““The Three Musicians (1921)”. “This celebrated work, now in the New York Museum of Modern Art, is part of series painted while Picasso was with his young family in Fontainebleau in the summer of 1921. It marks a return to high Synthetic Cubism and his enduring Commedia dell'Arte imagery, commenced in the early days in Paris. His continuing association with the refined world of ballet, through his wife and through his work designing sets and costumes for Diaghilev, is evident throughout.
Again, like The Lovers (1919), there is a wonderful sense of humour in the work, even though the masked cut-out overlays of the three faces, and the intense white blocking give the figures a sinister appearance. Unlike the early synthetic papiers-colles with their realist inclusion of sheet music, the notes here are iconographic to the point of being cartoonesque. The crudely shaped clarinet is a repetition of his early Cubist sculpture Mandolin and Clarinet (1913) and no doubt the centred harlequin with his boldly coloured, exaggerated costume is Picasso, leader of this strange musical band. This harlequin, like Picasso, is the magician of his art, conjuring up mystical sounds, his musical notes, like Picasso's no doubt, resonating at an eccentric modernist pitch.” LAURA PAYNE (Laura Payne, Essential Picasso, Parragon Book, Bath, 2001)
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