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5 [Background info] [K-6: Looking] [K-6: Making] [7-12]
Seated Musketeer and standing nude 30 November 1968
oil on canvas 161.9 x 129.5 (cat. 35)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gift of A.L. and Blanche Levine, 1981
© Succession Picasso, Paris, Viscopy Ltd, Sydney, 2002
SUPPLEMENTARY IMAGE:
Picasso
Photo André Gomez
RMN-Michèle Bellot
The motley troupes of musketeers, caballeros, toreadors, bawds and lascivious damsels surging into his canvases and graphic works between 1965/6 and 1972 humorously evoke paintings from the Spanish Golden Age and the theatre of Lope da Vega. Yet Jacqueline Picasso told André Malraux that the trigger for these works was, in fact, Picasso's fascination with Rembrandt. 'They [the musketeers] arrived when Pablo went back to studying Rembrandt', she recollected. However, seventeenth-century Dutch painting and seventeenth-century Spanish painting were in close rapport, and Picasso recognized that 'The Dutch painters could sometimes be taken for Spanish'. In fact, up until the early 17th century Holland had been governed by Spanish rulers.
Picasso had a great love of dressing up. He had a large collection of fancy hats, fake moustaches, false noses, etc. These works are travesties in the true sense of the word, meaning "a change of clothes". The fun of disguise and masquerade sets the tone. They are also about a more alarming kind of physical dislocation and fragmentation and distortion, but unlike "all the king's men" Picasso had ingenious ways of putting Humpty Dumpty's limbs and features back together again.
In this painting there is lolly-pink naked woman and an electric-blue musketeer with his Prussian blue hair. The pipe-smoking musketeer is seemingly jolted right out of his chair, severed at the hips, with legs akimbo. The composition has been turned into a galaxy of nodal points which link up in quite unexpected ways. His eyes and nose are the same colour as her skin, the triangle of her public hair and her nails match his clothes, stripes, crosshatching and fanning lines cross-refer. The ends and joints of the chair, the musketeer's knee, the bowl of his pipe, his eyes, the breast of the pink woman, her toes, the buttons of his shoe, her eyes, all form a network.
The flamboyant spreads of thinned oil paint with luxuriant fringes of dribbles that we encounter in the Beyeler Foundation's Reclining Nude with Kitten or the Metropolitan Museum's Seated Musketeer and Nude have no precedent in Picasso's earlier paintings.
K-6
LOOKING IDEAS
'Meet' a musketeer, a 17th century soldier-adventurer. Talk about any musketeers that might be known to your class. Name some contemporary adventurers and describe their costumes.
Give a detailed fashion report of what this musketeer is wearing.
Give this musketeer a name and invent an adventure circle-story about him.
Find the other person in the painting.
Identify the musketeer's chair. What looks special about this chair?
Does the musketeer look comfortable? Role-play his pose with a chair. How might he appear from a back view?
Find other traces of the colour red in this painting.
What colour background can be seen? Do you think that Picasso forgot to paint some areas or have they been left bare on purpose? Discuss.
Zoom in on all the examples of pattern in this painting. Count the number of different patterns that can be seen.
Focus on the brushstrokes. Find five different types of brush-marks.
Does this painting look like it was made quickly or slowly? Why?
MAKING IDEAS
Make a drawing chart of all the patterns that can be seen in this painting.
Invent some more patterns of your own and add to the chart.
Create a painting of this musketeer from the back view.
Collect some costumes and bring to school. Organise some students to dress up while others draw. Swap over. Use these drawings as a basis for a painting. Create a patterned frame around the border.
LINKS TO KEY LEARNING AREAS
- HSIE: Significant Events and People, Time and Change, Identities
- English: Talking and Listening, Producing texts, Creative writing.
- Drama: Performing, Role-play
- Mathematics: Counting, Number, Shape, Pattern
7-12
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Frames: Structural / Cultural
Musketeers in Picasso's art can be linked to his memories of childhood and a love of the theatrical. Without looking at the painting, brainstorm a list of words about childhood memories and the theatre, e.g. make-believe, costume, drama, playfulness, disguise, characters, colour, movement, energy. What similarities can be found in each list? Analyse Picasso's use of these elements in art. How have they been used to convey a sense of childhood memories and the theatrical? Use the words in your brainstorm lists to describe the painting.
Is the musketeer falling apart or coming together? How are the art elements manipulated to achieve unity in the painting? Discuss, examining the compositional principles of repetition, harmony, tension and equilibrium. Locate examples. Picasso has used these principles to create the character of the musketeer. Compare and contrast this to an actor's use of make-up and costume in creating a character for the theatre.
Examine the photograph. Like an actor, Picasso had a love of dressing up. Explore the many reasons why people dress up in different costumes. Research the musketeer in Spanish culture. Review the introductory text of the education kit. What similarities can be made between Picasso's identity as a modern artist and the identity of the musketeer? Analyse why Picasso might renew his interest in these themes in his eighties. | 
