Episode #70: Art Auction Audacity--Picasso’s Les Femmes D'Alger (Version "O") (Season 8, Episode 2)

October 26, 2020 Jennifer Dasal

In our eighth season, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction considering why they garnered so much money, and discovering their backstories. Today: Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes D'Alger (Version "O").

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Episode Credits:

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

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Links and further resources

Mental Floss: 15 Things You Might Not Know About Picasso's Women of Algiers

Amanda Beresford, “Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger Series (1954-55) and the Algerian War of Independence,” via The Western Society for French History

La Frimeuse: Women of Algiers. Pablo Picasso

Christie’s: PABLO PICASSO Les Femmes D'Alger (Version "O")

ARTnews: Picasso’s Late Period: The Prices Keep Rising

Episode Transcript

When I tell people that I am a curator at an art museum, I’m usually asked a number of questions-- what’s it like? What’s your favorite work in the collection? What does a curator actually do? And how did you even get a job as a curator in the first place? Truly, I answer these kinds of questions all the time, but there’s one question I’m asked probably most of all by people who are just getting into art, or just exploring a new museum for the first time. And that question is this: what’s the most expensive work of art at the museum? Or it’s variation, which could be directed at any piece in any collection: what is this worth? So, it’s probably not the most important question anyone could ask about art, but I also totally get it. Money is a big part of art, always has been. Think about works from the Medieval or Renaissance periods, or heck, even back to ancient art. Those who were able to commission a marble portrait bust, or have their visage and story represented in hieroglyphics, or could request an illuminated manuscript--they had to have some good disposable income to spend on art. And as time progressed, especially into the 20th and 21st centuries, this became even more so. The art market exploded in the second half of the 20th century and--even in times of COVID-19--is still growing, expanding, and people are still SPENDING. It’s amazing, really, and it does lead to a lot of questions: who values a work of art? Why is a piece worth so much money? And what does it mean for us?

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season eight, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction and considering why they garnered so much money, continuing today with Pablo Picasso’s This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

Considering that Pablo Picasso is basically a stand-in for the idea of the first major celebrity artist of our modern era, it isn’t a surprise to know that his paintings frequently fetch big, big money at the world’s most prestigious auction houses. A Picasso coming up for sale is always a major moment, regardless of the size, subject matter, or even the date of the work of art being touted. But even so, in 2015 one of his works made even more fantastical headlines after receiving what was the all-time bid record for a single work of art, the most expensive artwork ever sold on the market up to that point. Today, we’re going all-in to find out why. What’s so great about his 1955 painting, Women of Algiers (Version O), also known as Les Femmes d’Alger, which broke the art world on May 11, 2015, at Christie’s. After all, it was the fifteenth work in a series created only eighteen years before the artist’s death, and long past his Cubist prime. What’s so major about Women of Algiers?

Well, first we’ve got to start with what’s so major about Picasso. We’ve spoken about him a couple of times on this podcast, first in Episode #39 when we discussed his rivalry with Henri Matisse, and next in our “Shock Art” season when we discussed his breakthrough painting from 1907, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. That’s episode #46-- so definitely go back to those two for more details. But here’s a quick biography of an artist so famous that even my toddler son knew his name at a young age, because “Picasso” is basically shorthand for “artist” in practically every artsy board book out there.

Pablo Picasso was born in 1881, in the Spanish town of Málaga. Early on, he was considered to be a child prodigy, whose art training naturally began as a child at the hands of his father, who--say it with me!--was himself an artist. In 1895, the Picasso family moved to Barcelona largely to offer the teenage Pablo a better education and more opportunities for his budding art career. His father got a job at the School of Fine Arts, and that connection allowed Picasso the chance to complete the entrance exam for enrollment. Normally such a process took students a month to complete, but Picasso took only 1 week to finish it, at the age of just 13. It should come as no surprise that he was quickly admitted to the school. By the age of 19, Picasso was proficiently copying the work of Spanish masters like Goya and El Greco in museums around the country, including the great Prado in Madrid. However, it wasn’t those artists of his home country who made the greatest impression on his burgeoning, unique style. The men who truly influenced him were Paul Cézanne, the great post-Impressionist, and Henri Rousseau, whose so-called “primitive” painting style was like catnip to young Picasso. And like Rousseau and Cézanne before him, Picasso was finding it difficult, among the formal art settings of Barcelona, to have his work accepted and admired. And so he went to where his great heroes had lived and worked, and he traveled to Paris in 1900 to pursue a new path, which he made official when he permanently moved to the capital in 1904. There, he quickly set up camp, made important connections with as many creative types as possible-- writers, critics, other artists, collectors-- and got to work honing his craft and experimenting, always experimenting, always eager to push himself to the next level. And most art historians agree that he did this--really, really did this-- for the very first time with his 1907 breakthrough painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Les Demoiselles shot the Catalan artist to quick renown. Though he created incredibly meaningful and even beautiful works prior to this juncture in his career-- especially in two periods known famously now as his “Blue” and “Rose” periods-- it was the utter break with tradition, with art rules, so to speak, that begat both Cubism (alongside other artists like George Braque, Juan Gris, and so forth), as well as Picasso, the artist who would go on to become one of the most famous of the century. Picasso and his cohort would go on for a decade within various modes of Cubism, until opting to return to the more realistic style of his earlier training. Critics and art historians have rightfully noted a shift in mood of Picasso’s works-- a morose tone, a somber sensation, a shift that would bring the artist to the next big juncture in his career, and one that would inspire his other most famous work of art. In the mid-1930s, the dual darkness of the Spanish Civil War and the early hints of the upcoming Second World War threw the artist for a loop, and after a devastating 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica in the Basque region of Spain--led by Nazi bombers who supported Francisco Franco’s nationalistic aims--Picasso was horrified and devastated himself. Later that year, he completed his anti-war monument, a 11 ½ feet long by 25 ½ feet wide painting that takes its name from the town, Guernica. It’s somber, it’s dark. It’s the stuff of nightmares, but inspired by the horrors of real life.

Some have called Guernica the pinnacle of Picasso’s career, and in some ways, they might be right. The last few decades of his lifetime, especially after WWII, brought a revisiting of themes, styles, and subject matter, causing some to deem his works derivative of his own former output, while still leading others to celebrate this as a kind of fine-tuning of the artist’s previous experiments. And the final decade and a half in particular? Woof. A 2007 article in the journal ARTNews sums up the dichotomy of late Picasso lovers and haters nicely: quote, “Picasso biographer, author and critic Pierre Daix observed, ‘Painters are never better than in the evening of their lives.’ [While] Michael Findlay, director of Acquavella Galleries, New York, [said] ‘With very few exceptions, the paintings [Picasso] did during the 1960s and ’70s were seen as the kind of sloppy flailings around of an aging maestro who had seen better days.’” Even in the 1950s-- the period that begat today’s star painting-- there was a bit of a dislike for the aging master. I admit that even I personally favor many of the artist’s earlier works--the more experimental, more groundbreaking ones like his Cubist canvases and panels over his later series, though there are standouts in all periods of the artist’s life. And think about this: by the time of his death in 1973 at the age of 91, his artistic output extended to about 50,000 objects-- and yes, that’s the estimated total output of the artist, when you consider everything from painting and drawing to prints, ceramics, sculptures, tapestries, and so forth-- yeah, you might have some duds in there, but the numbers work in the artist’s favor-- the more he made, the more he could possibly make something truly great, no matter if the inspiration came from his own history or background, or from other touchstones of art history.

Coming up: greatness achieved. Stay with us.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

In her 1964 memoir, Life with Picasso, Francoise Gilot-- an accomplished painter whose career was overshadowed by her long, tempestuous relationship with the artist forty years her senior-- recalled the numerous visits the couple would make to view a painting by the French Romantic painter, Eugène Delacroix, a work titled Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, known in French as Les Femmes d’Alger. As Gilot wrote, quote, “He had often spoken to me of making his own version of Femmes d’Alger, and had taken me to the Louvre on an average of once a month to study it. I asked him how he felt about Delacroix. His eyes narrowed and he said, ‘That bastard. He’s really good.”’ Unquote. This little line-- this statement of both jealousy and artistic appreciation-- would be a prelude to the most important work of the artist’s final two decades. As we noted at the beginning of this episode, studying the work of artists who came before him was an integral part of Picasso’s training and upbringing, as he sought to emulate Goya, El Greco, Velásquez, and others from the Spanish tradition-- but after moving to Paris, and staying in France for most of the rest of his life, he fell under the spell of French artists as well. And Eugène Delacroix--and his Algerian ladies-- were at the top of his list. Completed in 1834, Delacroix’s painting is one of the best examples of what has been deemed “Orientalism,” a Romantic trope in both painting and literature from the 19th century that idealized so-called “oriental,” or “Eastern” cultures and locales from a “Western,” or Euro-centric point of view. The concept of the exotic of other lands and peoples was enthralling, and very much in vogue during this period, especially in France, where there was a severe obsession with all things Northern African, in particular, due to French conquests of areas of present-day Morocco, Tunisia, and--tada-- Algeria. Delacroix himself visited this region in 1832, making a stop in the present-day capital of Algiers where he supposedly received special permission to enter a harem--typically a female-only environment--and selected at least two women to pose for his sketches. The final composition, presented at the 1834 Paris Salon, made a splash: a composition of three women lounging in a shallow space decked out in deep carpets and velvet cushions, with the ladies donning, naturally, harem pants and flowing chemises, all festooned with jewels and scarves. Delacroix spares no detail, right down to the tiled floor, the floral wallpaper, the angled mirrors, the requisite hookah, a Black woman assumed--but not confirmed--to be a handmaiden, and the women’s discarded babouches slippers--while it doesn’t have that “so precise that it looks like a photograph” sensation that you get when looking at works by Delacroix’s near-contemporary, Jean-Léon Gérôme-- it nevertheless all adds up to making the viewer feel as if they can step into this scene. It’s immersive in the best way that an 1832 painting could be-- and it was, and still is, sensational.

By the mid-1950s, Delacroix’s painting may have sprung to mind to Pablo Picasso not just as an artistic tour de force, but because Algeria itself was making headlines. November 1954 brought the first battles of the Algerian War of Independence, a war that lasted eight years and ended in 1962 with decolonization and Algerian independence from France. As an emblem for the dying embers of French Imperialism, this war was major news, especially for Europeans removed from the Second World War by less than a decade. It makes sense that Picasso-- especially given his anti-war responsiveness with Guernica--would reflect upon this moment in history. Or, at least, the moment in history would prove to be an opportune time for him to reflect upon art history.

Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger isn’t one work of art-- it’s actually a series of 15 paintings, two lithographs, and many sketches. Picasso began working on the series only six weeks after the declaration of war in Algeria and sped his way through the next two months, designating each painting with a letter of the alphabet from “A” through “O,” with that final painting, Version “O”, completed in February of 1955. Most of these paintings are a variation on the Orientalist trope established by Delacroix in his work and heightened by others, like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, another one of Picasso’s artistic heroes, whose works like La Grande Odalisque further exoticize and sexualize such harem scenes. (Odalisque, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, is a French word to describe women-- either concubines or chambermaids-- in a harem setting, originally within the context of the Ottoman Empire.) Still, while in the midst of his creative flurry, Picasso didn’t know if what he was making was going to be very good at all. As he noted to his art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, quote, “You never know how your work will turn out. You start a picture, and it becomes something quite different. It's strange how little the artist's intention counts for.”

Jumping into a closer examination of that series culmination, Version “O”, gives us an idea of how Picasso both emulates, and recontextualizes, Delacroix’s original painting. Right away, when comparing the two works, you’ll notice that Picasso’s painting is more blatantly sexualized in its display--while Delacroix’s four women, handmaiden included, are all dressed sumptuously in a variety of rich and flowy materials, Picasso’s women are all nude or semi-nude, their breasts, buttocks, and more on display, even if in a somewhat disorganized geometric style (because, you know, it is Picasso we’re talking about, after all). And again, unlike Delacroix, there’s nothing to hint at any sort of reality here-- it’s not shadowy or gleaming or filled with a hazy veil of smoke from the shisha, but is instead bright, garish even, all manner of stripes and cross-hatchings and brushstrokes bold and slashing. It’s less an Orientalist dream than a jarring hallucination. And that makes it wonderful: whereas Delacroix’s figures practically scream their exoticism, Picasso’s hardly allude to their Orientalism at all. Only the figure on the left of the composition, a woman wearing a veiled headdress and wearing a red vest that only further highlights her exposed breasts, delicately holding a hookah’s pipe and wearing what might appear as babouches if you really squint--only she could be identified as a figure somewhat akin to those of the Orientalist trope.

Picasso, probably inspired by news reports of the Algerian War and haunted by his own wish to create something as good as Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, thus must have been spurred to create this series, one of the greatest of the second half of his career. But it wasn’t solely these two elements that were the impetus for his Les Femmes d’Algers series, because another, more personal, reason comes into play here. Just two days after war was declared in Algeria, French painter Henri Matisse died at the age of 84 on November 3rd, 1954. As you might remember from Episode 39 of our podcast, Matisse and Picasso were famously competitive with one another, so much so that the elder Matisse once referred to his relationship with Picasso as a constant “boxing match.” While they began their acquaintance as closer to enemies than anything else, as both men aged, their rivalry cooled down and they began to first grudgingly admire one another before eventually becoming friends. surprise surprise. They challenged one another, sent notes and critiques of each others’ work, and inspired one another. It was a true meeting of the minds, and it’s thus no coincidence that Picasso began his Women of Algiers series only weeks after his friend’s death. Because a long-held fascination of Matisse’s had been the odalisque, those icons of Orientalism favored by artists like Gerome and Delacroix, and Matisse spent practically the entire 1920s painting exoticized female nude after exoticized female nude. And there’s a lot that we can say about this series, including whether or not it is socially acceptable these days to like these paintings, but that’s a huge conversation for a future episode of this show. What matters within the context of our topic today is that Matisse had become synonymous, in Picasso’s mind, with the modern take on Orientalism. Turning to the same subject matter was a way to engage directly with his old frenemy. He made this extraordinarily clear in conversation with another friend, the English artist Roland Penrose, declaring, quote, "When Matisse died, he left his odalisques to me as a legacy, and this is my idea of the Orient, though I have never been there.” Unquote. Indeed, one can draw parallels, though inexact, between Picasso’s nude in the right foreground to works like Henri Matisse’s iconic Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra), a landmark painting from 1907 now at the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as his Large Reclining Nude (called The Pink Nude) from 1934 and his Blue Nude cut out series from the years just prior to his death.

Coming up: Our final thoughts on Version O, and its financial valuation. Stay with us.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

All of this adds up to a painting that is incredibly deep in its significance for both the artist and for the time period in which he worked. Throughout the Women of Algiers series, Picasso ties up loose ends regarding his recently-deceased friend, his long admiration of a Delacroix masterpiece, art historical tropes, and current events, which reach their pinnacle in Version O. That alone may lead to an understanding of why this work-- a later addition to the artist’s oeuvre, could garner such a huge sum at an auction. Version O is its own unique showpiece, a nexus between the historical context, inspiration, and legacy. Instead of following Delacroix’s vision of Orientalism or emulating Matisse, Picasso aspired to see the Middle East from the perspective of his original lens: bizarre, distorted, aggressive, sexual and quite wonderful. Picasso used Delacroix and Matisse as his eyes to the window of Algerian culture in a time when Algeria was a topic on everyone’s lips, merging them in a manner that pays homage to all his inspirations at once.

The importance of Picasso’s series--or at least interest in it--was understood around the time of its creation. In 1956, just one year after Version O, and the entire series, was completed, art collector and historian Douglas Cooper viewed Picasso’s works and commented on their quality to Alfred Barr, Jr., curator and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In a letter to Barr, Cooper wrote, quote: “I recently spent the day with Picasso and went through most of what he has done since last July. I have been greatly impressed...A whole series of interiors deriving half from Delacroix half from Matisse—great emphasis on ornament, arabesque, simplification...In short, as you are planning to come to Europe, this is a word to tell you that you must see all this in the studio: it is to my mind much better than anything since 1946.” Unquote. In short: what a difference a decade can make.

Later that same year, the entire Women of Algiers series was consigned to Kahnweiler’s gallery for sale, and the entire series-- all fifteen paintings--were bought in June by collectors Victor and Sally Ganz for a total price of $212,500, or about $2 million in today’s dollars. Over time, the couple began divesting themselves of some of the works from the series, eventually selling off ten canvases while keeping their top five versions, which included, of course, the spectacular Version O. But even Version O eventually made its way to market, being sold along with other Ganz family art, in an auction at Christie’s November of 1997. At that time, it sold for a total of $31.9 million dollars-- I mean, that’s a pretty penny, and truly nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not the nearly $200 million price tag that the work would garner less than 20 years later. By the time that Version O hit the market again in May 2015, the amount expected for even a late-era Picasso painting had rose astronomically, and a valuation of the work had increased from that previous $32 million to a proposed $140 million, a number that would catapult the canvas into world-record status. And it achieved it. Considering auction house fees, the final tally for this single painting was $179.4 million, indeed setting a record for the most expensive Picasso painting sold at auction, and, like much major auctioned art today, it ended up in the Middle East, purchased by the former Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.

So what changed? Even considering that Picasso’s Women of Algiers had been lauded during its own time, this skyrocketing of valuation in such a short time--less than two decades, was fantastic and to some, unexpected-- especially considering that later-career Picassos weren’t so highly prized. Art sales and valuation are notoriously tricky to pin down, but it’s probably safe to say that a couple of factors were at play here. First is that many consider Picasso to be a true cornerstone of 20th century art history-- and indeed, his role as one of the progenitors of Cubism merits this, let alone the popularity of the rest of his artistic output. And being one of the big names means that demand remains huge-- as every collector, every institution, would want to get their hands on that big name star. It’s simple economics, in that way. The second element at play is in the scarcity of Picasso works--which is somewhat laughable as a concept, considering the sheer amount of artworks that the artist produced in his lifetime, which we mentioned earlier this episode. But what’s actually scarce is the amount of artworks from the first half of Picasso’s career, the part that many consider to be most influential, most experimental, most important. The vast majority of those works have long been held in both public and private collections, and while they do occasionally bubble up in sales at auctions, they’re apt to remain in one place, especially if they are housed in a museum or another institution, for example. Thus, the prices for more widely-available late Picasso works-- those will just keep going up as gallerists and auction houses mine the artist’s final years for what could be considered the next great late Pablo Picasso painting.

And a quick coda to this episode before we end today: last year, in July 2020, another canvas from the Women of Algiers series came up for sale on a new auction initiative for Christie’s, called Christie’s ONE, a live-streamed, global sale that took place in four different cities in what the auction juggernaut called a “relay-style format.” Version F was one of the most anticipated works in this sale, and the first time that this version had ever been featured at auction. It’s obviously a much earlier canvas in the series, and a much looser and rougher rendition of the harem scene-- and it was valued as such, with an estimate of $30 million dollars. It was finally sold for just under that amount: $29,217,500.

Next time on ArtCurious, we’re finally discussing an artist we’ve never yet discussed on this show, and looking at his two incredible works that have reached the highest echelons at auction. Don’t miss it.

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Arina Novak. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us gŌing, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod.

Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in the most expensive works ever sold at auction.