April 27, 2005
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André Villers/Karl Kemp Antiques
André Villers’s photograph of “Pablo Picasso with Cowboy Hat and Revolver.” The gun Picasso is brandishing was said to be from Gary Cooper.
PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW
A Quixotic Man of 1,000 Poses, Each From His Own Script
By KEN JOHNSON
In 1953, a 23-year-old photographer named André Villers sought out Pablo Picasso in hopes of adding his image to a portfolio of portraits of modern artists that he was assembling. Picasso, who could be unkind to people who found their way into his orbit, took a shine to Mr. Villers, and the result was a series of intimate black-and-white portraits made during the 1950′s and 60′s, some of which are now on view at Karl Kemp Antiques in Manhattan.
Picasso was, of course, an uncannily photogenic man, and he played to the camera like a veteran character actor. In Mr. Villers’s pictures, he adopts a remarkable variety of personas.
We see him working in the studio with visionary concentration and clowning around bare-chested in a bowler hat and a fake beard. Elsewhere he seems a kindly patriarch posing with his young children Claude and Paloma. And then he is like a child himself, in a cowboy hat marveling over a pistol said to have been given him by Gary Cooper. Standing shirtless next to the handsome young Mr. Villers for a double portrait in a mirror, he wears a funny, conical knit hat that ties under his chin and an expression of deadpan impassivity that makes him a ringer for Buster Keaton.
Despite the apparent candor and spontaneity, however, none of Mr. Villers’s pictures catch their subject off guard. Picasso is always in charge, and the photographs have the generic feel of official publicity shots. What would be really interesting would be pictures that Picasso did not want his public to see.
André Villers’s photographs of Picasso remain on view at Karl Kemp Antiques, 833 Madison Avenue, near 69th Street, through May 15. Information: (212) 288-3838.
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