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Lot Essay
Pablo Picasso's Oiseau et libellule is a charming, freely-painted canvas depicting a small, polychromatic bird, perched on a verdant tree branch against a bright blue sky and clutching a yellow-and-black-striped insect in its beak. Painted on 12 February 1939, the following day, Picasso was featured on the cover of TIME magazine. Beneath the cover photo was the caption, "Why not try to understand the songs of birds?"
Picasso expanded on this idea in a feature article,
"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of the birds? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? Whereas with painting, people must understand. If only they would realize that an artist...is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things..." (quoted in "Art’s Acrobat" in TIME Magazine, vol. 33, 13 February 1939, no. 7, p. 46).
Picasso expanded on this idea in a feature article,
"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of the birds? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? Whereas with painting, people must understand. If only they would realize that an artist...is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things..." (quoted in "Art’s Acrobat" in TIME Magazine, vol. 33, 13 February 1939, no. 7, p. 46).