The Story of the Picasso-Ish Collection
What happens when you hire a Hollywood superstar to portray a great artist in a biopic, but the artist’s estate won’t let you use any of the actual art?
When famed director James Ivory—of the Oscar-winning Merchant-Ivory partnership, creator of films such as Howards End, A Room with a View, and The Remains of the Day—wanted to shoot a biopic of Picasso starring Anthony Hopkins, he had a problem: the Picasso estate refused permission to use any images of actual Picasso art. So Ivory turned to a pair of artists to produce works that, as the New York Times put it in 1996, involved “painting sort of, kind of, but not exactly like Picasso.” One of those artists was a neighbor of Ivory in the Hudson Valley, Bruno Pasquier-de-Vignes. The film, called Surviving Picasso, was released in 1996, and features some of the final works.
A few years ago, we were in the home of Pasqueier-de-Vignes. The French artist was selling a huge number of paintings and sculptures, pending a return to his native France. Tucked away—not initially being offered for sale—was a large roll of extremely heavy kraft paper, from which peeked a few intriguing images. We asked to see what lay within, and after hearing the story of their origin, made and offer and bought the lot.
A portion of the original roll, more than 50 feet long.
This year, we were in touch with the artist, now in his late 80s, and he explained that the roll contained more than 50 studies for the final works produced for the film: in other words, these are studies for works that are in the style of another artist. They represent Pasqueier-de-Vignes exploring the colors and lines and perspectives of Picasso, as any student might at art school.
We have divided the roll into more than 50 works for sale, ranging from pencil sketches to small and medium paintings to a few very large studies. Most, though not all, feature annotations from Pasqueier-de-Vignes, naming and dating the original work as well as the date that he produced the study.
In the 1996 article, the Times consulted the director emeritus of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, who was a noted Picasso scholar, about the works that did appear in the film. Not surprisingly, he was scathingly dismissive, though granted that “some of the pastiches of the drawings are passable.”
Pasqueier-de-Vignes said he wasn’t surprised: “Can you imagine a critic in front of these things? He’s going to have a nervous breakdown.”
The Times quoted the artist as saying the works would give an art critic “a nervous breakdown.”
The works for sale are, in the end, an artifact of the history of filmmaking as it relates to the ownership of art. They’re also delightful in their own right.
We have framed only three of the works, to serve as examples of what they look like in various frames. We can frame to order, in natural wood, white wood or black, or get creative for you. To see the full collection, contact us at Kate@katefindsart.
Examples of a few of the works are below.
