简简单单

饿了就吃

困了就睡

高兴了出去玩儿

郁闷了去散步

做自己想做的事，无拘无束

我喜欢这种生活

美丽让女人透不过气
　　坐在B区第四排的两位嘉宾低声交谈，内容断断续续传进坐在她们斜后方的我的耳
朵里：“……辣椒减肥……”“……根本……shou不了！”我正猜测是“受不了”还是
“瘦不了”，时装表演开始了。这是服装设计师薄涛的设计专场表演，在较为平淡的“’
98北京国际服装服饰博览会”结束后掀起了一个高潮。主题是“灰姑娘的故事，女巫的
使命”。那个家喻户晓的童话被演绎成：时装设计师把一个又一个姑娘打扮成公主。30
岁的薄涛如何把“灰姑娘”变成“公主”？
　　先是创造一个辉煌的背景——地点在北京劳动人民文化官太庙广场，法国时装大师
皮尔·卡丹和“合成音乐”高手雅尼轰动一时的地方。面积5000平方米。与场地相配的
是完美的表演制作：舞美制作邀请法国Lumision公司实施——全法国80％的时装表演、
大型活动由该公司制作，包括法国世界杯的开幕式、闭幕式。此次法国灯光师携一流的
灯光及其他演出设备来“造势”，让薄涛公司破费50万美元。而那些围满了舞台的、绑
在摄像机上的纸玫瑰，据说每枝价值7元人民币。舞台编导是法国专业人士。
　　再看服装——灰姑娘变公主的重点，由薄涛携数十名年轻设计师设计，大部分面料、
辅料、配饰专程从法国、意大利采购，也有“国货精品”。面料方面得到了法国最权威
的面料展会——“第一视觉”的协助。
　　所有这些似乎都是“顶尖”品牌不可或缺的。
　　在600万元人民币的铺垫下，50位专业女模特走上比一般的T形台大得多的舞台。这
是一次“细腰族”的集体亮相。身材“敦实”的薄涛在以他的名字命名的品牌成衣设计
中一贯坚持修长收腰的版型——他受到市场的热烈欢迎，有“薄涛一版俏三年”的说法，
他将这一版型申请了专利。这次旨在“造感觉”的发布会上，纤细被发挥到了极致——
薄涛透露：“那些衣服的腰围是58－60厘米。”表演“压轴戏”的模特李小姐低声告诉
我：“我的腰围是59厘米，我没敢吃晚饭，衣服穿上感觉还有点紧。”李的身高是1米
81，演出后脱下华丽的大裙子，换上露肩针织背心，显得非常单薄。薄涛所设计的衣服
的尺寸堪比童话里的水晶鞋——不是真命公主穿不进去，或者只能“削足适履”。薄涛
如果严格规定其他“两围”（胸围和臀围），真不知有几人能穿进去。显然，参加这次
表演的大部分模特除了瘦还是瘦，在30多分钟里走这么大的场子，她们显得有气无力。
　　如果说女性束胸衣背后有两条交叉、拉紧的“绳子”，那么其中的一条就是——男
权社会里“女为悦己者容”的事实，它从来就没变过。
　　现代社会里，好莱坞神话和T型台上的“模特文化”很大程度上主导了女性的审美
趣味和与之适应的生活方式，而男性服装设计师是这背后的举足轻重的“巫师”。
　　奥黛莉·赫本代表的窈窕淑女时代至今让很多男性怀念。赫本主要由纪梵希时装
“包装”。有个笑话说，赫本太瘦了，设计师为她设计服装先以笤帚为模特！半个世纪
过去，事情似乎还是没变。模特李小姐的体验是一个佐证。除了为穿进薄涛的“公主裙”
不吃晚饭，这位在欧洲时装舞台正“红”的中国模特还告诉我另一些情节：在欧洲，特
别是在法国的设计师，比如迪奥的设计师嘎里阿诺、纪梵希的设计师麦克奎恩几乎每场
时装表演都让模特穿紧身胸衣。感觉？胸闷，喘不过气！而且不能弯腰——腰身都被固
定住了。一次在埃及表演，模特还戴上了硕箍——就像一些土著民族为了把女人脖子拉
长所套的金属圈，这下，这些“骄傲的公主们”看上去更加趾高气扬——因为根本没法
看前面的路，就由两个男模特扶着走。李小姐跟我说这些的时候，边说边向左右两侧伸
出手臂，看上去像十字架上的耶稣——不同的只是头的位置，模特的头是高昂着的。这
又让人不禁要问，18、19世纪欧洲贵族女子是不是就是这个样子？她们高昂着用面粉、
铁丝固定一缕缕假发辫、羽毛、珠宝的头，穿大蓬裙——19世纪70年代起，为了追求更
婀娜的女性形态，欧洲贵族女裙增加“裙架”。19世纪末女装放弃裙架改用束胸衣，使
女性体态侧面看呈“S”形。来自欧洲和美国的最新时尚信息印证了一位服装大师的话：
“流行总是在过去找元素。”在西方，日益增多的女性为了追求细腰、长颈、美脚而进
行自我束缚，这种潮流已从美国传到了英国，束身已成为一些职业女性追求“完美”的
主要方式。
　　通过2年时间的束腰，一位31岁的英国女士潘多拉·甘妮的腰围已从25英寸减至19
英寸。这个办法是“美体”中最常见的一项，束腰者在几个月之内，连续更换越来越紧
的束腹衣，同时延长穿它的时间。通常一位束腰者每天穿束腹衣的时间长达12小时，每
隔4小时更换一件。医学会告诉我们这样做的后果：胃部和脾脏会向上移动，肠子和膀
脱向下移动，长期束腰必然导致食欲不振，促使胃萎缩。但对“甘妮们”来说，这些抵
消不了细腰带来的“良好感觉”——她们的偶像是40、50年代的影星，像费雯丽、碧姬
·芭锋、索非亚·罗兰等。她们明白，尽管自己永远不可能像偶像们那样“完美”，但
至少拥有了“部分的美丽”。
　　为了进一步“美体”，一些女性通过定做的紧身衣压低锁骨来增长脖子。美国加利
福尼亚的一些女学生甚至坚持用弯脚器使自己的脚减小1－2个尺码，以达到她理想中的
“莲花脚”。穿上这种金属制成的弯脚器一次数小时，它通过弯曲跖骨使脚踝前移，产
生一个特别的拱型来减小脚的尺码。尽管中国在半个世纪前已根除了缠足的陋习，现在
的姑娘仍有“勇气”为“美”进行冒险。
　　已故的香奈尔女士知道这些一定会非常生气。她最先打破由男性制定的“女性标
准”，成为现代女装的真正奠基人，而且直到现在，也没有几个女设计师像她那样不看
男人脸色设计女服。她完全抛弃欧洲传统长裙、裙撑、胸衣、腰封、臀垫以及它们构成
的“曲线美”。颇具意味的是，她那实用的箱形两截式裙装在本世纪早些时候遭到了很
多上流社会女人的抵制，——毫无疑问，她们的审美和男人保持一致。香奈尔的接力棒
传给了一个又一个男性设计师，现在“香奈儿”意味着“高级女装”，已变成香奈尔曾
反叛的“上流社会”的“行头”。在设计风格上，这个现代女装的开山品牌也越来越随
波逐流，但却得到了女性消费者、羡慕者和男性“观众”异口同声的欢呼。
　　维维安·韦斯特伍德的所谓“叛逆”完全是另一回事。这个让年轻丈夫当助手兼做
“缨斯”的老太太是当红的女装设计师，她最主要的功绩是把街头时装揉进高级女装，
在表现女性“曲线”方面比男设计师有过之无不及。她把传统的高跟鞋的后跟引向一个
新高度，同时把前脚掌也加厚，让脚好受一些；她使用臀垫塑造夸张的肥臀，用装饰物
和亮色把人们的注意力引向“关键部位”，她让内衣统统外穿……妓女式的风格结合高
级面料的精良裁剪，她的女装具备真正的“危险曲线”。
　　男性设计师则矢志不渝地塑造女性的“理想身材”。远的不说，只说90年代的设计
师。在层层叠叠掩饰身形的“解构热”之后是挺胸收腰突出线条的“建构热”——借助
腰封、肚箍、胸托来建构漏斗身形。范思哲曾说他的一季服装服饰中腰封是明星。卡尔
·拉格菲尔德自创了一款漆皮腰封皮带，专门用来穿在裙子外炫耀女性身材。迪奥的现
任设计师嘎里阿诺也对柬胸衣表示青睐，至此，90年代的女装全面回到40年代——与迪
奥品牌创始人确立的“新外观”呼应，现代女装画了一个圆圈。
　　女性是否时尚是透过男人眼睛看的。迪奥品牌上两季的主题“东方风”和“闺房情
事”是东西方“性感”标准的杂交——旧上海的丝绸、刺绣、流苏和西方露骨的线条。’
98北京服装服饰博览会上的重头戏——旨在发现设计新人的“兄弟杯”服装大赛上，樊
其晖以“昔日上海滩”为主题的设计获了银奖。小樊在台下悄悄说，他的灵感来自旧上
海的风尘女子。这其实是事实，只是不能堂皇地记录在服装史上——引领潮流的往往是
那些靠取悦男人吃饭的女人，比如率先在欧洲穿超短裙、比基尼泳装，率先在中国戴舶
来的平光眼镜、穿舶来的高筒丝袜的女人。
　　“美女”的文学模本也是男人创造的。以小说《红高粱》出名、捎带捧红女演员巩
俐的作家莫言，在为一本女性刊物撰写有关美女的文章中谦虚道：早在春秋战国时期的
民间诗歌总集《诗经》里就有叹为观止的句子，比如《硕人》，把女人的美既写实又唯
美地描述出来，后人还能说什么？
　　“耕者忘其犁”，“羞花闭月”——这是男性对罗敷、西施们的赞美，也是他们在
挑战自己的想象力，文学技巧也跟着百花齐放了。作家肖建国在给《希望》杂志的文章
中把他认为“性感”的女人比做“豆腐脑”。乍一听挺有趣，实际不新鲜——早有男人
称女人“秀色可餐”，以现代社会的“多元化”，男人尽可以依自己的口味把女性“可
人”的标准定成“可口可乐”、“葡萄酒”或者“卤煮火烧”。
　　当小说《洛丽塔》终于得以见了阳光，又被拍成电影，一股消瘦的少女风貌从银幕
传到时装舞台，然后蔓延开。并不是一向迷恋玛丽莲·梦露和丽达·海华丝的男人们对
女人变得宽容了，那其实是他们的“口味”更多样化了——大导演波兰斯基和伍迪·艾
伦的恋童癖得以从发霉的角落拽出来，成为有争议的“标准”。
　　文化界才子争霸，女人要为自己美也得通过男人。这让我想起张爱玲，这位昔日上
海滩既“入世”又“出世”的作家，是一个把衣服“看透了”的女人。她的《更衣记》，
让我们看到穿衣的复杂。
　　谈到中国旧时女人的“紧身背心”，张说它的功效实在奇妙——它使女人看上去
“不大像女人而像一缕‘诗魂”’。那时与它相配的是直线条、延至膝盖的小袄和“铅
笔一般瘦的裤角”以及“似脚非脚的金莲儿”，张评论到：“妙在给人怜仃无告的感觉。
在中国诗里‘可怜’是‘可爱’的代名词。男子向有保护异性的嗜好，而在青黄不接的
过渡时代，颠连困苦的生活情形更激动了这种倾向。宽袍大袖的，端凝的妇女现在发现
太福相了是不行的，做个薄命的人反倒于她们有利。”
　　如果说女人对男权社会（包括它的最高层面政治）有反应，也仅仅反应在衣服上。
民国初建时，国人对民主政治和卢梭的“理想化的人权主义”充满信心，女人的时装也
跟着“空前的天真、轻快、愉悦”——“喇叭管袖子飘飘欲仙，露出一大截玉腕。短袄
腰部极为紧小。上层的女人出门系裙，在家里只穿一条齐膝的短裤，丝袜也只到膝为止，
裤与袜的交界处偶然也大胆地暴露了膝盖。存心不良的女人往往从袄底垂下挑逗性的长
而宽的淡色丝质裤带，带端飘着排穗。”
　　旗袍也是个有力证据。自旗人入关后，旗人妇女和汉族妇女一直各穿各的衣服，
“五族共和”之后，全国妇女突然一致采用旗袍，因为她们“蓄意要模仿男子”——
“在中国，自古以来女人的代名词是‘三绺梳头，两截穿衣’。一截穿衣和两截穿衣是
很细微的区别，似乎没有什么不公平之处，可是1920年她们初受西方文化的熏陶，醉心
于男女平权之说，她们排斥女性化的一切，恨不得将女人的根性斩尽杀绝。因此，初兴
的旗袍具有清教徒的风格。”
　　张对男装的审视既体现知识分子的理性又绝对“女人感觉”，她甚至同情起男性着
装的单调：“男装的近代史较为平淡……对男子服饰的限制是现代文明的特征，十八世
纪以前，中外的男子尚有穿红着绿的权利。……男人的生活比女人自由得多，然而单凭
这一点不自由，我就不愿意做一个男子。”
　　研究服装史的人难免只见衣服的“尺寸”变化，而高举“女权”大旗的人可能根本
就对女人的身体视而不见。能写善画。喜好奇装异服的没落贵族张爱玲的所见所悟，才
是难得的“流行评论宝典”。她在说女人同时看见了男人，说衣服却描画出了政治——
男权社会最高的层面。她为看起来变化莫测的流行找到了“规律”——这规律适用于她
看到的本世纪前半叶以前的流行之怪状，也适用于她没能看到的世纪末（甚至未来）。
　　这样想，许多“时尚”就有它存在的“合理性”了：中国第一家专业“美甲”公司
的老板李安说，中国女人不留指甲，不美手，实在是中国男人的悲哀。她毫不羞涩地引
用英国男人的话：“女人美丽的指甲，在性爱的时候能为对方充电”，如果你不以为然，
她甚至用她那水晶指甲轻划你的背来个小试验（一本女性杂志这样介绍）。吸脂、用色
素纹红唇、用硅胶隆胸，甚至乳头再造粉红色、修补处女膜都似乎和吃减肥药一样，只
是一些“美容方式”。
　　女性“美的标准”背后的另一条绳子就是“潮流”和“时尚”，也就是“从众”。
用这样的标准要求个人，隆胸、束腰、拔颈、削足适履自然成了一代又一代人的生活方
式。
　　这两条绳子从未消失过，变化的只是“方式”——当年的小女孩是在“过来人”的
强迫下缠足的，在“成衣”象征的工业时代，女人“自虐”的行为看起来更自觉更自愿，
而且商业和科技让自虐的方式更多样化。信息在此的作用是更便于全球化的“交叉感
染”。“潮流”这个词的“形象性”误导了我们：以为它是一股永远向前没有尽头的活
水。新人类最容易相信这一点，听过他们的歌谣吗？——“长江后浪推前浪，前浪死在
沙滩上”。不怕他们驾你“老”就去提醒他们：“后浪”也终究会重蹈覆辙。
　　时尚之于我们的“生活方式”，其实不过是一些此起彼伏的“泡泡”之于一锅“老
汤”。

Behind 'Boy With a Pipe'

In May 2004, Sotheby’s of New York sold Pablo Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe (1905) to an anonymous private collector for $104 million, making it the most valuable painting ever sold. Most art critics attributed the painting’s value not to its peculiarities, but to a prime auction market and an appreciation of the Picasso brand in recent years (Baker E1). Yet Boy with a Pipe is undeniably provocative, raising questions both about Picasso’s sexuality and his relationships with children. In it, the artist depicts a lanky and vaguely feminized adolescent boy holding an opium pipe. The boy is clearly intoxicated and his pose is sexually suggestive: his legs are spread, his groin, prominent. The homoeroticism at work in the painting seems to suggest homosexual or even pedophilic desires. Moreover, a look at Picasso’s oeuvre reveals that Boy with a Pipe is only one of a series of works from 1905 and 1906, on the hinge of his blue and rose periods, which depict effeminized, almost androgynous, adolescent males in vaguely sexual positions. Upon closer inspection, each figure appears in fact to be only a different rendering of the same boy, compelling us to wonder if Picasso, a renowned philanderer, was not also a pedophile. Just who was this eroticized boy and what was the nature of his relationship with the twentieth century’s most celebrated artist?

The prevailing theory is proffered by Picasso’s friend and authoritative biographer, John Richardson. In the first volume of his A Life of Picasso, Richardson identifies the boy as “P’tit’ Louis,” a figure Picasso referred to in an interview in 1966 as a boy who regularly visited his Bateau Lavoir studio in Paris. According to Picasso, the boy “stayed there, sometimes the whole day. He watched me work. He loved that. And he died in the prime of his delinquent life” (qtd. Richardson 340). Richardson was the first person to use this quote from Picasso to identify the 1905-1906 model as “P’tit Louis,” and most subsequent scholars have deferred to his authority on the subject. In a telephone interview, Richardson explained that “Picasso was fascinated by the idea of androgynous youth,” as celebrated by the then popular cult of Arthur Rimbaud, a gay poet whose career ended at the age of twenty and who was the under-age lover of the elder writer, Paul Verlaine. At the turn of the century, the Parisian artistic community held Rimbaud’s relationship with Verlaine as a sort of sacred artistic ideal. As such, Richardson believes Picasso drew inspiration for Boy with a Pipe from an erotic poem Verlaine wrote about Rimbaud called “Crimen Amoris,” which talks about an adolescent “evil angel” wearing a halo of flowers, and which must, Richardson suggests, have called to mind Picasso’s own relationship with “P’tit Louis” (Richardson). Even Sotheby’s cited Richardson’s interpretation in its auction catalogue for Boy With a Pipe in 2004 (Lot 7 Catalogue).Yet Picasso did not refer to P’tit Louis as a model and Richardson has presented no evidence to suggest that Picasso was attracted to the boy—who is recalled only once, in a series of interviews conducted when the artist was in his eighties. More importantly, Richardson overlooks a vital transformation—and a vital character—in Picasso’s life in 1905 and 1906 as he moved from his so-called 'Blue Period' to the Rose: Max Jacob.

who?

In 1906, Picasso was ending an intense three-year sexual relationship with the openly gay French poet Max Jacob. Picasso’s letters to Jacob reveal this as a period of emotional instability for the young artist, an emotive transition we see paralleled in the paintings. Indeed George Boas suggests in his The Cult of Childhood, that we often relate such periods of personal, emotional instability to our own adolescence and perceive vital persons in our lives in ‘adolescent terms’ (Boas 34). Translating this into Picasso’s painting, it is not surprising to find, upon close inspection, that the feminine, boyish-looking Jacob, not the hypothesized “P’tit Louis,” provided the physical model for the adolescent males which Picasso painted in 1905.

Yet Picasso’s relationship with Jacob was so intimate that the paintings from this period cannot be said to be only “about” Jacob, but are, moreover, an emotional expression of self. As we progress through the series of paintings from these years, we notice that Picasso’s feminized adolescent boys undergo quite unnatural changes, becoming rapidly more virile in 1906, as though the artist only begins with a particular model—Jacob—and then improvises upon his rendering of this model to depict a separate mental archetype of ‘boy.’ The latest of these figures, painted in late 1906, seem even to become super-masculine and vaguely animal, with grosser proportions and visible musculature. They seem to anticipate the artist’s representation of himself in his later works as a bull, a muscular ‘animal,’ thus suggesting that the adolescent boys Picasso depicts might gradually come to allude to the artist’s conception of himself. In fact, the transition from the feminine ‘self’ we see in Boy with a Pipe and the other 1905 paintings to the masculine animals of 1906 suggests a critical sort of personal transformation. The earlier of these paintings reflect a self which Picasso perceived as feminine and sterile, antithetical to the essentially ‘male’ work of the artist. This, he exorcised through his depictions of frail and sexually submissive male figures, composites of a homosexual self which was simultaneously being actualized—perhaps further ‘externalizing’ his homosexual urges—in his sexual affair with Max Jacob. The rapidly transformed males of 1906 can be interpreted as depicting Jacob’s opposite: unnaturally masculine figures which suggest Picasso’s deliberate transformation of his self-conception. Particularizing his vulnerabilities into a ‘homosexual self,’ which he associated with Jacob, Picasso then sought to expel this part of himself through depictions of adolescent Jacob-like boys. Understanding the intensely personal impetus for these works, then, is critical both to understanding the transition from the Blue to the Rose periods and to understanding the complex self-sculpted persona of Picasso himself.

 

love?

 To put the Jacob affair in context and thus to understand the emotional and psychological import of Picasso’s boys, we must first consider Picasso’s emotional history and a peculiar ‘idolization of self’ that permeated his art. At a glance, it would seem Picasso lived life without restraint, almost free of the soon-to-be so-termed ‘ego.’ He had no less than six “major” mistresses in his life and doubtless many ‘minor’ ones besides (Seymour). He was, at intervals, friend and enemy to the likes of Apollinaire and Breton, and was so fabulously arrogant that he is said to have characterized his life thus: “When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso” (qtd. Richardson 67). These words suggest that Picasso conceived his identity as bound up with his art, a notion that seems to spring from his youth. Picasso’s father was an artist and an alcoholic. The elder Picasso trained his son to become a painter and, implicitly, to take over a paternal role in the family (Spies). The young Picasso resented his father’s increasing impotence as an artist, a husband, and a father. He would later recount with disgust how his father “surrendered” to the world by giving his palette to the young Picasso as a gift for his fourteenth birthday (Spies). In his father, Picasso had an early model of how weakness manifests itself in both art and manhood. With such a legacy, he could not let his artistic self be undermined by weaknesses, emotional or otherwise. Even Picasso’s daughter, Maya, like many other women Picasso knew, would later write of an emotional awkwardness with her father when she was child (Spies). This is arguably because Picasso’s emotional life, his virility, and his art were so tied together that he could not let himself be emotionally vulnerable in without becoming also artistically vulnerable. The celebrated sexual conquests of his adult life extend this idea further, enunciating a virile self that corresponded in his mind to his sustained virility as an artist. Yet by deliberately living the life of the rake and womanizer, Picasso necessarily denied a vulnerable part of himself.

Picasso did, however, let himself be emotionally vulnerable once: in 1905 and 1906, Picasso was moving out of Max Jacob’s apartment, ending a relationship that would prove uniquely intimate in what we know of his life.  Though Picasso would never live with a woman for more than a decade in the course of his life, he had lived with Jacob on-and-off for three years and would correspond with him until the poet’s death in 1944. Their letters, collected by Hélène Seckel in Max Jacob et Picasso, were intimate and frequent, suggesting that Picasso let himself be emotionally and psychologically vulnerable towards Jacob in a way that he would not allow himself to be vulnerable towards others. Indeed, though they lived together, Richardson writes, Picasso would have despised being thought gay. So to cover, he and Jacob created a fiction of very separate lives, in which Max worked days at the Paris-France department store while Picasso slept during the day and painted at night (Richardson 260). This was, Richardson confessed in an interview, a weak attempt at concealment: “Oh, Picasso was absolutely having sex with Max Jacob. And everyone knew!” (Richardson) Indeed even Picasso’s mistress, Fernande Olivier, noted upon first meeting Jacob that the two men were “toujours ensemble” (Seckel 32). Yet Picasso could not let himself remain with Max Jacob, who represented desires which Picasso saw as effeminate and “artistically sterilizing” (qtd. Seymour). Rather, the adolescent paintings of this period tell the story of a struggle to isolate and externalize these desires.

 sketching

In fact, if we consider one of Picasso’s sketches of Max Jacob done during this period, we notice that Jacob appears both provocative and childlike, embodying Boas’s claim of projection of the adolescent state of one’s own emotions in ‘adolescent terms.’ In the sketch simply titled Max Jacob, Picasso depicts what might well be the archetype of Boy with a Pipe. In the sketch, Jacob, five years Picasso’s senior, is depicted as boyish and vacuous. Presumably the pipe in the sketch contains opium; Jacob has the same intoxicated stare that we find in Boy with a Pipe. Like the boy, his hair is tousled, his smock simple, his hand caught in the same enervated gesture. It is precisely this sense of enervation, of male submissiveness, which is often associated with male homosexuality and which particularly frightened Picasso.

As we have seen, from his youth, Picasso’s art was linked with his sense of personal and sexual virility. A precocious artist, Richardson, writes that he was also a “precocious lover,” claiming his first sexual experience to have occurred at the age of 13 (Richardson 68). His relationship with Jacob would have implied a sexual and thus artistic tenderness, bordering on weakness perhaps, that would have conflicted with Picasso’s quest for personal potency as an artist and as a masculine lover. Throughout his life, Picasso worried over the “artistic sterility” that he saw in other artists, a sort of impotence of the creative sense, which leads one to self-imitation. A friend, Gerald Nordland, quotes Picasso as saying, “One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility” (qtd. Seymour). Yet in his numerous paintings of nude adolescent males from this period, Picasso might doubly be ‘imitating himself.’ The young male bodies must have at least somewhat resembled his own (he was in his twenties at the time) and the images, if they allude to his homosexual desires and his relationship with Max Jacob, are not ‘art’ in a pure sense, but an outlet of personal emotion which Picasso would have recognized as self-imitative and therefore destructive.

Another Picasso sketch of Max Jacob, also simply titled Max Jacob (1905), reveals a creature so highly-feminized as to appear nearly sexless. This figure clearly harks to the ambiguously-gendered boys in Picasso’s 1905 paintings. One should also note Picasso’s addition of what appears to be a ruffled collar, which suggests a sort of captivity and submissiveness. This pale, androgynous figure is iconic of other of Picasso’s early 1905 children, many of whom are depicted with the same submissive ‘collar,’ as acrobats or harlequins. Thus while the figures may represent Picasso’s homosexual self, they also represent the figure principally associated with that version of himself, Max Jacob. Indeed by likening some of his earlier figures to Jacob, Picasso externalizes his homosexual identity by associating it with Jacob and then, through his paintings, supplants this figure with more virile likenesses representing a more artistically potent version of himself.

painting picasso, seeing jacob

We see Picasso’s submissive self depicted in a particularly dark light in Actor and Child (1905), which depicts a young boy in a blue leotard—the same color as the boy’s smock in Boy with a Pipe—who, though discernibly male, yet retains the sexually ambiguous marks of a child; his folded hands symbolically conceal his genitalia. Yet his facial expression is almost identical to Jacob’s. The actor has the boy by both shoulders, preparing to lead him somewhere; his darkened-out eyes suggest a dark intent. The boy appears reluctant. Here, Picasso provides us with what seems an at least potentially sexual and disturbing narrative, fraught with homoerotic tension. The helpless resignation of the boy, contrasted with the blind assertiveness of the older male actor, represents Picasso’s competing sexual selves. Indeed, Werner Spies notes in his Picasso’s World of Children, that in many of his later works, the artist depicts himself as a “blind beast” led by a woman (Spies). So, too, after his affair with Max Jacob, Picasso would spend his life ‘led’ by numerous women and would paint them voraciously. In Actor and Child, the blind actor plays the role of Picasso’s artistically virile beast-self and the young boy, in the same facial language as the sketch of Jacob, represents Picasso’s homosexual self, emotional and artistically self-imitative. One might even suggest that the sort of ‘self-imitative’ emotional import that characterizes Picasso’s works from his time with Jacob, is here suggested by the boy’s introverted posture. Clearly this blue ‘self’ appears already destined to be subsumed by its larger and more forceful antagonist, the actor in rose.

enervation

 

works cited

Special thanks to my writing partners, Lamar Sapp and Jake Katz,
for their suggestions and criticism.

I. Picasso works

Picasso, Pablo. Boy with Pipe (1905). Private collection.
Picasso, Pablo. Max Jacob (1904). Musée Picasso, Paris.
Picasso, Pablo. Max Jacob (1905). Musée Picasso, Paris.
Picasso, Pablo. Actor and Child (1905). National Museum of Art, Osaka.
Picasso, Pablo. Acrobat with Ball(1905). The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow
Picasso, Pablo. Acrobat and Young Harlequin (1905).Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA.
Picasso, Pablo. Étude d’homme (1906). Galérie Jan Kruger, Paris.
Picasso, Pablo. Young Nude Boy (1906). State Hermitage, St Petersburg.
Picasso, Pablo. Young Nude Boy (1906). Musée Picasso, Paris.

II. Other works cited

Baker, Kenneth. “Record Price for a Picasso adds to Painting’s Mystery.” The San Francisco Chronicle. 11 May 2004. p. E1.

Boas. George. The Cult of Childhood. London: Univ. of London, 1966.

Cowling, Elizabeth, et al. Picasso & Greece. Andros: Umberto Allemandi & Co. 2004. No page numbers.

Fabre, Josep Palau I. Picasso: The Early Years (1881-1907). New York: Rizzoli, 1981.

Kamber,Gerald. Max Jacob and the Poetics of Cubism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971.

Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso (1881-1906). New York: Random House, 1991.

Richardson, John. Telephone Interview. 2 April 2005.

Seckel, Hélène, ed. Max Jacob et Picasso. Paris : Réunion des Musées Natiounaux. 1994.

Seymour, Ann. “Picasso and his Mistresses.” Fashionlines. 3 April 2005.

“Lot 7 Catalogue: Pablo Picasso: Garcon à la Pipe.” Sotheby’s Catalogue. 5 May 2004. no page numbers.

Spies, Werner. Picasso's World of Children. Munch: Prestel-Verlag, 1994. No page numbers.

 

about the author

My mother liked to think my fondness for encyclopedias a sign of precocity. It was not. Rather, like many fat and awkward children, I became ‘bookish’— though not by the ordinary route—because I secretly hoped that by acquiring the vocabulary of a grown-up, I might in fact pass as one. Having quit little league and the scouts, given to hot tea, shopping, and easy tears, I had utterly failed at boyhood. Adulthood conferred a kind of impunity: a teacher who could not run the mile in under twelve minutes was no sissy; a doctor who gardened instead of golfed was still a viable part of his community.

So I dug into a long line of World Books that dominated the solitary bookcase in our living room, imposing its will on a painted glass duck and flanked by the Bible and old yearbooks. By age ten, my vocabulary reflected an uncanny familiarity with ocean life, American presidents, and human anatomy. Context, of course, is lost to the young encyclopod. I could spit out names that sounded impressive (to me) but couldn’t go much further than that. Uncles would quiz me and kids my own age would puzzle over me the way a cat puzzles over a fly. I could pass as a ‘nerd,’ read ‘smart,’ by mentioning Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale without being entirely certain that I was not referring to a cookbook.

Eventually, I think, I outgrew that stage. But then, as a potential Comp Lit major, I sometimes wonder. The other day a girl named Shauna showed up at the Middle School library where I and some other Princeton students tutor kids after school. Shauna was in sixth grade, wore glasses, a tightly-bound ponytail and responded to questions in short, slightly neurotic blurts. She was carrying a big, stuffed panda.

“So you like pandas?” I tried to be friendly as we dug into a worksheet on igneous rock.
She peered at me crossly through her glasses as though I had just asked her if she was fond of eating panda. “Well, I had to bring this one to class for a project, but if you’re asking if I like stuffed animals, the answer is NO.” she said. “I’m just not that kind of person.”

I recoiled at her sarcasm, wondered about the home life of a child who found the notion of liking panda bears so reprehensible. Though I know that her self-conception and career plans—she intends to be an “Egyptologist” when she grows up—are childish and subject to future uncertainties, I envied the certainty with which she could say “I am just not that kind of person.”

So what kind of person am I? Less certain than Shauna, it occurs to me to offer a pointillist portrait: My favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is Cherry Garcia. My favorite color is periwinkle. Most acronyms and the people who use them make me queasy. I drink too much coffee and not enough milk. I sleep with a nightlight and grind my teeth. I was recently diagnosed as Obsessive Compulsive…which explains why I brush my teeth for twenty minutes every morning. I have a golden Labrador named Misty and I think the daffodil is a perfect flower. I love airports and trail mix and rainy days. I love poetry and wish I could write it; I have friends who do. I’m told I am an exceptional whistler and a mediocre pianist (at best). I can't draw a straight line but I can’t stand a crooked tie. As a child, my favorite TV shows in order of importance were: 20/20, MacGyver, and Matlock. I hated cartoons. Except for Ducktales which hardly qualified as such; I think I saw Scrooge McDuck at an alumni dinner here last summer. From fourth to ninth grade, I played football. On a team. With pads and cleats and a mouth guard….I can hardly believe it either. I broke my pinky during a rainy game. Tragically, this is the most gruesome sports-related injury I can claim. I drank two bottles of Starbucks Frappuccino everyday for two and a half years ending last summer…which, it occurs to me now, also makes more sense with the OCD. My favorite drink is a White Russian, which is also my mother’s favorite drink and the wimpiest way of consuming alcohol this side of a Fuzzy Navel. I have smoked various sorts of things once. Okay, twice, but I coughed both times. And frankly, the smell of anything worth smoking makes my stomach turn (unless, of course, we’re talking salmon). I do not have favorites outside of food and color, but my poem of the moment is Hardy’s “Darkling Thrush;” my book of the moment is one I read this summer: Max Perkins, which was written, like this sentence, by a Princetonian, A. Scott Berg. NPR (National Public Radio) is also dear to me, especially a program called “The Splendid Table,” hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper who talks about food the way most folks talk about sex and whose name sounds like something you’d order at one of those hairy, hempy, hydroponic, places in the Village. I paid $7.00—seven dollars!—for a cinnamon tea latte at a place in the Village a month ago. It was like drinking potpourri, which I loved. My mother too is fond of lattes of most sorts, though my father worries over anything that can sound like Sunday with an –e. My thought of the moment: I suppose someday when I’m old and my thoughts are beginning to get mixed up, I will remember happy moments from books and movies and other people’s lives as my own. I already do this sometimes. So I figure, wouldn’t it be great if everyone swapped all their happy memories so that one day, when we are all old and the caffeine, the smog, the hydrogenated oils have made us crazy, our minds will be, in larger proportion, full of happy thoughts to get mixed up with? And since we’d have spent a lifetime swapping with friends and loved ones, chances are pretty good that, at any given moment, we would be mixed up on the same happy thought at the same time as someone else. Which means we could all be, in a way, what we become less of everyday: together.

 

	千里之外
	歌手：周杰伦/费玉清 专辑：依然范特西
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