Pablo Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends. Photograph by Rene Burri / Magnum.

Exhibition Research: Let Textiles Talk

Picasso

and the Art of Children

Let Textiles Talk Log #7 by Amélie Martelle

For many modern painters, children pursued a unique experience of the world that allows them to form a distinct and honest expressive style. They believed that at this early stage of life, young ones have an uninhibited relationship with the world, one that absorbs all things beautiful. Several modern artists celebrated the ways in which children are able to render such beauty to simple abstractions. Pablo Picasso famously said:

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Pablo Picasso’s approach to artistic creation was a mission of undoing, that could only be realised by letting go of the rules and restrictions resulting from the reliance on studying the great masters of art history. Although Picasso expressed his fascination for the Spanish painting tradition, even openly referencing Spanish Renaissance artist El Greco (1541-1614) as an inspiration for his work, he also recognized children’s inherent virtue of innocence and it’s creative potential. A father of four, he welcomed his own children into the studio where they could draw and even collaborate on new projects, lending their playful imagination to radical art making.

Ramses Wissa Wassef’s career follows similar trends – renowned for his academic training, yet dedicated to break with it. As a top student at the French Lycée of Cairo, Wissa Wassef passed an entry exam for the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris with only a 5-month preparation period, which earned him a notable mention in the weekly newspaper Images published in Cairo in 1931. In France, he trained as an architect in the most prestigious art institution of the republic, which even gave rise to a movement of the same name inspired by ancient forms.

After his studies, he left Europe and its modern ideals behind. He returned to Egypt, where he founded the Wissa Wassef Art Centre, which at the time explicitly set out to challenge the conditions of belonging to the established art history discourse. Wissa Wassef consciously created a space where young makers weaved to their best abilities under conditions that meant to nurture spontaneity in action. The children were not allowed to make any sketches; their imagination had to be directly translated into weaving on the loom. Nor were they allowed to see any examples of Western art, because Wissa Wassef believed that those who see Western art are compelled to copy it.

Whilst Wissa Wassef’s main ambition was to educate the children of Harrania in textiles, his method reflects an expressive pursuit shared with modern artists interested in the experimentation and spontaneity that resulted in the simplified visual language and expressive use of color promoted in the twentieth century. Art brut, naïve art, outsider art, and folk art emerged as overlapping labels to define the valorisation of works by makers with no formal art training. All of which spurred a question that challenged the notions of belonging to the art world to this day: when is something art or someone an artist?

Pablo Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends. Photograph by Rene Burri / Magnum.

«Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France » ou « Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF».
Weekly Egyptian magazine, Images (1931)

Pablo Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends. Photograph by Rene Burri / Magnum.

This article is tagged with:

Sources

Fineberg, Jonathan. The Innocent Eye : Children’s Art and the Modern Artist. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

«Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France » ou « Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF».

Weekly Egyptian magazine, Images (1931)

Pablo Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends. Photograph by Rene Burri/Magnum. Source – The innocent eye : children’s art and the modern artist by Jonathan Finberg

«Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France » ou « Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF».

Weekly Egyptian magazine, Images (1931)