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2 [Background info] [K-6: Looking] [K-6: Making] [7-12]
Nude in a rocking chair 26 March 1956
Oil on canvas 195 x 130 (cat. 16)
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Purchased 1981
© Succession Picasso, Paris, Viscopy Ltd, Sydney, 2002
SUPPLEMENTARY WORK:
The rocking chair c. 1957
Photo André Villers
RMN-Michèle Bellot
All the La Californie works are pervaded by the influence of Matisse, Picasso's great friend and rival, who died in 1954. Matisse had taken up residency in the South of France at the end of World War I and the lush palmy surroundings, the glamorous light and an oriental sense of ease had become keynotes of his work. When Picasso committed himself to living in the same region after 1955, never returning to Paris even for a week-end in the last seventeen years of his life, he inherited Matisse's kingdom, so to speak.
The art historian Yve-Alain Bois has evaluated the Gallery's Nude in a rocking chair as follows: 'Nothing seems to me more Matissean in Picasso's entire oeuvre: the brushwork, the flat planes of pure colour, the reserved white halos around the object, the blank face, even the quotation of a palm tree. And yet, what could be more Picassoesque, with such a dismembering and remembering of the body, such a crumpled knot at the centre, and such a generalised metaphoricity: the shark-like belly, the phallic right arm and neck, the eyeglass shape of the rocking chair? The work is a hybrid: Picasso has co-fathered a canvas with his competitor.'
Matisse, along with his old friend Braque, were the painters Picasso held in the highest esteem in his later life. And so this "dismembering and remembering of the body", that had been carried out so savagely in his manifesto painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, is here less violent. Though clearly still capable of using his brush like a knife, in this painting Picasso is under the more lyrical and tender sway of Matisse. It is as if one of those demoiselles d'Avignon had fallen upon easier times, and rocks calmly in a curvilinear bentwood chair.
K-6
LOOKING IDEAS
Meet the figure in the rocking chair.
Give this person a name and invent a story about how she came to be in this picture.
How has Picasso changed this figure to make it look different from a real life figure?
Picture and describe facial features that you have which she does not.
Focus on the rocking chair. Make the sounds and movement of this chair.
Look at the photos of Picasso and his rocking chair. How has it been changed in this painting?
Look closely at the chair and detect part of an animal hidden in the line of the chair. Name this animal.
Describe your favourite chair to the class and talk about why it's special to you.
Zoom to the scene outside and describe the view from the studio.
MAKING IDEAS
Create a face for the woman in the rocking chair.
Make a painting of your special chair with a special friend or pet sitting in it.
Create a painting of the view through the window.
LINKS TO KEY LEARNING AREAS
- HSIE: Environments (the studio location at Cannes in the south of France)
- English: Talking and Listening, Producing texts, creative writing
7-12
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Frames: Subjective / Structural
What is your initial response to this painting? Name the painting's subject. Is it a person or something else? Male or female? List all the elements of the human body that you can see.
What are the dominant elements of art in this image? Explain their use. Have they been painted slowly or quickly? Gently or aggressively? Discuss how each has given form to the figure. How does their use direct the viewer's eyes through the composition?
The person in this painting has no face, no specific identity. Can you find faces anywhere else? Whose face could it be?
Picasso was renowned for the intensity of his eyes. Find evidence of eyes in the image. How have they been disguised? Why are we taught that it is impolite to stare?
Compare the painting with the photograph of Picasso's studio. Can you see similarities? Look at the painting and the photograph. Imagine the artist making this painting in his studio. | 
