The Artist is a Parent

The Paris Picasso Museum 2023 exhibition,“The Collection in a New Light”, opens with Picasso’s famous portrait of his eldest son, Paulo. Yet, the way fatherhood shaped his work is rarely, if ever, examined. What do we miss when we overlook parenthood in artists’ lives?

Picasso painted his four children numerous times, from the 1920s on. They provided the inspiration for sculptures. Yet if you were wondering about the impact of fatherhood on his work, you’d find very little. A 2021 article in the Beaux-Arts magazine briefly evokes childhood as a theme and Picasso’s major works depicting his children. Articles on Picasso’s relationship with his children (or often, the lack thereof) abound. He often is a poster child for separating the work from the artist, due to the decades of abuse he inflicted.

It might be that his children were reluctant for these to be presented as a coherent body of work, or to take parenthood as a frame through which to see his career. They may also feel detached from these depictions. His daughter Maya reportedly “thought [her portraits] hardly felt like her at all.” Maybe they did not, do not, want to be the subjects of his work.

Still, I am struck by the differential treatment of fatherhood and motherhood in artists’ lives. It does not seem to just reflect artists’ involvement in child rearing, or the importance of the theme in their overall career. SF Moma’s 2022-23 retrospective of Joan Brown introduces her as a mother, even though it only includes a few portraits of her child. Whether they have or do not have children, raise or do not raise the children they have, motherhood is always a lens through which their work and selves are examined, including by other women.

We may want to push against motherhood as a lens, we surely want to push against it being the only lens to look at women’s work. But as this Literary Hub article so eloquently says, “Our children create in us entirely new identities, which are rattling and sometimes, if we’re lucky, redeeming. How can we not write about this?” Parenthood is transformative. We’ve long ignored it transforms men too. What are we missing when we ignore how parenthood shapes the life course, and by extension, one’s body of work? Beyond variations in themes, surely we should consider how it affects techniques and medium, shaped by time, bodily and physical constraints, or even just the strategies artists embrace in prioritizing some work over others after becoming a parent.

I hope to, one day, read these stories.

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Tidbits

While researching this I read about other artists’ depictions of their children. While backsearching an image, a 1791 John Hoppner featured in the same article, seen on the right, seemingly triggered Google Images’ filter against abusive materials. Depicting the intimacy of childhood and family life raises countless ethical dilemmas.

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