Although Pablo Picasso’s compositions in 1910 were becoming more complex in appearance, he was still deeply conditioned by the material existence and the physical appearance of his subjects ([19]), what we could a sort of “referential abstraction.” This may be seen in the ripples of wavy hair, the schema of a look, an evocative breast, the curving shapes of a musical instrument, and the natural beauty of the young girl in Jeune fille à lamandoline. However, carried by the movement of the figure itself, the artist tilted forward the three-quarter profile, making it irreconcilable with the rest of the face while creating a new kind of relationship with the spatial content, a new and original fusion of a face with its surroundings. Yet, he completed this process by the geometrization of certain forms that one cannot identify as having a referential value, treating them as mere signs ([15]). The level of abstraction he was reaching at this point is exemplified in the drawing Femmenue, where a rectangular plane with an angular breast is superimposed on the right side of the torso. The hip is marked by a shaded triangular plane, above the double curves of the buttocks. Similar planes protrude between the figure’s legs and recede into the space behind her, linking the figure and her surroundings. Arms and legs are represented by a mixture of lines and curves; the straight lines seem to express the extension of the bone structure, while the curves suggest the volume of muscle and flesh ([20]). Equally referential is the oil Femmenuedebout, comprised of varying shades of muted greys, browns, dark blue, and white. Single black lines seem to be scattered throughout, mostly vertical, some diagonal. A few rounded lines at the top of the canvas combine to form the nude’s bust, tilted up. To its left and right, lines bend to indicate elbows. The torso includes some of the brightest whites and palest tans. On the figure’s left, just below the torso, we see the two largest curves of the painting. A bright white-grey meets the edge of the curve which could indicate the buttocks. Directly below, a fairly straight line representing the left leg is met at a wide angle by two curves and two diagonals depicting the opposite leg. The combination provides a suggestion of movement.

Form continued to break down under the painter’s relentless assault, becoming ever more fragmented, ever more transparent, until objects and the space that contained them formed a continuum within the grid. Like radiologists studying bones and muscles under a shower of x-rays, the compositions demonstrated that the harder one looks, the more rigorously one probes, the more things one discovers ([37]). Indeed, Richardson suggests that the large planes, opaque or transparent, out of which Picasso built his phantom figures may have been influenced by Röntgen’s discovery ([34]; [35]).

And yet, if in his 1908 and 1909 paintings, Picasso had used faceting primarily to describe the contours of the body seen as a unified sculptural mass, each facet of his spring 1910 figures seem start gaining an independent form, freely overlapping or intersecting its neighbors. The overall disposition of facets reflects the natural form of the body, but any given one is at liberty to depart from the “real” outline of the limb it describes. The meaning of a given form—an angle or a curve—depends as much on its placement with respect to the depicted figure as on its particular character ([20]). It was now obviously much easier to fuse figure and surroundings, thus emphasizing both the “materiality” of space and the unity of the picture surface, while the greater complexity and concentration of the central areas generally served to isolate and emphasize the subject ([19]).

In spring, his Femme à lamandoline echoed the oval shape of Georges Braque’s oil of the same title, the first Cubist work in this format ([8]). The constant exchange of ideas led the Frenchman later to claim that the two had difficulty recognizing their own canvases. “I felt that the painter as an individual shouldn’t intervene, and therefore the paintings should be anonymous. I was the one who decided that canvases shouldn’t be signed, and for a while Picasso did likewise … Picasso and I were engaged in what we felt was a search for the anonymous personality. We were prepared to efface our personalities in order to find originality” ([23]). Personal character, however, still played an important part. Less a generalizer, Picasso was riveted by the thing itself, and its very peculiarities were his stimulus. He cared less about the continuity of space around a motif, or its relation to the shape of the support. While he also exploited the new fusion of figure and ground, his real interest lay in the fragmentation of objects and in the opportunity it gave him for pushing their physiognomic into a world of new signs ([36]). He always relied on direct observation, studying the association of constituent parts in the visible world. In order to grasp better the immediate fundamental sensations, he multiplied optical and tactile experiments, often exploring the connection between sculpture and painting ([16]).

Even to those less familiar with them, the distinct personalities of the two artists came to the fore. In May, the article written by Gelett Burgess in, 1908, “The Wild Men of Paris” appeared in The Architectural Record. He wrote: “Picasso is colossal in his audacity.” Having photographed the artist sitting in his studio in front of two Kanak sculptures, he described his own reaction to the setting: “His canvases fairly reek with the insolence of youth; they outrage nature, tradition, decency. They are abominable ... How little Picasso, with his sense of humor, with his youth and devilry, seems to glory in his crimes! ... Absinthe can’t tear hard enough to rouse such phantasmagoria! Only the very joy of life could revel in such brutalities” ([23]).

Another personality that was determined to break with the mold was Sergei Diaghilev, especially when it came to choreography. On June 4, his Ballets Russes premiered the Oriental inspired ballet Schéhérazade at the Opéra Garnier. Set in a harem, it was an extraordinarily sensuous production danced with fluid, flowing movements ([35]). The production became known for its traditionally dazzling costumes, opulent scenery, and erotic choreography and narrative that was rarely seen in performances of the time. When the impresario had returned to Paris, he had done his homework, bringing a spectacle that flashed in one dazzling tour de force all his company’s aces: powerful rhythmical dancing, exotic atmosphere, lavish costumes. The music had been by Rimsky-Korsakov, choreography by Michel Fokine, decor and costumes by Léon Bakst. In the role of the Gold Negro, Nijinsky made his entrance “like a flashing parabola,” said Cocteau, stirring passion in the harem. A frantic orgy ensued ([11]). Curiously after the show, the person everyone was talking about was not, as might have been predicted Nijinsky, but the set designer Léon Bakst, who was feted throughout town and interviewed in fashionable magazines as a celebrity. He was quick to acknowledge that his reputation as a designer had been preceded by Poiret’s. Long after the end of the Ballets Russes season, the impact of Schéhérazade would go on reverberating, not least throughout the world of fashion. Women would appear at parties dressed in Poiret’s vivid colors and oriental patterns, inspired by Bakst’s turbans, jeweled tunics and harem pants ([35]).

The theme would have reminded Picasso of his own escapades into the exotic world of the harem in 1906 and 1907. But at this point, he was interested in more formal issues. Through the spring, he continued work on his portrait of Uhde and started another of Vollard. The first one may have been completed prior to his departure for Cadaqués in June; the latter probably would not be finished until autumn. Fernande later wrote: “He started making Cubist portraits. He painted that of Uhde, who traded him a small Corot for it … Then he did Vollard’s, and Kahnweiler’s. He worked on these portraits for a long time, above all on that Vollard, which dragged on for months” ([8]). Despite advanced Cubist segmentation, or “analysis,” he still managed to capture the likeness as his sitters. The portraits would display lower-relief modeling, with space shifting from “sculptural” to “pictorial;” and an increased subdivision into nuanced planes ([2]).

As was usual when the competitive Picasso felt he needed a push in his innovations, he decided that it was time to go back home. Together with Fernande Olivier, he had traveled to Gòsol in the spring of 1906, to Horta d’Ebre in the summer of 1909. That second summer, Picasso had executed his first Cubist paintings in Horta d’Ebre. They had planned to travel to Madrid and Toledo, but Fernande’s health prevented them. The discomforts of the journey, as well as the Spartan life in the rural area had made things worse for her. On September 7, she had written Gertrude Stein: “I am decidedly very sick ... A friend here, who is a doctor, has advised Pablo to take me back to Paris as soon as possible. I am too exhausted to write any more” ([34]). Soon after, he and Fernande returned to Barcelona, where they stayed at the Grand Hôtel del’Orient. They also planned to spend September in Cadaqués, but they returned to Paris by the middle of the month.

Now in 1910, Olivier wrote to Gertrude in Fiesole on June 17: “We are definitely going to Spain. I think this plan was decided upon after your departure. There are to be too many painters going to Collioure, like Marquet, Manguin, Puy, etc. So Pablo decided not to. We shall go to Cadaqués, where the Pichots go every year. We shall be there till September and then shall certainly go to Barcelona. Braque, Derain, and Alice should be coming with us to Barcelona. Our departure is set for the 26th of this month. With the Pichot family we shall be 18 or 20.” The letter also indicated that Picasso had received a copy of the article by Burgess. She added: “Pablo is right now doing the portrait of Vollard” ([8]; [9]). He would complete this painting upon his return to Paris in autumn.

Picasso had been with Ramon Pichot on his first visit to Paris, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition in September 1900. There is a drawing by Picasso, titled La sortie del’ExpositionUniverselle,Paris, which portrays the model Odette —whose real name was Louise Lenoir—, Picasso, Pichot, Miquel Utrillo, Carles Casagemas and Germaine Gargallo—whose real name was Laure—, all together arm in arm in the exhibition grounds. Casagemas would commit suicide for love of Germaine the following year, and she, after spending some time with Picasso’s lover, would later marry Pichot.

The couple had already tried to entice Picasso and Fernande to Cadaqués 1909, on their return from Horta, but they had had to hurry back to Paris and move into their new apartment ([26]). This year, they accepted their invitation to join them there. The Pichot family had built a villa some ten years earlier at Punt del Sortell, across the bay from the stark white fishing village. One possible inducement: Pichot’s sister, the celebrated opera-singer Maria (known as Nini), wife of the no less celebrated Catalan conductor Joan Gay, had recently completed a concert tour in France. She had told anyone willing to come along with her to Cadaqués that they could travel gratis on her troupe’s communal ticket ([34]).

At the end of June, Picasso wrote to Apollinaire: “I do not know if I have time to come see you before I leave; but if you have the time come by to see me; it would make me happy to be able to say goodbye. I am leaving this Wednesday afternoon” ([6]). He was eager to discuss a projected translation of Cervantes’s El LicenciadoVidriera to be done by the poet and illustrated by him. The artist called this book “one of the most original [tales] in Spanish literature” ([34]). A few days later, he wrote him again: “I will not be leaving until Friday night for the beautiful country in which I was born. Come by, if you can, to shake my friendly hand. Your compadre” ([6]). Soon after the meeting, on June 30, he departed with Fernande for Cadaqués.¹

The trip took them from Paris to Figueres, the border station where the train line ended at the time ([5]). As Mas points out, there were five daily trains in 1910 covering the route between Barcelona—Estació de França and Paris—Embarcadero (Gare de Lyon); the fast trains took 24 hours, and the express trains about 20. If we suppose that Picasso left Paris on Friday evening, he could only have taken the 7:20 or 9:30 train. The 7:20 train arrived in Portbou at 3:15 the next day, and in Barcelona at 7:26. Picasso simply did not have the time—and it would have also been illogical—to go to Barcelona and retrace his route to Figueres, as previous authors suggested ([34]). It must therefore be established that Picasso got off at Figueres station on Saturday, July 2, at around 4:30 p.m. Between Figueres and Cadaqués there was a tartana—a carriage with a capacity for eight people—that made the journey in about six or seven hours, with two changes of carriages. Picasso could have taken the tartana on Saturday afternoon or, preferably, on Sunday morning ([27]).

The town had the advantage of being so difficult of access—cut off by an abrupt ridge two thousand feet high—that the villagers’ dialect was closer to Mallorcan Catalan than to the mainland variety. This made for a sense of isolation: it was like being on an island. The ravages of Phylloxera had already been felt in the region, leaving the mountains bare, without the tenderness that the green of the vines had always lent them. The landscape, without greenery, was severe and abrupt, featuring splintery, dark rocks, black in some points, brown or reddish brown in others ([31]).

Pichot had turned the family home in Es Sortell into an artists’ colony; members of the old El QuatresGats group had been going there since the turn of the century. The dining room had been decorated with a fireplace by the sculptor Manolo Hugué, a friend of Ramon and Picasso. The house had been expanded since the matriarch of the family had built the first building in the shape of an ellipse in 1900. Now there was a new wing that gave the building a U shape, and at the inner end of one of the wings, a second floor had been built. One of the wings was for Maria Gay to practice her art. Ramon seems to have had a studio in a nearby building. The house was full. In addition to the patriarchs, there were Ramon and Germaine; Mercè and her husband, the writer Eduard Marquina—and children—; Niní—Maria Gay—and her husband, the composer Joan Gay—and children—; the violinist Lluís Pichot; the cellist Ricard Pichot, and probably his partner in the Trio Hispània, the pianist Eladi Costa, in addition to the maids.

As there were plenty of people already at the house, Picasso decided to rent a sparsely furnished place at the edge of the sea, on 162 of Riba d’es Poal on the north side of the bay, in the home of a fisherman’s wife who rented rooms to painters and writers ([34]). This was Lídia Noguer de Costa, known as La Sabana. It seems that Fernande did not feel comfortable at La Sabana’s place, or that she did not enjoy their intimacy. It is likely that this is the reason they moved to Plaça de la Constitució, popularly known as Plaça de les Herbes. Recently, thanks to restoration work, a hostel has been discovered in this square, specifically at number 2, Cas Casaquero, which might have been where Picasso and Fernande stayed ([27]).

“We are paying a hundred francs a month for a house that has only two beds, two tables, and some chairs,” she wrote to Gertrude ([35]). In a more positive note, she would also add: “He loves the bitter smells of thyme and rosemary, the dusty, wild cacti of his land. He admires the serious beauty, the austerity even of the landscapes of the Mediterranean coast in what it still has of the Moresque, of what is left of the occupations of Antiquity” ([2]).

On Friday, July 8, Picasso sent a postcard to Leo Stein, with an image of the port of Cadaqués. In the brief text, he gave him the address of Cadaqués—“Picasso/Cadaqués/Provincia de Gerona/Por Figueras”—and announced: “Nous sommes ici depuis dimanche” ([25]). On Tuesday, July 5, he had also sent a postcard to Apollinaire, with the address and a gastronomic exclamation: “Je suis le roy de la boullavaise [sic]” ([6]) in reference to the magnificent fish stews he must have been enjoying in those first days in Cadaqués. He also wrote to his friend Derain: “We are already in Cadaqués. I hope your promises of visiting will come true. Getting here is very easy if you want, I will give you the details” ([34]).

By mid-summer, Picasso was absorbed in his work, painting the local fishing boats, as Fernande described them, “stranded in little heaps around the harbor.” He executed several drawings of boats with the same title: Le port deCadaqués: bateaux(Étude). According to Palau, they are references to Pichots’ large boat Nebuchadnezzar, named after Verdi’s opera. Others claim that the boat is probably the one used by some Greek divers in town. These drawings are preliminary studios for Barquegrecque àCaraques and Le port deCaraques (Figure 1).

Figure 1.Le port deCasaques.

This had already been a favored subject for his friend Georges Braque. The “navicular structure—the dovetailing and the joinery” made them ideal subjects for the structural methods of Cubism, as Roe noted ([35]). He was also influenced by the local geography as he worked on these canvases. The draining of color reflected the surrounding bleached, white houses and grey-black rocks, and the calmablanca of the small, secluded bay. They help us see the evolution of Picasso’s syntax; how it goes from an almost naturalistic study to an effort at synthesis, and from there to a selection of points of view arranged based on dominant lines. Le port deCasaques, a series of boats stranded on the sand contains white and blue, grey and ochre. Preceded by a “tactile” anchor, with a background that evokes the buildings of the bay, it plays with horizontal and vertical lines to arrange an apparent two-dimensional chaos.

Picasso also made three drawings with same title, Mandoline, which recall both a pegboard and certain prows with pulleys to move fishing gear. In Catalan, the word Barca-mandoline is used for both the instrument and the vessel. It is possible that Picasso was aware of this and that he treated these two similar forms in this series of drawings that start from a certain naturalism to approach the particular non-Euclidean geometry that the artist had been experimenting since the spring of 1910. On the other hand, there is a conflict between Palau and Zervos when it comes to dating a series of eight drawings in India ink wash, with titles evocative of the sea: Arabesque de pays age demer, Marine, Marine and Arabesque de voile et vaguest. These must have also been made in the summer in Casaques, although at different stages of a frenetic evolution, the same one that leads from the “Greek ships” to the studies of the female nude like Figure and Femme Assis, probably related to the oil Le guitarist.

The human figure would remain Picasso’s central subject. Comparing a drawing of this period like Femme Nuedebout (Figure 2) with his faceted figures of 1908 shows how dramatically solid form would slowly disintegrate.

Figure 2.Femmenuedebout.

The head is an abstract sphere positioned atop a stem. The woman’s breasts are indicated by semicircles like half-moons or melon slices, descending from shaded planes that project at either side of the cylindrical torso. The buttocks appear as a similar pair of curves at the base of the torso. Triangles projecting at either side seem to indicate the hips. The legs are a pair of vertical strips or cylinders. The different elements of the body are no longer enclosed within an unbroken skin; instead, they are represented individually, exposed to the space around the body. Indeed, this interpenetration of body and space is boldly indicated by the large shaded angles overlapping the figure ([22]). The formal structure of the model was usually worked out against a blank or undifferentiated background, while the grid structure integrating her seemed to be improvised in the course of the work. This is not to say that figure and ground were completely unrelated: in fact, a configuration of verticals and horizontals sometimes provided the armature around which the figure was constructed ([20]).

In Femme Nuedebout from July, he had reinterpreted the female nude as a series of lines and semicircles. Areas of shading provided only hints of three-dimensional form; yet, essential parts of a human body—head, neck, shoulders, arms, torso, breasts, legs, and kneecaps—were retained. As Karmel has argued, he made use of just three basic signs: overlapping diagonal planes, perpendicular lines, and sections of curves, making them correspond to different aspects of the figure. These synecdoche’s were clearly selected for their resemblance to particular anatomical features, rather than being determined by a larger system of contrasting forms ([21]). Canvases executed throughout the summer would further develop the style announced by Jeune fille à lamandoline(Fanny Tellier). The most complex ones like Le guitarist confirmed his move toward abstraction ([8]). The brownish, reddish composition, built with diagrammatic sparseness, allowed only the slightest relation to reality: the size of a man, the bare suggestion of a guitar, both impossible to recognize if not for the title ([5]). A tenuous scaffolding of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines replaced both anatomy and contours, and articulated big patches of variegated tone that represented not just the “real” musician, but a certain atmosphere ([10]).

He carried abstraction so far that all that remained of his model were a few elements which he regarded as significant, its essential constitution. It was during his stay in Casaques that he “broke up the homogeneity of form,” to use the terms used by Kahn Weiler ([14]). Since the Renaissance, the representation of objects in space in terms of “closed” forms had conventionally implied the depiction of their depth and solidity by means of chiaroscuro and perspective. Picasso, who wished to avoid both of these devices, now broke through the closed “skin” of objects, depicting them in terms of overlapping fragments. Mass itself seemed to dissolve in the flickering play of semitransparent planes that asserted a position in space. What distinguished this approach from previous ones was the adoption of discontinuity as a constructive process. By isolating each aspect of the object and showing it separately, it was possible to present its essential qualities, undistorted by the accidents of perspective, lighting, and so forth ([20]). This also resulted in a dismantling of the traditional boundaries between objects and their surrounding space, which, in turn, allowed him to establish a new coherence of depth and surface ([33]). The new technique allowed planes to flow into the ground and hence into each other, thereby denying any sense of unified, coherent mass. The basic module was the (open) angle, which generated oppositions of values and hues, continuity and discontinuity. Probably to forestall the threat of the complete dissolution of the object, the artist concentrated the most articulated forms to the center of the composition as in Femme à lamandoline, allowing the edges (covered with horizontal strokes serving as textural device) to play the role of background against which the figure stood out ([23]).

Social life in Casaques was not as they had foreseen. On Thursday July 14, Fernande wrote to Gertrude: “Thank you, dear Gertrude, for both your letter and the magazines. You wrote to me that you were not having very good weather in Fiesole, and it rained and was very windy here the first few days, but for a few days now it has been nice and almost warm. It is not very pretty here, not as pretty as other places I have seen in Spain. If I were not afraid of offending the Pichots I would confess that I find Casaques very ugly. First of all, there is nothing but the sea, a few insignificant mountains, some houses that seem to be made of cardboard and a few characterless natives, who look as if they could be either bricklayers or fishermen, although practically the entire population is made up of fishermen. The women, who are no different from those of any other place, rather ugly, do not make any impression. A few fishing boats lie on the beach in very small groups in various parts of the port, as well as small beaches and narrow, here. You can’t buy anything but fish, as I expected; the fruit is quite scarce and of poor quality; and the prices are at least as expensive as in Paris. We are living in a house that costs us 100 francs a month, and the only furniture is 2 beds, 2 tables, and a few chairs. Considering all this, although I am not bored, I find it rather boring. We have Frika and the maid with us. Frika is very happy and the maid is starting to get used to it. She does all the shopping and although she doesn’t understand a word of Catalan she manages to chat with everyone and make herself understood—all while speaking French and being answered in Spanish. I don’t know if we will be there long. I would like to hear some news from Alice and know where I can write to her. Give her my best wishes, and also to Mademoiselle Levy. There is no straw ties in Spain, and Pablo would be very interested in knowing what they are. For my part, I want to thank you for the coral. Coral is my favorite stone, although it is not a stone, but I don’t really know how to call it. Anyway, it is the one I like best and its magical properties mean that I will always wear it to be happy and healthy. That’s right. Write to me again. Maybe we will go to Barcelona for a few days. My love to Leo and you. Germaine and Pichot have asked me to send you some memories” ([8]).

It is significant that Gertrude sent coral to Fernande, when the seabed of Casaques is very rich in these precious zooids. As we have seen, one of Picasso’s first works in Casaques wrere the two canvases: Braque grecque àCadaqués and Le port deCasaques, in addition to four preparatory sketches, a series of watercolor drawings and several studies of mandolins based on the shape of the boats. The title “Greek Boat” is not gratuitous. Around 1900, a family of Greek divers, the Kontos, had settled in Casaques to exploit the coral business. There are even photographs of the large boats of these Aegean sailors that must have made Picasso think of his primitive Cycladic ancestors.

On Sunday, July 17, Picasso wrote a postcard to Apollinaire to make sure that he had received his address correctly ([6]). Picasso was impatient to hear from Apollinaire. He was afraid that the previous postcards had not reached him because he had written Apollinaire’s neighborhood Passy—15 rue Gros, in the 16th arrondissement—, but he had not indicated the city of Paris; and in France there are a lot of towns with that name. On Sunday August 7, Apollinaire finally replied. He explained that he had spoken to Kahnweiler about the project for an illustrated translation of Cervantes’s work, but was hesitant about publishing with the gallery owner ([6]). And in a letter with an undetermined date, between August 8 and 17, Picasso acknowledged that had asked Mercè Pichot’s husband, the writer Eduard Marquina—for a translation to be completed by that same winter. Unfortunately, this project would never come to fruition. Picasso concludes the letter promising that “je te écrirais un de ces jours mais écrí moi sovent je suis tout seul ici” ([6]).

By August, Picasso had begun to crave for more exciting company. He missed the camaraderie of fellow artists. He had tried to persuade Braque to come to the port town, but he had been unwilling to leave Paris. So he tried Derain. He and Alice were staying at Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, and they had been corresponding with them. They would eventually convince them to come to Cadaqués. From Cagnes-sur-Mer, they would have gotten on a boat that took them to Portvendres, where they hoped to find another sea transport to Cadaqués. It seems that this was not possible. Portvendres is relatively close to Cerbère—or Cervera de la Marenda, in Catalan. And, from there, it is possible that they took the train to Figueres. Once in the Empordà capital, they took the tartana to Cadaqués. When they had been walking for a while, Alice lit a cigarette and in the darkness she saw an extravagant, bearded man looking at her warily: it was Picasso, who had come to meet them without welcoming them, as a surprise. Once in Cadaqués, they stayed at Fonda Miramar (later Hotel Cap de Creus) at 5, Plaça de Frederic Rahola (then Plaça de les Herbes), a few meters from where the Picassos lived. Derain painted two views of Cadaqués, from behind the church, in a style more indebted to Cézanne than to Cubism. He also participated in the seafaring life of Picasso and the Pichots. All together, on the Nebucodonosor, on good sea days they would go around and look for seagulls.

Fernande was feeling a little better: the Pichots spoke French, and the Derains were pleasant. Picasso didn’t really like classical music, and at the Pichots’ house there was classical music all the time. Ricard on the cello, Lluís on the violin, and Niní with her incredible voice, plus some friends and relatives who joined them, were a spectacle between sublime and surreal. André would fit into the group, but Fernande was starting to be bothered with Alice, who was bawdy and quarrelsome—and in Picasso’s confidence, causing a certain jealousy ([17]). Although Derain could hardly be said to have been a Cubist in the full sense, he was much attached to Pablo, whose work he admired; and while he could not go all the way with him—he was too much wedded to color, among other things—he did paint some still lifes with a strongly Cubist character during this summer at Cadaqués, far more balanced than those of his “Fauve Period” ([30]).

That same summer, Picasso started the canvases La table de toilette (Figure 3) and Naturemorteavec verre et citron that he would work on through autumn. The former is the more decipherable, hence probably executed first.

Figure 3.La table de toilette.

At the top was an adjustable mirror suspended between two columns; in the foreground an array of toiletries: a glass with a toothbrush in it alongside Fernande’s bottles and jars. These hazy, delicate effects gave way to a firmly drawn, fairly regular orthogonal grid harboring mysteriously glinting planes, which combine to produce an impression of activity and energy. Recession was not prospectively defined but neatly suggested by the contrast of a small key in the drawer at the back with the larger key in the drawer in front. The device of focusing our attention on a familiar object that we instinctively want to grasp originated with Braque.

By this stage the differences between their paintings had become very subtle indeed, since the more emphasis Pablo placed on space, light and atmosphere (at the expense of the identity and materiality of the depicted objects), the more his work resembled his partner’s ([10]). By inviting us to touch it, the key lures us into what Georges Braque called “tactile space.”

The second major Cadaqués still life is less legible. Rather than dividing the background into rectangular planes, Picasso allowed it to remain an indefinite space, punctuated by groups of predominantly vertical lines. At the upper corners and the bottom edge of the canvas, these verticals were capped with inverted curves, yielding a distinctive stem-plus-arc motif ([4]). Against what Richardson calls an organ-pipe-like grid, he set out a conglomeration of objects, which were tantalizingly close to being identifiable—maybe a glass, a fruit dish, a lamp with a shade, possibly a mandolin. One more legible detail—a realistic but ghostly knob on the extreme right-hand surface of the table—conjured up once again a drawer, this time not otherwise delineated. The other legible detail, the slice of lemon with radiating spokes at the very center of the composition, seemed to hold everything together ([34]).

Probably to set himself a new challenge, Picasso had contacted Kahnweiler on Thursday July 28 to tell him he was going to start work on the etchings for Max Jacob’s SaintMatorel “one of these days” ([34]). According to Ainaud, on April 28, Jacob had written to Kahnweiler “learning with pleasure of Picasso’s provisional acceptance”. André Derain, whom the publisher initially approached to provide the illustrations, agreed to design the publisher’s device on the title page, but considered the project itself too risky. It was written in just 48 hours, composed in a discontinuous narrative, and combined multiple literary genres. Furthermore, Jacob undoubtedly wrote it while still in a visionary state, deeply affected by his own religious epiphany that very same month. Picasso agreed to provide the designs—primarily out of devotion to his old friend Jacob whom he had met on arriving in Paris eight years before, but also because he saw in this project an opportunity to explore certain ideas already nascent in the spring of 1910. The poet himself was delighted: “Picasso’s silence led me to believe that he was annoyed, that he was grumbling at both Matorel, myself and the other one” ([8]). Max had introduced Picasso to esotericism and the Kabbalah. Their relationships were often complicated, due to Max’s jealousy of any friendship that could overshadow him: Apollinaire, Braque and Pablo’s partners. One night in late September 1909, Max had a revelation: Jesus appeared to him on the wall of his room. He immediately converted to Catholicism and wrote Saint Matorel, the first book he would publish, at Kahnweiler’s suggestion. Incidentally, Max Jacob would be baptized in Paris on February 18, 1915, with the name Cyprien, with Picasso as his godfather.

Saint Matorel is a short text that explains the life of a kind of alter ego of Max Jacob dressed as a monk in a Barcelona convent. Max Jacob claimed that the place where Víctor Matorel resided in Barcelona was the convent of Santa Teresa, of the Lazarists, and that it had two sections, the old part and the new one, and that the former had a chapel that was one a Gothic masterpiece from the 14th-century art. However, Santa Teresa lived two centuries later than Gothic art, and the order of the Paulines or Lazarists was founded in the 17th century and introduced even later in Barcelona ([1]). The story tells of Victor Matorel, a minor employee in a Paris subway who converts to Catholicism, becomes a monk, and ends his life a saint. A second volume, entitled LeSiègede Jerusalem; Grande Tentation Céleste de SaintMatorel, would be published three years later, and continue the story as a three act drama.

Picasso produced a total of six etchings in Cadaqués, of which four would be finally selected for the book: Mademoiselle Léonie, La table, Mademoiselle Léonie surunechaise longue, and Lecouvent. He touched only tangentially on the episodes in the life of Matorel, instead preferring to concentrate on three episodes; the scene in which the protagonist dines at an inn, the Lazarist monastery of Saint Teresa in Barcelona, and on Mademoiselle Léonie, his companion (Figure 4).

Figure 4.Mademoiselle Léonie.

He used these as springboards for innovations in spatial values across three genres; figurative, still-life, and landscape, and just as the text is to be understood symbolically so Picasso’s illustrations should be seen as “formulas expressing the essence of the subject.” With respect to reality, Picasso’s attitude was one leaning toward abstraction, this being the process by which his mind isolated that quality in a subject that was regarded as independent of all others. This abstraction, however, was intended to take hold of what was characteristic and essential in reality. By definition, therefore, his was a realistic attitude—realism here implying an analysis and critique of nature in order to extract its inner meaning, as opposed to Naturalism which simply led artist to reflect the detail and disorder of tangible appearance ([14]).

In the etchings, he used a system of transparent, interpenetrating shapes or planes suggesting form in shallow depth, from which the figure re-emerges, as in the first plate, Mademoiselle Léonie. The real person that inspired the character had been a circus girl from the troupe that had frequented the Taverne del’Ermitage who had also appeared in the oil Mademoiselle Léonie ([34]). Here, Léonie is portrayed standing, using the short, sparse lines and slanting diagonals to communicate a certain vulnerability or delicateness. There are several preparatory drawings for the first one: CompositionCubiste (Femme), Femmenuedebout, Mademoiselle Léonie(Étude), Femmedebout, Femmenuedebout which is also related to the oil Mademoiselle Léonie(Étude).

The second plate presents a much more simplified and reduced reflection of the painting La table de toilette previously mentioned in the depiction of a key resting in the drawer of the table at the bottom of the etching, which reaches out tentatively towards us, the prism of a mirror is located in the upper left-hand corner, along with the significant goblet positioned in front of it (Figure 5).

Figure 5.La table.

Here the artist used those objects to evoke numerous elusive mysteries, reflecting Matorel’s profound religious transformation, as he journeys from a secular sinner seeking meaning to an ascetic hermit. Through the texture and light-refracting qualities of objects, we experience a sense of disembodiment as we connect with the uplifting essence of more spiritual matters in the shimmering light. The atmosphere in the etching also evokes the brightness of the sea, as the forms between the glass and the table float like the boats Picasso was sketching and painting in Cadaqués.

For the third plate, Léonie sits on a chaise longue (Figure 6), Picasso used numerous jutting cubes and triangles emanating from a central axis to make her appear to rotate or vibrate.

Figure 6.Mademoiselle Léonie surunechaise longue.

The neck and face of Mademoiselle Leonie, the companion of the story’s main character, situated near the top center, along with the legs of the chaise-lounge at the lower left, are scarcely identifiable amid the fragmented planes, shaped with thick crosshatching and subtle, parallel lines that fade into voids.

Jacob’s text alludes to Léonie through unfinished conversations, and Picasso’s dislocated planes brilliantly convey her capricious, ungraspable nature. Lights and darks were juxtaposed in the etching arbitrarily to create the same sense of low relief, and were evenly scattered over the entire surface to maintain a compositional balance. As Raynal wrote, they “no longer imitate the misleading appearances of visual phenomena but the truer ones of the mind” ([19]).

Using similar devices for the final plate, Lecouvent,the artist masterfully captures the brightness of the Spanish light refracted in myriad directions as it reflects off the convent tor monastery (Figure 7). A host of theories have been written about this last etching. Some think that it is vaguely inspired by a Barcelona convent that Picasso visited that summer, and some think that it is an urban view of Barcelona, taken from his hotel room. There is a third theory, which is that next to the Porxos d’es Podritxó, near the bank of Es Poal, there had been a convent. The building would have disappeared after the confiscation of Mendizábal (1836), but Pichot also made an engraving recalling this convent in Cadaqués. Perhaps influenced by Pichot, Picasso drew inspiration from these porches in what is undoubtedly a fantasy composition.

Figure 7.Lecouvent.

Picasso still intended, in the usual way, to create visual representations of persons and objects appearing in Jacob’s narrative, but the use of Cubist constructions forced him to forgo realistic forms. Instead of actually illustrating the text, we find visual equivalents inspired by the artistic tenor of the words. Although the result is not an illustration of the text in a strict sense, we feel that word and image have been brought into perfect harmony. For an enterprise which at the time must have seemed like folly, we can now see Saint Matorel as ground-breaking work. Its success lies in the marriage of Jacob’s broken text with Picasso’s similarly asymmetric compositions and jarring lines. Far from being cold, or austere, the rhythmic interplay of forms in these etchings seems to emanate a vital force, or living energy.

It seems that the painter Frank Burty Haviland also went to Cadaqués this summer, coming from Ceret, but we have no documentary evidence of this. Haviland belonged to a large family of porcelain makers from Llemotges, and had an extensive collection of black art. He had met Picasso in 1909, and would serve as an intermediary for an important project commissioned by the painter, critic and collector Hamilton Easter Field. On Tuesday July 12, Field had written him from Brooklyn, New York (“care of Mr. F. Haviland, 70 bis, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs”) with specific notes on the panels, but the letter would not arrive until Tuesday August 2 ([34]). He had enclosed a plan of the room and the space the panels were to occupy.

Figure 8.Femmenue.

Picasso and Field had met the previous year to discuss a project to decorate his library back home with eleven of his paintings. A relative of the Haviland’s (Paul and Frank), he may have been introduced to the artist through them ([8]). Picasso had accepted but, although he worked on the commission intermittently over the next several years, he never completed all eleven of the panels. Femme Nue(Figure 8) may be the first of the paintings Picasso did produce for Field.

Its narrow, vertical format, dictated by the terms of the commission, is unusual in the artist’s oeuvre, but in other respects the painting is typical of Picasso’s analytic Cubist style. Details of the figure, a breast, the head, may be made out, but in most respects the painting appears as disembodied shards of modeled form. Those forms are delineated by sharp lines which describe roughly geometric shapes, and which in turn make for a kind of grid pattern across the surface of the canvas. The color scheme of the painting, limited to shades of brown, gray, and black, is also typical of this period. The muted palette allowed Picasso to concentrate upon the depiction of subtly shifting, overlapping planes in shallow space.

References to outward appearance were vague. The remaining structure owed its reality to the invention of a new architecture that was beautifully human in its proportions and a convincing entry as a three-dimensional “ideographic sign” ([32]). This is the period of what Bois called “Semiological Cubism” ([4]).

By this time, tensions finally exploded between Fernande and Derain’s wife, who was being combative and flirtatious with Pablo. As a result, the couple was more or less encouraged to leave ([35]). Picasso made their departure the pretext for a trip to Barcelona on Saturday August 6 ([8]), where he would take Derain to see the sculptors Pau Gargallo and Enric Casanovas ([34]). By now Derain’s artistic concerns had begun to depart significantly from his, an attitude he shared with Vlaminck ([35]). Their stay in the Catalan capital was very brief. On Wednesday, August 10, Fernande sent a letter to Gertrude Stein. She explained that they had arrived on Saturday August 6 and were planning to leave on Thursday August 11 in the morning ([28]).

This is the date the left Barcelona for Paris. As Braque pointed out in a letter to Picasso, on Sunday, August 14, he was visited by the Derains in Paris. Braque proposed to meet Picasso in Cadaqués at the end of September ([25]). Picasso and Fernande actually returned to Cadaqués on Friday August 12 in the company of Angel de Soto ([34]), She wrote to Alice: “On our way back from Barcelona ... It was very hot and rained a lot. The Derains, who were with us there, left yesterday for Paris … I would like very much to be in their shoes. We won’t be back in Paris until the 15th or 20th of September. Braque is supposed to come at the end of the month. Haviland too” ([8]).

They could not wait to head back to France, and on Wednesday August 17, Picasso wrote to Apollinaire to let him know they were getting back “on Wednesday the 24th” ([6]). Unfortunately, there were some issues that forced them to postpone their trip, and as she wrote on August 20 to Gertrude (who had already returned to 27, rue de Fleurus where she had been joined by Toklas): “We will return to Paris next Friday 26” ([8]). Fernande’s prediction proved right, and on the stated day, they were back in the apartment on 11, boulevard de Clichy ([34]).²

Once in Paris, Picasso evoked some of his accomplishments during his stay in Cadaqués. The geometrical figuration of the summer pictures had been so distant from conventional anatomy that it had often been impossible to distinguish representational from non-representational elements. As Golding had pointed out, he had used the outlines or the main directional lines of the figure as the starting point for his compositions. Around this linear framework, he built a complex system of open and interacting planes that sometimes seemed to represent the forms of a human body, but often were quite arbitrary, leaving no clear-cut distinction between planes representing the body forms and planes that were merely compositional elements, as in Flacon et livres (Figure 9). The final state of his canvases had resulted from a process of reworking in which representational elements and abstract components had become interchangeable ([20]).

Figure 9.Flacon et livres.

He vanished into his studio, oblivious to everything except the unending task of regenerating Cubism, avoiding the dangers of losing all contact with reality, drifting off into art for art’s sake, or a formulaic form of picture-making, as would happen to others. Richardson describes how his work went very slowly, compared with the previous summer at Horta, when Fernande’s health issues had inspired an avalanche of paintings. This summer, the anguish was his and not hers, and it was entirely to do with his work. Faith in his role as lepeintrede la viemoderne was propelling him to the brink of abstraction—a Rubicon he nevertheless refused to cross. Yet, the Cadaqués images are so difficult to decipher that even the artist sometimes forgot what a particular image represented.

If in the first Cubist oils Picasso built the composition using a network of intersecting diagonals, summarizing the visual image of physical reality, from now on he would build an orthogonal grid to which he would attach a series of elements with a life of their own: a line that summarizes a certain form marks the cadence of the rest. In La table de toilette, for example, we can guess this piece of furniture—which Fernande had not made up in her lette to Gertrude Stein—crowned by a mirror; we can also identify a brush and a drawer with a key, perhaps the most identifiable element of the work. This is a solution originating in Braque to give the composition a certain spatial idea. Without this resource, many Cubist works would be difficult to interpret.

Yve-Alain Bois claims that in Cadaqués Picasso had invented another type of unit, this time no longer “motivated” by the indexicality of the grid, namely “the sickle,” a combination of the portion of a circle with a straight line cutting into it as in Femmenuedebout. This new mark would characterize this second “Semiological Phase” of Cubism (the search for a unitary mode of notation) ([4]). After he came back, these “sickle” marks would become predominant, the grid being now devoted solely to the syntactic function of linking discrete elements, as a basic structure on which to hook up the various marks ([4]).

Despite all the progress he had made in Spain, or perhaps because of it, his output did not generate the interest he had hoped for. He had set foot in the abyss of abstraction, and the path he had taken could scare his collectors. Kahnweiler himself considered the Cadaqués paintings as unfinished and suggested to Max Jacob that his friend might have gone mad. He would purchase only one of these abstract paintings Picasso had brought back; Vollard would buy the rest. He paid 950 francs for nine pictures. And yet, several lines of contemporary art would be based on the artist’s findings in the Catalan town, such as Cubo-futurism and Russian Constructivism, or Mondrian’s plasticism. Modern art cannot be understood without the foundations laid by Picasso in the few two months he spent in Cadaqués. The town embodies the “white calm” of Cubism. A deceptive mirage, as underneath the flat and smooth surface of the canvases, there lurked the true essence of the role of art in relation to representation on the one hand, and a liberated visual language, on the other.

La sortie de l’Exposition Universelle, Paris. Paris. [End-October]/1900. Charcoal and color pencils on paper. 47,6 x 62 cm. E and R Cyzer 20th Century Art. OPP.00:073.

Femme à la mandoline. Paris. Spring/1910. Oil on canvas. 80 x 64 cm. Private collection, Switzerland. OPP.10:004.

Mademoiselle Léonie. Paris. Spring/1910. Oil on canvas. 65 x 50 cm. Private collection, Basel. OPP.10:016.

Femmenue. Paris. [Spring]/1910. Pencil & India ink on paper. 51,5 x 41 cm. Národni Galerie, Prague. (Inv K 33 590). OPP.10:072.

Jeune fille à la mandoline (Fanny Tellier). Paris. [Late–] Spring/1910. Oil on canvas. 100,3 x 73,6 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, NYC. (Inv 966.79). Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, 1979. OPP.10:002.

Femmenuedebout. Paris. Late-Spring/1910. Oil on canvas. 97,7 x 76,2 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. (Inv 1954:11). Consolidated Purchase Funds, 1954. OPP.10:009.

Femme à la mandoline. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Oil on canvas. 91,5 x 59 cm. Museum Ludwig, Köln. (Inv ML 01268). Schenkung 2001. Loan since 1976. OPP.10:010.

Le port de Cadaqués: bateaux (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink on paper. 22,5 x 17,5 cm. Private Collection. OPP.10:030.

Le port de Cadaqués: bateaux (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink on paper. 22,5 x 17,5 cm. Private Collection. OPP.10:031.

Le port de Cadaqués: bateaux (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Pen & brown ink on paper. 22,6 x 17,4 cm. Musée Picasso, Paris. OPP.10:032.

Le port de Cadaqués: bateaux (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Ink. 22 x 31,5 cm. Galerie Rosengart, Luzern. OPP.10:033.

Barque grecque à Cadaqués. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Oil on canvas. 56 x 34 cm. Private collection, France. OPP.10:015.

Le port de Cadaqués. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Oil on canvas. 38 x 45,5 cm. Národni Galerie, Prague. (Inv O 9107). OPP.10:008.

Mandoline. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Brush & ink on paper. 47,9 x 62,9 cm. Sotheby’s. #330, N10148, 11/13/19. OPP.10:037.

Mandoline. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink on paper. 10,3 x 26,5 cm. Sotheby’s. #122, L20005, 02/19/20. OPP.10:038.

Mandoline. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Gray wash on paper. 24 x 31,5 cm. The Abelló Collection. OPP.10:058.

Arabesque de paysage de mer. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink wash on paper. 31,5 x 24,5 cm. Sotheby’s. #28, L20010, 06/18/20. OPP.10:044.

Marine. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Brush & ink on wove Vidalon paper. 24 x 32 cm. Maya Widmaier Picasso Collection, Paris. (Inv 01206). OPP.10:045.

Marine. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink wash on paper. 24,2 x 31,7 cm. Musée Picasso, Paris. OPP.10:046.

Arabesque de voile et vagues. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink wash on paper. 24 x 31,5 cm. Private collection. OPP.10:057.

Figure. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Brush with India ink on paper. 31,5 x 24 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel. (Inv 1965.11). OPP.10:051.

Femme assise. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink wash on squared paper tracing. 60 x 49 cm. Private collection. OPP.10:059.

CompositionCubiste(Femme). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. India ink on paper. 31,8 x 21,8 cm. Dian Woodner Collection, NY. OPP.10:052.

Femme nue debout. [Cadaqués]. [Mid-Summer/1910]. Pen & India ink or brown ink on paper. 31,5 x 21,5 cm. Musée Picasso, Paris. OPP.10:053.

Mademoiselle Léonie (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Pen & India ink on fragment of page with poem by Fabien Colonna. 19 x 16 cm. Private collection. OPP.10:055.

Femmedebout. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Ink on paper. 31,5 x 21,5 cm. Private collection. OPP.10:064.

Femmenuedebout. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Ink on paper. 31,1 x 20,6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. OPP.10:073.

Mademoiselle Léonie (Étude). Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1911. Oil on canvas. 100 x 81 cm. Louvre Abu Dhabi. OPP.10:056.

La table de toilette. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer [~Fall]/1910. Oil on canvas. 61 x 46 cm. Ralph F. Colin Collection, NY. OPP.10:011.

Le guitariste. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Oïl on canvas. 100 x 73 cm. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. (Inv AM.3970.P). OPP.10:018.

Femmenuedebout. [Cadaqués]. [Mid-Summer/1910]. Pen & India ink or brown ink on paper. 31,5 x 21,5 cm. Musée Picasso, Paris. OPP.10:053.

Nature morte avec verre et citron. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer–Fall/1910. Oil on canvas. 74 x 101,3 cm. Cincinnati Art Museum. (Inv 1967.1428). OPP.10:003.

Mademoiselle Léonie (Max Jacob, SaintMatorel). Cadaqués. August/1910. Etching. 19,9 x 14,1 cm. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. (Inv GI 1061). OPP.10:039.

La table (Max Jacob, Saint Matorel). Cadaqués. August/1910. Etching. 20 x 14,2 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Marian Agnell Boyer & Francis Boyer Library. OPP.10:049.

Mademoiselle Léonie dans une chaise longue (Max Jacob, Saint Matorel). Cadaqués. August/1910. Etching. 26,7 x 20 cm. The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA. (Inv M.1977.17.3.G). OPP.10:062.

Le couvent (Max Jacob, Saint Matorel). Cadaqués. August/1910. Etching. 20 x 14,1 cm. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University. Gift of John Hay Whitney. OPP.10:042.

Femmenue. Cadaqués. Mid-Summer/1910. Oil on canvas. 187,3 x 61 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (Inv 1972.46.1). OPP.10:061

Femmenuedebout. Paris. Fall–Winter/1910–1911. Charcoal on white wove paper. 48,3 x 31,4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. (Inv 49.70.34). Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949. OPP.10:014.

Flacon et livres. Paris. Winter/1910~1911. Oil on canvas. 38 x 46 cm. Sotheby’s. #2, N09035, 11/06/13. OPP.10:090

¹Others date this trip to late June ([17]; [13]); to June 26 ([8]; [2]); to the end June ([12]); to July 1 ([34]; [3]; [35]); or simply to summer ([38]; [5]; [30]; [24]; [18]; [7]).

²Others date the return to the end of August,, 1910 ([7]); to September 5 ([3]); to early September ([17]; [29]); simply to September ([12]); or even more generally to autumn ([30]).