ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

used scratchy lines to present facture even more baldly. He broke the contours into
coarse, angular sections so that the eye could not move around any form without being
aware of the aggressive irregular movements of the artist’s human hand, and therefore of
the eye and mind that directed it. 30
Critic Henry McBride, an adherent of the Stieglitz
circle, aptly termed Picasso’s linear networks “skeletons of thought,” and “straggling,
lazy charcoal lines . . . [that] . . . breathe intensity and force.” 31
This way of reading drawings informed the more savvy viewers of the 291
exhibition of works by Picasso and Braque. The anonymous reviewer for the American
Art News noted, “The remark has been made that Picasso is not a draftsman. To those
who do not understand his abstract lines it will be necessary only to look at the etching
entitled ‘Les deux Amis,’ than which nothing could be more exquisitely drawn, to realize
that in this work the same fine feeling exists as in the other drawings, only in the etching,
it is obscured by the descriptive quality of the picture [(Fig. 3.21)].” 32
Charles Caffin
seized upon “the processes of Picasso’s mind, as laid bare in these drawings.” 33
For these
critics, the artist’s thoughts and feelings were central; representation only got in the way
of appreciating expression.
The few paintings in the exhibition, such as Picasso’s Violin and Guitar (Fig.
3.20) were but graphic armatures clothed with a little color. Viewers at 291 could follow
the conceptual and physical construction of cubism from drawing much as connoisseurs
had long observed the genesis of old master paintings in preparatory drawings. In fact,
the Cubists used drawing for very traditional academic purposes familiar to O’Keeffe: to
study parts of objects or figures; to study whole objects or figures; and to devise
compositions based upon these studies. 34
But Picasso and Braque pushed these traditions
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