Le hibou sur la chaise 1947

Curator: This striking oil on canvas before us is Pablo Picasso’s "Le hibou sur la chaise," painted in 1947. Editor: It feels like an oddly benevolent sentinel. Sort of squat and watchful, a quirky totem pole guardian. Curator: Tell me more about that feeling it evokes. Editor: It is the way the owl's head sits on the chair...a strangely assembled collection of sharp planes against those swollen chair limbs—all underpinned by that stark, cell-like, backdrop. All seems very methodically rendered. Was there something about available materials that pushed him in this angular direction here? Curator: I would suggest it comes more directly from his persistent dismantling of form, here embracing that familiar cubist aesthetic to almost reconstruct an owl. Perhaps, it speaks more directly of transformation during those uncertain times? Editor: Uncertain, yes, that fractured representation certainly speaks to broader themes. The flattening of perspective, the reduction of elements to basic shapes, could signal scarcity during that particular moment. Those dark, almost industrial hues against the yolk yellows. There is definitely something powerful and knowing emanating from that peculiar combination. Curator: Knowing yes, and intensely observed too! Those stark details of the owl's face render the whole piece oddly intimate! The owl itself a figure with a significant history throughout all manner of myth and folk culture, and here in 1947 presented as an everyday companion atop this very domestic scene. I wonder, was it really there, perched on the chair? Editor: Hard to say what the actual scene might have been but thinking about the time period, one can start to ask how painting itself transforms during a period of upheaval? Maybe this owl IS all material reduced and rendered symbolic! The object flattened but also looming...a presence crafted from careful seeing. Curator: So it becomes more than just an owl perched on a chair, doesn’t it? It’s about how we *see*. How perspective can be shattered, rebuilt. The object being present and simultaneously a ghost of itself. Editor: Absolutely. When materials are scarce and everything feels unstable, art has to pull double duty, doesn't it? Reflecting both the external and our fragmented interior lives.