Picasso’s Eiffel Tower Journey

#88002     40″ X 30″     ac

• Daumier: “The Third Class Carriage”, ca. 1860-62
• Picasso: “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, 1907. MOMA, NY

In 1831 when young Honore Daumier (1808-1879) did a caricature, Gargantua, which insulted King Louis-Philippe, his reward was six months in prison and instant notoriety. Censorship laws restrained his republican opinions, but he went on to create an outpouring of drawings, paintings, and an immense body of lithographs – nearly 4000 of them – stigmatizing rogues, mocking the middle class, and tenderly immortalizing the downtrodden.

Chen fills a decrepit rail car with Daumier peasants and Picasso weirdos and a mysterious man in black silhouette on excursion to see Paris’ new steel marvel.

The woman right behind the mother looks like the Mona Lisa, what can be seen of her. No artist would ever have enjoyed the Eiffel Tower more than Da Vinci who was as great an engineer as a painter.

– Lawrence Jeppson