Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
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Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Oil
on canvas, 1910; 101.1 x 73.3 cm
Gift
of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman, in memory of Charles B. Goodspeed, 1948.561
Cubism
challenged the tradition of considering painting as an orderly spatial unity
that mirrors reality. Instead of seeing painted equivalents of recognizable
things, the viewer was presented with objects represented simultaneously from
several points of view. In Picasso's portrait of his dealer Daniel-Henry
Kahnweiler,the subject's head, suit, hands, and a still life to the left remain
identifiable. But they have been broken up into planes that have been flattened
and arranged across the picture surface as if to remind us that this portrait of
Kahnweiler is, after all, a painting.