KAREN WILKIN
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resented - particularly when that person is female. With few exceptions -
an achingly tender drawing of Marie-Therese - Picasso's most powerful
portraits of women are shamanistic acts of possession. Sometimes rage,
respect, or oddly, nervousness declares itself (A perceptive British sculp–
tor with whom I visited the show was sure that Picasso was terrified of his
wife, Olga Khokhlova, given the rigidity and caution with which he de–
picted her.)
The exhibition's relatively few male portraits were often more rigor–
ous and arresting than even the most sensuous of the female images, again
with a few exceptions, such as the early, brilliant improvisations on Fer–
nande Olivier's distinctive looks and the evocations of Marie-Therese
voluptuously abandoned in sleep. I'm thinking of the iconic, keenly ob–
served drawings of Apollinaire and Stravinsky, and (one of the stars of the
show), a head ofMax Jacob, an early study for
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,
a
brutal, direct evocation of a high forehead and lean, intelligent,
particular
face, with a few slashing strokes. (Given its toughness, power, and dis–
tance, the famous image of Gertude Stein must be considered a male
portrait.) And there are self-portraits: Picasso as dandy, as eternal mask,
and finally, the show's searing climax, as a haunted and haunting death's
head.
But in a real sense,
all
of Picasso's images are self-portraits, no matter
what their nominal subject, no matter whether it is animate or inanimate.
Perhaps the cumulative effect of the "declared" images of the artist is so
powerful because the great artificer had no need to pretend that he was
addressing anything but his preferred theme. Yet the most arresting work
in the show was a plaster female head, constructed with the swollen vol–
umes that signal Marie-Therese. The sculpture is not so much a relief as a
robust free-standing portrait somehow turned inside out and wrenched
onto a rectangular surface, without losing any of its vigorous articulation.
Elsewhere last season, the coincidental overlapping of a group of di–
verse sculpture shows made for interesting comparisons. Mia Westerlund–
Roosen's new work at Lennon-Weinberg Gallery translated her recent
excavated outdoor pieces into architectural, domestic terms. My favorite
was a suavely curved white wall that revealed - or was split by - a tightly
gathered "curtain" of creamy cloth and knotted, ravelled cords. There's
always a sly, tongue-in-cheek feminist undercurrent in Westerlund–
Roosen's sculpture and in her recent work, seductive body part meta–
phors declared themselves momentarily and then merged with other,
multivalent readings. A propped tower of lacy, swelling discs recalled the
artist's earlier "American Beauties" series, transformed by new associa-
