"Femme aux Chrysanthemes" (1942) by Francis Picabia
During World War II, Francis Picabia (1879 - 1953) painted images of starlets, nudes and fashionable women that he found in popular magazines and, in particular, erotic magazines of the 1930s. Picabia faithfully copied these images of women altering little from the original photographs. Signs of the photographic origins of his paintings - the harsh artificial lighting and snap-shot effects - were left deliberately obvious. Moreover, Picabia frequently chose images in which the female anatomy was distorted by sharp camera angles which he left uncorrected in his painted versions. He also seductively translated black and white images into color of his own choosing underscoring his fascination with the colors and textures of the female body. However, in spite of the fact that the women he chose often existed in a realm of stereotypical poses and cheap eroticism, Picabia’s paintings of women in the 1940s demonstrate his interest in the fundamental differences between the genres of painting and photography. Each image selected and copied is implicated into this dialogue.
Please note the quite modern-looking Full-Brazilian.
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