Chapter 15 I The Anarchists on Montmartre (1) Nude in Red

To untangle the mess is to create. Guillaume Apollinaire One morning in the spring of 1906, a coachman drove an open carriage to the steps of the Rue La Vignan.A man sat in the back seat of the carriage.He got out of the car lumberingly, told the coachman to wait in the bar, and then strode alone towards the door of the Laundry Boat.The porter, who had seen all this, reckoned that a man of such grandeur must have come to collect a debt from her lodger.She jumped into the aisle with a stride and went straight to Picasso's house.She knocked softly on the door and reported: "A rich man may be looking for you."

"What's it like?" asked the other side of the door. "A very rich art dealer from Lafayette Street." The merchant was indeed from Lafayette Street, Volald.After learning from Apollinaire that Picasso had given up the "blue period" and was about to create more lively paintings, he came to explore the reality. He read them all.An hour later, André Salmon and Max Jacob also came to La Vignan Street. What happened before their eyes was unbelievable: the art dealer Volald moved two paintings from the "Hunter Pavilion" painting.The two poets recognized that it was all Picasso's work.The art dealer put the painting on the back seat of the carriage and used wooden wedges to stabilize it, and then walked towards the door he just came out with the same heavy steps.A few minutes later Volald reappeared.This time, he took out three paintings and put them in the carriage; then, four!Five!By the time the carriage was full, there were at least twenty Picasso paintings in the back seat.

Volald got into the carriage and sat down beside the coachman.The carriage turned around and walked unhurriedly towards Linyin Avenue.Max Jacobs couldn't hold back any longer, tears welled up in his eyes.Sticking to Andre Salmon, he thanked the gods in heaven for helping his esteemed friend so generously. 1906 was an auspicious year. The "laundry boat" has already received a very odd-looking person.But anyway, he bought some Picasso works.He found Picasso through Berthe Weil.The man's name was Andre Le Vere.He told a very bizarre, unbelievable, but informative story. The "laundry boat" people thus took a liking to the amateur art lover.Lacking the ability to purchase all the modernist paintings individually, Le Vere organized with some friends to create a "Bearskin" association.Eleven members pay a certain amount of annuity every year, which is handed over to Le Vere, who was promoted as the general agent, to be used by him to collectively purchase paintings for the association.In order to discover young painters that he could recommend to his members, Le Vere visited all the galleries and studios as the general agent of the association.They distribute the purchased paintings to each member by lottery.They unanimously agreed to sell all the works ten years after the establishment of the "Bearskin" association, and part of the profits will be returned to the painter.

How can such a good idea not be tempted?Following the proposal of Andre Le Vere, the members and friends of the association decided to buy only Picasso's works in 1906.Soon after this joyous event, Volald followed. He paid two thousand francs in gold.Two thousand francs in gold!That night, the people on the "laundry boat" drank champagne to their hearts' content.The next day, Picasso put a wallet into the inner pocket of his coat and fastened it with a safety pin. A few days later, he took Fernand Olivier to Barcelona, ​​Spain for vacation.Soon after, they went to a village in the mountains of Catalonia: Gorsol.

Max Jacobs and Guillaume Apollinaire went with them to Orsay, an old train station in the center of Paris, opposite the Royal Palace.It is now converted into a museum of modern art.The train station sees them off.Each of them carried a heavy basket filled with brushes and paints used by the artist for painting.They descended the steps of the Rue La Vignan, where a carriage was waiting.It pulled the group of people in a happy mood to the platform of the railway station.When they arrived, many other friends were already waiting for them on the platform.People embraced each other, and the sound of blessings and farewells became one, and it was very lively.

Picasso and Fernand stayed in Goussole until the summer.Picasso made full use of this time to complete a painting that he started the previous winter but could never finish.This oil painting is of special significance in the development of his art. A few months ago, he had two visitors.This visit once again filled his already stretched purses.Two eccentrics, Gertrude Stein and Leon Stein, led by Henri-Pierre Roche, came to Picasso's studio.Before coming to Gosol to meet Picasso, they bought some Cézanne's works from Vollard, and also got Matisse's "Woman in a Hat" in the "Beast Cage" of the Independent Art Exhibition.Later, Leon happened to come across a print by Picasso that was on display at the Sagot Gallery.He went home and took his sister back to the Sagot Gallery to show her, and his sister didn't like the painting.

Sagot asked: "Don't you like those two legs?" "No. I don't like those feet." "Well then, let's saw them off!" They didn't move the painting.Leon Stein bought "Little Girl with a Basket of Flowers" made in 1905 for 50 francs without hesitation (Fig. 17).Then, Leon persuaded his sister to visit the Spanish painter whom they had never heard of.Luo Xie, who often communicated with the "laundry boat" gang, volunteered to act as an intermediary.At the end of the first visit, the Stein brothers and sisters bought several paintings.Thanks to their presence, Picasso was able to afford enough raw materials to last him for several weeks.The arrival of the Stan brothers and sisters saved him from the embarrassment of being forced to overwrite old paintings in order to paint new ones.

Picasso and Gertrude quickly became friends.The Spanish painter liked the American woman's figure so much that he suggested a portrait of her.She agreed.He wanted her to be like Angel Ingres (1780-1867), a French painter.The last representative figure of the classical school of painting.He represented the conservative academic school and opposed the emerging romantic painting school at that time, forming a sharp academic struggle.Like painting "Portrait of Mr. Bertan" (Fig. 18), take a solid and stable sitting posture. The first day of portraiture begins.The painter placed his model in a broken armchair, and he himself sat on a chair in front of the easel.The face is attached to the canvas, and a sketch is drawn first: Gertrude folds his hands on his knees, leans his back slightly forward, and huddles, as if waiting for something.The whole portrait reveals a masculine strength.On the first day, everything went very well.The Stein family came to pick up their heroine after get off work.Everyone was very excited, and even felt that the painting at that time could be regarded as a portrait that had been painted, paid for, taken away, and could be exhibited immediately.

"So, what about the future?" Picasso asked. "Do you want me to come back again?" Gertrude inquired in a low, deep voice, exactly as the artist had shown him in the painting. Not only did she come the next day, but she continued to come for months.Every afternoon, she left Rue Frelis and came to Montmartre, opened the door of the "laundry boat", and sat in the broken chair opposite the painter. Leon sometimes came to visit, and Fernand sometimes came to have a look.She thought the Stans were a little funny, especially Gertrude, who wore a corduroy coat and strappy sandals.But she could see that there was a lot of perseverance and tenacity in this man, because sitting in front of Pablo Picasso in one position for hours on end required a certain kind of tenacity.Yet, for some reason, the artist never drew her mouth.

Fernand, wanting to appear warm to her, suggested that the model read La Fontaine's fables.Gertrude takes her advice.The days are like this in reading and chatting, passing day by day. After ninety days like this, Picasso suddenly stopped painting.Facing a frustrated Gertrude, he confessed: "When I look at your face, I can't see anything." He had just painted the model's face and erased it. There was no other way but to set off for Gosol again. Long before his first trip to Gorsol, a sculptor friend had spoken to him about the poverty and deprivation of this Catalan mountain village in the Pyrenees, not far from Andorra.There is no road traffic, people can only go in by riding mules.Surrounded by patches and patches of brown and yellow mountain scenery.Far away from modern life, everything is natural without any pollution or damage.Many of the hospitable mountain village residents are engaged in smuggling.All this is exactly what Picasso needs.So, he went there.

It was in Gossole that Picasso started a new way of creation.And this new way of creation prompted him to perfect his artistic revolution within a year.The result of this artistic revolution is "The Maiden of Avignon" (Figure 19).In the bare local scenery and the frugal life of the residents, Picasso carefully refined his painting style, making it finally reach the level of fineness, elegance and perfection.He was always looking for what Gauguin had discovered in Tahiti in the Pacific: a pure, raw form, and others, such as novelty in style.The purpose is to restore his values ​​​​when he painted those social outcasts in Montmartre or the female prisoners of Saint-Lazare Prison, and at the same time determine the difference between him and traditional art; The textual research of society, the textual research of the existing culture... overthrow the existing customs, and find the original self-the free-thinking, anarchist youth who sympathizes with others. At first, he painted in the style of Ingres, because he was fascinated by Ingres's "Turkish Bath" (fig. 20), which was exhibited at the Autumn Art Fair in 1905.His "Fernand Dressing" belongs to extreme classicism.Later works were influenced by a host of other factors, such as ancient Iberian statues from before the Roman conquest exhibited in the Louvre, uncultivated 12th-century Gossole, and works by Matisse and Derain. Picasso is tirelessly observing, seeking and discovering. In 1906 he painted The Scarlet Nude.The picture-in-picture shows Fernand naked, with a big red rose in the background.The characters have erect hair, folded hands, the light on the face is darker than the body, there is no gaze, the eyes have no sockets, are thin and long, like a slit, and there is no expression or subjective consciousness on the face. A model of a mask. When Picasso returned to Paris to escape the typhoid epidemic that broke out in Gossole, he stood in front of the portrait of Gertrude Stein, without even seeing the model again, and painted the head that had been wiped out with just one stroke come out. A model of a mask "Red Nude", as a sister work of "The Maiden of Avignon", is a preliminary exploration of a new art - Cubism.