Past Perfect: Into the Labyrinth
Drawing on Greek myth, Pablo Picasso explored his inner demons.
One of the pioneers of cubism, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) rejected established artistic conventions and championed new forms of expression. Even Picasso, however, was not immune to the charms—and horrors—of antiquity. Throughout his prolific career, the Spanish artist created a surprising number of works devoted to subjects from ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Fascinated by bacchanalian scenes, he painted dozens of studies of carousing nymphs and satyrs. In the 1950s, he experimented briefly with ceramics, creating several striking vases and urns decorated with characters such as Orpheus and the Greek god Pan. A decade later he produced four dramatic anti-war paintings depicting the Aeneid’s “Rape of the Sabines” (in which Romulus’s lustful followers carry off the young Sabine women of central Italy). But Picasso’s most famous experiment with classical subjects came earlier in his career, in the 1930s, when he explored various human emotions (such as lust and aggression) in a series of etchings and paintings featuring the half-man, half-bull known as the minotaur. The unnatural offspring of Queen Pasiphae of Crete and her bull lover, the minotaur was one of Greek mythology’s most potent symbols of repressed savagery and desire. Imprisoned from birth in the labyrinth of Minos, the monster spent his days feeding on the flesh of young virgins and awaiting his inevitable death at the hands of the Athenian hero Theseus. Despite his own self-proclaimed modernism, Picasso was unable to resist the allure of this classical fiend, who so perfectly embodied the hidden darkness and untapped potential of humankind.—Ed.
