This chillingly beautiful sketch is one of my favorites by Picasso. It features the haunting image of the half man/half beast, Minotaur staggering through a village. As villagers flee, only a little girl stands in its way, holding a flower as her only defense.
The most common interpretation links the Minotaur to the anger and sadness Picasso felt after his father died. He drew/painted a series of pictures depicting the balance between light and dark, good and bad, innocent and evil with the image of a Minotaur pitted against nothing but a girl and a flower.
I however like to interpret it differently. To me, art is very personal to the creator as well as the viewer. What the artist sees and what we see do not necessarily have to be the same thing. The following is my personal - probably over romanticized - connection to the piece (complete with literary links!)
When I view this picture, I see a touching display of the power of innocence. The sketch depicts chaos and destruction, but there is no visible indication that the Minotaur is directly responsible. It almost seems that the villagers, in their desire to escape, are the sole cause. Could we assume - in my interpretation - that the beast is only so in appearance. Only the child with the flower can see past his disfigurement and accept the truer beauty inside. I picture him reaching out to the girl, feeling, needing her warmth.
I refer back to similar tales such as Beauty and the Beast or Rigoletto where - while others chant "We don't like what we don't understand, in fact it scares us" - the one with a pure heart is able to bring forth the true worth of the previously monstrous creature.
I would also like to bring attention to the tragic short story, La Casa de Asterion ("The House of Asterion") by Jorge Luis Borges. The poem gives Midus' Minotaur (from the labyrinth) a very human character. He is painted as nothing more than a misguided and unfortunate man. He talks of his loneliness and of how people shun him. He proves that he is naive on the workings of the world by believing he is direct descendant of the sun and when men come, he thinks he must deliver them from their evil, mortal coils. When he dies, he doesn't fight.
Perhaps we can find a similarity between the Minotaurs of both Borges' story and Picasso's sketch. I interpret both as stories of the unfortunate and pitiable beasts. Only one - Picasso's Minotaur - finds acceptance in the only heart that would open to it.
Picasso's "The Minotaur" should incite fear, or, at least, a general sense of uneasiness. And yet, staring at the light emitting from the girl and her flower, how pure, and how strong she is in the face of the supposed beast, the audience should feel a sense of calm or trust wash over them. We don't know what happens next. For all we know, the Minotaur devours the girl whole. But for the moment - the moment Picasso captured in the picture - she is the only one willing to fight for innocence and truth and we trust her through and through.
The Minotaur is harsh and intense but beautiful and calming as well. Whether you see the contrast between the hideous monster filled with rage and the pure young girl or you see two innocent souls making a connection, this piece speaks worlds to the power of one brave and innocent girl with a flower.
-Collette Riddle
I like this sketch too; I hadn't seen it before now. I can't tell what stage of Picasso's career this -- earlier or later than Guernica?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, but I've never thought of the Minotaur as a sympathetic character. He's not "Beast" for me. But then my approach to this figure is from the story of Ariadne and her thread. And from Daedalus and Icarus.
And what is all that stuff between the girl and the Minotaur? There is a woman's torso and small horse (a mare?) and some other detail I can't quite make out. I wonder how all of this fits into your innocence and monster reading.
I saw it as destruction from chaos, not so much from the Minotaur. In all the fright, the woman fainted, the horse fell over. Of course, this might be where we notice the difference between what I want to see out of what is actually drawn. I will gladly admit that my interpretation is not correct. But I will always interpret the sketch the same way, perhaps, until I cease to believe in innocence.
ReplyDeleteYour interpretation is interesting and is obviously as valid an interpretation as any other, though I feel the need to chime in on the discussion for a moment. First, this is not a sketch. It's an etching. Etching is a much more involved process than sketching. Much more difficult to do well as it requires complete control by the artist and mistakes are very difficult to hide, (unlike a sketch where you just reach for the eraser). Second, Picasso always used the Minotaur as a symbol of himself. It fed into his vision of himself as a strong, virile, sexual force. The girl holding the candle in this etching has the unmistakable profile of his long time lover Marie Terese Walter, a woman he never married but who captivated him from the moment he met her when she was 17 and he was in his 40s. She would be in his life (even giving birth to his daughter Maia) exerting a calming force until he died. She did indeed tame the minotaur. The other figures are all from the personal mythology Picasso constructed around himself over the course of a half century or so with the fallen female matador representing all those lovers who dared to get into the ring with him and were vanquished.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I don't see nearly enough discussion about Picasso's graphic work from the 1930s on the web as those works deserve.