Picasso, the Knife Game and the Unsettling in Art

(14.3.2023) Nobody knows when and by whom the knife game was played for the very first time in history. Dora Maar (née Theodora Markovitch) played it, in 1935 or 1936, on her own, in the semi-public sphere of a Parisian café, and apparently to the effect of impressing Picasso. Marina Abramović made a performance, inspired by the knife game, in 1973, and in a TV series (I saw) in c. 1979, children played it, with slightly unsettling effect, as I recall (on me). All of this has to be put in perspective. And here come some reflections on the unsettling in art, and on whether transgressing the boundaries – in art, of art – or not.

(Picture: Man Ray)

(Picture: Argentina)

1) The Knife Game as a Performance 1

As far as I can see the motives of Dora Maar for playing the knife game in the café Deux Magots in 1935 or 1936 are unclear. Due to Françoise Gilot relating what Picasso had told her on Dora Maar having played the knife game (see F 628), on her own, in the semi-public sphere of a Parisian café, we know (or can assume) what effect it had: Picasso was fascinated. By Dora Maar, putting off her gloves and stabbing with a knife into the table, stabbing into the spaces inbetween her fingers and into the table, but also hurting her fingers. Picasso was impressed. But was this the intended effect? Did Dora Maar want to impress Picasso? At least I do not know, and it seems that Picasso studies have not asked the question.
One might call the doing of Dora Maar a performance, she acted, she did something, not in the context of art, but in the semi-public sphere of a café, without it having been announced that she acted (or played some game) or intended an artistic effect (by doing a surrealist one-woman play, for example). What she did seemed to be real life, unconventional acting, doing, irresponsible acting/doing, extravagant acting, eccentric acting. But it had an effect. Perhaps an unsettling effect. But Picasso was fascinated.
When Picasso broke up with Dora Maar and when she reacted with a nervous breakdown, Picasso was deeply upset (F 630). And again it was real life, it was something that happened between two human beings, but since both of them were artists (Dora Maar a more intellectual one), and since Picasso’s art is largely made out of his relations with people, including the unsettling scenes, it is not far-fetched to put all in perspective here: it is about the unsettling in art, about the knife game, about Picasso, Dora Maar and others. And Picasso wanted art to be unsettling. He was most clear about it in speaking to another lover, Geneviève Laporte (the most neglected important love affair of Picasso in Picasso literature). Art had to shake up, to shock, to be unsettling, perhaps deeply unsettling:

2) Picasso and the Unsettling

»Comprendre! Il s’agit bien de comprendre!… Depuis quand un tableau est-il une démonstration mathématique? Il est destiné non pas à expliquer (à expliquer quoi, je me le demande) mais à faire naître des émotions dans l’âme de celui qui regarde. Il ne faut pas qu’un homme reste indifférent devant une œuvre d’art, qu’il passe en jetant un coup d’œuil négligent… Il faut qu’il vibre, s’émeuve, crée à son tour, par l’imagination sinon effectivement… Le spectateur doit être arraché de sa torpeur, secoué, pris à la gorge, qu’il prenne conscience du monde dans lequel il vit et, pour cela, il faut d’abord l’en sortir…« (Propos 1998, p. 136f.; excerpt from the 1973 memoir of G. Laporte; compare also p. 139]

Why not reading this passage, transmitted by Laporte, as a commentary not only on Picasso’s own art, but also on Dora Maar’s doing in 1935/36, when she played the knife game? But is it a commentary? Perhaps it is rather defining an ideal, because one might also say that, rivalling with Matisse, Picasso knew also about what art, what paintings could offer as well: a soothing reminder of what positive forces might be found in life as well, where not only the unsettling is ruling, the unsettling which, for many people, rather is to be excluded from art.

I recall that the knife game being played by children who were as young as I was then, in c. 1979, had an effect on me. I was impressed that such thing was possible. I think that the effect was an unsettling one, and since a TV series, Die Rote Zora und ihre Bande (after the novel by Kurt Held (=Kurt Kläber)) can be regarded as being part of popular culture, perhaps it was happening, on some level, what, according to Picasso, should happen. In art, by art. But there are nuances.

First of all it is interesting to note that the knife game, as it was played in the TV series, is not part of the novel. In the novel one child has to pass a test of courage to become a member of the gang of the Rote Zora. He has to handle the knife as it is shown to him (while the girl, leader of the gang, is mostly only watching what the boys do), but the actual knife game as the finale of that test, the finale as played in the TV series is lacking. In film the children actually do stab a knife into the earth. And it is possible that the writer Bora Ćosić influenced the way how the scene was done in film, but I do not know that for sure.

(Picture: Francesco Pierantoni)

3) The Knife Game as a Performance 2

In the television series, as one might say, the children emulate, in playing a game, a game that the children had seen adults playing. The novel does also say so: the children do what they knew carpenters and sailors, men, not women, down at the harbor, used to play. What Dora Maar did, when playing the game on her own, alone, in a sort of solo performance, was also foreshadowing a performance Marina Abramović did in 1973, namely in her performance Rhythm 10. And Marina Abramović is also very clear in her autobiography, what she wanted art to be and what not: art had to be unsettling (p. 109), and simply to be beautiful was not what art should be. Marina Abramović, on some level, acted, perhaps not in the tradition of Picasso, but in the tradition of what Picasso wanted art (when speaking to G. Laporte) to be. But it is also obvious that Marina Abramović, in her performances, transgressed boundaries Picasso would never have transgressed. Yes, the unsettling was what, among other things, fuelled his art, and his biography is rich of unsettling scenes, but Picasso would not have turned his art into (the genre of) unsettling scenes, thus eradicating potentially what makes the boundary between life and the art context, in which life is usually more contemplated than acted out. Performances that had real bodily consequences, that could turn into real life scences in which viewers turned to be actors acting violently, since they thought they could do so, was certainly not what Picasso intended. Picasso, one might say, had feminine hands, and avoided to drive a car since it could be bad for his wrists (both of which also François Gilot related, in interviews). The boundary between art and life was, as far as I can see, only occasionally transgressed, for example when Picasso created images by using lipstick and by drawing on other people’s bodies. But the Picasso who was and is famous for his paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, needed the context of art, a kind of safe space, rather than the art space being destroyed as being a shelter and becoming – more or less – a real life scene.

It is also Marina Abramović to whom we owe a most intersting commentary on the knife game. Neither she does seem to know where it did originate (probably nobody does now, and certainly the game’s history could be traced back into the origins of human history itself). But in commenting on her performance Rhythm 10 she does say that her performance was based on a drinking game played by Russian and Yugoslav peasants. She compares the game to Russian Roulette, stating that also the knife game is about courage, recklessness, desperation and gloom (p. 81f.). In her view it is, thus, the perfect games for Slavic peoples (again p. 82).

Further Reading:
Marina Abramović (with James Kaplan), Durch Mauern gehen. Autobiografie, Munich 2016

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