Art-o-Gramm: Picasso's "Dream" or the incredible story of "Le Rêve"

“Le Rêve” is a painting from 1927. It was created during a time when Pablo Picasso's interest was particularly focused on Surrealism , but also on his new love, Marie Thérèse Walter. Both the new art movement and the woman are reflected in the painting, although the extent of their respective influences can be assessed quite differently.

Pablo Picasso was in the midst of his engagement with Surrealism, which he had begun in 1925. As part of this engagement, he had, among other things, returned to sculpture with renewed and intense focus.

He juggled form, in paintings and sculptures he began to juxtapose and nest different forms of expression, sometimes in an overflowing abundance, sometimes quite decisively and “sparsely”, as in “Le Rêve” .

Surrealism developed from a current within Dadaism , and some people see a great deal of Dada in "Le Rêve" (this isn't meant ironically; otherwise, it would be called Gaga, not Dada). The Surrealists appreciated Picasso's engagement with Surrealism; for them, he was a symbolic figure of modernism. They also liked to appropriate him for themselves, which Picasso rejected; he never wanted to be pigeonholed.

Some art historians believe that neither Picasso nor any single one of his works has anything to do with Surrealism. This is the prevailing opinion among art historians, at least regarding Surrealism in the narrower sense; however, they see Surrealist influences in numerous of his works .

“Sleeping Woman in an Armchair” is considered to be “surrealistically inspired” (there is no link to it, it has “disappeared” into a private collection and is thus forever removed from view by “ordinary mortals”).

the “Seated Bather on the Seaside from 1929”,

and “The Crucifixion” from 1930.

If “The Crucifixion” is inspired by Surrealism, then perhaps “Le Rêve” is too… however, considering the independence and innovative spirit that always emerges in Picasso’s artistic work, this limiting classification seems somewhat skewed.

There are also music critics who claim that the Stones were influenced by the Beatles (or vice versa), but most musicologists see independent, incomparable achievements.

Every band was naturally influenced by the music of other bands making music at the same time. Some bands, however, drew on a few more influences as a basis for their work, as the Stones and the Beatles certainly did.

Picasso also drew on a wider range of influences, for example, from the study of masterful paintings dating back to prehistoric art. Against this backdrop, it seems more difficult than with most Surrealists (or indeed most other artists) to attribute a Picasso painting to a specific inspiration.

The second influence that is said to be perceptible in the painting is that of Picasso's "latest flame," Marie Therese Walter . It is true that Picasso was in a relationship with Marie Therese Walter when the painting "Le Rêve" ("The Dream") was created in 1932; they had a relationship from 1927 to 1935.

It is also true that Marie Therese Walter appears many times as a (named and unnamed) subject in Picasso's paintings, but determining the exact influence of a woman on a painting by Picasso is certainly just as difficult as attributing a specific inspiration.

But let others argue about that; here the main issue is the provenance of the painting “Le Rêve” .

sensational story , not entirely atypical for Picasso works , which ends in an equally sensational estimate of the painting's value:

self-taught art collector Victor Ganz laid the foundation for his Picasso collection in the United States by purchasing “Le Rêve” for a mere 7,000 US dollars. Victor Ganz died in 1987, leaving behind the “dream” of his wife Sally, who had been collecting with him since 1942.

The family lived surrounded by their art; young Tony Ganz once asked the mother of a school friend, "Where did they hang their Picassos?" When Sally died in 1997, the Ganz family's son and three daughters had to part with the most valuable part of their parents' collection, for example, to pay inheritance taxes.

A difficult parting, even though the Ganz children felt “that the paintings were displayed much better Christie’s auctioned as part of the legendary collector couple’s estate at Christie’s in November 1997 , where it became one of the two Picasso records set at that auction.

“Le Rêve” fetched an unexpectedly high price of US$48.8 million , making it the sixth most expensive painting in the world at the time. The second record was the total price: the sold portion of the Ganz collection brought in over US$200 million, the highest sum ever achieved by the sale of a private collection – and, with a purchase price of around US$2 million, a truly handsome return of 10,000 percent.

Included in the auction of the Ganz collection in 1997 was the “Femme en chemise assise dans un fauteuil” from 1913, “The Woman in a Shirt in an Armchair”.

“Woman in Shirt in Armchair” fetched $24.7 million, contributing a significant portion of the $200 million auction proceeds. The buyer was Leonard Lauder , son of company founder Estée Lauder and, in addition to his work in the family cosmetics business, a gifted and wealthy art collector. Over the course of his life, Leonard Lauder amassed a substantial collection of Cubist paintings, which he bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in April 2013.

From October 20, 2014 to February 16, 2015, this collection – including the Femme en chemise assise dans un fauteuil” – can be seen in the exhibition “Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection” at the museum.

Back to “Le Rêve”: The nearly 50 million US dollars called for at auction as the winning bid and sale price were supposedly raised by an Austrian investment banker, although probably not really and actually:

This Austrian investment banker is known for having residences in New York and Bermuda, and for having lost €1.9 billion on "Caribbean" deals between 1995 and 2001 – not necessarily for himself, but rather at the expense of an Austrian trade union bank… "Le Rêve" reports that, under financial pressure, the Austrian investment banker sold the painting to Stephen Wynn in 2001 for an estimated US$60 million.

An intriguing side note: This banker is said to have briefly owned Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" from 1890 in the late 1990s. The last documented sale of this legendary painting was an auction at Christie's New York on May 15, 1990, where the painting was sold by the heirs of Siegfried Kramarsky to the Japanese collector Saito Ryoei for $82.5 million… Where "Dr. Gachet" is today seems to be a mystery.

With “Le Rêve,” we know where it ended up: with a Las Vegas casino operator named Stephen Wynn, who, strictly adhering to the law “The house always wins,” amassed a fortune of nearly 3 billion US dollars. The 60 million dollars for “Le Rêve” thus cost him roughly what a meal at a mid-range restaurant costs most people, which is why you don't need to feel quite so much sympathy for him in the following story:

In October 2006, Wynn wanted to resell the painting and had already agreed on a purchase price of $139 million with one of his millionaire friends – the founder of the hedge fund SAC Capital, who was sentenced in New York in April 2014 to a $1.8 billion fine for fraud. “Le Rêve” would thus have become the most expensive work of art to date .

On the day before the handover, Wynn invited a group of reporters and friendly columnists to properly position his imminent role as seller of the “most expensive work of art of all time” in the media; at this meeting, he showed the painting and gestured animatedly to emphasize its importance.

He acted a little too excitedly and jabbed his elbow forcefully into the canvas, causing a tear about 15 cm long… the potential buyer backed out. Wynn had the painting restored for $90,000; its value after the repair was estimated (presumably by art historians) at $85 million.

Wynn was displeased; his insurance company was supposed to pay the difference of $54 million ($139 million - $85 million), but refused (presumably citing its own negligence). Wynn now no longer wants to sell the painting; he is said to have interpreted the incident as a sign to keep it.

In conclusion, a quote from Picasso that fits both his classification within the “hyperreal painting” of Surrealism and the hyperreal, completely detached sums of money paid for Picasso’s paintings , and the buyers who are not bound to reality and who maintain this art market:

"Some call the works I created during a certain period surrealist. I am not a surrealist. I have never deviated from the truth: I have always remained in reality."

(quoted from de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso#cite_note-110 ).