Hear the Photographer (y1969-131)

Pablo Picasso’s monumental sculpture Head of A Woman now stands comfortably on a wide swath of lawn, with the minimalist architecture of Spelman Hall as a backdrop. This wasn’t always the case; originally the work was placed in front of the University Art Museum, facing due north towards Nassau Street. To create a photograph that conveys a sense of shape and three-dimensionality, photographers rely on light and shadow to bring out the form of an object. I was never able to take a great photograph of the Picasso, due to the angle of light that fell on the piece: the sunlight was always behind or off to one side of it, which made for a washed-out or backlit image. Also, the façade of the Art Museum and the plaza leading up to it didn’t allow the silhouette of the piece to stand out clearly enough for my taste: with the entrance doorways, brownstone cladding, parked bicycles and windows of McCormick Hall all competing visually, I eventually gave up trying to make what I would call a definitive image of Picasso’s work in that location.

In 2002, underground construction began at McCormick Hall and it became necessary to move Head of a Woman to its current location. I find wonderful symmetry in the placement of this concrete sculpture in front of architecture, carried out largely in the same material, by another icon of the 20th century, I.M. Pei, who completed Spelman Hall in 1973, only two years after Head of a Woman was finished. The ramshackle primitivism of the sculpture, seen against the refined minimalism of the building is a wonderful contrast and the various angles of light falling on the piece throughout the day show off the work at its best. Now facing due south, Head of a Woman is bathed in ample, changing light at all hours of the day, allowing the viewer to see (and photograph) it in a myriad of ways, bringing out its form, scale and subtle color.