Têtes-paysage

Têtes-paysage (Heads-landscape) belongs to Picabia’s “Transparency” series, a group of works so named for the artist’s use of multilayered, transparent images. In the dreamlike tableaux of the transparencies, Picabia referenced visual sources ranging from ancient Rome to the Renaissance, often juxtaposing the sacred with the profane. These works draw on mythology, religion, and conventions of beauty and, in their blending of the unexpected, project a distinctly Surrealist sensibility. As much as they reflect the traditional world, however, they also mirror modern times: indeed, Picabia derived his simultaneous, nonhierarchical use of images from his experiments in film, especially his 1924 masterpiece with René Clair, Entr’acte.