Picasso Tentacle Erotica

1 John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 3, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 384, quoting an interview with Skira in the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 4, 1931.

2 Quoted in Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, The Prodigy, 1881-1906 (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 42.

3 Roxanne Hamery, Jean Painlevé: Le cinéma au coeur de la vie (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), pp. 66-67.

4 Hélène Hazéra and Dominique Leglu, "Jean Painlevé Reveals the Invisible" (interview, 1986), trans. Jeanine Herman, in Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painlevé, eds. Andy Masaki Bellows and Marina McDougal (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2000), p. 174.

5 Brigitte Berg, "Contradictory Forces: Jean Painlevé, 1902-1989," in Science Is Fiction, p. 17.

6 Ibid., p. 174.

7 In conversation with the author, September 2010.

8 Roland Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981),
p. 255.

9 At the time that Picasso began his aquatic variations of Marie-Thérèse (1931), Painlevé released revised versions of four of his early silent films, Hyas et stenorinques (Hyas and Stenorhynchus), Le Bernard-l'ermite (Hermit Crab), Crabes (Crabs), and Crevettes (Shrimps), that included the new technology of synchronized soundtracks. The original inter-titles were left in place, but the addition of Painlevé's voiceover and specially composed musical scores enhanced the anthropomorphism of the films' subjects and renewed their popularity.

10 Robert Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism," in Studies in Erotic Art, eds. Theodore Robert Bowie and Cornelia V. Christenson (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 341-42.

11 Hazéra and Leglu, "Jean Painlevé Reveals the Invisible," p. 174.

12 Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism," p. 345

13 Ibid.

14 Arthur I. Miller, Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 98, quoting Jean-Paul Crespelle, La vie quotidienne à Montmartre au temps de Picasso 1900-1910 (Paris: Hachette, 1979).

15 Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, p. 369.

16 Jean Painlevé Through His Films, dirs. Dennis Derrien and Hélène Hazéra,
eight-part television series, coproduced by La Sept, GMT, and Les Documents Cinématographiques, 1989.

17 Hazéra and Leglu, "Jean Painlevé Reveals the Invisible," p. 178.

18 Jean Painlevé, "Neo-Zoological Drama," trans. Jeanine Herman, in Science Is Fiction, p. 117.

19 Michael Richardson, Surrealism and Cinema (New York: Berg, 2006), p. 84.

20 Hazéra and Leglu, "Jean Painlevé Reveals the Invisible," p. 175.

21 Ian Walker, City Gorged with Dreams: Surrealism and Documentary Photography in Interwar Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 132.

22 Hazéra and Leglu, "Jean Painlevé Reveals the Invisible," p. 175.

23 Ralph Rugoff, "Fluid Mechanics," in Science Is Fiction, p. 55.

24 Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism," p. 342, n. 15.

25 Ricard Bru, "Tentacles of Love and Death: From Hokusai to Picasso," in Imágenes secretas: Picasso y la estampa erótica japonesa (Barcelona: Museu Picasso, 2009), pp. 182-83.

26 Gertrude Stein, quoted in Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, p. 396.

27 Bru, "Tentacles of Love and Death," p. 197; Diana Widmaier Picasso, "The Provenance of Picasso's Collection of Erotic Japanese Prints," in Imágenes secretas, p. 204.

28 Widmaier Picasso, "The Provenance of Picasso's Collection of Erotic Japanese Prints," p. 204.

29 Georges Sadoul, "Picasso as a Film-Director," in A Picasso Anthology, ed. Marilyn McCully (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 262.

30 Georges Sadoul, French Film (London: Falcon Press, 1953), p. 35

31 David Grossvogel, "The Play of Light and Shadow: A Directional Error," Yale French Studies, no. 17 (1956), p. 79.

32 Marina McDougal, "Introduction: Hybrid Roots," in Science Is Fiction, p. xvi.

33 Jennifer Wild, "The Cinematographic Geographies of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque," in Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism (New York: PaceWildenstein, 2007), p. 166, n. 53. The note is in the archives of the Musée Picasso, Paris.

34 Berg, "Contradictory Forces," p. 19.

35 "Jean Painlevé's Film," New York Times, June 29, 1930.

36 Berg, "Contradictory Forces," p. 19.

37 Sadoul, French Film, p. 44.

MICHAEL CARY is a New York-based writer who works with John Richardson and Gagosian Gallery, most recently on the exhibition "Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: l'Amour Fou," at Gagosian Gallery Chelsea, Apr. 14-July 15.