EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

One theme common to poetic art in the West - and used on this site under Artist as Other Artist  - is the artist's adoption of another's persona. It has been practised for centuries though the idea is sometimes more easily seen in modern art. Susan Grace Galassi was right on target when she wrote recently about this self-portrait drawing by Picasso that "throughout his early years, Picasso made use of allusions to works by other artists whose identities he 'tries on' and weaves into his own. In some works, such as this one, the identification is more explicit as Picasso models himself in the guise of a predecessor's self-portrait."¹  

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She notes that Pierre Daix has also written: "Picasso does not redo Poussin. He is Poussin in 1901."² The expression and pose in the self-portrait at left - as well as the tiny triangle of his white collar - link it to Poussin's self-portrait.³ So does the division of Picasso's face into dark and light halves. Picasso even adopts Poussin's centrally parted hair which I have no doubt Picasso did not actually brush that way in life.

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"Picasso", Galassi continues,"portrays himself as if hovering, coming into being with the coalescence of marks on the sheet, with echoes of other artists' self-representations underlying his image."⁴

To make their oeuvre unerringly inventive while remaining true to the canon's overall purpose, artists cannot just adopt one technique - say, face fusion - to make their art self-reflective. Among other methods they use the faces, personas and styles of earlier artists with whom they feel at one to both disguise and convey their meaning. Picasso, having visited some Neolithic caves in France, wondered whether he might not have been the same little artist reincarnated time and again from the Stone Age to the Paris of his day.