Le Soleil Noir de Picasso, through the Lens of David Douglas Duncan

"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible." Klee

David Douglas Duncan, Harry Ransom Center

Paris Hotel Boutique

Museu Picasso, Barcelona Lump, at bottom, in a cameo appearance in a Picasso version of “Las Meninas” by Velázquez.

Museu Picasso, Barcelona

Lump, at bottom, in a cameo appearance in a Picasso version of “Las Meninas” by Velázquez.

Yesterday night I got to sleep with my head full of Picasso's images. Browsing the net I came across a gallery of over 600 pictures by world-famous photographer and author David Douglas Duncan. In October 1996, he donated his archive to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, with a permanent web exhibition. I was struck by the energy and presence of Duncan's photography, how his lens could capture  a particle of eternity. I thought of Deleuze words in L'image-temps: "Le passé ne succède pas au présent qu'il n'est plus, il coexiste avec le présent qu'il a été." No fact of life was beneath Duncan's interest. "Lump and Picasso meets for the first time. Mutual love," he wrote in The Private World of Picasso, p.3. When he arrived at Picasso's home Villa la Californie in Spring 1957, his dog Lump, a Dachshund and Picasso became inseparable. One day Picasso asked if Lump had a plate for himself. As Duncan said no, he painted Lump's portrait on his  own plate and dedicated it to Duncan's dog. David Douglas Duncan wrote a book on the little-known story of Picasso and Lump, A Dachshund's Odyssey, May 2006. Picasso once said, "Lump, he’s not a dog, he’s not a little man, he’s somebody else." He had many dogs, but Lump was the only one he took in his arms. Picasso painted 44 studies in his “Meninas” series between Aug. 17 and Dec. 30, 1957 — and Lump appears in 15 of them.

La piscine, Roubaix Picasso à l'oeuvre. Dans l'objectif de David Douglas Duncan, 18février-20 mai 2012.

David Douglas Duncan: Picasso, états d'âme  2012, Galerie Basia Embiricos, 14 rue des Jardins Saint Paul, Paris 4^e, 23 février au 23 avril 2012.

Museum Ludwig Cologne, MemyselfandI.