New Acquisition: Pablo Picasso’s Bull and Picador

For Pablo Picasso, la corrida (or bullfight) was a lifelong passion, from his childhood in Málaga to his late years in the South of France. The subject—with its bullfighters, bulls, and horses—pervades his work in all media through every stage of his career. The theme was especially important in his graphic work, from his very first print of 1899 (depicting a picador holding a lance) to his linocuts of the 1950–1960s.

Pablo Picasso, Bull and Picador, 1952, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In Bull and Picador, acquired through this year’s Collectors Committee, Picasso depicts the dramatic moment when the picador stabs the mound of muscle on the bull’s neck, thereby weakening the bull and enabling the matador to execute the fatal thrust later in the performance. It is, in essence, the beginning of the end for the bull. At the same instant, however, the bull gores the horse’s side—a moment of intense primal satisfaction for the bull for which he will ultimately pay with his life. The horse rears up in agony, his angular, rawboned body no match for the massive and swelling musculature of the bull whose body dominates the composition. The scene itself is tightly cropped and foregrounded to enhance the intensity of the action. The vigorous line work and scraping combined with broad applications of aquatint convey the dynamism of the scene.

Central to the action and yet completely anonymous is the picador, shielded under his or her castoreño—the traditional wide-brimmed hat. Leaning dramatically forward in full thrust, head down (like the bull), the picador’s hat is viewed as if from above creating a flattening effect that, together with the patterned sleeves of the picador’s jacket, render the bullfighter’s body formless, almost fanciful—a perfect visual foil to the structural articulation of the bull and horse. Indeed the only human face in the whole composition is the spectator in the upper right, lightly defined in aquatint, whose engaged expression perhaps reflects our own.

Pablo Picasso, Femme Torero. Dernier Baiser (Woman Torero. Last Kiss), 1934, purchased with funds provided by Dr. Richard E. Brandes, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Bull and Picador joins other Picasso prints related to the bullfight already in LACMA’S collection, allowing the museum to illustrate the artist’s treatment of the subject in varying styles and printmaking techniques. The 1934 line etching Woman Torero. The Last Kiss depicts a female torero slung across the bull’s neck about to receive a “kiss” from the bull, leading to interpretations of the scene as a depiction of Picasso and then-lover Marie-Thérèse Walter.

Pablo Picasso, El Picador obligando al toro con su pica (The Picador forcing the bull with his lance) from La Tauromaquia, 1959, gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Gensburg

Pablo Picasso, La Cogida (The Goring) from La Tauromaquia, 1959, gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Gensburg, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

La Tauromaquia from 1959 is a suite of 26 aquatints created as illustrations to the 18th-century bullfighting manual written by renowned Spanish matador Pepe Illo. The fluidity of aquatint allows for loose, notational gestures that capture the movements of the bullfight, while the flat areas of color in linocut suggests solidity and boldness in depicting a matador for the 1958 print celebrating the bullfights at Vallauris in the south of France.

Pablo Picasso, Toros Vallauris 1958, 1958, gift of Lucille and George N. Epstein, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Bull and Picador demonstrates Picasso’s mastery of intaglio printmaking in his use of aquatint, drypoint, and engraving to build up and animate the composition. It was printed by Roger Lacourière, a master printer that Picasso met in 1934 and who at once encouraged and challenged the artist to experiment using traditional methods in unorthodox ways. In his shop, Picasso produced many of his most technically complex and accomplished prints. Bull and Picador is the sixth and most fully articulated of 20 total states and was never editioned. Unlike Picasso’s editioned intaglio prints that were often steel faced, a process that deadens the vibrancy of a print, this sheet prints with deep blacks and rich surface texture and possesses the immediacy of a drawing. A major achievement within Picasso’s graphic oeuvre and a work of utmost rarity, Bull and Picador now stands at the center of LACMA’s holdings of the artist’s prints.

Leslie Jones, Curator of Prints and Drawings
Naoko Takahatake, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings

New Acquisition: Ninth-Century Pair of Guardian Lions

A recent discovery in Kyoto, this Pair of Guardian Lions is the earliest known monumental pair of wood Japanese lion guardians in existence. Roughly 30 inches in height, and each carved from a single block of wood (probably from the same tree), they lean into each other, full of life. Pairs of Guardian Lions such as this one were originally placed in front of a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple to protect the sacred precincts within from harm or evil spirits. They are invariably created in pairs, and then may be positioned together, or separated, flanking an entrance, gate, or building. The right lion has its mouth wide open; the left lion bares his teeth. The lion on the right is saying “ah,” the first sound of the Sanskrit alphabet; the lion on the left is saying “un,” the last sound of the Sanskrit alphabet. In English this corresponds to the saying, “from A to Z,” and in Buddhism means “all phenomena in the universe.”

Pair of Guardian Lions, Japan, ninth century, early Heian period (794–1185), promised gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

The heads of these lions are exaggerated in size compared to their bodies; the manes and tails are deeply and expressively carved. The tails represent stylized flames, adding the power of fire to the inherent power of the animals themselves. Even the ribs of each animal are shown in delicate carving. Original red pigment can be seen on the tongue of the right lion, and in spots of white undercoat here and there. The continuous grain of the wood can be observed even in the legs and paws of each animal. They were probably carved from the upper and lower sections of a shinboku, a sacred tree in the Japanese religion of Shinto, in which certain trees, rocks, mountains, and waterfalls are considered kami, or deities.

The astonishing early date of these sculptures—the ninth century—has been assigned to them by Professor Ito Shiro, the leading scholar of Japanese sculpture in the world today. This extremely early dating is based on three factors: the use of Japanese Nutmeg-yew (called kaya wood in Japanese, and only used between A.D. 750 and 900 for Japanese sculptures of wood); their “one-block” construction out of a single piece of hard wood (instead of the later multi-block method); and their sculptural style with its exaggerated large heads and less-muscular forelegs. The possible provenance of these National Treasure–quality artworks is being researched as this is being written: at present, all signs point to their possibly being the “lost” Guardian Lions made in the ninth century for the gatehouse of Toji, the earliest Buddhist temple of Kyoto, completed in 796. In the late 19th century, many Japanese temples sold off their artworks due to the suppression of Buddhism under the creation of what is called “State Shinto,” which emphasized the primacy of the Emperor. It is likely that our Pair of Guardian Lions left Toji, or another very early Kyoto temple of the ninth century, at this time.

The early date of these sculptures, and their incredible condition, given that they are made of wood, is hard to imagine in any culture outside of Japan. As the oldest and finest of their type in the world, including Japan, this Pair of Guardian Lions is a spectacular addition to the museum’s collection on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Pavilion for Japanese Art.

This Pair of Guardian Lions was acquired as a promised gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee.

Robert T. Singer, Curator and Department Head, Japanese Art

 

New Acquisition: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Odalisque

Executed in 1814, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Grande Odalisque at the Louvre has long been recognized as a landmark not only in the oeuvre of the artist but also in the development of the reclining nude as a topic of European art, a theme that stretches from antique models to Titian and Goya and later to Manet, Matisse, and Picasso.

Commissioned as early as 1808 by Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, the painting was sent to Naples in 1815, but remained undelivered. Following the fall of Napoleon, Joachim Murat had been executed and Caroline went into exile. Ingres’s painting was shown at the 1819 Paris Salon, where it was not well received. A critic remarked that there was “in that figure no bones, no muscles, no blood, no life, no relief, nothing in a word that indicates it is done from nature,” adding that the artist had done so on purpose with the intent of doing badly. Indeed, the nude figure was not based on reality, but had come straight from the painter’s imagination.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Odalisque, c. 1825–35, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

The painting acquired a particular significance in the eyes of the artist, attested by the numerous variants and versions in different sizes he executed during the next twenty years. In 1820, Ingres wrote in an inventory of his works that he had executed “several small repetitions” of his large Odalisque, of which several are known.

In classical painting, small-size works are often studies toward lager compositions—not so with Ingres, who reversed the creative process. There are in fact very few if any complete “sketches” by Ingres for his large compositions, for which he made instead numerous drawings and oil studies of details.

It is also well-known that Ingres often repeated his compositions. He wrote for instance: “It has sometimes been brought to my attention, and perhaps accurately, that I have represented my compositions too often, instead of making new works. Here is my reason: most of these works, which I love because of the subject matter, seemed to me worth improving by repeating them, or touching them up . . .” Among his works, three in particular were the object of such repetitions: his self-portrait, the Virgin with the Host, and this Odalisque.

If Ingres repeated his compositions, he never copied them. The variations on his self-portrait or on the Virgin with the Host show significant differences with one another. Such is the case also with the Odalisque. In this version for instance, Ingres reintroduced elements from the original version but now only visible through technical analysis. The precision of the drawing in this version may have been obtained through an optical device—a “camera lucida”—as suggested by David Hockney in his study on the artist’s drawings. The model, however, would not have been in that case an actual figure but instead another painting. This is but one of the many fascinating elements of that small and rare painting that allows us to penetrate into the mind of one of the greatest painters of the 19th century.

Acquired as part of the 29th-annual Collectors Committee, which took place over the weekend, the painting will be on view in the near future in the Bolker Gallery in the Ahmanson Building.

J. Patrice Marandel, The Robert H. Ahmanson Chief Curator of European Art

New Acquisition: Roni Horn, Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”)

In 1975, just after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Roni Horn traveled to Iceland. She found herself captivated by the qualities of the place, most especially its landscape and weather, which could transition from sunshine to a hailstorm and back again in a matter of minutes. Thus began her desire to capture and reflect moments of instability and change, a theme that she has explored through serial photography, drawing, and sculpture. In making objects, Horn has worked with highly expressive materials such as water or gold, as well as the subjectivity of written language.

Paradox is at the heart of Horn’s practice, as it relates both to our physical world and to the shifting and fluid attributes of personal identity. In the 1990s, Horn began making large sculptures in glass, a material that, since her childhood, she found to be the most ideal expression of color. Glass itself is a contradiction: despite its appearance, it is neither solid nor liquid, but referred to equally as a disorganized solid and a super-cooled liquid. Continuing her explorations into multiplicity, perception, and identity, Horn’s work in glass plays with dualities: form and image, lightness and weight, strength and fragility.

Roni Horn, Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”), 2013, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Steve Tisch, © Roni Horn

Roni Horn’s Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) is a solid form of glass. Its rough sides evidence the process of casting, while its pristine and slightly concave top surface reveals, within its interior, a seemingly endless depth. Rendered in vibrant lavender hues, the sculpture provides a stage for the play of reflections brought on by the presence of natural light. In doing so, Horn invites contemplation between the object, the viewer, and their surroundings, as the 3,300 pounds of glass delicately changes according to its conditions.

In order to make a work of this clarity, the glass was poured gradually over 24 hours and cooled with precision for four months. It is displayed exactly as it appeared following the process of its creation. Though exceedingly complex to produce, the resulting object could be compared to a poem: precise, with nothing extraneous. Horn herself maintains a writing practice, and literary references surface throughout almost all of her work. In this instance, she sources the title from a piece of short fiction by artist Hollis Frampton.

Roni Horn, Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) (detail), 2013, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Steve Tisch, © Roni Horn

Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) draws on the history of minimalism and could be compared to—and displayed alongside—works by Los Angeles Light and Space artists such as James Turrell or Helen Pashgian, Finish Fetish artists such as John McCracken, or Donald Judd’s explorations into form and variation, exemplified by his installation of one hundred aluminum boxes. In fact, Horn visited Judd in Marfa, Texas, following his invitation to install a sculpture there, and she was acutely influenced by that experience.

Roni Horn, Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) (detail), 2013, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Steve Tisch, © Roni Horn

However, Horn’s voice and perspective are drastically different. Her work would be better compared to that of Agnes Martin; in the case of both Martin and Horn, we can trace the presence of the artist’s hand or her sentiments, marrying an awareness of human fragility with the geometric forms of their mostly male counterparts. As artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres wrote, “Some people dismiss Roni’s work as pure formalism . . . they cannot see the almost perfect emotions and solutions her objects give us . . . a new landscape, a possible horizon, a place of rest and absolute beauty.”

Jarrett Gregory, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art

LACMA Acquires 10 Artworks During 2014 Collectors Committee Weekend

Since 1986, LACMA’s annual Collectors Committee Gala has resulted in numerous important acquisitions for the museum’s encyclopedic collection. The weekend is one of LACMA’s most significant annual fundraising events, and it plays an essential role in acquiring major works of art to expand and strengthen the museum’s collection. During the 29th-annual Collectors Committee Gala, which took place over the weekend, generous Collectors Committee members (87 couples, including 23 new members) pooled funds and voted on which works of art would enter LACMA’s collection.

The Saturday-evening gala opened with exciting news: LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan announced that Helen Pashgian’s installation, currently on view at LACMA through June 29 in the exhibition Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible, was acquired for the museum through a generous gift from trustee Carole Bayer Sager. The large-scale artwork is made up of twelve two-part columns framed out of molded acrylic; as viewers walk past, between, and around these forms, the sculpture creates an immersive viewing experience that changes based on one’s perspective. Sager, a trustee since 2009, also acquired Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Shafted), in 2011.

Helen Pashgian, Untitled, 2012–13, gift of Carole Bayer Sager, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

All told, LACMA raised $4.1 million toward art acquisitions this weekend—a record for the event. Below is the complete list of works proposed by LACMA curators and acquired through the 2014 Collectors Committee. Check back with Unframed throughout the week for a series of short essays on each of these works.

Roni Horn, Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”), 2013, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Steve Tisch, © Roni Horn, photo: Genevieve Hanson

Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) (2013), by Roni Horn, is a form of solid glass. Rendered in vibrant lavender hues, the 3,300-pound sculpture changes according to the conditions and reflections brought on by the presence of natural light. This is the first Roni Horn work to enter LACMA’s collection as well as the first glass piece by Horn to be acquired by a Los Angeles museum.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Odalisque, c. 1825–35, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’s small reclining nude is an autograph reduction of the artist’s celebrated 1815 Odalisque, a landmark in the painter’s oeuvre and a milestone in the representation of the nude in Western painting. Throughout his long career Ingres often repeated his subjects, while altering their image, composition, or style. This recently rediscovered painting is an important contribution to our knowledge of the artist and of his technique: As recently suggested by David Hockney in his discussion of Ingres’s drawings, the artist may have used an optical device—such as a “camera lucida”—to reproduce the outline of his original composition. Its details however reveal the artist’s hesitations, changes, and additions, which are evidenced in all the versions Ingres painted of the subject.

Pair of Guardian Lions, Japan, 9th century, early Heian period (794–1185), promised gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

Dating from the 9th century, the earliest known large-scale wood sculptures of a Pair of Guardian Lions. Each lion was carved from the same source, a sacred tree called shinboku. In Japanese art the nutmeg-yu wood from which they are carved was used for sculpture only between A.D. 750 and 900. These powerful yet playful animals, which seem to speak to each other with their expressive, large heads, would have stood guard at the entrance to a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine in the early Heian period (794–1185).

Pablo Picasso, Bull and Picador, 1952, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Bull and Picador (1952), a print by Pablo Picasso that depicts the dramatic moment of a bullfight when the picador stabs the mound of muscle on the bull’s neck while, at the same time, the bull gouges the horse’s side. The corrida, or bullfight, was a lifelong passion for Picasso and a seemingly ceaseless source of artistic inspiration in all media, but especially in his graphic work. Picasso began working with the master printer Roger Lacouriére in 1934, which marked the beginning of a radically new engagement with intaglio printmaking during which he experimented prodigiously, deploying traditional methods in unorthodox ways to produce many of his most technically complex and accomplished prints. It is a major achievement within Picasso’s graphic oeuvre and a work of utmost rarity.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Poster for The Scottish Musical Review, 1896, gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Kitzia and Richard Goodman, J. Ben Bourgeois and Andrew Rhoda, Viveca Paulin-Ferrell and Will Ferrell, Olivier and Zoe de Givenchy, and Laila and Mehran Taslimi, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

This work is Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s extraordinary, nine-foot tall poster for the Scottish Musical Review (1896). Scotland’s most renowned designer, Mackintosh has received international acclaim for his architecture and furniture design; his contributions to other media are not as well known. The poster features an elongated, androgynous figure conflated with an abstract, flowering Tree of Life, an image that would be a key component in the design of his most famous building, the Glasgow School of Art, designed at the same time as the poster. Only about 10 examples of this poster are known to have survived.

Antonio de Torres, Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe), c. 1725, gift of Kelvin Davis through the 2014 Collectors Committee

A striking painting of the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe by Antonio de Torres, one of the most important painters of the early 18th century in Mexico. This image of the famous wonder-making Virgin shows her surrounded by four roundels detailing her apparitions to the Indian Juan Diego. This emblematic painting of the “Queen of the Americas” bolsters LACMA’s collection of Spanish colonial art and its commitment to Latin American art.

Feng Mengbo, Long March: Restart, 2008, purchased with funds provided by Jane and Marc Nathanson, Ann Colgin and Joe Wender, Mary and David Solomon, Carolyn and John Diemer, and Bryan Lourd through the 2014 Collectors Committee, © image: Feng Mengbo

Chinese artist Feng Mengbo’s Long March: Restart (2008), a large-scale video installation considered to be one of the most iconic artworks created by a Chinese artist in the past 30 years. The piece combines humor, wit, and cynicism on historical moments in 20th-century China: the Long March, a two-year military retreat in 1933–35 by the Red Army that led to the rise of the Communist Party and the Open Door Policy after the Cultural Revolution as symbolized by the introduction of Coca-Cola in 1979. Long March: Restart is a “side-scroller” video game that is projected onto two facing walls at a life-size scale. The player moves along with the avatar of a digital Red Army soldier tossing cans of Coca-Cola with a soundtrack of revolutionary songs rendered in the style of vintage 8-bit gaming music.

Nancy Grossman, No Name, 1968, gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee, © Nancy Grossman, courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY, photo © 2014 Museum Associates/LACMA

Nancy Grossman’s iconic No Name (1968), a meticulously crafted sculpture carved in found wood and encapsulated by a skin of black leather that was designed, cut, sewn, and tacked together by the artist herself. A cross between sculpture and assemblage, the artist’s leather head suggests strong ties to Surrealism and is part of the feminist movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. This is the first Grossman piece to enter LACMA’s collection.

Mitra Tabizian, Tehran 2006, 2006, gift of the Buddy Taub Foundation, Jill and Dennis A. Roach, Directors, through the 2014 Collectors Committee, © Mitra Tabrizian, courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York, photo © 2014 Museum Associates, LACMA

Iranian artist Mitra Tabrizian’s photograph Tehran 2006 (2006) is a metaphorical study of isolation, displacement, and social upheaval. Tabrizian’s fascination with contemporary Iranian cinema informs her photographic work, including this piece, which is photographed like a wide-angle shot in a film. Staged in a then-recently developed residential section in the northwestern area of Tehran, the setting evokes a society without a functioning infrastructure, where the directionless inhabitants are ironically juxtaposed with a billboard that reads: “We will continue [on] the path of the imam and martyrs of the Revolution.”

Linda Theung