A selection of highlights from Pablo Picasso - Paper and Clay: Online Auction.
On offer as part of our 26 October - 2 November Online Auction is a brilliant selection of Picasso ceramics featuring animal motifs that make us imagine a dinner party like no other. Sometimes it’s good to be early to the party.
All’s fair in art and tableware. Or at least that’s all I remember of finishing school. Berkeley Park is the name – charmed – and I am a purveyor of fine evenings. As such, I am fortunate to make the acquaintance of the minded, be they like-, lofty-, or out-of-theirs.
I see on the invitation that you are a guest of Pablo’s; tell me, what did you think of the calligraphy? I did it myself, mind, so nothing but a compliment will do. As the first guest you have the privilege and the saddle of getting to know your host. A lesson, on the house: try not to be the first to an artist's dinner; you run the risk of becoming pentimento when the evening takes its shape. And heaven knows you’ve got to add two hours for painters. It’s why I wrote seven on the card. Most will take it as eight, and thus Pablo will show up at nine.
No bother at all. If they are minded, I am winded; that’s the long and the short of it. Please, allow me to take your coat and show you the spread. Pablo so generously made them for me, and I’ve been dying to get some use out of them.
Pablo Picasso, Taureaux, marli aux feuilles, 1957 (left) and Toros, 1952 (right). Pablo Picasso - Paper and Clay: Online Auction.
Don’t get me started on men and their symbols of strength. Although now that you have, it’s in fact our conversation starter. I have a pet theory, you see: There must always be a Lascaux. In those caves we rendered the bull appropriately, against stone, and in the glow of the flame. The media ave grown more and more brittle ever since, and it culminates here. Our fragile times call for bluster but fall apart on impact. These will be Hemingway’s plates, but that can stay between us.
Pablo Picasso, Oiseau no. 76, 1963 (left) and Oiseau à la huppe, 1952 (right). Pablo Picasso - Paper and Clay: Online Auction.
Dinner is vegetarian, of course. It would be gauche to serve meat on these. And we must have some balance between earth and sky, no? All of Pablo’s ceramics are stamped or marked on the reverse, so I like to think of these as my tagged research birds. One broods in the darkness, almost struggling to focus between us and the void, while the other struts with a high tuft and a stance that says hand over the seeds and no one gets hurt. How striking these moods! The Waldorf salad will pop against them brilliantly, and indeed I’ve heard that Simone and Jean-Paul are coming together for once. It’s always will-they-won’t they with them.
Pablo Picasso, Sujet poisson, 1952 (left) and Pêcheur à la ligne, 1955 (right). Pablo Picasso - Paper and Clay: Online Auction.
I rarely take the terracotta pitcher out of the display, but it’s rarer that ee cummings is in town and the prose in my life is in dire need of some poetry. A verse of his has been swimming in my head all day: with a swoop and a dart / out flew his wish / (it dived like a fish / but it climbed like a dream). What more does our dear angler wish for than his hopes to rise with his line? A fishing rod and a kite are very much the same thing; it’s only the intervention of elements that separates them.
Pablo Picasso, Centaure, 1950 (left), Faune cavalier, 1956 (middle), and Visage de faune, 1955 (right). Pablo Picasso - Paper and Clay: Online Auction.
Sylvia Beach tells me that she’s just published a novel by one Mr. Joyce, a lovely if baffling Irishman; a retelling of the Odyssey through an elaborate scaffolding called Dublin. It’s apparently causing quite a stir among the bookish types – some are saying it should be banned; others say it’s too confusing to even warrant censure. I suppose we’ll find out tonight, but more importantly, I’m fascinated by the opportunity to see how myth interprets myth. The centaur and the satyr, as seen through Pablo’s eyes, will witness our guest, who, in turn, will lay the weight of his own myth upon them. This, I find, is the hallmark of all great artists, this ability to take what we know, these images and ideas, and reconstrue them to the point of incoherence, and yet, just yet, they manage to see a clear line across the firmament and pull out something universally understood. I do have to ask that you keep Stravinsky occupied while Mr. Joyce is eating, however, as I don’t want the two of them going off on tangents. Oh! There’s the bell. No time for nerves!
Pablo Picasso – Paper and Clay: Online Auction
Opening 12:00pm BST, 26 October 2023
Closing 4:00pm GMT, 2 November 2023
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