Bottle of Bass, clarinet, guitar, violin, newspaper, ace of clubs
Pablo Picasso
1914
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris.
Though his guitar paintings were the focus of this study, Picasso also painted the woodwind instruments of the cobla orchestra. Picasso frequently chose to paint the Catalan woodwind instrument the tenora. This choice of instrument further illuminates the influence of the sardana culture on Picasso’s art.
The tenora is about 25 percent larger than a typical clarinet and has a significantly wider bell. The tenora is a double-reeded instrument, contrasting the single-reeded clarinet, and its reed is located in a pirouette external to the main tenora body. Though Picasso titled his paintings with ‘clarinet,’ it is evident that the instruments are actually tenoras. Kachur studied the portrayal of Picasso’s woodwinds and clearly presented the discrepancy between the titles and the illustrations. Especially evident in Bottle of Bass, clarinet, guitar, violin, newspaper, ace of clubs and the wood sculpture Mandolin and Clarinet, the proportion of the size of the bell at the end of the instrument compared to its body signifies a tenora. Furthermore, Picasso clearly illustrated the tenora’s external reed, protruding from the tenora’s body (Kachur 255).
What was the purpose of this disguise of the instrument’s identity? To answer this, we explore the role of the tenora in the cobla orchestra and find that the tenora was the heart of the Catalan music. The French writer Max Jacob described the tenora: “I will remember all my life the instrument which is called the ‘Tenora’; it is long like a clarinet and can compete, says a musician, with forty trombones. Its sound is dry, like that of a cornemuse” (Qtd. Buettner 114). The tenora was the source of power for the sardana’s music. In addition, its distinct sound (cornemuse is the French term for bagpipe) provided the character of the Catalan music. By illustrating the tenora and not the more universally known clarinet, Picasso attached himself to this Catalan culture. The disguise of the identity of the instrument may have been another rebellious aspect of Picasso’s Cubism and his ploy to hide the influences of Cubism. Kachur believed that the disguise “was an appropriate ‘password’ to the painters’ bohemian subculture, for by its nature the instrument epitomizes a folk-culture resistant to the homogenization of mass urban culture” (Kachur 257). This ties in to the motive of this study – to challenge Picasso’s assertion that music didn’t influence his art. By realizing Picasso’s discrepancy between title and illustration, we see that Picasso was clearly moved by the Catalan music – inspired enough to paint a cultural instrument, rather than a generic one, that provided the power and characterizing quality of the sardana music. Through his association with this instrument, it is clear that Picasso was striving to capture the freedom of the “folk-culture” that he found in Céret – using his art to rebel against the “homogenization of mass urban culture” found in more restricted art and perhaps the Barcelonan more serious music culture.
Additional "Clarinet"/Tenora Art
Pablo Picasso, Man with a Clarinet; Pablo Picasso, Mandolin and Clarinet ; Pablo Picasso, The Clarinet