Pera de Monaco (2021): A dialogue with Pere Manach

The portrait of Pere Manach is one of my favourite images I hold in my mind.
I came across him one day in a secondhand store. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Unfortunately he was a print, not the original... because when I looked at the details it was revealed as the creation of one Pablo Picasso (to be fair, I may not have been able to afford him if he was the original ;)). I had never seen Pere before, and I was utterly drawn to him.
I had a really interesting conversation recently about the positives and perils of prints and ‘non-originals’ in the art world. For me, It’s a complicated topic. But, I’ll be honest, that day I bought Pere (to be completely accurate, he was an excerpt from a vintage book).
This is my twenty-first century conversation with my treasured book excerpt of Picasso’s 1901 painting. Content, solitary, powerful - here is Pera de Monaco, in dialogue with Pere Manach.

Satin varnish finish

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Welcome to the cave of imperfect forms. I’ll let the forms speak for themselves:

‘We like to think of ourselves as your poor man’s (or woman’s or person’s) Marie-Therese Walter or Dora Maar. In fact, if you blur your eyes to the point of not being able to see at all, you may even be able to catch the scent of a very syntheticy Eau de Wally Neuzil.

You may decide for yourself which, if any, of these muses lurk in our creator’s conscious, unconscious or collective unconscious... however, we do know for sure that the purpose of our existence is to reveal the dark, irreverent and unusual slivers that glint like broken glass in all of us imperfect forms here on Earth.’

Errrrr, why thank you, imperfect forms.

Kate