured artist as
a mask rather than a mirro r, but that does not exclude the possibility of a margin
of overlap between these two domains. The artist pictured within and the artist
picturing from without meet at the textual imerface, in the self-reflexive dirnen-
sion irnplicit to any representation of the artist and model theme.
FOCUS ON THE ARTIST AT WORK
We have surprised him
At work, but no, he has surprised us
As he works.
~John Ashbery, "Self-Portrair in a C07 Mf;':;;;:"---- ~
It is in terms of their mutual engagement in the creative act that the depictd
artist most closely corresponds to the artist depicting. Within Picasso's treatmem\
of the artist and model theme, the creative act is thereby played out on two levels:
explicidy, in terms of the subject matter or comem, and implicitly, in terms of
the actual making or forming of the image. The additional dimension of multiple
variations or serial imagery literally, as well as figuratively, transforms the cre-
ative act imo an extended narrative of the creative processo Though the mutual
acr of image-making is what bonds the artist within to the artist without, it is
aiso what separares them, for the two artists differ markedly in terms of their
working methods. The artist pictured by Picasso works direcdy from the model,
while Picasso, as we know from extant sources," executed these scenes without
the use of a model. Their shared identity rests, thus, on both the fictitious painter
and his rnaker being characterized as artists at work, engaged in the process of/
creating images. Picasso's artists are not merely recognizable by the characteristic
CHAPTER ONE
tools of their trade: the palette and easel, the brushes and beret; more tellingly,
they are defined by their praxis. In Picasso's representations, the artist, despite
any affectations to the contrary, is always at base a working craftsman.
A definire bias seems to underscore Picasso's preference for depicting the art-
ist at work. By placing emphasis on the artist's praxis-on the physical activity
of making art-Picasso seems to be deliberately working against the tradition of
the artist as a gentleman scholar, a man of refined tastes and learning. Such an
image is, of course, predicated on a value system that places the conceptual over
the manual, the artist's mind over his hand, reflecting an effort to promote the
artist as an enlightened thinker rather than a mere artisan.
By the eighteenth century, the tradition of the artist-scholar had become so
ingrained that it constiruted within portraiture a special category in its own right.
Stately portraits of artists had, in fact, come to occupy so prevalent a position in
the history of the French Academy that a proposal was made in 1880 to create a
national museum devoted exclusively to artists' portraits of artists. 29 Though the
museum never got beyond the stage of a temporary exhibition installed within
the Louvre in 1888, a listing of some three thousand portraits intended for the
museum's collection was compiled and published by Henry Jouin. The majority
of these works were painted in the eighteenth century, when portraits of artists
were at their most popular. The museum would have featured examples by such
prominent eighteenth-century painters as J. B. Greuze, H. Rigaud, L. Tocqu,
J. B. Perronneau, and N. de Largillire, among others. To understand more fully
the ideology of the artist-scholar that these painters so overwhelmingly sub-
scribed to, and that Picasso so vehemently opposed, it is necessary to probe more
deeply the dynamics underlying these eighteenth-century images of artists.
Despite individual discrepancies of style, portraits of artists painted during
the eighteenth century generally conform to a type: the artist is formally posed
rather than portrayed candidly; fashionably attired, he is surrounded by classical
statue busts and books that directly allude to his knowledge of antiquity (this
done in an effort to promote the artist as a painter of mythological subjects,
which were more highly valued by the Academy than were portraits), To be sure,
there are eighteenth-century representations of artists that do not necessarily
follow these dictates, but in most of these cases, such images are not actually
portraits of specific individuais: they are more generalized depictions of anony-
mous artists. Such works fali more properly under the category of genre than
portraiture. By contrast, the conventions of formal portraiture were adhered to
in the vast majority of eighteenth-century portraits of artists.
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
The format most often adopted for such images was derivative, modeled on
the classical archetype established by the seventeenth-century artist Poussin in
his famed self-portrait of 1640 that hangs in the Louvre. What is characteristic
of ali these portraits of artists, from Poussin's to Largilliere's, is that the artist is
never portrayed in the act of painting or sculpting. While he may be pictured
with brush and palette or hammer and chisel, in addition to having one of his
famed canvases or sculptures as the insignia of his trade prominently displayed
nearby, the artist is never shown actually at work. Indeed, the social prestige that
rhese formal portraits attribute to the artist seems to rest precisely on this divorce
of the artist from the actual manual labor of his craft.
These eighteenth-century portraits of artists are, perhaps, best described as
"furnished" portraits: the artist is not characterized through his actions, but
rather through his setting and costume; his identity is detailed in the richly de-
fined traits of his surroundings. As status symbols, such highly posed images
rely heavily on a metonymy that links the subject to his material possessions,
thereby linking him to a set of social codes and conventions, in addition. Por-
trayed in this prescribed manner, character becomes equated with surface ap-
pearance: it is the accessories that make the man, so to speak.
By contrast, Picasso offers a decidedly different image of the artist. In his
representations, the artist is not described by his surroundings. It would be more
accurate to say that the figure of the artist is used to describe his craft. Implicit
to this orientation is the supposition that an artist's identity rests above ali on his
capacity to make works of art; the artist, according to this cJ!lte-ntie~ot be
defined in terms other than that of his praxis. For JiaSso, thus, it beco~es
possible to represent the artist in a way that was impossible for the eighteent~
century painter who posited the value of an artist in a privileging of mental
co~ception over craft. For Picasso, in other words, the repressed act of represen-
tation not only can come out in the open, it can now assume the privileged
position.
This emphasis of praxis over conception is in keeping with Picasso's notorious
disdain for theories, which to his mind over-intellectualize art. "Those trying to
explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken," he was to say on more than
one occasion. "After ali, a work of art is not achieved by thought but with your
hands." The artist, in Picasso's opinion, should not theorize about his art, but
rather through his art. According to one account, when a young painter wanted
to explain his theories to Picasso, the older artist stopped him by insisting he
"say it with brushes and paint." In other words Picasse advocated the idea tha/
CHAPTER ONE
artists should not separare thinking from making, but rather consider the two
processes as inextricably bound together. "If the painter has ideas, they come
out of how he paints things."30
By stressing the artist's praxis-his identity as a maker-Picasso is not nec-
essarily denying the role played by the artist's intellect; rather, he is inscribing
the conceptual within the framework of praxis. "Painting is a thing of intelli-
gence," he affirmed. "One sees it in Manet. One can see the intelligence in each
of Manet's brushstrokes, and the action of intelligence is made visible in the film
on Matisse when one watches Matisse draw, hesitare, then begin to express his
thought with a sure stroke." 31As Picasso sees it, the artist's thoughts are directly
revealed and rendered present in his actions; the stroke is not just an index of the
movements of the hand, but of the mind, as well. On the basis of this logic,
which binds thinking to painting in one transparent gesture, Picasso declares his
belief that an artist's thoughts should unfold only as he works.
As a result of this singularly directed focus, Picasso's artists often seem vir-
tually blind to anything but their canvases, so intent are they upon their work.
But Picasso himself was certainly not blind to this irony; looking at one of his
own etchings of the artist and model, Picasso pointed out that "the painter him-
self sees nothing: he's only looking at his picture. There are certain painters who
only can look at their pictures and see nothing else." 32The model, in such in-
stances, is cast to the sidelines, almost as if she had been abandoned by the artist
who appears totally consumed in his canvas.
The drarnatic conflict that grows out of this polarization is a familiar enough
tale: that of art versus life. From the legendary Pygmalion to Balzac's Frenhofer,
from Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken to Pirandello's Diana and Tuda, the story
of the artist and his model is a continual retelling of the primal conflict waged
between the artist's desire to breathe life into inert matter and the resistance of
life to be reduced to any static formo
Whenever the artist does appear triumphant in his efforts to overcome rhe
limitations of his art, his victory is bought at quite a price. In Balzac's Le chef-
d'ceuore inconnu, the youthful Poussin sacrifices love to art by allowing his mis-
tress to serve as another man's mo dei in hopes of learning the master's secret of
imbuing life into art. The artist's all-consuming passion for his art proves even
more costly in Edgar Allen Poe's tale, "The Oval Portrait." U sing his young
bride as his mo dei, Poe's artist grows ever more obsessed with the picture he is
creating, while becoming ever more oblivious to the flesh and blood woman who
is posing for him. The final stroke he puts on canvas coincides with the final
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
breath she draws; the model dies so that the picture may live. The implications
of this Gothic tale are dire indeed for the obsessed artist. He is a man who is
doubly cursed: first, by the impotence that marks his relations with the model,
and thus with life itself, due to the dictates of his all-consuming passion for art;
second, by his deadly compliance with the morbid, murderous way in which art,
like a vampire, feeds on life. The moral of the story is clear: art triumphs only at
the expense of life. By choosing his art over the woman he loves, the artist effec-
tively seals his fate; he will be left alone in the end, having alienated himself from
life in order to live solely through his art,
Such obsessiveness on the part of the artist toward his work, which character-
izes so many portrayals of the artist in literature, borders on a demonic posses-
sion that is Faustian in character. Identifying with the creative process to the
point of total absorption, the artist seems overpowered by a force more cornpel-
ling than himself. "Painting is stronger than Iam; it makes me do what it likes,"33
Picasso would claim in 1963 while at work on a series of paintings based on the
artist and model theme. In this declaration, Picasso reveals once again a way of
thinking rooted in romanticisrn, in its myth of the artist as demiurge. At times
Picasso mocks such rornantic pretensions by parodizing the artist who madly
works himself up to a creative frenzy. Yet, the excessive-indeed, obsessive-
way in which Picasso himself fixated on the theme of the artist at work betrays
his own underlying fascination with the creative process, a fascination that is
more a continuation of the romantic viewpoint than ~diction of it.
o E M Y S T I F Y I N G "L E M Y S r: R E P I C A S S o ..
/
... the old man had become, by a sudden transformation, the perso\.-
fication of art, art with its secrets, its impulses, its reveries.
-Honor de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece
It would seem that it was largely due to this personal desire to explore the cre-
ative process that Picasso agreed in 1955 to be the subject of a documentary in
whicl, he would be filmed in the act of painting by the French director Henri-
Georges Clouzot. The title of the film, Le mystre Picasso, casts a romantic
ovenone, hinting at a revelation of secrets and hidden knowledge, proposing an /
initiation into the great master's mysterious creative processo Indeed, Clouzot'y
"documentary" unfolds a cloaked melodrama that echoes that of Balzac's tale,
Le chef-d'a!uvre inconnu. Like the young Poussin in the story, Clouzot in,A-

recting this film seems to desire one thing above all else: the chance to enter the
great master's private studio, to see revealed there on his hidden masterpiece the
secret of his genius.
This becomes clear at the very outset of the film in the opening voice-over
narration. After raising the question of what went on in the head of Rimbaud
when he wrote his poems, or in Mozart when he composed his music, the nar-
rato r rather dramatically announces that now we can discover "the secret mecha-
nism that guides the creator in his perilous adventure." Clearly, then, Clouzot
believes that there is a secret to creation, a secret that underscores all creative
acts, regardless of the particular art form, a secret that will in the end explain the
"perilous adventure" that is creativity, Moreover, he believes that the moving
camera can capture that secret for us on filmo But, just as Balzac's story ends
with the unveiling of a canvas that proves incomprehensible to its baffled onlook-
ers, Clouzot's film fails to deliver any climatic insight into "le mystre Picasso."
lnstead, it reinforces the mystification of its subject by promoting the virtuoso
image of the legendary Picasso, the master magician, continuously at work,
claiming no fatigue; "I could go on all night," he tells Clouzot at one point. ln
actual fact, after one particularly long session of filming in the studio, the seventy-
four-year-old Picasso nearly collapsed from the exertion of his performance be-
fore the cameras and under the hot lights.34 He had played his part-that of the
artist as demiurge-past the point of dramatic overkill; the sustained effort had
resulted in posing a real danger to his health. Yet, recorded on film is a robust,
bare-chested Picasso improvising one creation after another in a deceptively fac-
ile manner.
ln the first half of the film, Clouzot employs a gimmick to further dramatize
the master's "rnystre." Due to a new type of colored ink that Picasso had re-
cently beco me aware of, which when put on paper made the surface transparent,
Clouzot was able to position his camera so that he could film Picasso's pictures
from behind, tracking the course of their development without the artist himself
being visible. As a result, the images seem to appear and take form as if by magic,
almost as if they were creating themselves. Curiously, then, in order to showcase
Picasso's mastery of the brush-his sleight of hand, as it were-it became nec-
essary for Picasso to quite literally paint himself out of the picture. The more
invisible he is, the more visible, it would seem, is his virtuosity, as if creative
genius were measured by what degree the creator is effaced by his own creation.
This displacement of the artist becomes even more pronounced when Clouzot
switches from the black-and-white film used in the sequences in which Picasso
actually appears, to color stock in those sequences in which only the paintings
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
fill the screen, implying in the transition an eclipse of the "real world" by the
more colorful, transcendem vision that opens up through art.
However, by keeping the artist hidden in the shadows, so to speak, Clouzot
achieves the coumereffect of spotlighting Picasso's "mystre." Masked by the
image, Picasso quite literally performs his gestural acrobatics without any show
of effort. It is almost as if the Picasso who "appears" on screen were the precur-
sor of the modern-day video star-a flamboyant showman whose flashy theatrics
appear to be all style and no substance. ln one notable sequence tracing the
development of a single painting, we see how the image begins as a drawing of
flow'ers, only to be then implanted within the surrounding contour of a fish,
with the flowers transforming imo fish scales in the processo Next, Picasso boldly
embeds the fish within the larger, encompassing contour of a bird: it is as if one
image were being swallowed up by the next. Periodically, Clouzot interrupts this
ongoing process of metamorphosis by jump-cutting to the artist himself, who is,
we soon learn, working against the clock. Clouzot hovers about in the back-
ground, intermittently warning Picasso how Iittle film footage is left, dramati-
cally building the suspense with every passing minute. The camera is stopped
just long enough for Picasso to mix his colors; with only two minutes of film
remaining, they then resume shooting. The painting once again fills the frame
and we watch on as the bird acquires a brilliant plumage through Picasso's deftly
applied accents of colo r. Then, in the last eight seconds, Clouzot dramatically
cuts to a close-up of Picasso's eyes, which suddenly widen their intense focus.
lmmediately, Clouzot cuts back to the image, which is to go through yet one
more metamorphosis, this the most startlin~~he very last
possible moment transforms the profiled bird imo the giam-sizel~~~_ of a
whimsical, horned creature-a satyr or faun, who lightheartedly lo~knsn~ectly
imo the camera and out at us; it is he who has the last laugh, it would seem
With this final turn of events, alllogical sense of scale and reference is ovt -
turned, There is no way to retrace the various stages of the painting's develop-
ment on the basis of the final image alone; the bird, the fish, and the flowers have
beco me as hidden as the man behind the picture who painted them. And yet, it
is the artist's implied presence, and his alone, that binds this odd concatenation
of images together. ln view of this, the laughing satyr who terminates the series
seerns in spirit, if not in outward form, like a self-portrait: the artist as an impish
genius, an elfin spirit.
Through such sequences, the film winds up reversing its own documentary
premise: the artist's image-making is focused upon more to promote the artist's
image than the images he makes. Appropriately, in the very first painting that
CHAPTER ONE
Clouzot's camera tracks in close-up, what we see emerge before anything else is
the figure of an artist; gradually, Picasso adds a canvas and then a mo del. The
inicial image seen in the film, thus, is that of an artist painting a mo del. What we
will rarely see after that, however, due to Clouzot's masked shots of the images
from behind, is Picasso himself actually at work painting. As a result, Le mystre
Picasso often seems more caught up in reenacting the mythology of the artist
than in recording his working method.
And yet, essential to the film's romantic premise of the artist as demiurge is
the artist's role as image-maker. When Clouzot in the closing sequence sets out
to chronicle Picasso's more ambitious undertaking of a large-scale painting, The
Beach at La Garoupe, he shifts the format of the film from the earlier theatrical
showcasing of the painter's prowess to a more prolonged and focused coverage
of Picasso's working processo Clouzot's camera follows the artist through the
extensive alterations and revisions Picasso makes. As we wait for the image to
come magically together before our eyes as had all the others previously, Picasso
upsets our expectations by proclaiming, "This is bad, very bad." After making
Iurther adjustments, his opinion is unchanged; "This is very, very bad. I'm ru-
ining everything." To Clouzot, he says, "You wanted drama; now you have it."
Picasso proceeds to darken the entire canvas then, taking it from a sunlit day
at the beach to nightfall by painting in the moon and stars. With this cycle
now complete, he feels ready to begin again on a new canvas, this time boldly
blocking out broad color patches first and then integrating the figures. From the
excesses and experimentation of the first canvas, he now seems sure how to co-
ordinate the whole. "Well, it's finished," he finally announces, though in actual
fact he was to rework the canvas once again after alI shooting on the film had
been completed. This ornitted revision could hardly pose a problem for Clouzot,
however, since he never intended Le rnystre Picasso to be simply a documentary
of one particular painting's genesis. The premise of the film, underscored by its
romantic title, implied from the outset a more daring and ambitious project: to
uncover the essence of secret knowledge, the "mystre" of creativity itself. As a
result, focus was placed less on the painting produced than on the process of its
production.
Despite Clouzot's dramatics, this emphasis on the activity of painting intro-
duces a materialist stress that threatens to undercut the film's more rornantic
pretensions of staging the creative act as a mysterious ritual or epiphany, Under-
scoring such a project is the presupposition that creativity, privileged as a higher
mental process akin to the romantic concepts of imagination and genius, is
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
"knowable" (that is, revealed, expressed, rendered present) only through the
more base, servile, mechanical operations of praxis. One can easily draw an anal-
ogy here to another hierarchical construct, the one that governed early cubist
criticism; I am referring here to my earlier discussion on the privileging of con-
cept over percept. J ust as that hierarchy breaks down under closer scrutiny, the
distinction drawn between creativity and praxis also results in an irreducible
paradox when its implications are followed through to their logical conclusions.
How can creativity be considered an elevated operation distinct from praxis
when it can only be analyzed through a study of praxis? The self-contradiction
inherent in the hierarchy as stated opens up the possibility of reversing the order
of its privileged terms. Thus, it could be argued that creativity is dependent on,
indeed, that it is conditioned by the artist's praxis.
In terms of Picasso's praxis, what unfolds on film as Picasso paints is a work-
ing method of trial and error that progresses through digression, a method
marked by shifts and reversals that turn on strategies of condensation and dis-
placement, a method by which the image is composed only to be subsequently
undone in an ongoing cycle that makes any seeking after a defini tive resolution
seem a deluded quest; in short, what emerges is a "method" that does not pro-
ceed methodically. It is as if the creative process were more intent on pursuing
the vagaries of its own free play than the end goal of a culminating masterpiece.
Once again, such a concept is rooted in romanticism. The likening of the creative
process to a form of free, spontaneous play leads ultimately to Novalis's procla-
mation that <111 artistic creations are intrinsially lawful.J5~Thus, any effort to
systematize or control what here is rornantically portrayed asan organic, self-
generating process will always in the end falI short of fulIy arresting-rhe further
possibilities of creative play. "AlI the sacred play of art," wrote Friedrich Schle-
gel, "is but a distant copying of the infinite play of the world, that wor~f art
which is eternally fashioning itself." 36
It is at this point, the point at which the creative process seems to supersede
all categorization or closure by exhibiting a wilIful freedom of its own, that crea-
tivity is once again raised to a mythical, pseudo-theological status; it becomes
rnetaphoricalIy a means of transcendence. It folIows from rhis line of thinking
~hat the artist can share in this transcendence not by attempting to mas ter or
lrnpose control over the creative process, but rather by submitting to its innate,
organic nature. "I work like the Chinese," Picasso would often claim, "not after
nature, but like nature." 37 In effect, the artist who folIows this romantic course
wl! seek to merge-or, perhaps, submerge-his identity into the creative pro-

CHAPTER ONE
cesso Consequent1y, Picasso's "mystre" becomes contingent on the "mystere"
accorded to the creative principle itself. ln a curious reversal of logic, the mate-
rialist emphasis placed on the praxis of painting-a praxis that emerges as an
elusive, open-ended play rather than a progressively staged system or mechanical
method-provides the very means for reconstructing the romantic myth of crea-
tivity as a transcendent power.
Where do 1 get this power of creating and forming? 1 don't know. 1 have
only one thought: work.
When he is at work, but not when he dreams, the forms of the creative
artist pass beyond his imagination. When 1 am dreaming, 1 do not see
anything out of the ordinary. lt is the outcome of work which makes the
greatest contribution to creation. If we never arrive at this astonishment
about our work, we never create new forrns."
lndeed, it is this same theoretical perspective-a metaphysics of creativity
grounded in an organic conception of praxis-that seems to underlie Picasso's
own thinking during his late period. lncreasingly with the passage of time, the
aging Picasso turned away from an aesthetics governed by the classical concept
of the masterpiece and moved closer to the romantic predilection for an aesthetics
that was process-oriented. Hence, the more frequent practice of working in serial
or multiple imagery that characterizes Picasso's late style, as welI as the consum-
ing interest he develops in depicting the artist at work. This shift to a more
romantic orientation in which focus is centered on the creative process might
then also account for Picasso's wilIingness during the later years to be filmed
while at work.
However, Picasso's ever increasing interest in pursuing the playful possibili-
ties of creativity over the more focused and goal-directed curtailment of those
choices suggests an even more compelIing desire on his part-the desire to assert
the freedom of a creative play that would resist resolution and bypass alI dead-
ends. The attraction that such an orientation would hold for the aging artist is
readily apparent; the freedom attributed to creativity metaphorically alludes to a
freedom over death itself. But it is not only in the romantic analogue of nature
and organic growth that the creative process acquires a transcendent power for
Picasso ("Painting isn't a question of sensibility; it's a matter of seizing the
power, taking over from nature'I "). Transcendence is also implied through a
theological analogue as Picasso circumspect1y likens the creative artist to God.
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
Something holy, that's it, It's a word something like that we should be
able to use, but people wouId take it in the wrong way. You ought to be
abIe to say that a painting is as it is, with its capacity to move us, because
it is as though it were touched by God. But people would think it a sham.
And yet that is what's nearest to the truth."?
By postulating a spiritual connection to a higher power or truth, one that tran-
scends words or explanation, Picasso reveals to what an extent his thinking on
creativity is .rornantic at base.
Though Clouzot's film may seem to depart from this romantic line of think-
ing in its intent to document or dissect the painter's creative process-to discover
"the secret mechanism that guides the creator in his perilous adventure" -it is
important to recognize to what extent the entire enterprise was also romantic at
base. From the outset, Clouzot adopted a romantic attitude toward the creative
process, setting it up as the desired goal in a quest to uncover the hidden essence
of "le mystre Picasso." lnstead of "demystifying" the painter's creative process,
Clouzot only served to further promote its mystique by reinforcing the myth of
"le rnystre Picasso."
CREATIVE PLAY AND THE THEORY
OF THE SUPPLEMENT
The desire to demystify-in the sense of revealing, of making the invisible vis-
ible-is itself predicated on the desire to give full presence.to-a-eoncealed essence,
the desire, in other words, to recover a lost origirthat undersc~th the
neoplatonic quest for the 'ideal as well as the romantic longing for a mer~f
mind and matter. lt is this same desire, according to Jacques Derrida, that under-
scores the entire system of Western metaphysics, a system that he characterizes
as logocentric. Derrida's project of deconstruction, always on the lookout for
the moment when reason attempts to ground itself in a self-authenticating sys-
tem, is itself grounded in a critique of this "metaphysics of presence," a metaphys-
ics that he claims is illusory on the basis of the differential network of meaning
thar marks language and thereby liberates what he refers to as a "general gram-
matology"-an irreducible textuality marked by the supplementarity of writing,
se
tho slidings and differences of discourse that endlessly displace meaning into a
free play of signification that defies semantic reduction. However, this notion of
an open-ended, supplementary play of meaning does not defy Derrida from
making one final reduction: "there is nothing outside the text."41

CHAPTER ONE
Derrida's theory is at once both too complex and toa convoluted to be prop-
erly elaborated or, for that matter, justified within the context of a discussion on
Picasso's late work. Thus, this is not the place to attempt to deconstruct decon-
struction. And even if we could, that would not refute Derrida's theory as much
as validate it since, as Derrida himself has pointed out, deconstruction does not
outline a critical metalanguage that is itself free of logocentrism. ln fact, Derrida
sees no prospect of a total break from the "metaphysics of presence" by which
language itself simultaneously perpetuares and disguises its own endless play of
displacements. If Derrida's critique is valid, it must therefore be possible to turn
it on itself; it folIows then that every deconstructive text, even Derrida's own, is
open to a further deconstructive reading.
What I would like to stress here, however, is the paralIel that can be drawn
between Derrida's proposed supplementarity of discourse and Picasso's promo-
tion of a free creative play that, as my analysis has atternpted to show, bears
traces of a lingering romantic metaphor in which creativity is related to transcen-
dence. If, in accordance with Derrida's disavowal of closure, no text, not even a
deconstructed one, can ever have the last word, then Picasso's romantic version
of a creative process that is organic and self-generating is analogous in that under
such a view no work of art can ever be considered truly finished or definitively
resolved; instead, it wilI always be looked upon as a work in progresso "You can
put a picture aside and say you won't touch it again," claimed Picasso, "but you
can never write THE END."42 Thus, the act of signification will at one and the
same time exceed and falI short of the signified-such is the paradox engendered
by the figurative play of language that Derrida refers to as the logic of supple-
mentarity." It is a logic that is double-edged, in effect, signifying on the one
hand the lack of an originary presence or state of plenitude, while on the orher
hand compensating for that lack by putting into play its own nerwork of rhe-
torical relays and differential traces, the prearticulated, intertextual system of
language that far exceeds any single, authoritative logic.
The act of pictorial representation engages Picasso in an analogous supplemen-
tary play. LiteralIy inscribed within the term "representation" is a staternent of
its own metaphysical project-to re-present, or make present once again. How-
ever, when the prefix "re" is separated from the root "presentation," we can see
how the word also inscribes the undoing of this metaphysic, the prefix function-
ing as a marker of how the root (the originary "presence") has been displaced,
shifted from an originary status to that of a secondary re-appearance. The hy-
phenated gap, functioning as a graphic mark of dis-placement, figuratively
"represents" the falI from grace, that is, a state of full plenitude; for the exiled
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
"-presentation" that follows in its wake, there can be no recovery of lost "pres-
ence." The supplementarity that marks rhetorical representations, thus, will
mark pictorial representations, as welI, displaying its twofold logic: first, in the
displacement that always separates the representation fromits referent, and sec-
ond, in the figurative play of the differential network of relays and traces that a
representation sets into motion.
According to Derrida, the theory of the supplement can be extended to the
figurative play of alI representation, indeed, to the irreducible textuality of all
modes of thought; "there is nothing outside the text." If the continual play of
the supplement does then correspond to the view Picasso manifests in his late
style of an organicalIy conceived creative process that is played out in the open-
ended practice of representing, then it follows that the traces of a lingering ro-
manticism should not be detectable in Picasso's thinking alone, but in Derrida's
as well. Though it may be translated into the textual rhetorical terms employed
by Derrida, the romantic concept of transcendence that underIies Picasso's think-
ing on creativity can aiso be traced to Derrida's concept of supplementarity, for
it is the supplement, according to Derrida, that signifies not only a lack or dis-
tancing from origin and presence, but also the compensating function of a figu-
rative play that resists resolution, exceeding the intentions of any authorial
control or authoritative logic. Thus, it folIows that a writer would be mistaken
in presuming that his or her languag.e,~ matter how rigorously controlIed,
could ever be delimited by the writer's intentiofl~ Language, according to the
logic of supplementarity, wilI always slip past such dE rts to contain its meaning.
Deconstruction is therefore critical of granting any auth itative position or meta-
language status to criticism. The deconstructivist's criti ism of criticism, how-
ever, is itself based on a subtle displacement. The transce dent status denied to
criticallanguage by deconstruction is not effaced but only shifted to the notion
f the supplement, which in Derrida's explication is "present" nowhere, but
everY,:he~e at work, creating a generalized grammatologl that pervades alI of
our thinking, while forever evading our grasp of its total wrrkings.
The transcendent freedom implied by both Derrida's ir~preSSible supplemen-
tarity and Picasso's open-ended creativity proves, noneth ess, to be as much a
~onfinement as a release. Not only is it impossible to fulI attain ultimare mean-
lllg or defini tive conclusions when they are endlessly de erred and displaced by
~helogic of supplementarity, it is by the same token eq'}alIy impossible for mean-
I~g to ever break free from the closed circuit operation of a textuality or figura-
tive play that is both irreducible and unmasterabl7
For deconstruction, thus, mean~ver pure or self-evident; it is never a
CHAPTER ONE
given preexistent essence. Rather, meaning is a textual construct, subject to a
continual critique in which a fuU, conclusive definition is always deferred. To
presume that meaning could ever be fully present would be, for the deconstruc-
tivist, an act of bad faith. At this point, the lingering traces of a romantic tran-
scendentalism, which can be detected at work in the thinking of both Derrida
and Picasso, merge into traces of a lingering existential influence. An analogy can
be drawn between Sartre's creed of "existence preceding essence" and Derrida's
contention that writing precedes speech, by which he means to infer that the
logic of supplementarity precedes all modes of signification. Sartre's concept of
authenticity rejects the notion of human nature as fixed or preestablished and
calls instead for a continual self-critique by which the illusion of a fully achieved
identity is always deferred. Clearly, there is a correspondence between an exis-
tential project that defers essence, a deconstructive critique that defers meaning,
and a creative process that defers closure.
My claim is not that Picasso intentionally or even intuitively set out to "de-
construct" the act of representation by focusing on the artist and model theme.
Nonetheless, the extensive variations he puts into play by pursuing a therne that
is highly self-reflexive can be read as a critique of representation from which we
can also infer Picasso's own theoretical orientation toward the creative processo
lnsofar as a deconstructive reading can assist in "constructing" the process of
Picasso's image-making, or rather, his un-making of the image, this digression
into the parallels between Derrida's theory and Picasso's creative play will, I hope,
not be seen as merely a further example of supplementarity,
THE SEMIOTIC MODEL
The artist and model theme poses questions that directly relate to the practice of
making art and that indirectly outline a critique of representation. ln terms of its
self-reflexive dimension, the artist and model therne serves as a mo de! in its own
right-a theoretical mo de! of the artistic processo Whether the artist is trying to
faithfully record the appearance of the model, as is customary in traditional por-
traiture, or whether he or she is using the mo del only as a general guide!ine to
exemplify a more abstract, universal principie, as would be the case in allegorical
representations, the artist who employs a model sets into play a referential frame-
work. An image drawn from a mo de! implies both a connection to the referent
and a disconnection, for the image is never an exact equivalent of the model:
rather, its relation to the model is always one of signification.
----~
ln semiotic terms, an image drawn from the mo de! functions as a sign that
represents the model, or a meaning signified by the model. Byextension, an image
in which an artist is portrayed in the act of drawing from a mo de! becomes a sign
that, in effect, represents representation. At this point, it becomes necessary to
question what the term "representation" represents. If images drawn from mod-
els can vary from the mimetic to the highly abstract, then what does it mean to
say that the artist's image represents the model? Surely, the issue of representa-
tion raised in this context cannot be limited to a theory of resemblance alone.
In order to more fully map out the possible relations of the sign to its object,
it proves helpful to draw upon the taxonomy devised by Charles S. Peirce for
classifying the different orders of signs.:" Broadly speaking, the various ways in
which an artist's image is said to represent the model can be summarized by the
trichotomy that Peirce proposes as follows:
1) The lcon, in which the sign refers to the object that it denotes purely
because of a similarity to it, the relationship between the icon and its object being
solely one of resemblance, as in Peirce's examples of a painting, a diagram, or a
metaphor. Peirce is careful to point out, however, that the basis of the similarity
between the icon and its object is one present in the character of the sign itself,
independent of whether any corresponding object actually exists or not.v In
effect, icons represent only the formal aspects of things. Thus, in terms of the
iconic value of Picasso's images of the artist and model, it makes no difference
whether Picasso used an actual model or not when creating his pictured models.
The image of the model functions as an icon iiisfar-as.jt figuratively stands for
a "model."
2) The lndex, in which the sign functions as a symptom, or~ indicator, or a
reference that directs the attention of the person for whom it ser~s as a sign to
the object of the sign; the index thereby serves as evidence for the object or event
it represents. In contrast to the icon, there is an inseparable, existe~tial connec-
tion between the index and its object; the object signified by the index must
indeed exist.v Thus, the index provides information about existing o jects with-
out necessarily resembling them. When Picasso represents the fi ure of the
painter at work purely through a scribbled stroke, he is also repr senting his
OWnhand at work through that gesture. The linear play is an index of Picasso's
tive, pictured artist. ..I
OWncreative play, drawing attention to the actual, existent artist be ind the fic-
3) The Symbol, in which the sign is more arbitrary. Rather ~~_representing
the object through a natural likeness or existentia] connection, the symbol ac-
..-------

quires its fitness to represent its object through convention, such as those codes
that dictate the iconography of allegorical representations.:" For Picasso, the
bearded artist became a symbolic code, an allusion to his own natural father and,
by extension, to the symbolic father, the figure of authority, 49 Significantly,
Picasso never tired of parodying this particular code.
Clearly, examples for all three functions of the sign can be found among
Picasso's representations of the artist and mo dei, proving that his approach is not
limited to any one category. But ir would be wrong to think that we could simply
divide and sort out Picasso's images according to these three classifications, for
the various functions of the sign are not mutually exclusive. Frequently, and
perhaps even invariably, there are margins of overlap between the various typolo-
gies; all three functions of the sign can be at play in a single image. lt would
therefore be a mistake to assume that the classifications of icon, index, and sym-
boi each designate a fixed, distinct set of components that would enable one to
isolate the "true" character of the signo Peirce's taxonomy does not constitute an
authoritative method for pigeonholing or otherwise straightjacketing the signo
The value of his classifying systern rests not so much in the breakdown of its
divisions as in the inference that can be drawn from this breakdown: namely,
that the sign is multidimensional in character. lt follows, then, that the way in
which an artist's image can be said to represent the model will be multidimen-
sional as well.
ln the history of Western art, however, the tendency has been to view diverg-
ing modes of representation-such as the mimetic and the abstract, the linear and
the painterly, the organic and the geometric-as diametrically opposed rather
than interdependently linked. We are thus without a philosophy that would ac-
count for the multidimensional character of the signo lnstead, we are faced with
a succession of countertraditions that play one style against the other. lt is rhis
polarization that has given rise to two legendary tales of the artist and his model.
THE MOOEL BOUNO ANO UNBOUNO
The first of these two myths sets forth an explanation for the origin of painting
that dates back to classical antiquity. According to the account given by Pliny
the Elder in his Natural History." the beginnings of painting can be traced to the
outlining of a man's shadow. Pliny relates the story of a Corinthian maid who
was saddened by the knowledge that her lover would soon be leaving the coun-
try. ln order to preserve a lasting image of her beloved, she traced the shadow
his face cast upon the wall. At the heart of the story lies the desire to reproduce
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
reality, to create a bond that would be Iaithful to the model; it is the desire, in
other words, that underlies the mimetic ideal. Ultimately, however, as this tale
of love's longing to overcome loss and separation so graphically suggests, it is a
desire that also reflects a metaphysical ideal; a desire, that is, to render present
what is absent.
Not surprisingly, a legend such as this, which privileges outlining by citing it
as the origin of painting, became popular with neoclassical artists near the end of
the eighteenth century when the current style of painting was itself firmly mod-
eled on line drawing. David Allan's version of the rnyth, painted in 1773 (see
figo 8), is a characteristic example of how the theme was treated during the height
of its popularity, a time when, as Robert Rosenblum has shown in an informative
study of the legend," artistic preferences were dictated by a romantic classicism.
ln the highly charged subtext of Allan's portrayal, what emerges are the erotic
implications of the story. The Corinthian maid is provocatively posed: her drap-
ery slips off one shoulder, baring her breast, as she sits perched on the lap of her
lover. Tracing his shadow with one hand, she adjusts his pose with the other by
tenderly touching his face; it is a caressing gesture that is balanced by another
seductively charged point of contact elsewhere-the brushing of her toe against
his in the lower right. The sexual innuendo is carried further as her legs straddle
his, while his arm clasps her firmly by encircling her waist. The two figures are
intimately linked, thus, in a bond that metaphorically underscores the bond im-
plied by the mimetic ideal itself. It rs -a bond signifying unity and fusion, the
inference being that image and referent are as indivisibly joined as two lovers
coupled in an embrace. ~
An alternative tradition that traces a Christia'i1 ancestry for painting is set
forth by the therne of St. Luke painting the Virgin, which dates back to the sixth
centurv. According to the legend, St. Luke painted the image of the Virgin as
she had appeared to him in a vision. The model, in this instance, is sacred in
origin; a hierarchical distinction thus separates the artist from his model. ln the
classical myth of the Corinthian maid who outlined her lover's shadow, an inti-
mate bond linked artist to model; in the Christian legend of St. Luke, by con-
trasr, it is the distance between artist and model that becomes significantly
charged. lt is this division or estrangement that articulares the real from the ideal,
the mortal from the divine, the material from the abstract. lt is the separation of
artisr from model, in other words, that separates the artist's image from a mi-
o f /
rnetIc unction. lnstead of an outline that has been 9'irectly taken from the model,
t~e image is now set at a remove, displaced from its source. The artist's orienta-
non toward the model shifts dramatically, thus, when we shift from the classical
>

to the Christian context; it is a reorientation that, in this instance, implies no less
than a shift from mimesis to abstraction, from percept to concept, from the
indexical sign to the archetypal symbol.
The legend of St. Luke painting the Virgin became especially popular with
Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this pe-
riod, northern artists turned increasingly toward naturalism, but when repre-
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
senting the theme of St. Luke and the Virgin, they continued to draw a sharp
distinction between the secular and the sacred. Whether the Virgin is explicitly
portrayed as a vision on high, or whether she is brought down to earth as if she
had descended to St. Luke's studio in the flesh, she is still cast as a symbolic
figure, conforming to type, distinct from the more individualized figure of the
painter. Discussing the subject of St. Luke, Erwin Panofsky points out that
"figuratively speaking, representations of this kind were always self-portraits,
and as time went on they tended to become self-portraits in a literal sense also." 52
Thus, in depictions of St. Luke and theVirgin, the difference between the sacred
and the secular grew more and more apparent, As the figure of the painter be-
carne more of an individual, the Virgin appeared all the more ideal for being a
generalized type rather than a particularized portrait. This separation of the hu-
man from the divine finds its metaphor in the spatial distancing that sets artist
and model apart.
The sixteenth-century Flemish painter Jan Gossart, also calIed Mabuse, painted
the theme twice, with a ten-year period intervening (see figs. 9 and lO).hln terms
of style and conception, the two versions differ radicalIy. The later picture is
more visionary and dramatic in its staging, showing a shift away from the earlier
emphasis on classical symmetry in favor of a more animated, diagonal axis that
already anticipates the stylistic dynami"s-ef-th~oque period. Yet, the under-
lying design of the composition, the "deep structure," so to speak, has not
changed, despire the-transforrnations evident on the sUrf~e from one version to
the next. ln each case, the accent falls on the gap that opens up at center between
the two figures, isolating the Virgin from the saint. ln the earlier version, an
open archway articulates the gap that intervenes; in the late\.scene, a diagonal
threshold divides the kneeling St. Luke from his vision of the\Virgin, who now
appears completely enclosed within a vapory cloud. The comp sitional design in
each instance, thus, splits along the division that is at the very c re of the theme.
A shared space that could encompass both Virgin and saint wit in the same fold
is denied; instead, both images reveal a space that is segmented rather than inte-
grated, a space that emphasizes detachment rather than connec ion .
. Both in premise and in practice, thus, the theme of St. Lu~ painting the Vir-
gm seems. to structurally run counter to the classical myth of te Corinthian maid
who outlines her lover's shadow. lnstead of proposing a ;0ked correspondence
between the image and its referem, the legend of St. Lu e and the Virgin implies
a detachment that undermines the mimetic ideal, a achment that is, however,
necessarily prior to the formulation of th~ olic. What these two legendary
tales of the artist and model represem in counterpoint is none other than the
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CHAPTER ONE
binary opposition that underlies the theme of the artist and mo del itsel: namely,
the dialectical play of percept versus concept.
COUNTERBALANCING ART AND LIFE
Between the two-artist and art-there stands life, now dividing, now
uniting, now checking, now promoting.
-Otto Rank, Art and Artist
We seem to have come fulI circle, which is perhaps fitting for any discussion of
a self-reflexive theme. As we have seen, Picasso does not choose any particular
side in the percept/concept debate as much as he chooses to view both sides of
the debate. His versions of the artist and model are formulated on a dual axis in
which the focus of the eye does not preclude the focus of the mind. Indeed, his
dialectic approach seems to promote both the intelIigence of the eye and the
vision of the intelIect. What can be inferred from Picasso's work is the supposi-
tion that every visual percept implies an abstracting focus, just as every mental
concept conforms to a visual gestalt.
Under such an orientation, the percept and the concept become comple-
ments. It is a situation analogous to Picasso's views on the relationship of art to
life. At times, Picasso had virtually been accused of a lack of courage in stopping
short of total abstraction.v But it would be wrong to conclude from this that
Picasso saw art as dependent on nature. It is clear from the artist's remarks, as
well as from his work, that such was not the case. "Nature and art, being two
different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our concep-
tion of what nature is not." As has already been noted, however, Picasso would
often express the desire to work in accordance with the laws of nature. "It's not
. after nature I'm painting, but before nature, with it.">' If, for Picasso, the work
of art had an autonomous identity, separate from nature or any external context,
the creative act was, nonetheless, looked upon as an analogue to nature. Rather
than severing the connection between art and nature, Picasso displaces it by re-
directing emphasis from the static context of the work of art to the dynamics of
the creative process, the process that is seen as paralIeling the processes of nature.
The work of art's connection to nature is therefore reinscribed within the encom-
passing framework that metaphorically links creativity to organic growth.
For Picasso, thus, the work of art remained tied, even if indirectly, to nature
or to a reality that was external, "Whether he likes it or not," Picasso was to
assert, "man is the instrument of nature. It forces on him its character and ap-
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
pearance." No wonder, then, that for Picasso the idea of total abstraction made
virtualIy no sense. "There is no abstract art. You must always start with some-
thing. Afterward you can remove alI traces of reality. There's no danger then,
anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark." Under
rhe dictates of this point of view, art could never be cornpletely divorced from
life; certainly, it was never Picasso's desire to separate the two. "I paint just as I
breathe," he is quoted as saying, demonstrating once again a way of thinking
based on an organic correspondence between art and nature. "We are not merely
the executors of our work," he would insist; "we live our work." In Picasso's
view, art and life were more like complementary colors than mutualIy exclusive
primaries: isolated, each would register a Iack; alongside one another, however,
each would be intensified. According to this equation, art and life need each
other for completion. Indeed, for Picasso, neither art nor life was possible with-
out the other. "I'm no pessimist, I don't loathe art, because I couldn't live with-
out devoting all my time to it. I love it as the only end of my life." 55 Given this
orientation, it is not surprising that the artist and model theme becomes for
Picasso a metaphor for the confrontation of art and life.
PICASSO'S "MENINAS": CHANGING
THE ORDER OF THINGS
While the theme of artist and model opens itself up to questions about the rela-
tionship between art and external reality, it is a therne that also turns inward to
question its own premises; within this self~refleXiVecio~, the theme that un-
folds is one of art confronting art. Nowhere in Picasso's wo~ on the artist and
model is this more evident, perhaps, than in his 1957 series o~ariations based
on Velzquez's Las Meninas (see figs. 11 and 12). In this instanc~\another work
of art served as the artist's "model," a work of art that in itself ~ntained the
the~e of artist and modeI. If representing representation is implicit to the dy-
namlCSof the artist and model theme, then Picasso's representatioris of Velz-
quez's Meninas take this self-reflexive dimension one step further\ Picasso's
variations, in effect, represent the representing of representation. If re are to
fo~low t,he convoluted logic of such a statement, we must try to trac1 through
this chain of superimposed representations.
In Velzquez's Las Meninas, we find several motifs familiar witlyin the vo-
cabulary of pictorial representation, familiar precisely because these r,0tifs serve
as.metaphors for the theme of representation itself. I am re:~:iJ..: here to the
WIndows, barely visible along the right wall; the open illu7ated doorway,
o, 12. I
17.8
ARS
Gira

Taking inventory once again, we cite window, door, mirror, and canvas-
each an example, in its own way, of a threshold, a framing of a space beyond. As
metaphors, they map out two fields of representation: first, painting as a window
view or open passageway that we look through; and second, painting as a mirror
surface or portrair canvas that reflects backon uso Within this binary system of
representation, the Picture. is designated as either~a direct extension or reflection
of reality, a mirnetic similitude or continuum bein the key factor in both terms
of the equation. Representation, by this definition, is ' ereby rendered transpar-
ent to itself.

The twofold system of classical representarion metaphorically laid out by

highly visible in the dark recesses of the background; the adjacent mirror, offer-
Velzquez in Las Meninas has, by the time of Picasso, branched outward; or, per-
ing its spectral reflection of Philip IV and his wife, Mariana, to our view; and
haps more accurately, it has imploded. The labyrinthean\ dynamics of Picasso's
the two rectangular canvases above, their images nearly obscured from view by
seri~l imagery map out a shift in orientation that parallei the spatial transfor-
the shadowy darkness cloaking almost half the picture, censoring the degree of f
matlOn of Renaissance central perspective by cubism's deployrnent of multiple
articulation in the upper registers. The large canvas on the left in the immediate
perspectives. Under this system, representation no longd'equals similitude; it
foreground aiso functions as a kind of blocking agent, for its image is concealed
from view; we see only the back of the canvas. The picture within the picture
djd
no .lo~ger leads in a direcr line to the thing itself, as ir for Velzquez. The
maJonty of the figures in Velzquez's Las Meninas di7.ct their eyes outward
must therefore remain a mystery, since for us what is being represented on its
toward the "real": that actual space that lies beyond the picture plane. Conspicu-
surface cannot be known; it is an invisibility.
ously, none 01 the figutes look at the rnirror or t7ases-all those represen-
CHAPTER ONE
tations that surround them-for they are bound by the direct line of their gazes
to an external reality. By contrast, in Picasso's series of variations one represen-
tation leads only to another representation. Contrary to this closed-circuit play,
VeIzquez's cycle of window, door, mirro r, and canvas illusionistically opens the
picture up, extending the spatial fieId in several directions: from the windows,
through which light enters on the right, to the door, which allows light to enter
from the rear. Contiguous to the doorway's far extension back into depth is the
forward projection of the mirror, reflecting yet another spatial beyond-this
time not the space that lies in the deepest recesses of the picture, but rather the
space that lies in frant of the picture plane, the space inhabited by us, the view-
ers, that once was occupied by the painting's first viewer, the painter himself,
VeIzquez, as he worked before the canvas.
Through the juxtaposition of the door and the mirrar within the picture,
Velzquez in effect sets a two-way trap for our gaze: as we look forward into the
picture, we traverse a space that doubles back on us, that brings a fictive, illu-
sionistic background depth (signifying an anterior space, a space beyond) right
alongside its inverted mirror double and spatial counterpart-the fictive, illu-
sionistic foreground (yet another space that lies in a beyond, outside the frame).
Caught within this system of cross-reference, the viewing subject is also subject
to view; as we look forward, into the picture, we see ourseIves being seen.>
Meeting the viewer's gaze are the startled expressions of the figures within the
scene, figures who halt in mid-action as they turn to view uso These reactive
gestures acknowledge our presence, or rather, the presence of an implied modeI
who serves as the object of the gazes within the picture. We, as onlookers, find
ourseIves, in effect, sharing the same vantage point as the modeI. This ambiguity
has led one analyzer of the painting, John Searle, to postulare that Las Meninas
is painted from the viewpoint of the modeI, since the painter who is composing
the picture (the painter from without, rather than the one pictured within) has
effaced his own position before the canvas by superimposing the implied pres-
ence of the model in his place.? But Searle has underestimated Velzquez's ability
to compose an image of uncompromised ambiguity and instability, something
Michel Foucault does not do in the pravocative essay on Las Meninas that forros
the first chapter of his 1966 book, The Order of Tbings.v As Foucault helps us
to see, neither modeI, spectator, nor the painter composing the picture can be
credited as being the sole subject who posits the picture, for each of these pos-
sible candidates eclipses the other, each coinciding at the same ambiguous point
in space, which is both an ideal and real point, both alluded to and actual-the
space, that is, that lies before the picture plane proper.
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
As a consequence, this overcrowded locus becomes an activated center that
will not stabilize or fix its identity according to an inverted one-point perspec-
tive. Foucault expresses the elusive, oscillating nature of this site eloquently: "In
this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a cease-
less exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutra] furrow of the gaze
piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and
the model, reverse their roles to infinity." 59 The painter's canvas, pictured with
its back turned toward us, does not help to clarify the issue, for its image is sealed
within the image; we cannot see the image it holds for the painter within the
picture. Thus, it follows that we cannot pin down the subject of the painter's
gaze. NonetheIess, many critics have stubbornly tried to do just that, thereby
missing the whole point in the process, for the picture is not simply a puzzle
with one solution, No reductionisr viewpoint of Las Meninas could ever ac-
knowledge the full play of its pictorial dynamics. As Picasso makes abundantly
apparent by fifty-eight variations (and, indeed, could he not have painted many
more besides?), Las Meninas is not one-dimensionaI.
With Foucault directing our gaze once again, we see that "the painter is ob-
serving a place which, from moment to moment, never ceases to change its con-
tent, its form, its face, its identity."60 Foucault might as well have been describing
Picasso observing Las Meninas, which from one variation to the next also "never
ceases to change its content, its form, its face, its identity."
Foucault chooses to focus on Velzquez's Las Meninas at the start of his in-
quiry into the history of human conscieusnsss (or what he calls "an archaeology
of the human sciences") because he sees in th~~ng's structure a possible
paradigm of how knowledge itself was structured un~r the classical system.
"Perhaps there exists, in this painting by Velzquez, the representarion as it were,
of Classical representation, and the definition of the spacexit opens up to US."61
For Foucault, the theme of Las Meninas is representation., cataloged in all its
various functions within the picture like a listing in an orderr table. According
to the broad outlines of Foucault's analysis, the boundaries oIjwhat it is possible
to know within the classical age are delirnited by what can be rrpresented within
the ordering systern of the table; what cannot be so ordered, cannot be repre-
sented, for it is not yet known, it is still unthought. In Las M en,inas, if we follow
~oucault's line of thinking, what cannot be represented is the a,tt of representing
Itself, for how does one include the activity of organizing the table within the
table itself? All the necessary elements can be displayed onr.hy one, but such a
e
a simila, enumeration. While the painting can '7
tabl will not, indeed, cannot, unfold the dynamic!~~:s:7, interplay by way of
t representation as its
>

CHAPTER ONE
theme, it cannot represent the act of its own representing." Thus, as Foucault
takes note, the painter cannot be represented in the act of painting; instead, we
see him pausing, with brush suspended in mid-air and his eye fixed outward on
the model.
Emerging from that canvas beyond our view, he [the painter] moves into
our gaze; but when, in a moment, he makes a step to the right, removing
himself from our gaze, he will be standing exactly in front of the canvas
he is painting; he will ente r that region where his painting, neglected for
an instant, will, for him, beco me visible once more, free of shadow and
free of reticence. As though the painter could not at the same time be seen
on the picture where he is represented and also see that upon which he is
representing something. He rules at the threshold of those two incompat-
ible visibilities. (Foucault 1970, pp. 3-4)
When he returns to the task of painting, the painter will disappear behind his
canvas. Between the attentive gaze and the active gesture lies a breach that elas-
sical representation, in Foucault's view, cannot bridge.
What is missing here, what indeed cannot be represented, according to Fou-
cault, is the unifying, transcendental Subject, capital 5, who posits the scene for
himself.
lndeed, representation undertakes to represent itself here in all its ele-
ments, with its images, the eyes to which it is offered, the faces it makes
visible, the gestures that call it into being. But there, in the midst of this
dispersion which it is simultaneously grouping together and spreading out
before us, indicated compellingly from every side, is an essential void: the
necessary disappearance of that which is its foundation-of the person it
resembles and the person in whose eyes it is only a resemblance. This very
subject-which is the same-has been elided. (Foucault 1970, p. 16)
This subject will not emerge, according to Foucault's calculations, until Man,
capital M, makes his debuto (Foucault is, of course, using the term Man in a
universal sense, to indicate the horizon of humanity, or rather, the subject as an
individual consciousness; Woman, it would seem, at this critical break between
what Foucault calls the Classical Age and the Age of Man, was still an invisibil-
ity, still unthought.) If we are to accept Foucault's reasoning, Man does not enter
the scene until Kant outlines the finirude of knowledge, thereby shifting know!
edge from a direct, unmediated connection to the thing itself by positing it in-
stead as a point within consciousness. The object and subject of knowledge, thus,
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
becomes Man, bom out of the Kantian notion of transcendental Subjectivity, As
a logical offshoot of Man, the human sciences are "bom" at this same time.
According to Foucault's thesis, Man as the conceptual object of the human sei-
ences only becomes visible in the nineteenth century.
When Velzquez painted Las Meninas in 1656, Man, as Foucault conceives
him, was not yet knowable as such; Man was still unthought. What therefore
could not be made visible in Las Meninas, according to Foucault's logic, is the
subjective consciousness that could posit the scene for itself, because Man as a
unified and unifying subject had not yet emerged on the scene; Man, so defined,
still lay outside the limits of the classical episteme. Picasso, painting his versions
of Las Meninas three hundred years after Velzquez, postdates Man. A different
field of representation is yielded up as a result, one that finds its center in a
subjective consciousness that willfully appropriates the image for itself.
By imposing his own stylistic idiom in accordance with his own point of
view-not hesitating to amputate, distort, or parody in the process-Picasso
clearly emerges as the unifying subject behind the fifty-eight variations he paints
in response to Velzquez's image. ln 1952, when Picasso was still only just con-
templating the idea of doing a series of variations after Velzquez, he said:
Suppose you just wanted to copy Las Meninas. If 1 were to set myself to
copying ir, there wouldome a moment when 1 would say to myself: now
what would happen if 1 put th;tfi,~re a little more to the right or a little
more to the left-? And I would go ahad and try it, in my own way, with-
out attending any more to Velzquez. 'l\his experiment would surely lead
me to modify the light or to arrange it dtfferendy, from having changed
1\
the position of a figure. 50 little by little would proceed to make a pie-
ture, Las Meninas, which for any painter who specialized in copying
would be no good; it wouldn't be the Menfl.nas as they appear to him in
Velzquez's canvas, it would be my Menin S.63
Picasso, then, deliberately does not imitare; i stead, he translates, or rather mis-
translates.' and posits himself in the differen.je. Coterminus with the emergence
~f Man, it would seem, is the emergence ofrriginality as a key aesthetic value,
it being .the signifier of the individual subjerive consciousness.
As Plcasso makes perfectly clear, his intention was not to copy, but to create.
Revisionis.m, conducted in this manner.lbecomes a form of re-visioning, leading
us to rethink the Meninas as a re~ Counteractively, however, the variations
also create a rippling effect, 0.9>-- that throws our focus off center, from product
to process, from the thing-viwed to the act of viewing. ln responding to Velz-
CHAPTER ONE
quez's image, Picasso has played the dual role of both artist and spectator. One
thing the variations represent, as a result, is the act of viewing itsel, its dynamics
laid out within the twists and turns of the series.
In looking at Velzquez's Las Meninas, Foucault carne to the following
conclusion:
It may be that, in this picture, as in all the representations of which it is,
as it were, the manifest essence, the profound invisibility of what one sees
is inseparable from the invisibility of the person seeing-despite all mir-
rors, reflections, imitations, and portraits. (Foucault 1970, p. 16)
Looking at how Picasso looked at Velzquez, what we nonetheless come to see
is, in effect, the person seeing, or rather, the viewing subject made sovereign. As
stated earlier, the source of much ambiguity in Velzquez's Meninas, which also
accounts for much of the image's resonance, can be traced to the painting's prob-
lematic point of view, oscillating as it does between painter, model, and spectator
(all of whom occupy the same implied locus). In Picasso's series, however, the
point of view fixes itself in one figure, that of Picasso himself, who virtually
plays all three roles. The images he makes in response to Las Meninas are mod-
eled on his style and not that of Velzquez; they follow his point of view and not
that set down in the original. Picasso, in effect, appropriates Velzquez's image
into his own image. He even appropriates Velzquez's dog into a representation
of his own dog, Lump (Z.XVII.404), and as the series concludes, he inserts
among variations of Velzquez's handmaidens a portrait of Jacqueline
(Z.XVII.408), who would later become his wife. Her appearance in the series
signifies Picasso almost as pointedly as would the inclusion of a self-portrait. In
reworking the original so radically on his own terms, Picasso clearly showed that
he was less interested in making a study of Velzquez than in making the Meninas
his own.
Picasso posited the image for himself in ways more significant than simply
glossing personal biographical imagery over that of Velzquez's imagery. Picas-
so's Meninas are not only self-reflective; they are self-reflexive, as well. In the
classical age of Velzquez, a theory of self-reflexivity was not yet thinkable and
thus had no place in the order of things. "It is not possible," Foucault says of
Velzquez's Meninas, "for the pure felicity of the image ever to present in a full
light both the master who is representing and the sovereign who is being repre-
sented" (1970, p. 16). That which signifies, in other words, cannot be repre-
sented along with that which is signified; in the presumed correspondence
between representations and things that Foucault sees as characteristic of rhe
THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
classical age, there is no place for a mediator. The sign will always be entirely
transparent to what it represents, just as the signified will always be coextensive
with representation. Such an arrangement makes ir inconceivable to divorce the
sign from meaning.
There is no intermediary element, no opaciry intervening between the sign
and its contento ... any analysis of signs is at the same time, and withour
need for further inquiry, the decipherment of whar they are trying to say.
Inversely, the discovery of what is signified is nothing more than a reflec-
tion upon the signs that indicate it .... There will therefore be no theory
of signs separare and differing from an analysis of meaning. (Foucault
1970, p. 66)
As a consequence, "this universal extension of the sign within the field of repre-
sentation precludes even the possibility of a theory of signification" (1970, p. 65).
The act of signification is, it would seern, an invisibility within the order of
things that defines the classical episteme.
In the post-classical age, which for Foucault is signaled by the Kantian cri-
tique and the ensuing advent of Man, it becomes increasingly difficult to conceive
of a theory of representation that is not based on an act of signification. A schism
is thereby opened up between representations and things; after the classical age,
the sign no longer "h as valueaN~rect discourse of that which is signified"
(1970, p. 67). Intervening between the si~ and its referem now is the conscious
awareness of the act 01 signification itsel~he role of Man is thus no longer
simply to describe the order of things as >~~~d been in the classical age when
meaning was thought to be a given and representation was seen as reliable and
transparent. In the gap that opens up between re~resentations and things, a place
also opens up for Man as the source of significatlon. Though our own postmod-
ern age is shifting the focus once again, away ~rom this egocentric base to an
emphasis on the cultural contexr and the originless play of the signifier, the epis-
~emological break between the classical age an1 the modern age turns on this
ISsue of signification and the entrance of Man ou the scene. Rather than simply
being parr of an already existing order, Man at this critica] juncture becomes the
privileged subject who now posits the order 1things and posits himself in the
processo
In Picasso's sries of variations, not surrisingly, it is the artist who has be-
cO~e.the sovereign subject and who is r)?'resented as such. In the thirty-fourth
varlatlon of Picasso's sries (see figo 91, the figure of the painter assumes the
Streamlined form of a triangle, whicl1by extension forges a protecting shelter for
------ ->
 THROUGH A SELF-REFLEXIVE FRAME
s Meninas.
;ht 1992
the princess lodged within its boundaries. At the apex of this triangle, which
vr.
coincides with the head of the painter, Picasso balances the mirror. Its reflection
of the Infanta's royal parents (King Philip IV and his wife Mariana) is now be-
yond recognition, for the rnirror's image has been reduced to one of pure ge-
ometry-a diamond-shaped abstraction. No deity, whether a sovereign or God .
himself, is posited as the observing onlooker of Picasso's scene; if any form of
divinity is present, it is to be found in the person of the artist himself. The use
of black and white in the costume of the painter, in addition to the royal insignia
of his honorary society (shaped conspicuously in the form of a large cross),
seems to consecrate his supreme dominion over the scene. The artist has, in
effect, undergone a transfiguration. The sense of inherent divinity associated
with royalty has now been bestowed on the painter. The ultimate demonstration
in this usurpation of power is evident in the mirro r that no longer reflects the
rayal patrons but which now functions as a crown for the artist. The glorification
of kings, of the sovereign onlooker, has been eclipsed, thus, by the emergence
of the artist-hero as the transcendental Subject.
For Picasso, what constitutes the very foundation of representation is pre-
cisely what was for Velzquez excluded from representation: the subject who
posits the picture for himself. Under the self-reflexive terms of this new order of
things, the subject of representation will inevitably be the subject represeming.
unter and It folIows, then, that in alI of Picasso's representations of the artist and model,
etching. what is also being represented is the activity of representing. In contrast to
992 ARS, Velzquez's painter, who is not shown in the act of painting, Picasso's painters,
as we have already noted, are alm6s-t all caught in the act. At times, in fact, the
figure of the painter is represemed purely as a scribbled form that signifies the
gestural activity of painting itself (see pg. 14). Taken to this extreme, gesture
completely eclipses the gaze in a graphic representation of Picasso's preference
for praxis over theory, As these self-reflexive images also reveal, however, this
focu~ on the artist's praxis presupposes a\theory about the organic nature of the
.
creauve processo Indeed, praxis raised to nhis privileged degree becomes a theory
I

10 ItS own right. Despite his avowed hatred of all theories about art, Picasso's

obsessive fascination with the creative process ends up turning the theme of the
artist and model imo a theory, a theory that is inscribed within the theme's self-
reflexive fold. It is a theory that, in effedt, sets out to do no less than represem
the act of its own representing.