Art-o-Gram: Picasso's "Dream" or the Incredible Story of "Le Rêve"

"Le Rêve" is a painting from 1927. It was created at a time when Pablo Picasso was particularly interested in surrealism, but also in his new love, Marie Therese Walter. Both the new art movement and the woman are reflected in the painting, although the extent of their respective influences can be categorised quite differently.

Pablo Picasso was in the midst of his engagement with Surrealism, which he had begun in 1925. In the context of this engagement, he had once again and very intensively turned to plastic design.

He juggled with the shape, in pictures and plastic, he began to put forms of expression side by side and to nest it into one another, sometimes in an exuberant abundance, sometimes very decided and "barren", as in "le rêve" .

Surrealism has developed from a current of Dadaism , and there are people who see a lot of Dada in "le rêve" (this is not meant ironically, otherwise there are gaga and not dada). The surrealists liked it when Picasso dealt with surrealism, for the surrealists he was a symbolic figure of modernity. Which she would also like to take for herself, which Picasso rejected, he never wanted to put himself in a drawer.

So there are art scientists who believe that neither Picasso nor a single work of him would have something to do with surrealism. For the prevailing opinion of the art scientist, this applies at least to surrealism in the narrower sense, but they see surrealistic influences in numerous of his works :

"Surrealistically inspired" are z. B. the image "Sleeping woman in the armchair" from 1927 (there is no link there, is "submerged" in a private collection and thus withdrawn for "normal mortals" forever),

The "Sitting Bathend on the Marine beach of 1929",

And "the crucifixion" from 1930.

If "the crucifixion" is inspired by surrealism, then "Le Rêve" maybe ... with a view to the independence and joy of innovation, which always appear in Picasso's art, this limiting classification seems somehow a little wrong.

There are also music critics who claim that the Stones have been influenced by the Beatles (or vice versa), but most musicologists see independent, non -comparable services.

Of course, each band was influenced by the music of other bands that made music at the same time. However, some bands got a few more influences as a working basis, as the Stones and the Beatles certainly did.

Picasso also got a few more influences, e.g. B. from studying masterful painting to the times of prehistoric art. more than most surrealists (or more than most other artists) to assign a picture of Picasso to a certain inspiration.

The second influence, which is said to be felt in the picture, is 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 correct that Marie Therese Walter appears many times as a (named and unnamed) motif in Picasso's pictures to identify the exact influence of a woman on a picture of Picasso, is certainly just as difficult as the assignment of a certain inspiration.

But others should argue about it, this is primarily about the provenance of the image "Le Rêve" .

The image "Le Rêve" includes a rather sensational story , which ends in a rather sensational estimate of the painting value:

art modice and collector Victor laid the basis for his Picasso collection in the United States by buying "Le Rêve"-for a total of $ 7,000. Victor completely died in 1987 and left the "dream" of his wife Sally since 1942.

The family lived with their art, the little Tony Alles asked the mother of a schoolmate "where they had their picasso". When Sally died in 1997, the son and the three daughters had to part with the most valuable part of their parents' collection. B. to pay taxes with the heir.

A difficult separation, even if the whole children found "that the pictures in the presentation at Christie’s would come into its own much better than in her parents' not very large New York apartment". "Le Rêve" was auctioned as part of the legendary collector couple in the November auction in 1997 at Christie's , where it was responsible for one of the two Picasso records that were recorded in this auction:

$ 48.8 million, “Le Rêve” achieved a completely unexpectedly high price and thus became the world's sixth-driven painting in the world. The second record was the total price: the sold part of the whole collection brought over $ 200 million, the highest amount achieved by the sale of a private collection-and a really nice return with $ 2 million at the purchase price.

With the auction of the full collection in 1997, the "Femme en chemise assise dans un fitty" from 1913, "the woman in the shirt in the armchair".

"The woman in the shirt in the armchair" achieved $ 24.7 million and thus brought in a good part of the proceeds from the $ 200 million auction. The buyer was Leonard Lauder , son of the company founder Estée Lauder and, in addition to his cooperation in the cosmetics company of the family, talented and adequate means of art collector. In the course of his life, Leonard Lauder built an important collection of Cubist pictures, which he bequeathed to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in April 2013.

From October 20, 2014 to February 16, 2015, this collection - with the femme en chemise assise dans un fitty " - can be seen " Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection "

Back to "Le Rêve": The almost $ 50 million US dollars called on the auction as a surcharge and the sales amount is said to have applied an Austrian investment banker, but probably not really:

This Austrian investment banker is known for residence in New York and on the Bermudas, for losing it from 1995 to 2001 with "Caribbean" business by 1.9 billion euros, not necessarily for himself, probably at the expense of an Austrian union bank ... by "Le Rêve" it is reported that the Austrian investment banker in 2001 under financially 60 million US dollar is reported Stephen Wynn sold.

Exciting history on the side: At the end of the 1990s, this bencher is said to have been Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" From this legendary picture, an auction at Christie's New York has been handed down on May 15, 1990, in which the picture of the heirs of Siegfried Kramarsky for $ 82.5 million was sold to the Japanese Saito Ryoei ... where the "Dr. Gachet" is no longer known.

At "Le Rêve" we know where it landed: at a casino operator from Las Vegas named Stephen Wynn, who, in the strict implementation of the law "Die Bank always wins", has accumulated a fortune of almost $ 3 billion. The $ 60 million for "Le Rêve" put it like about normal people a meal in a mid-range restaurant, which is why they do not have to spend as much pity in the following story:

In October 2006, Wynn wanted to sell the painting again and had already agreed a purchase price of $ 139 million with one of his millionaire friends-the founder of the Hedge fund SAC Capital, who was sentenced to a fine of $ 1.8 billion in New York in April 2014. "Le Rêve" would have become the most expensive work of art until then .

On the day before the handover, Wynn invited a group of reporters and friendly columnists to adequately place his immediate position as the seller of the "most expensive work of art of all time" in the media, he showed the painting and gestured in this date in order to underline its importance.

He acted a little too excited and pushed his elbow sharply into the canvas, which born away from a tear around 15 cm long ... The potential buyer jumped off. Wynn had the painting restored for $ 90,000, which was valued at $ 85 million after the repair (presumably by art scientists).

Wynn did not like this, the difference of $ 54 million (139 million - 85 million) should pay for his insurance, which (presumably with reference to his own fault) refused. Wynn no longer wants to sell the picture, he is said to have understood the event as a sign of keeping the painting.

Finally, a sentence of Picassos, which fits both Picasso's classification in the "over -realistic painting" of surrealism as well as the over -real, completely withdrawn money sums that are paid on the speculative art market for Picasso's pictures and to the not -bound buyers who entertain this art market:

"Some call the work that I created in a certain period.

(Quoted from de.wikipedia.org/wiki/pablo_picasso#cite_note-110 ).