Balzac en bas de casse et Picassos sans majuscule

"The movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself."
--Picasso

Those who have seen any of the three large lithographs of Balzac and found them wanting because of their unsaturated, faint black line may be pleasantly surprised to behold these eight smaller lithographs. Despite their size, they pack a more powerful punch because of the fully saturated, deep black line with which they were inked, not to mention their rich, yellow background, a not inconsequential bonus for all the color-starved Picasso lovers out there.

In 1935, Picasso imparted the following thought to Christian Zervos, his friend and chronicler, "It would be very interesting to preserve photographically, not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream." Dora Maar actually produced such a photographic record of the creation of Guernica. Some of the progressive stages of The Charnel House were also photographed. But it seems to me that Picasso most thoroughly realized this ideal in his printmaking. I am not aware of any statements of his or of his collaborators to this effect, but it is hard to imagine that Picasso was unaware that the restless explorations of his creative process were immortalized in his prints. After all, he famously worked and reworked many of his prints, and thankfully produced a printed record at many steps along the way. Proofs were pulled during the often numerous "states" of his prints, though usually in very small numbers. Between states, he attacked his prints in various and increasingly innovative ways, all the while recording his wondrously transformative quantum bursts of creativity. Prints provided Picasso a medium well suited to his method, since, by burnishing the intaglio plate and polishing the lithographic stone, he could subtract detail as well as add it in. He was clearly aware of the central importance of his subtractive proclivity, as he said to Zervos in the same conversation, "In the old days pictures went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions."

Although he had been speaking about his painting, perhaps the most well-known example of Picasso's "destructive technique" is the eleven stages of the lithograph entitled Le Taureau (The Bull, 1945-1946, Mourlot 17, Bloch number 389), in which he toys with various conceptual ways of rendering the creature, initially complicating but then mostly simplifying his design until nothing is left but a pinhead and a simple, mostly stick-figure outline. Another example is this series of nine wonderfully amusing lithographs of Balzac, eight of which were published in this elegant folio (Bloch numbers 715 through 722). The unusual aspect of this series is that it is impossible to purchase a large group of Picasso's consecutive riffs on a single theme, especially for a rather affordable price (in the very low five figures, that is; these prints are also individually available for around $2000-3000 a pop). Most of Picasso's variations took the form of successive states of the same print. But once he reworked the stone or plate, these variations were lost forever, apart from the one, two or three artist's proofs that were typically pulled of each state. These are usually in museums, are otherwise very hard to find, and are generally pricey.

Balzac's imposing physiognomy must have been artistically compelling. Rodin fell prey to it, and Picasso clearly could not escape its charm. This set of eight lithographs presents a superior example of the easy marriage Picasso had arranged between fine art and caricature. It also displays a charming graphic progression of alternately diminishing and increasing complexity as Picasso plays with different ways of rendering the novelist's face. First he toys with Balzac's coiffure and brow. Then he adds some gravity to Balzac's expression. Next he strips away as much detail as he can while still retaining the essence of "Balzacness". In the last two images, Picasso rebuilds the face with his signature stylizations, now playing the opposite game of how many of them the face could juggle while yet retaining its essential nature. Each portrait of Balzac is marvelous in and of itself, but the set when viewed as a whole is even more riveting than the sum of its parts. It is a truly rare experience to behold at once the consecutive results of the artist's creativity, but this series offers no less than just that.

Here's how these gems came to be. As Mourlot relates, "Picasso arrived in Paris for a few days and I asked him to do a portrait of Balzac for the publisher Sauret.... The following morning....Picasso handed me 8 litho drawings....numbered from I to VIII as well as three large compositions. A few days later, he re-worked a crayon litho [unnumbered by Picasso, Bloch 722]....of the same subject." The lithograph numbered II was chosen as the frontispiece for Sauret's publication of Balzac's Le Pere Goriot, and the remaining eight were later published in the book presented here.