Girl before a Mirror

Picasso, Pablo

dc.coverage.temporal	creation date: 1932	en_US
dc.creator	Picasso, Pablo	en_US
dc.date	1932	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2007-11-02T18:25:03Z
dc.date.available	2007-11-02T18:25:03Z
dc.date.issued	1932	en_US
dc.identifier	104821	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1721.3/22460	en_US
dc.description	Girl Before a Mirror shows Picasso's young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, one of his favorite subjects in the early 1930s. Her white-haloed profile, rendered in a smooth lavender pink, appears serene. But it merges with a more roughly painted, frontal view of her face—a crescent, like the moon, yet intensely yellow, like the sun, and "made up" with a gilding of rouge, lipstick, and green eye-shadow. Perhaps the painting suggests both Walter's day-self and her night-self, both her tranquillity and her vitality, but also the transition from an innocent girl to a worldly woman aware of her own sexuality. It is also a complex variant on the traditional Vanity—the image of a woman confronting her mortality in a mirror, which reflects her as a death's head. On the right, the mirror reflection suggests a supernatural x-ray of the girl's soul, her future, her fate. Her face is darkened, her eyes are round and hollow, and her intensely feminine body is twisted and contorted. She seems older and more anxious. The girl reaches out to the reflection, as if trying to unite her different "selves." The diamond-patterned wallpaper recalls the costume of the Harlequin, the comic character from the commedia dell'arte with whom Picasso often identified himself—here a silent witness to the girl's psychic and physical transformations.	en_US
dc.description	full view	en_US
dc.format.extent	64 x 51.25 cm (25.2 x 20.18 inches)	en_US
dc.format.medium	oil paint	en_US
dc.format.medium	canvas	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	130929	en_US
dc.rights	(c)Davis Art Images	en_US
dc.subject	Mirrors	en_US
dc.subject	Reflections	en_US
dc.subject	Wallpapers	en_US
dc.subject	Cubism	en_US
dc.subject	Self-perception	en_US
dc.subject	Women in art	en_US
dc.subject	Mistresses	en_US
dc.subject	Painting, Spanish --20th century	en_US
dc.subject	Art, Modern --20th century	en_US
dc.title	Girl before a Mirror	en_US
dc.type	Image	en_US
dc.rights.access	Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only	en_US
dc.identifier.vendorcode	MOMA-P0045	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	Repository: Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York, United States) ID: 2.38	en_US
vra.culturalContext	Spanish	en_US
vra.technique	painting (image-making)	en_US
vra.worktype	Oil painting	en_US
dc.contributor.display	painter: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)	en_US