James Lord

(Picture: youtube.com)

I remember having read James Lord’s Picasso and Dora (originally published in 1993) on a transatlantic flight in 2008. And though the subtitle labels the book as A Personal Memoir, I do recall, maybe like many other reader, especially one episode that makes the book in my personal memory more appear like a picaresque novel. It’s the scene after Picasso having done a first portrait drawing of James Lord in a café in Paris of 1944. And Lord, after nervously strolling through the city of Paris after this memorable lunch for a whole afternoon, and because of being deeply disappointed by the drawing, takes the same pen that Picasso had used to do the portrait – and does correct it.
Fine. It is Lord himself who uses the word »correct«, although what he describes in detail (including the complicated psychic movements leading to the act) might also be interpreted as an addition, because Lord had felt that something seemed to be missing at a tiny spot the artist had left blank:

»I took the pen and added a threefolded entwined line that was meant to allude to a shawl or the creased pull-over, which, indeed, I was wearing at the time.«

A single line that, as James Lord had felt, seemed to guide him to the very source of the artistic act. And although he had felt at first that the sketch in ink Picasso had left on the Café’s paper tablecloth had been more lively and more interesting in comparison to his own portrait (and it seems that he had felt something like humiliation, even more so as Dora Maar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Maar) had taken a knife out of her pocket and had cut out the tablecloth drawing to take it with her), he had apparently felt something like happiness now, after the act being completed (although, as he says, it was the only time in his life that he had believed of being in the possession of such a privilege of getting to this source).

Lord’s correction of the portrait, by the way, is not made transparent in the German paperback edition of the memoir, although the portrait is being included among the reproductions. But a sort of shame, I guess, apparently led to the choosing of a frame that does not display the neck, nor the GI-haircut nor the threefolded entwined line, meant to allude to something like a shawl of to a (pre-existentialist) pull-over.

The full drawing, however, can be seen here: http://www.amazon.com/Plausible-Portraits-James-Lord-Commentary/dp/0374281742/ref=la_B001IOF6H4_1_2_bnp_2_har?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405545952&sr=1-2

The very Picasso connoisseur, which I am not, might, by the way, answer the question, where the ink drawing that Dora had cut out from the paper tablecloth might be today. But what interests us here, is actually the window that opens into the complicated relations of a painter and a sitter, and the very insight by what complicated psychic movements a single line, be it part of the artist’s work, or be it an addition, correction or completion, can be driven. Because from Lord’s account, for once, it gets transparent, by what complicated movements of the mind a single drawn line is potentially motivated. And for this reason I should like to recommend nevertheless to look at the result of the correction, as it shows in the fully and, as it were, uncensored reproduced image of the drawing.

One might say the single and in terms of artistic value not very relevant line had been the result of the rather unstable relation of the sitter to the artist. But also the result of the rather unstable relation of the sitter to himself and to his self image. The oscillating of emotions – as the result of two emotional whirls interacting – is obvious from the later account by Lord, although or even more so because it is a later account that explores once again, or once more, what exactly had happened during this memorable lunch with Picasso and Dora. And what had happened afterwards. And because we are in possession of the history of the correction, a paradigmatic history, as it appears, although we do not know how reliable it is, we can paradigmatically see into the process that produces a single line. And therefore – it is not just a line. It is a paradigmatic line with what is behind it, as to psychic movements and forces, for once revealed.

Picasso in 1944 (picture: museupicasso.bcn.cat)

And we may now go on to wonder, what movements of the mind did lead Picasso’s hand, when making a first, and later, in 1945 a second drawing of James Lord. And when we now realize that we don’t know, it suddenly gets apparent that we usually don’t know. But in this one case, the episode of a bold correction out of frustration, we know (even if we do not want explore the psychic nature of the relation between Pablo Picasso and James Lord (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lord) in more detail).

*

If we take the insights won from the also picaresque correction-episode and shift our attention now to the portrait that Alberto Giacometti did of James Lord we face an even more complex setting. Here it is not only about the psychic movements within one line, but the complicated psychic interactions during many sessions of sitting for a portrait. Again we have an account by Lord. And from that account we learn for example, that while Giacometti was working on the portrait shown below in 1964 in Paris, he did interrupt his work to do for example phone calls. We get to know something of the artist’s swinging moods. And one does wonder, why, on the one hand, the artist requested eye-contact while doing the portrait, while, on the other hand, he was commenting while painting upon a novel he had just finished: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Came_in_from_the_Cold), a Cold War spy novel of 1963. And it seems that here we have complex psychic movements and interactions going on while a portrait is been done, but also, and on another level, something that distracts from immediately addressing or reflecting upon these interactions. Because, we suppose, an instinctive process gets disturbed, if it is made explicit, what while painting goes on psychologically. But in hindsight it seems even more remarkable, and it does add another level of complexity to the scenery of the portrait being done, that the very novel by John le Carré is about appearence and reality in regard to its main character, a British spy, but also in regard to his opponent on the German side. And it is remarkable that Giacometti, according to the account of James Lord, does reflect upon this novel, while trying to do a portrait. Which might mean here, and in regard to Giacometti, to render his vision, his psychological and physical perception of the sitter with whom he actually was interacting while doing the portrait, and in that, render the relation to and the interaction with the sitter.

(Picture: anongoingnovel.blogspot.ch)

What we add here to the story is a portrait caricature of John le Carré, done by André Carrilho (http://www.andrecarrilho.com), a caricature that, we know, the novelist did especially like and wished to own:

Or see here: http://static.nzz.ch/files/5/1/2/BamS_20131124_1.18192512.pdf

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