Picasso: The Needlepoints

How I Borrowed From the Master

Back in 2016, The Menil Collection in Houston mounted an exhibition titled Picasso The Line. The show included more than 90 of his works on paper, mostly drawings, with a few collages (also considered “drawings” by some art definitions). It was a fascinating show. Though Picasso has never been one of my favorites, I was quite taken with it. I even wrote a review for the Houston Press, for which I was a free-lance art reviewer at the time.

As always, I was also looking for my next needlepoint projects when I saw (many times), and wrote about the exhibition. I decided some of the Picassos on show were perfect patterns for needlepoints. With the one drawback that they were mostly black and white – which is fine for a drawing, but if you’re spending months stitching a larger-than-lifesize needlepoint piece, you find yourself (or at least I find myself) longing for a little color. So I took the liberty of adding it. Hope the Master, from wherever he may be now, looking down, doesn’t mind.

I was timid about it at first, only adding a few pastel patches to his Still Life (Nature morte), and some off-whites to give me at least a little variety in what was going to be a great white space. I decided it turned out pretty well.

Still Life (Nature morte) 1918/19.

So with the next one, Seven Dancers with Olga Khokhlova in the Foreground, from a Photograph by White (Sept danseuses dont Olga Khokhlova au premier plan, d’après une photographie de White), I got BOLD with color. These were ballet dancers, after all, who could stand up to color.

Seven Dancers with Olga Khokhlova in the Foreground, from a Photograph by White (Sept danseuses dont Olga Khokhlova au premier plan, d’après une photographie de White), 1919

And since Picasso had done some adapting himself, as he took his drawing almost directly from someone else’s photograph, I decided he would have no grounds to complain about my adaptation of his piece. Again, I think it turned out well. Olga K., by the way, was his wife at the time; that’s her right in front.

When I first saw the next one, The Vine (La vigne), in the exhibition, I thought immediately, “That would make GREAT wallpaper!” Not a very highbrow assessment, I guess, of a work by Picasso. But I still think it WOULD make great wallpaper – especially with the color augmentation I made.

The Vine (La vigne), 1921

And probably Picasso wouldn’t have minded if his drawing turned into wallpaper. After all, he used lots of wallpaper in his collages. And he did hundreds of ceramic designs in later life. He even, as it turns out, did needlepoint designs himself – these for Alice B. Toklas, life partner of his patron/mentor/friend, Gertrude Stein. Alice was a stitcher, so when she asked for designs to work up for two chairs in the Stein Paris salon – Picasso was there with drawings. Of course, I copied them; I couldn’t help myself. The originals, on the chairs, are now part of the Stein Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Picasso needelpoint designs for Alice B. Toklas.

My last Picasso so far is this typically “jagged” image, which came already with color, so all I had to do was find the yarns to translate it. I say my last “so far” because I’m sure there will be more in our future, Picasso’s and mine. Turns out Picasso is really easy to turn into needlepoint.

His drawing is so strong, and his colors, when they’re already there, are generally so straightforward it’s a snap to adapt them. Quite unlike some other artists whose work I also love, and have borrowed – Matisse, for instance, and Houston’s own, Emma Richardson Cherry. They present interesting challenges, but they’re hard. It’s almost as though Picasso made his drawings with my needlepoint pleasure in mind. Hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed the stitching.