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| Version C |
|
Version C has four
figures. The servant exiting with tray and the central seated veiled figure are
most identifiable. On the right side a mass of limbs and breasts are crumpled
on a rug, to the left a nightmarish hookah disembodied dream. Supposedly he
used
Jacqueline Roque , a new lover and future wife, as model. Documenting
options of playful
orchestration.
Black outlines and the childlike features elimination of many details. Picasso plays
with curvilinear forms against halos of repeated dashes and hatch marks.
The figures are dismembered beyond recognition and it is actually painful to look at, completely shocking. It was sold after the death of
the art collector
Victor Ganz in 1988.
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| Version D |
Version D is at LACMA. With the four
figures, Picasso starts staging some depth. The hookah smoker sits regal, in red and
gold, on the left. A tiny cross-legged woman is stretching in the center,
floating in the background. Broken down to shapes, she looks like the
combination of male and female sex organs. The servant to her left is stripped naked
except for her red waist sash, and she holds back a curtain with one hand and a
teapot on a tray with the other. On the floor , front and right ,we see the first
of Ingres influence. Melding romantic Ingres with classical Delacroix, Picasso
has taken Ingres’ “Odalisque with Slave”(in Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge Mass)
and put her reversed, with legs up in the air, crossed… a woman available and
at the same time denying access. Picasso was mining the roots of Orientalism. The color and light have undergone a
crucial change. The center of the canvas is a dark rectangle tp represent the
darkest recess of the harem and to
tie the figures in place. The painting is overall very dark, with punctuations of
red, blue and yellow. Pattern is pushed to the edges. It is not a painting with
any subtlety.
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