Pablo Picasso Sacré-Coeur

Angela Liu:

Take a moment to observe this unfinished painting. You may start to see parts of a church coming together. This is the iconic Sacré-Cœur Basilica, which sits atop a hill in the Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris. Montmartre was a popular residence for artists in the early 1900s. Picasso moved here around this time.

Picasso saw this church almost every day when it was still under construction and started to consider how he could represent and capture the church in every angle in one picture plane. You can see how he used geometric shapes and lines to depict the building and its surroundings. Notice how the dome, the sharp spires, and the nearby houses are presented as fragments instead of a single picture. Imagine walking around the church and looking at it from different angles—this is what Picasso wanted us to experience when we see this painting. This is an early foray into what we now call Cubism, a style he developed with Georges Braque that deconstructs objects into geometric shapes and various perspectives. 

This painting was never finished, but Picasso kept it preciously close to him until his death.

To learn more about Picasso’s breakthrough, please watch the video in the room behind you about his early Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

NARRATOR:

Titled Sacré-Cœur, this oil painting was created by Pablo Picasso between 1909 and 1910. It measures ninety-three centimetres in height and sixty-five centimetres in width.

The work has the appearance of a sketch or an unfinished painting. Picasso used brief, intermittent lines to create a field of geometric fragments, through which the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur, perched atop a hill in Montmartre, Paris, and the city below gradually emerge.

The canvas has a light tan background, while the basilica and houses, clustered above the centre of the painting, are highlighted in chalky white. Among the short, grey lines, you can make out the basilica’s arched portico and columns, and above them, a vague outline of the dome. Between the arches of the portico, you can also see another building topped with a smaller dome.

As you look further down the canvas, you can see the architectural diversity of the city. There are residences, defensive walls, and archways, and the buildings come in different shapes and sizes with gable roofs, flat roofs, and helm roofs. The city along the central axis of the canvas is portrayed in white in greater detail, adding depth and dimensionality to its busy charm. In contrast, the rest of the painting features scattered lines in lighter hues, creating a sense of distance as structures further away from the basilica appear less distinct.