Pablo Picasso: Girl before a Mirror: MoMA One on One Series Paperback – July 31, 2012

This is a volume in the "One on One" series published by New York's Museum of Modern Art, a collection of short monographs--or "sustained meditations," as the jacket text has it--by MoMA curators on some of the Museum's best known works of art. Anne Umland, the curator responsible for last year's "Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" exhibit and the author of its accompanying catalogue, here explicates Picasso's famous painting and places it in the context of his life and work. In late 1931, Picasso began an intensive painting campaign to produce work for his upcoming first great retrospective show at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris, scheduled to open in June 1932. Just a year before, Matisse had had a major retrospective at the same gallery, and it had been roundly criticized by the press for containing too many older works "recycled" for the new show. Picasso, who had just turned 50, desperately wanted to avoid a similar embarrassment and began turning out paintings at a furious pace, including "Girl Before a Mirror," which he finished and dated on March 14, 1932 and which, as he told Alfred Barr, the MoMA's first director, was his favorite in that long series (5). The "Girl" is, of course, Marie-Therese Walther, his mistress and model for so many of the paintings and plaster sculptures of those years. Dr. Umland succeeds very well in indicating the profound influence the three-dimensional work he undertook at his Boisgeloup sculpture studio had on his practice in those paintings for the Petit exhibition, which, as she notes, are "among the most Matisse-like of his works" (29). An X-ray of the painting enables us to see how extensively the artist reworked his original rather naturalistic composition to create a fascinatingly complex version of a traditional artistic theme. This is a small volume (46 pages), but it is very clearly written, excellently illustrated (there are over a dozen full-page reproductions of Picasso's plaster busts and riotously colorful canvases, with many other illustrations), and in general beautifully designed, and of course the discussion is completely authoritative. There are some photographs, too: by Brassai (of the work), by Man Ray (of Picasso), and by Picassso himself (of Marie-Therese). If you don't already love the painting, you probably will after reading this thoroughly delightful little book.

This is my introduction to MoMA's "One on One" series. Each book of 48 pages contains a "richly illustrated and lively essay by a MoMA curator" on a single work in the Museum of Modern Art. That quoted phrase is a bit of self-touting on the front cover flap, but at least in the case of PICASSO: GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR it is not hyperbole.At some point in my youth, I was given a print of "Girl Before a Mirror", which for quite a few years hung in my bedroom or, later, in my apartment. Thus I subconsciously absorbed it. But my actual knowledge of it was virtually nil until I chanced on this booklet. Picasso finished painting "The Girl Before the Mirror " in March 1932. The "girl" was Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom Picasso had met in 1927, when she was seventeen. They became lovers and Walter became a favorite subject or model for Picasso's art - paintings, drawings, and sculptures. This brief book covers some of the works of Walter or inspired by her; it discusses "The Girl Before the Mirror" within the context of Picasso's works and broader art history; and it recounts the history of the exhibition of the painting.All of this is quite well done and concisely done. The accompanying illustrations, of which there are more than thirty, are intelligently chosen and vividly reproduced. It all makes for an informative book that has greatly enhanced my appreciation of a long-time favorite painting.