MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Harlequin

(Picture: DC Comics; Wikipedia)

Harlequin (Picasso in 2023 – 4)

(30.7.2023) Harlequin? You mean: Harley Quinn? No, I mean Harlequin. But why Harlequin? Didn’t Picasso paint some Harlequins? Yes, Picasso did paint some. Other painters did paint some (even I did paint one, see below). But the Harlequin, here, is the embodiment of a question: does the art of Picasso still speak vitally to contemporary culture? Is it still relevant today? Because, if yes, also the painting of a Harlequin might still be relevant today. But right, the Harlequin, for the moment and with Harley Quinn, has migrated into the culture of the comic book (Bande dessinée), and while in a recent film documentary on Jean-Luc Godard it was said that painting did not really recover after Picasso, contemporary culture does not really seem to find much interest in Picasso anymore. Instead it shows interested in all kinds of identity politics, which might raise the question what role the Harlequin might find, in an era without a sense of humour due to forced identity politics and ideology.

(Painting: DS: Harlequin Warming at the Fire)

In 1993 Michel Serres published, in the context of his book on the angels (Serres 1995, p. 135), a commentary on a painting with a Harlequin. And according to Serres the Harlequin was the embodiment of the hybrid, the bastard, the quadroon. Which means that the Harlequin, as a figure torn or moving between various cultures, classes, various groups of people, might seem, as such and due to his mere existence, as a provocation to any kind of identity politics seeking for the unmixed absolute identity. The classic role of the Harlequin, in the tradition of European theatre, might have been that of the servant whose role, yet, is intertwined with the affairs of the ruling classes. Hence the Harlequin is rather a loose element in class struggle, but in Serres, in the 1990s, the Harlequin seemed to embody rather the loose element in the context of multiculturalism (understood as a multitude of unmixed varieties).
In Picasso the Harlequin rather was unspecified, since Picasso rather seems to have been interested in the contrast of person and role. Hence the Harlequin in Picasso, was, in a way, mere costume, and not the embodiment of a discussion of identity or class. But Picasso also seemed to have identified with the role, and on some level, in his biographical trajectory from poor immigrant to immensely rich, but still exiled painter, he had something of the Harlequin (see also Picasso in his encounter with former US-president Truman, for example), as Mozart had something of the Harlequin (and also Mozart is known to have performed, in a theatrical production, the role of the Harlequin himself).

The imagery of the theatre and of the circus is perhaps one element in Picasso (as the imagery of the bullfight) which might make his art seem to be rather oldfashioned and outdated today: not to be of immediate relevance. But in my view, an interest in Picasso can be activated if it is accepted that he had been embedded in cultures that we are not that familiar with anymore. Perhaps we are more interested in comics (but Picasso himself had been passionate about comics), and perhaps we are not familiar with the history of the Harlequin in the history of European theatre (in Picasso’s time there had been also a rediscovery of Goldoni, which made the figure of the Harlequin interesting again). Hence Picasso might not be that outdated as it might seem, even if there was no Harlequin in Picasso which was challenging identity politics. But in the context of the French Communist Party, of which Picasso was a member, his role might be described, on some level, as that of a Harlequin, constantly negotiating with a nomenclature who would have preferred him to paint according to the needs of communist propaganda, while Picasso wanted the imagery of the French Communist Party rather more modernist. In that he might be seen, despite his membership of the Party, rather as a loose element, whose function it was – on some level and similar to that of the Harlequin – to highlight boundaries and narrowminded sticking to boundaries, and be it those of his own party leaders, who needed Picasso as the walking advertisement of Communism.

Selected Literature:
Michel Serres, Die Legende der Engel, Frankfurt a.M./Leipzig 1995 [1993] [p. 134f.]

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