MORE TO PICASSO THAN MEETS THE EYE : INFRARED CAMERAS REVEAL HIDDEN WORKS UNDERNEATH PAINTINGS.Byline: Carl Hartman Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Underneath a dark blue painting of mourners on a beach, a researcher at the National Gallery of Art has found that Pablo Picasso painted - and then painted over - two vivid pictures of a bullfight. A sign of the great artist's prolific creativity, his changing artistic mood - or simply his need for something to paint on - the abandoned work was first noticed when bits of bright red and yellow appeared through small cracks in the somber som·ber adj. 1. a. Dark; gloomy. b. Dull or dark in color. 2. a. Melancholy; dismal: a somber mood. b. Serious; grave. blue. Infrared cameras eventually solved the mystery. They are now being used to examine other Picassos hanging in a show at the gallery called ``Picasso - The Early Years, 1892-1906.'' ``About half the paintings in the show have something underneath to investigate,'' said Anne Hoenigswald, the conservator conservator n. a guardian and protector appointed by a judge to protect and manage the financial affairs and/or the person's daily life due to physical or mental limitations or old age. who detected the hidden work. ``It may not be a whole composition, but worth looking at with an infrared camera.'' Adds Hoenigswald wryly wry adj. wri·er or wry·er, wri·est or wry·est 1. Dryly humorous, often with a touch of irony. 2. : ``It could be a lifetime job.'' Picasso painted the mourners, called ``Tragedy,'' on a big wooden panel in Barcelona in 1903. It belongs to his ``blue period'' brought on by the suicide of his best friend. Hoenigswald first detected traces of the underlying work when she examined the painting in 1983 - bits of red and yellow appearing through small cracks, visible only to the trained eye. Photos taken from the side, with what experts call a ``raking raking of an elephant—see back raking. light,'' showed something else: thickly painted areas where there was no apparent need for them. Infrared and X-ray photos, using light not visible to the naked eye, then revealed yet more underneath: horses and a series of arches. They resembled two other bullfight paintings Picasso did in 1901 and 1902, with red and yellow tones like those seen through the cracks. Then the gallery acquired a new infrared camera, capable of penetrating more deeply. More photos, taken in 1994 and 1995 on a different wavelength and hitched to a computer to enhance them, brought out more detail. They established a different bullfight scene with human figures in it, too. Hoenigswald recognized some details as similar to a drawing, now in the Picasso Museum in Paris, of a dead horse being dragged by two others. Even deeper were odd bits: a dog's head, the lettering of a friend's name. ``These were sketches - almost doodles Doodles can mean the following:
That was a Picasso trait trait (trat) 1. any genetically determined characteristic; also, the condition prevailing in the heterozygous state of a recessive disorder, as the sickle cell trait. 2. a distinctive behavior pattern. , wanting to fill any empty space on a canvas, a wooden panel or a piece of paper, she explained. So in the end, three layers emerged beneath ``Tragedy'': the rough sketches, a thickly painted action scene from the bullring, and another bullfight painting, showing horses dragging a dead horse from the ring. Picasso, long interested in bullfights, was showing a common scene: Before the matador matador In bullfighting, the principal performer, who works the capes and attempts to dispatch the bull with a sword thrust between the shoulder blades. Most of the techniques used by modern matadors were established in the 1910s by Juan Belmonte (b. 1894–d. engages the bull, horsemen enrage en·rage tr.v. en·raged, en·rag·ing, en·rag·es To put into a rage; infuriate. [Middle English *enragen, from Old French enrager : en-, causative pref. it with thrusts from a long lance. The bull gores and kills the horses, which other horses then drag from the ring. After his friend's suicide, Picasso apparently turned the wooden panel showing that bullfight scene from horizontal to vertical and painted ``Tragedy.'' But though the subject was different, he still used lines that remained on the panel from the earlier pictures. The shape of one horse's head from a bullfight painting, for example, defined the line of a man's neck and shoulder in ``Tragedy.'' A well-known 1955 film shows Picasso painting one side of a pane A rectangular area within an on-screen window that contains information for the user. A window may have many panes. See menu pane. of glass so the audience on the other side could see what he did. In the film, he repeatedly erases whole scenes and starts over. ``Or he leaves a little bit, and uses that for something else - a flower could become part of a head,'' Hoenigswald says. THE EXHIBIT Pablo Picasso's painting ``Tragedy'' belongs to the National Gallery of Art and is always on display in Washington. Many other paintings have been borrowed for the show, ``Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906.'' Some lenders sent them in advance or will allow them to stay in Washington afterward af·ter·ward also af·ter·wards adv. At a later time; subsequently. Adv. 1. afterward - happening at a time subsequent to a reference time; "he apologized subsequently"; "he's going to the store but he'll be back here so conservator Anne Hoenigswald and her team can examine them for additional sketches or paintings underneath. The show will be at the National Gallery until July 27. Admission is free, but passes are required on weekends and holidays because of the large crowds expected. The exhibit will then be at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, and contains one of the largest permanent museum collections in the Americas. , from Sept. 10 through Jan. 4, 1998. Tickets there will cost $15 for adults, $13 for seniors and students, $5 for children. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: A 1902 sketch by Picasso contains details similar to a work discovered underneath another painting. Associated Press |
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