In the Name of Picasso
Author(s): Rosalind Krauss
Reviewed work(s):
Source: October, Vol. 16, Art World Follies (Spring, 1981), pp. 5-22
Published by: The MIT Press
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In the Name of Picasso
ROSALIND
KRAUSS
Exhibit A: Picasso's Seated Bather, 1930. Against an azure wall of water,
fragmentsof bone and bleached carapace assemble the monumental image of
isolated, predatorywoman. Woman-as-insect,with great mandibles in place of
mouth evokingmoreeffectively
than any Masson or Mir6 thethreatof thevagina
dentata, this painting has functionedfor yearsas a major emblem of Picasso's
with surrealism,as it has also establishedhis preoccupation with an
affinities
especially surrealizingnotion of metamorphosis.The Museum of Modern Art
showed the picture in 1939, and then again in 1946, at both major Picasso
exhibitions.Thereafterit enteredthe collection to be placed on permanentview
and to be installed-permanentlyit had seemed-within a particular "view" of
the 1930sPicasso. This was a notion ofa metamorphic"style"concernedwiththe
body as a loose assemblyor constructionofpartsoftensuggestiveof foundobjects.
This stylewas fundamentalto theearlysculptureof David Smith,as it was to the
earlypainting of Gorkyand de Kooning. They understoodit as a mode or manner
having a rathergeneralapplication: thatof biomorphicconstructionto createan
image of transmutation.Not only artists,butgenerationsofstudentsimbibedthis
conception of the Picasso of the '30s and thisparticularstyle.
Exhibit B: Picasso's Bather with Beach Ball, 1932.Againsta pale cobalt sea
and sky, the monumental form of female adolescence is assembled from a
collection of pneumatic parts: bulbous bones so pumped with air that thefigure
appears to float.As a pendant to the Seated Bather,thisworkdisplaysa contrary
mood, a lugubrious sense of play instead of the earlierimage's desicatedwrath.
But in all thoseconditionsthatwe would call stylethepaintingsare nearlytwins.
Both exploit a simple backdrop to forcea sculpturalexperienceof theirtheatrically isolated forms.Both conceive the figureas constructedout of parts whose
fromone thing (bone, balloon) to
provisional coherenceeffectsa transformation
another(pelvis, breast).
Exhibit C: At a lecturethis fall at the Baltimore Museum of Art,William
Rubin, one of the leading Picasso scholars,showed both paintings.1With these
1.
The lecture was presentedon October 12, 1980, at a symposium on the cubist legacy in
twentieth-century
sculpture.
6
OCTOBER
Pablo Picasso. Seated Bather.1930.(Left.)Batherwith
Beach Ball. 1932. (Right.)
two works,he said, we findourselveslooking at two different
universes-and by
this he meant differentformal as well as symbolic worlds. This is hard to
as if someone pointed firstto a Hals portraitof a Dutch
understand;as difficult
militia officer
and then to his renderingof the Malle Babbe and maintainedthat
a
theywereproductsof different
styles.But Rubin was insistingon thisdifference,
difference
become incontrovertible
by the veryfactthatbehindeach picturethere
name: Olga Picasso; Marielay a real-worldmodel, each model with a different
Therese Walter.
We are by now familiarwith the sordidconditionsof Picasso's marriagein
the late '20s,as we are withhis passion forthesomnolentblond he metwhen she
was seventeenand who was to reign,a sleepyVenus,overa half-dozenyearsofhis
art. But in Rubin's suggestionthatOlga and Marie-Therbseprovidenot merely
antitheticalmoods and subjectsforthepictorialcontemplationof thesame artist,
but thattheyactuallyfunctionas determinants
in a change in style,we run fulltilt
into the Autobiographical Picasso. And in this instanceRubin himselfwas the
firstto invoke it. The changes in Picasso's art, he went on to say, are a direct
In the Name of Picasso
7
functionof the turnsand twistsof themaster'sprivatelife.With theexceptionof
his cubism, Picasso's styleis inextricablefromhis biography.
With the Museum of Modern Art's huge Picasso retrospectivehas come a
floodof critical and scholarlyessays on Picasso, almost all of themdedicated to
"Artas Autobiography."That latterphraseis thetitleofa just-publishedbook on
Picasso by an author who sees everythingin his work as a pictorial response to
some specificstimulus in his personal life,including theDemoiselles d'Avignon,
which she claims was made in an effort
to exorcise"his privatefemaledemons.''2
This same author,who proudlypounces on a mish-mashof latter-day
accounts to
decision to go to Paris to pursue his art
"prove" thatPicasso's turn-of-the-century
was due to his need to "exile himselffromSpain in orderto escape his tyrannical
mother,"providesus witha delicious, ifunintendedparodyof theAutobiographical Picasso.3
But prone to parody or not, this argumentis upheld by many respected
scholars and is attractingmany others. John Richardson, of course, took the
opportunityof reviewingthe Museum of Modern Artexhibition to forwardthe
case fortheAutobiographicalPicasso. AgreeingwithDora Maar thatPicasso's art
is at any one timea functionof thechanges in fiveprivateforces-his mistress,his
house, his poet, his set of admirers,his dog (yes,dog!)--Richardson exhortsarthistoricalworkersto fan out among the survivorsof Picasso's acquaintance, to
record the last scraps of personal informationstill outstanding beforedeath
preventstheremainingwitnessesfromappearing in court.4Richardson'strumpet
has been sounding this themeforover twentyyears,so on this occasion his call
was not surprising.But the Autobiographical Picasso is new to William Rubin
and that this view of mattersshould now hold him convertis all the more
impressivein thatit had to overcometheresistanceof decadesof Rubin's training.
Rubin's earlierpracticeof arthistorywas rich in a host of ways of understanding
art in transpersonalterms:ways that involve questions of period style,of shared
formaland iconographic symbolsthatseem to be the functionof largerunits of
historythan the restrictedprofileof a merelyprivate life. So the Rubin case is
particularlyinstructive,all the more because in his account the personal, the
private, the biographical, is given in a series of proper names: Olga, MarieTherese, Dora, Frangoise,Jacqueline. And an art historyturnedmilitantlyaway
from all that is transpersonalin history-style, social and economic context,
and significantly
archive,structure-is interestingly
symbolizedby an art-history
as a historyof the proper name.
2.
Mary Mathews Gedo, "Art as Exorcism: Picasso's 'Demoiselles d'Avignon.''' Arts, LV (October
1980), 70-81.
3.
Ibid., p. 72; see also Art as Autobiography, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980.
4.
JohnRichardson,"Your Show of Shows," The New YorkReview,July17, 1980.Eugene Thaw
uses Richardson'sessayas an occasion forhis own attackon artas autobiography.See, "Lust forLife,"
The New York Review, October 23, 1980.
8
OCTOBER
I can call nothing by name ifthatis not
its name. I call a cat a cat, and Rolet a
rogue.
-Boileau
A propername,we could say,is a tokenwithouta type.Not transferable
and
not reusable,it applies only to me. And I am itscompletesignificance.The proper
name completes,exhausts itselfin an act of reference.Aside fromlabeling the
object that is its bearer,it has no furthermeaning, and thus no "sense" such as
other words have. Those words, like the common nouns horse or house have
definitions:a set of predicatesbywhich we grasp theconceptthatcan be said to be
their sense, or meaning. But a proper name has no such definition-only an
individual who bears the name and to whom it refers.That is not only common
But
sense,but it is theview thatphilosophyheld until theend of thelast century.5
thenthistraditionalno-senseviewwas attackedfirst
byFregeand thenbyRussell.6
Propernames, Fregeargued,mustnot only have a sense,but in cases whereone is
naming a nonexistentcharacter(like Santa Claus), theymayevenhave a sensebut
no referent.
Russell wenton to enlarge thisviewbyclaiming thatordinaryproper
names are, in fact,disguiseddefinitedescriptionsand thuswe learn how correctly
to apply a propername by recourseto setsof characteristics.
(Thus the "sense" of
the name Aristotleis supplied by some or all of a set of descriptions,such as: a
Greek philosopher; the tutorof Alexander the Great; the author of the Nicomachean Ethics. .... ) We could call thistheintensionalor senseviewof thepropand bySearle,7
er name; and it has been variouslyarguedbythelaterWittgenstein
to be itselfmore recentlychallenged by a causal theoryof nominal reference.8
In an extraordinaryessay Joel Fineman has recentlyindicated the importance of the philosophical debate on proper names to literarytheoryand criticism:
The progressiveand increasinglydogmatic subordinationby philosofirstto extension,thento expression,thento
phy of nominal reference,
5.
John Searle writes:"Perhaps the most famous formulationof this no-sense theoryof proper
names is Mill's statementthatpropernames have denotationbutnot connotation.For Mill a common
noun like "horse" has both a connotationand a denotation;it connotesthosepropertieswhichwould
be specifiedin a definitionof the word "horse," and it denotes all horses. But a proper name only
denotes its bearer.See, Searle, "Proper Names and Descriptions," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Paul Edwards,ed., New York, Macmillan, 1967,vol. 6, p. 487.
Gottlob Frege, "On Sense and Reference,"in TranslationsfromthePhilosophical Writingsof
6.
Gottlob Frege, Peter Geach, Max Black, eds., Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1960. This essay was first
published in 1892.BertrandRussell, "Descriptions,"in Readings in thePhilosophy ofLanguage, Jay
Rosenberg,Charles Travis, eds., Englewood, Prentice-Hall,1971. ReprintedfromRussell, Introduction to MathematicalPhilosophy, London, 1919.
Thus Wittgensteinin thePhilosophical Investigations,Para. 40: "When Mr. N. N. dies one says
7.
thatthe bearerof the name dies, not thatthe meaning dies." See also Para. 79. JohnSearle, "Proper
Names," Mind, LXVII (April 1958), 166-173.
This literatureis anthologizedin Naming, Necessity,and Natural Kinds, Stephen P. Schwartz,
8.
ed., Ithaca, Cornell UniversityPress, 1977.
In theName of Picasso
9
intention,and finallyto a historicitythatpostpones itsown temporality,in manyways parallels thedevelopmentand eventualdemise ofan
aestheticsof representation.That is to say, theperennial awkwardness
philosophy discloses in the collation of word and thing is closely
relatedto the uneasy relation our literarytraditionregularlydiscovers
when it connectsliteral to figurativeliterarymeaning.9
Whateverits statuswithin currentconsiderationsof literaryrepresentation,
it is clear that the proper name has a definiterole to play within currentarthistoricaland criticalnotions of the relation betweenimage and meaning.
Classical theories of mimesis would, like the classical theoryof proper
A visual representation
of something"means"
names, limitmeaning to reference.
that thing in the world of which it is a picture. "Hence," Aristotlewrites,"the
pleasure [all men] receivefroma picture:in viewingit theylearn, theyinfer,they
discoverwhat everyobject is, that this, for instance, is such a particularman,
etc."'10A picture is thus a label-only a visual ratherthan a verbalone-which
picks out somethingin the world and refersto it. And its meaning is used up in
thisact of reference.It is in thissensethatthemimeticimage (or representation)
is
like the traditionallyunderstoodproper name. Both are typesof labels, modes of
reference;in both cases the meaning is conducted through,limited to, just this
referentialchannel. In this view both names and pictures would constitute
representationsthat,in thephilosophical sense,have extensionbut no intension.
The meaningof thelabel extendsovertheobject to which it refers,
but comes to an
end at its boundaries. It denotes the object. But it is without connotation or
intension,without,thatis, a conceptual statusthatwould allow it to be applied
over a pluralityof instances,without,finally,generalconditionsof signification.
In the classical sense of the propername, it has a referentbut no sense.
It is too obvious to need restatingthat art historywas launched througha
sense of, among other things, the inadequacy of classical mimetic theoriesto
explain themultiplicityof visual representationover thecourseof world art. In a
search forreasons fora particularculture'smaintenanceof nearnessor distance
betweenits art's images and theirreferents,
art historiansturnedto a notion (or
rathera whole host of notions) of signification.Thus we have Riegl insistingthat
late Roman sculptureis unnaturalisticbecause it intendsa meaning thatcannot
be netted by, or completed within, the confinesof that material object the
sculpturecould be said to represent.From its verybeginning art historycalled
upon a theoryof representationthat would not stop with mere extension (or
denotation) but would allow for intension (or connotation). Iconology, as
Panofskypresentsit,would be unthinkablewithoutsuch a theory.However,those
9.
Joel Fineman, "The Significanceof Literature:The Importanceof Being Earnest," October,
no. 15 (Winter1980),fn. 7, p. 89.
10. Aristotle,Poetics, Part I, Section V.
10
OCTOBER
early generationsof art historiansalmost never,themselves,theorizedtheirown
assumptionsabout representation.
They simplytookit as a given thatit was in the
connotativerichness and density-that is, the intension-of the aestheticsign,
thatit lay claim to being artat all. Its intensionwe could say,was takenas a record
or index of themultiplicityof human meaningor intention;and theyequated this
capacityformultivalentcontentwith theverycapacityto conceiveaestheticsigns.
No technicalfieldis monolithic,and of coursearthistoricalpracticehas been
dividedabout method,purview,and almosteverything
else one could name. But it
is probably the case that,with veryfew exceptions,the unspoken assumptions
about the intensivepowers of visual representationwere shared by most practitionersin the firstpart of thiscentury.
Thus therevisionin the theoryof representationthatis currently
underway,
in its overturningof those older beliefs,is all the more striking.The revision
involves a returnto a notion of pictorial representationas constitutedby signs
withreferents
but no sense:to thelimitingof theaestheticsign to extension,to the
dependent condition of the classically conceived proper name. Although the
practice,nowhereis it more
epidemic of extensionis widespreadin art-historical
I
shall go on to demonstrate,
in
Picasso
studies.
And
as
and
obvious
than
virulent
evoke
more
nowhereshould its spread
irony.
I have said everythingwhen I have
named the man.
-Pliny the Younger
What I have been calling an aestheticsof extensionor an art historyof the
proper name can be likened to the detectivestoryor the roman diclef,where the
meaning of the tale reducesto just thisquestion of identity.In thename of theone
"who did it" we findnot only the solution, but the ultimatesense of themurder
mystery;and in discoveringthe actual people who lie behind a set of fictional
characters,we fulfillthe goal of the narrative:thosecharacters'real names are its
sense. Unlike allegory, in which a linked and burgeoning series of names
establishes an open-ended set of analogies-Jonah/Lazarus/Christ-there is in
this aestheticsof the proper name a contractionof sense to the simple task of
pointing, or labeling, to the act of unequivocal reference.It is as though the
shifting,changing sands of visual polysemy,of multiplemeaningsand regroupings, have made us intolerablynervous,so that we wish to findthe bedrockof
sense. We wish to achieve a typeof significationbeyond which therecan be no
we insist,must be made to stop
furtherreading or interpretation.
Interpretation,
somewhere.And wheremore absolutelyand appropriatelythan in an act of what
For the individual who can be shown to
the police call "positive identification"?
be the "key" to the image, and thus the "meaning" of theimage, has thekind of
singularityone is looking for. Like his name, his meaning stops within the
boundaries of identity.
In the Name of Picasso
11
The instance of "positive identification"that led offthe last dozen years'
march of Picasso studiesinto the terrainof biographywas thediscoverythatthe
major painting of the Blue Period-La Vie, 1904-contained a portraitof the
Spanish painterand friendof Picasso, Casagemas, who had committedsuicide in
1902." Until 1967,when this connectionwith Casagemas was made, La Vie had
been interpretedwithin the general contextof fin-de-siecle
allegory,with works
like Gauguin's D'Ozi Venons Nous? and Munch's Dance of Life providing the
relevantcomparisons.'2But once a real personcould be placed as themodel forthe
standingmale figure-moreovera person whose life involved the lurid details of
impotenceand failed homicide but achieved suicide-the earlierinterpretations
of La Vie as an allegoryof maturationand developmentcould be put aside fora
more local and specificreading.Henceforththepicturecould be seen as a tableau
vivantcontainingthedead man tornbetweentwowomen,one old and one young,
the meaning of which "is" sexual dread. And because early studies for the
painting show thatthe male figurehad originallybeen conceivedas Picasso's selfwith his friendand
portrait,one could now hypothesizetheartist'sidentification
read the work as "expressing... that sense of himselfas having been thrustby
women into an untenable and ultimatelytragicposition ...."*"
is wrong,but
The problem with this reading is not that the identification
thatits ultimateaestheticrelevanceis yetto be provedor even,given currentarthistoricalfashion,argued. And the problemof its aestheticrelevanceis thatthis
reading dissociatesthe work fromall those otheraspects,equally present,which
have nothingto do withCasagemas and a sexuallyprovokedsuicide. What is most
particularlyleftout of thisaccount is thefactthattheworkis located in a highly
fluctuatingand ambiguous space of multiple planes of representationdue to the
fact that its settingis an artist'sstudio and its figuresare related,at least on one
level, to an allegoryof painting.'4 Whateverits view of "life," the work echoes
such distinguishednineteenth-century
forebearsas Courbet and Manet in insisting that,fora painter,lifeand artallegorizeeach other,bothcaughtup equally in
the problem of representation.The name Casagemas does not extendfarenough
to signifyeither this relationship or this problem. Yet currentart-historical
Pierre Daix, "La Periode Bleue de Picasso et le suicide de Carlos Casagemas," Gazette des
11.
Beaux-Arts,LXIX (April 1967),245.
12. AnthonyBlunt and Phoebe Pool, Picasso, The FormativeYears, New York
Graphic Society,
1962,pp. 18-21.
13.
Theodore Reff, "Themes of Love and Death in Picasso's Early Work," in Picasso in
Retrospect,Roland Penrose,John Golding, eds., New York, Praeger,1973,p. 28.
At thebeginningof his discussionofLa Vie,Reffhas no troublelocatingthework: "the
14.
setting,
an artist'sstudio with two of his canvases in the background" (p. 24). But after"reading" it
through
the proper name of Casagemas, his account of the location changesand, curiously,"the
settingis no
longernecessarilyan artist'sstudio" (p. 28). This is a nigglingdetail, but I bringit to theattentionof
the readerwho feelsthatthereis nothinginherentlyobjectionable to a historyof
propernames,since
thatmerelyadds anotherdimension to the interpretationof a given work. In practical fact,what we
findin most cases is not addition, but restriction.
12
OCTOBER
wisdom uses "Casagemas" to explain thepicture-to providethework'sultimate
meaning or sense. When we have named Casagemas, we have (or so we think)
crackedthe code of the painting and it has no more secretsto withhold.
La Vie is afterall a narrativepainting and this close examination of its
dramatispersonae is an understandable(thoughinsufficient)
responseto thework.
The methodologyof thepropername becomesmoreastonishing,however,when
practicedon the body of work inauguratedby cubism.
Two examples will serve.A recentstudy by Linda Nochlin takes up the
question of Picasso's color, an issue almostcompletelyignoredbyearlierscholar-
ww
Pablo Picasso.The Scallop Shell (Notreavenirest
dansl'air).1912.
ship."5Withinmodernistart,color would seem to be a subject set at thefurthest
possible removefroma readingbypropernames. This turnsout not to be true,as
Nochlin analyzes a 1912 cubist painting that is mostlygrisaille,brokenby the
intrusionof a flatplane broadlystripedin red,white,and blue, and carryingthe
writtenwords, "Notre avenirest dans l'air." Conceived at about thesame timeas
thefamousfirstcollage, Still Life withChair Caning, theworkin question echoes
many othercanvases fromearly 1912,in which the introductionof some kind of
15. Linda Nochlin, "Picasso's Color: Schemes and Gambits," Art in America, vol. 68, no. 10
(December 1980), 105-123; 177-183.
In the Name of Picasso
13
large plane which,like thechair-caningor thepamphlet "Notre avenir... ," is a
color and texturefrom the monochrome facetingof analytic
wholly different
cubism,and inauguratesboth theinventionof collage and theopening ofcubism
to color.
This, however, is not Nochlin's point. The actual red-white-and-blue
tricolorepamphlet that Picasso depicted in this cubist still life had been issued
originally to promote the developmentof aviation for militaryuse. Thus the
pamphlet "means" French nationalism; its colors bear the name of Picasso's
adopted country.Behind the tricolorewe read not only "France" but thename of
theartist'sassumed identity:"Picasso/Frenchman."Color's meaningcontractsto
thecoding of a propername. (Later in thesame essayNochlin revealsthatbehind
Picasso's use of violet in his work of the early '30s therelies yetanothername,
which is its meaning: once again, Marie-Therese.)
Thus the significanceof color reducesto a name, but then,in thefollowing
example, so does the significanceof names. In his essay "Picasso and the
Typographyof Cubism," Robert Rosenblum proposes to read thenames printed
on the labels introducedinto cubist collage, and thus to identifythe objects so
labeled.16 In Picasso's collages many newspapers are named: L'Indkpendant,
Excelsior, Le Moniteur,L'Intransigeant,Le Quotidien du Midi, Le Figaro; but
none with such frequencyas Le Journal.Rosenblum describesat lengththeway
this name is fractured-mostcharacteristically
into JOU, JOUR, and URNALand thepuns thatare therebyreleased.But thattheword-fragments
performthese
while
to
label
the
its
name, is very
jokes
serving
object-the newspaper-with
much Rosenblum's point. For he concludeshis argumentbydeclaringtherealism
of Picasso's cubist collages, a realism that secures, throughprinted labels, the
presence of the actual objects that constitute"the new imageryof the modern
world."'7
This assumption that the fragmentedword has the ultimate functionof a
proper name leads Rosenblum to the followingkind of discussion:
Such Cubist conundrumsare quite as common in the labelling of the
bottlesof Picasso's compatriot,Juan Gris. On his cafe table tops,even
humble bottlesof Beaujolais can suddenlybe transformed
into verbal
jokes. Often, the word BEAUJOLAIS is fragmentedto a simple
BEAU... in anotherexample... he permitsonly the lettersEAU to
show on the label (originallyBeaujolais, Beaune, or Bordeaux), and
therebyperformshis own Cubist versionof The Miracle at Cana.'8
We are to expand theword-fragment
to grasp thename (we have our choice
16.
Robert Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Typography of Cubism," in Picasso in Retrospect,
pp. 49-75.
17. Ibid., p. 75.
18. Ibid., p. 56.
14
OCTOBER
of threereds) and therebyto secure the original object. In this certaintyabout
word-worldconnectionthereis realism indeed.
But are the labels EAU and JOU a set of transparentsignifiers,the nicknames of a group of objects (the newspaper, the winebottle)whose real names
(Journal, Beaujolais) form the basis for this labor of the cubist pun? Is the
structureof cubist collage itselfsupportiveof the semanticpositivism thatwill
allow it to be thus assimilatedto the art historyof the propername? Or are the
that gatheron the surfacesof Picasso's collages instead a funcword-fragments
tion of a rathermore exacting notion of reference,representation,and signification?
This is a portraitof Iris ClertifI say so.
-Robert Rauschenberg
The most recentmajor addition to thescholarlyinquiryon cubism is Pierre
Daix's catalogue raisonni, Picasso: 1907-1916.Daix's suggestivetextexpands the
somewhat limited art-historicalvocabulary fordescribingwhat transpireswith
the advent of collage, for Daix insists on characterizingcollage-elementsas
signs-not simply in the loose way that had occurredearlieron in the Picasso
literature-but in a way thatannounces its connectionto structurallinguistics.'9
Daix is careful to subdivide the sign into signifierand signified-the first
being the affixedcollage-bit or element of schematicdrawing itself;the second
of thissignifier:newspaper,bottle,violin.20Though thisis rare
being thereferent
in his discussion,Daix does occasionally indicatethatthesignifiedmay not be an
property,like a texture-forexample,wood,
object at all but rathera free-floating
of
a
bit
by
wood-grained
wallpaper-or a formal element such as
signified
verticalityor roundness-although thiselementis usually shown to functionas
the propertyof an object: of the round, verticalwinebottle,forexample.21Again
and again Daix hammers away at the lesson that cubist collage exchanges the
natural visual world of thingsforthe artificial,codifiedlanguage of signs.
But thereis, nowhere in Daix's exposition, a rigorous presentationof the
conceptof thesign. Because of this,and themannerin which much of Daix's own
discussion proceeds,it is extremelyeasy to convertthe issue of the collage-sign
into a question of semantics,thatis, thesign's transparentconnectionto a given
Daix's relation to structuralism and an analysis of the sign is documented as being through
19.
L&vi-Strauss, to whom he refers at points throughout his text.
Because Daix seems, indeed, to equate the signified with the referent,he deviates in the most
20.
crucial way from Saussure's characterization of the signified as the concept or idea or meaning of the
sign. Saussure is careful to distinguish between the concept evoked by the sign and any real-world,
physical object to which the signifier could be attached as a label. It is to the former that the
designation signified belongs. Daix, who never mentions Saussure's name, seems likewise unaware of
the major import of Saussure's analysis.
See Pierre Daix, Picasso: The Cubist Years 1907-1916, New York, New York Graphic Society.
21.
Little, Brown, 1980, p. 123.
In theName of Picasso
15
referent,therebyassimilating collage itself to a theaterof the proper name:
"EAU is reallyBeaujolais, and JOU is in factJournal."
If we are really going to turnto structurallinguisticsforinstructionabout
the operation of the sign we must bear in mind the two absolute conditions
posited by Saussure for the functioningof the linguistic sign. The firstis the
and signified in which the
analysisofsigns into a relationshipbetweensignifier
(s) thesignified,
signifieris a materialconstituent(writtentrace,phonic element)and
an immaterialidea or concept. This opposition betweenthe registersof the two
halves of the sign stressesthatstatusof thesign as substitute,proxy,stand-in,for
an absentreferent.
It insists,thatis, on theliteralmeaningof theprefix/re/in the
word representation,
drawingattentionto theway thesign worksaway from,or in
the aftermathof, the thing to which it refers.
This grounding of the termsof representationon absence-the making of
absence theveryconditionof therepresentability
of thesign-alerts us to theway
thenotion of thesign-as-labelis a perversionof theoperationsof thesign. For the
label merelydoubles an alreadymaterialpresenceby giving it its name. But the
sign, as a functionof absence ratherthan presence,is a coupling of signifierand
immaterialconcept in relation to which (as in the Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein
notion of the proper name) theremay be no referent
at all (and thusno thingon
which to affixthe label).
This structuralcondition of absence is essential to theoperationsof thesign
within Picasso's collage. As just one fromamong the myriadpossible examples,
we can thinkof the appearance of the two f-shapedviolin soundholes that are
inscribedon thesurfaceofworkafterworkfrom1912-14.The semanticinterpretation of thesefsis thattheysimplysignifythepresenceof themusical instrument;
that is, theylabel a given plane of the collage-assemblywith the term"violin."
But thereis almost no case fromamong thesecollages in which the two fsmirror
each other across the plane surface.Time and again theirinscriptioninvolvesa
vastdisparitybetweenthe two letters,one being biggerand oftenthickerthanthe
other.With thissimple, but veryemphatic,size difference,
Picasso composes the
of the differential
size within a single
sign, not of violin, but of foreshortening:
surfacedue to its rotationinto depth. And because the inscriptionof thefs takes
place within the collage assembly and thus on the most rigidlyflattenedand
frontalizedof planes, "depth" is thuswrittenon the veryplace fromwhich it iswithin thepresenceof thecollage-most absent.It is thisexperienceof inscription
thatguaranteestheseformsthe statusof signs.
What Picasso does with thesefs to compose a sign of space as thecondition
of physical rotation,he does with the application of newsprintto constructthe
It is theperceptualdisintegrationof the
sign of space as penetrableor transparent.
of theprintedpage into a sign forthe brokencolor with which painting
fine-type
(from Rembrandt to Seurat) representsatmosphere, that Picasso continually
on theveryelementof thecollage's
exploits. In so doing,he inscribestransparency
fabricthatis most reifiedand opaque: its planes of newspaper.
16
OCTOBER
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Pablo Picasso.Glass and Violin.1912.(Daix cat.no.
529.)
If one of theformalstrategies
thatdevelopsfromcollage,first
intosynthetic
and theninto late cubism,is theinsistence
of figure/ground
reversaland the
continualtransposition
betweennegativeandpositiveform,thisformalresource
derivesfromcollage'scommandof thestructure
ofsignification:
no positivesign
withoutthe eclipse or negationof its materialreferent.
The extraordinary
contribution
of collageis thatit is thefirst
instancewithinthepictorialartsof
anythinglike a systematic
explorationof the conditionsof representability
entailedbythesign.
Fromthisnotionofabsenceas one ofthepreconditions
ofthesign,one can
thelabelsofcubist
beginto see theobjectionsto thekindofgamethatliteralizes
collages,givingus the"real"nameofthewinemarkedbyEAU or thenewspaper
is notthesprinkling
ofnicknames
byJOUR. Becausetheuse ofword-fragments
on thesurfaces
oftheseworks,butratherthemarking
ofthenameitself
withthat
conditionof incompleteness
or absencewhichsecuresforthesign itsstatusas
representation.
The secondofSaussure'sconditions
fortheoperationofthesignturnsnotso
much on absenceas on difference.
"In languagethereare only differences,"
In theName of Picasso
17
PabloPicasso.Violin.1912.(Daix cat.no. 524.)(Left.)
ViolinHung on a Wall. 1913?(Daix cat.no. 573.)
(Right.)
Saussure lectured."Even more important:a difference
generallyimplies positive
termsbetween which the differenceis set up; but in language thereare only
differences
withoutpositive terms.''22This declarationof thediacriticalnatureof
the sign establishesit as a termwhose meaning is neveran absolute,but rathera
choice froma set of possibilities,withmeaning determinedby theverytermsnot
chosen. As a verysimple illustrationof meaning as this functionof difference
(ratherthan "positive identification")we might thinkof the traffic-light
system
wherered means "stop" only in relation to an alternativeof greenas "go."
In analyzing the collage elementsas a systemof signs,we findnot only the
A single collage
operationsof absence but also the systematicplay of difference.
element can function simultaneouslyto compose the sign of atmosphereor
luminosityand of closure or edge. In the 1913 Violin and Fruit,forexample, a
piece of newsprint,its finetypeyieldingtheexperienceof tone,readsas "transparency" or "luminosity."In thesame workthesingle patch of wood-grainedpaper
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York,
22.
McGraw-Hill, p. 120.
18
OCTOBER
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Pablo Picasso. Compote Dish with Fruit,Violin, and
Glass. 1912. (Daix cat. no. 530.)
In the Name of Picasso
19
ambiguouslyallocated to table and/ormusical instrumentcomposes thesign for
open, as opposed to closed form.Yet the piece of wood graining terminatesin a
complex contour thatproduces the closed silhouetteof a neighboringform.And
the transparentcolorism of the newsprint hardens into opaque line at the
of its edges. In the great,complex cubist collages, each elementis
definitiveness
fully diacritical,instantiatingboth line and color, closure and openness, plane
Thus
and recession.Each signifierthus yieldsa matchedpair of formalsignifieds.
if theelementsofcubistcollage do establishsetsofpredicates,theseare not limited
calculus at the very
to the propertiesof objects. They extend to the differential
heart of the formal code of painting. What is systematizedin collage is not so
much the formsof a set of studio paraphernalia, but the verysystemof form.23
That form cannot be separated from Picasso's meditation on the inner
workings of the sign-at least as it operates within the pictorial field-is a
statusof themost basic elementof
functionof the combinedformal/significatory
the
For
it
the
of
is
collage.
affixing
collage piece, one plane setdown on another,
that is the centerof collage as a signifyingsystem.That plane, glued to its
support,entersthe work as the literalizationof depth,actually resting"in front
of" or "on top of" thefieldor elementit now partiallyobscures.But thisveryact of
literalizationopens up the fieldof collage to the play of representation.For the
plane resurfacesin a miniatursupportingground that is obscuredby the affixed
ized facsimile in the collage element itself.The collage element obscures the
masterplane only to representthatplane in theformof a depiction.If theelement
is the literalizationof figureagainst field,it is so as a figureof the fieldit must
literallyocclude.
The collage elementas a discreteplane is a boundedfigure;but as such it is a
figureof a bounded field-a figureof the verybounded fieldwhich it entersthe
ensembleonly to obscure.The fieldis thusconstitutedinsideitselfas a figureof its
own absence,an index of a materialpresencenow renderedliterallyinvisible.The
collage element performsthe occultation of one fieldin order to introjectthe
figureof a new field,but to introjectit as figure-a surfacethat is the image of
eradicatedsurface.It is thiseradicationof the original surfaceand thereconstitution of it throughthefigureof its own absence thatis themastertermof theentire
condition of collage as a systemof signifiers.
The various resourcesforthe visual illusion of spatial presencebecomes the
ostentatioussubject of the collage-signs. But in "writing" this presence,they
guarantee its absence. Collage thus effectsthe representationof representation.
This goes well beyond the analytic cubist dismembermentof illusion into its
constituentelements.Because collage no longerretainstheseelements;it signifies
or representsthem.
What collage achieves, then, is a metalanguage of the visual. It can talk
This and the next six paragraphs are adopted from my "Re-PresentingPicasso," Art in
23.
America,vol. 68, no. 10 (December 1980),91-96.
20
OCTOBER
about space without employingit; it can figurethe figurethroughthe constant
superimpositionof grounds; it can speak in turnof light and shade throughthe
subterfugeof a writtentext.This capacity of "speaking about" depends on the
abilityof each collage elementto functionas thematerialsignifierfora signified
is an absent meaning, meaningful
that is its opposite: a presencewhose referent
which is
only in its absence.As a system,collage inauguratesa play of differences
forced
absence
of
the
and
an
absent
the
both about
sustainedby
original
origin:
plane by the superimpositionof another plane, effacingthe firstin order to
representit. Collage's veryfullnessof formis groundedin thisforcedimpoverishment of the ground-a ground both supplementedand supplanted.
It is oftensaid that the genius of collage, its modernistgenius, is that it
heightens-not diminishes-the viewer's experienceof the ground, the picture
surface,the material support of the image; as never before,the ground-we are
told-forces itselfon our perception.But in collage, in fact,thegroundis literally
maskedand riven.It entersour experiencenotas an objectofperception,but as an
object of discourse,of representation.Within the collage systemall of the other
perceptualdonndesare transmutedinto the absent objects of a group of signs.
It is herethatwe can see theopening of theriftbetweencollage as systemand
modernism proper. For collage operates in direct opposition to modernism's
search for perceptual plenitude and unimpeachable self-presence.Modernism's
goal is to objectifythe formalconstituentsof a given medium, making these,
beginningwith theveryground thatis the originof theirexistence,theobjectsof
vision. Collage problematizes that goal, by setting up discourse in place of
presence, a discourse founded on a buried origin, a discourse fueled by that
absence. The natureof this discourseis thatit leads ceaselesslythroughthemaze
of the polar alternativesof painting displayed as system.And this systemis
inauguratedthroughthe loss of an origin thatcan neverbe objectified,but only
represented.
The power of traditioncan preserveno
art in lifethatno longeris theexpression
of its time. One may also speak of a
formaldecay in art,thatis, a deathof the
feeling for form. The significance of
individual
parts is no longer
understood- likewise,thefeelingforrelationships.
-Heinrich Wb1fflin
We are standingnow on thethresholdofa postmodernistart,an artofa fully
in which to name (represent)an objectmay
problematizedview of representation,
not necessarilybe to call it forth,fortheremay be no (original) object. For this
we could use the term
postmodernistnotion of the originlessplay of thesignifier
In theName of Picasso
21
in
simulacrum.24But the whole structureof postmodernismhas its proto-history
those investigationsof the representationalsystemof absence that we can only
now recognize as the contemporaneous alternative to modernism. Picasso's
collage was an extraordinaryexample of this proto-history,
along with Klee's
pedagogical art of the 1920sin which representationis deliberatelycharacterized
as absence.
At the verysame momentwhen Picasso's collage becomes especiallypertinent to thegeneral termsand conditionsofpostmodernism,
we are witnessingthe
outbreak of an aestheticsof autobiography,what I have earlier called an art
historyof the proper name. That this maneuverof findingan exact (historical)
referentforeverypictorial sign, therebyfixingand limitingtheplay of meaning,
should be questionable with regardto artin generalis obvious. But thatit should
be applied to Picasso in particular is highly objectionable,and to collage-the
and on absence-is
of thereferent,
verysysteminauguratedon theindeterminacy
For
it
is
that
raises
the
of
the impersonal
grotesque.
collage
investigation
of
in
onto
anotherlevel: the
workings pictorial form,begun
analytical cubism,
impersonaloperationsof language that are the subject of collage.
In his discussion of classic collage, Daix repeatedly stresses the depersonalization of Picasso's drawing in these works, his use of preexistent,
industrializedelements (which Daix goes so far as to call readymade),and his
mechanizationof the pictorial surfaces-in orderto insiston theobjectivestatus
of this art of language, this play of signs.25Language (in theSaussurian sense of
langue) is what is at stake in Daix's referenceto the readymadeand the impersonal: that is, language as a synchronicrepertoryof termsinto which each
individual must assimilatehimself,so thatfromthe point of view of structure,
a
does
not
so
much
as
he
is
The
speaker
speak,
spoken by, language.
linguistic
structureof signs "speaks" Picasso's collages, and in the signs' burgeoningand
transmutingplay sense may transpireeven in the absence of reference.
The aestheticsof the proper name involvesmore than a failureto come to
termswith thestructureof representation,
although thatfailureat thisparticular
junctureof historyis an extremelyserious one. The aestheticsof thepropername
is erectedspecificallyon the grave of form.26
One of the pleasures of form-held at least fora momentat some distance
fromreference-is its openness to multiple imbricationin thework,and thusits
hospitableness to polysemy.It was the new critics-that group of determined
"formalists"-who gloried in the ambiguityand multiplicityof referencemade
available by the play of poetic form.
24.
Simulacrum is a termused by both Jean Baudrillardand Guy de Bord.
25.
Daix, Picasso: The Cubist Years, pp. 132-137.
26.
The passage fromHeinrich Wilfflin,cited at the beginning of this section,which faces the
possibilityof the "death of the feelingforform,"is takenfromW6l1fflin's
unpublished journals. For
that passage, as forits translation,I am indebtedto Joan Hart and her PhD dissertationHeinrich
Wilfflin,Universityof California,Berkeley,1981.
22
OCTOBER
For the arthistoriansof thepropername, formhas become so devalued as a
term (and suspect as an experience), that it simply cannot be a resource for
meaning. Each of the studies on Picasso-via-the-proper-name
begins by anof an art historyof style,of form.Because Rosennouncing the insufficiencies
blum's essayon cubist typographywas writtena decade ago, it therefore
opens by
paying lip-serviceto the importanceof a formal reading of cubism, modestly
describingits own area of investigationas "a secondaryaspect," a matterof
"additional interpretationsthat would enrich, rather than deny, the formal
ones.''27 But Rosenblum's simple semanticsof the proper name does not enrich
the forms of cubist collage; it depletes and impoverishes them. By giving
everythinga name, it strips each sign of its special modality of meaning: its
capacity to representthe conditions of representation.The deprecation of the
formal,the systematic,is now much more open in what Rosenblum has to say
about method."Certainlytheformalistapproach to the 19thcenturyseems to me
to have been exhausted a long timeago," he recentlytold two graduate-student
interviewers."It's just too boring... it's so stale thatI can't mouth those words
anymore."28
This petulant "boredom" with formis emblematicof a dismissal that is
widespreadamong historiansas well as criticsof art. With it has come a massive
and a reductionof thevisual sign to an
misreadingof theprocessesof signification
insistentmouthingof proper names.
27.
28.
Rosenblum, p. 49.
In The RutgersArtReview, I (January1980),p. 73.