Echoes on a Reused Canvas: Picasso and the Life  of Images (1899)

Alfons Puigarnau Torelló

doi:10.24310/ba.47.2025.21061

Authors

Alfons Puigarnau Torelló UIC Barcelona Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24310/ba.47.2025.21061

Abstract

In 2015, an X-ray scan reveals a mysterious man torso underneath Pablo Picasso’s ‘Man After El Greco’ to a group of art conservators. The author defends that the academic male nude is a fragment of a copy of one of the characters appearing in Diego Velázquez’s 1630’s ‘Vulcan’s Forge’. This analysis holds onto an anachronistic view over the three-in-one portrait in which there is a dialectical dialogue between El Greco painter’s formal distortions, Diego Velázquez classical technique, and Picasso as transcending temporal categories.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Alfons Puigarnau Torelló, UIC Barcelona

Alfons Puigarnau (Barcelona, 1968) is an art historian and philosopher. His academic training focuses on the tradition of cultural history (Jacob Burckhardt, Wilhelm Dilthey, Aby Warburg) in combination with mentalities (Jacques Le Goff, Ferdinand Braudel, Georges Duby). Following these currents, he has published articles and specialty books on the function of the image in medieval art, the relationship between art and philosophical systems and the cultural imaginary of great historians of the mid-twentieth century.

After receiving his PhD in aesthetics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (1999), he began his teaching career as a professor of critical thinking, history and philosophy of culture at the UIC Barcelona in 2001. He is a tenured university professor with three six-year research periods and four five-year periods of accredited teaching.

As a lecturer, he has presented his ideas at various British academic institutions such as the Warburg Institute, the Architectural Association and the University of Leeds; and, in the United States, Harvard Law School, The Art Institute of Chicago, The University of San Diego, The University of Detroit Mercy, The University of Notre Dame, Cornell University, UCLA, Indiana State University and Stevens Institute of Technology.

In Europe, he has been at the Politecnico di Torino and the University of Bologna (Italy); the Universities of Poitiers and Caen Basse-Normandie (France), the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Finland), the France Stele Institute of Art History (Slovenia), the University of Rijeka (Croatia), the New Theater Institute of Latvia (Latvia), the BELEF Center and Festival (Serbia), the Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), the Athens Institute for Education and Research (Greece), the University of Hildesheim (Germany), the Utrecht Center for Medieval Studies (Belgium) and the Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). In addition, he has been professor of the Chair of Sacred Art at the University of Monterrey (Mexico), the Somaiya Vidyavihar University and the University of Delhi (India).

His publications include works on the medieval culture of the image: Neoplatonic Aesthetics, 1995; with Jaume Aurell, La cultura del mercader en la Barcelona del siglo XV, 1998; Neoplatonism and Iconography in Medieval Europe, 2000; Iconology and Theology of Time in Medieval Catalonia, 2003; John Scotus Eriugena and 12th century aesthetics, 2005; Johan Huizinga at the Warburg Institute, 2009; Celestial Places in Medieval Neoplatonism, 2014; On Sigillography and Political Theology, 2014; The Rainbow as Celestial Throne in European Romanesque Art (2018).

In his work on contemporary aesthetic interpretation he has, among others: Vertigo and Passion. The dramatic turn in the work of art, 1999; After the History of Culture, aesthetics and its mental habits, 2003; Iconoclastic Aspects of Genetic Architecture, 2003; Playing at being masters, 2010; with Oriol Vaz-Romero-Trueba, Lucia Moholy-Nagy: Crossed Letters in the GATCPAC Environment, 2012; with Oleg Kvashuk and Violetta Podets, Out of the Matrix of Consciousness: Useful Analogies for Better Understanding Algorithmic Architecture, 2014; The Woman Architect Schutze Lihotsky (2018). His latest book is Hitchcock Anatomy of Suspense. Spaces and Places. Madrid, MacGrawhill, 2021.

His research projects go hand in hand with his teaching and publications. He has participated in Memoria histórica. Las imágenes de la Edad Media: mundo real y espacio recreado, 2003-2004; Observatorio sobre la didáctica de las artes en el marco del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, 2005-2008; Los textos de arquitectura en Cataluña: la llegada del Movimiento Moderno y su relación con la tradición local catalana, 2005-2007; Congreso y Exposición. Architecture and Noucentisme. On the centenary of Eugenio d'Ors, 2007-2008; 'Angels without sky'. Short film about the Civil War in Catalonia (1936-1939), 2009; Thinking with images: creation of hyper-textual network for the transversal subjects of Thought at the UIC, 2007-2010; Women who were creative. Reconstrucción de la memoria de género en el ámbito de la cultura visual en Catalunya (1931-1939), 2010; Creatividad de género y cultura visual, 2009-2013; Teología política de las monarquías hispanas bajomedievales, 2012-2014; Visiones del Cielo: espiritualidad, política y cultura, 2013-2016; Creatividad femenina y cultura visual. (In)visibilidad histórica de mujeres creativas, 2017-2021.

Mention aside about texts that have also influenced this author are the works of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, The Invisible Cities (1972) and The Name of the Rose (1980). Inspired by the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges and other fictional authors, they teach the importance of Postmodernity as a philosophical and cultural experience.

References

BARÓN, Javier (2014), «La influencia del Greco en la pintura moderna. Del siglo XIX a la difusión del Cubismo», El Greco y la pintura moderna, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, pp. 101-197.

DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges, REHBERG, Vivian and BELAY, Boris (2003), «Artistic survival: Panofsky vs. Warburg and the Exorcism of Impure Time», Common Knowledge, Vol. 9, n.º 2, pp. 273-285.

HOENIGSWALD, Ann (1997), «Works in progress: Pablo Picasso’s hidden images», in McCully, Marilyn (ed.), Picasso. The Early Years, 1892-1906, Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, pp. 299-309.

MULCAHY, Rosemarie (2005), «Velázquez en Italia by Salvador Salort Pons», The Burlington Magazine, vol. 147, n.º 1226, pp. 336-337.

PICASSO, Pablo (1897), Letter of Picasso to Joaquim Bas, Madrid, November 3rd 1897, Fundació Palau, Caldes d’Estrach.

PIJOAN, Josep (1930), «El Greco-A Spaniard», The Art Bulletin, vol. 12, n.º 1, pp. 13-18.

PORTÚS, Javier (2014), Velázquez, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, pp. 301-302.

SABARTÉS, Jaume (1957), Dans l’Atelier de Picasso, Fernand Mourlot, Paris.

Sessa, Clarimma, JIMÉNEZ DE GARNICA, Reyes, ROSI, Francesca, FONTANA, Raffaella, and GARCÍA, José Francisco (2016), «A Study of Picasso’s Painting Materials and Techniques in Six of His Early Portraits», Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, vol. 55, n.º 4, pp. 198-216.

THE WARBURG INSTITUTE (1934), A Bibliography of the Survival of the Classics. I. The publications of 1931, The Warburg Institute, London.

THE WARBURG INSTITUTE (1938), A Bibliography of the Survival of the Classics. II. The publications of 1932-1933, The Warburg Institute, London.