War and the Cosmos in Picasso’s Texts, 1936-1940

by Lydia Csató Gasman

Table of Contents:

Prospectus

Prelude - An Apology

Introduction (pdf) - “That Death Could Fall From Heaven”

  1. Picasso’s 1936-1940 Cosmos
  2. The Spatial Location of the “Winged Bull”(26.1.1937)   Or The Reality of Evil
  3. Style And Excess
  4. The Main Moments of Picasso’s Cosmological Saga
  5. Cosmology, Autobiography and Concern For The “Other”
  6. The Cosmos in the Wartime Writings of Picasso’s Friends  and Contemporaries
  7. Remarks On Method
  8. The Absence of Picasso’s Cosmology in Extant Scholarship

Chapter 1 (pdf) - Picasso’s “Cosmographical Diagrams”

  1. The Emanating Center
  2. The Historicity of Picasso’s Center
  3. Picasso’s 1940 Cosmographical Diagrams.
  4. Human Suffering, As The Premise of Picasso’s Cosmology,   And The Centrality of Existential Evil In The Cosmos of “Pre-Modern”  Christian Saint, Augustine of Hippo (314-430,B.C)
  5. Dying at the “Infinite Center”
  6. Looking Closely at Picasso’s Cosmographical Diagrams
  7. The Disruptive Enigma of the Center in Picasso Cosmographical Diagrams

Chapter 2 (pdf) - Picasso’s “Winged Blue Bull”

  1. The “Bull of Heaven” at the Center of Picasso’s Universe and the Problem  of Clichés
  2. Picasso’s “Winged Blue  Bull” and the Consecration of Franco
  3. The Hemispherical Skirt In Picasso’s Dream And Lie of  Franco (1937)
  4. Picasso’s “Winged Blue [And] Incandescent Bull”(1937)
  5. The “Winged Bull”/”Winged Eye” as the Nada and Pascal’s Penses
  6. Picasso the Moralist and the Unbalanced Conjunction of Prevailing Evil and Subservient Goodness
  7. Picasso’s Hell as The Bull’s “Well” and the Fragility of Eros (1936-1937)
  8. The Freezing Lake in Dante’s Inferno and the “Cold Water” in Picasso’s “Well”

Chapter 3 (pdf) The Celestial Bull In “Gilgamesh:” Its Recreation In  Picasso’s 1936-1940 Texts And In The Committed Literature of the 1930s

  1. Flight, Heaven And The Heavenly Bull: An Apercu
  2. Winged Bulls In Apollinaire’s La Fin De Babylone (1914)
  3. The “Bull of Heaven” In Christian Zervos’s L’art De La Mesopotamie (1935)
  4. Demons of the Air and Science-Fictional Flying Objects
  5. Bulls And Balloons In Isidro Carnicero and Goya
  6. The Bull of Mithra and Violence Against Violence in Henry De Montherlant
  7. The Bull as the “Void” In Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris

Chapter 4 (pdf) Bullfighting, The Bull, Franco and His Air Force

  1. The “Head” of Sacred-And-Political Power and Decapitation  In L’acéphale, André Masson, Roger Caillois, Pierre Klossowski and Marcel Jean, 1936-1940
  2. Picasso’s Visual Memento: The Taurine Winged Heart/Head of Franco, 1936        
  3. The Decapitated Bull’s Head In Picasso’s “Spanish Civil War” Still Life Paintings, 1937-1938
  4. The Bull as the Enemy of Christ in Picasso’s Retrospective Toros Y Toreros, 1959
  5.  “Al Toro!” in the Motto of Franco’s Air Force and the Spanish Tradition of The Beastly Bull

Conclusion (pdf) - The “Scorching Bulls” in Picasso’s Text of the “Corrida In Mourning,” 1940

  1. The Last Texts of Picasso’s Corrida In Mourning, 17-19 August 1940: The Eternal Return of the War From the Air
  2.  Complementary Remarks On Picasso’s 1936-1940 Corrida:   The Injured Body;  Empathy with  the Wounded: Violence Against Violence;” and the Sky with the Sausage

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Illustrations