Doctoral Thesis on Picasso’s Iconography

On Monday, November 9, the doctoral thesis ‘Picasso’s Iconography between 1905 and 1907. The Influence of Pompeian Painting’ by Conchita Boncompte, and supervised by Dr. Lourdes Cirlot, was read at the Universitat de Barcelona.

The thesis sets out to demonstrate the influence of Pompeian painting on the work Picasso produced between 1905 and 1907, an influence that was supported by and engaged in dialogue with Picasso’s milieu and his experience of Catalan Romanesque from his stay in Gósol. The highly stimulating presentation of this study, which runs to more than 700 pages, and promises to open up new avenues of research, has already prompted many to wish that it be made accessible to a wider readership.

It would be an impossible task to summarize here the wealth of research and visual information put forward in the session, and we have therefore asked the author herself to give us a brief extract:

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The Digital Image in the Museu Picasso: a Project in Collaboration with the University

On the 7th and 8th of October I attended as a representative of the Museu Picasso at the two lectures by Carles Mitjà, a professor at the UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), spoke at the Working Sessions on the control of image quality at the Sonimag photo & multimedia fair. I am still asking myself how I, with my very limited knowledge of the digital image, came to be taking part in a speech full of algorithms on digital image quality… This is, then, a story of collaboration and mutual enrichment.

When I joined at the Museu Picasso just over a year ago the Director expressed his very real concern about the issue of ‘photography’ in the Museum. Despite my background of 14 years working in the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona, I remember insisting that I could introduce some degree of order and establish organizational and conceptual criteria, but that what was needed in the twenty-first century was digital images, about which I knew very little. I realized that the Director and I saw eye to eye on this, both of us aware of the importance of the issue for the proper functioning of the Museum, but we were also aware of the magnitude of the tragedy. So with this in mind I set to work.

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