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Dedicated to Another Snowscape in Picasso

(Picture: galerix.org)

(Picture: Argentina)

(Picture: chinaheritage.net)

(Picture: Zheng Jingkang)

(22.12.2022) A blue picture suddenly there was, in the studio (26 December 1962), Hélène Parmelin, did write, in one of her publications that actually (without exception) are dedicated to ›intimate news‹ from the painter’s studio (Parmelin 1969, p. 111).
Not every viewer might see, immediately, that this is a snowscape, another snowscape in Picasso. And not every viewer might know that Picasso had recalled, while painting it, a recent trip by car with his wife Jacqueline. A trip that apparently resulted in getting lost – in a dreamscape, and also in a literary landscape, that of Alain-Fournier’s great novel Le Grand Meaulnes.

The picture is not unlike that landscape by Chinese painter Qi Baishi, often referred to as the or a ›Chinese Picasso‹, not unlike that landscape, in its indirectness, evoking the utopia of the Peach Blossom Spring.
Why not imagining that Hélène Parmelin might have contributed a colophon to the blue painting by Picasso (as a matter of fact she did, if only in her book), explaining to any viewer what this blue picture was about. Not about the utopia of a Peach Blossom Spring, but about the experience of getting lost willfully, in a search what life, a renewed life might offer to a rejuveniled artist.

It was snowing at Mougins, Parmelin writes, and one Sunday Jacqueline just took her car, inviting her husband to a trip into the Blue. What resulted was an adventure both of them kept on talking about for long. There were treacherous icy conditions and danger resulting from that. But also a castle, suddenly, and both travellers looking through a key hole into a courtyard. And there was a celebration going on, and both travellers found themselves in the middle of the feast of the Grand Meaulnes. Happily they returned back, from that trip, to Mougins.

It is not quite clear, if it was Parmelin who added the explicatory detail of the Grand Meaulnes. It might have been Picasso, it might have been Jacqueline (or all of them), recalling the 1913 novel by Alain-Fournier. And probably mainly the first part of that novel, which is largely dedicated to a scenery of winter, and to a trip. With the Grand Meaulnes (17 year old Augustin Meaulnes) meeting, during the feast, the love of his life.

To be rejuveniled might also mean: to rediscover suddenly perhaps those tales once read in one’s youth, but now knowing, from life’s experience, what these tales were and are actually about. About instigating the lust of life, for life, but also telling, as the tale enfolds, of difficulties also that life may bring, of difficulties, perhaps, sufficiently or at least partly mastered, at least in literature. And finally of the joys that literature might bring. Rejuvenation, but also keys to a painting, and also keys to paintings that might come to us from far, but tell us about experiences that might be comparable with those we already know.

Selected Literature:
Hélène Parmelin, Picasso. Der Maler und sein Modell. Intimes aus einem Atelier, Hanau 1969, p. 110f

(Picture: DS)

(Picture: DS)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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