The Handsome Pork-Butcher c.1924–6, c.1929–35 by Francis Picabia

Abstract

This sardonic collage portrait of Raymond Poincaré, President and Prime Minister of the French Republic, was made with everyday objects such as combs, needles, curtain rings and pen nibs, all embedded in thick oil paint. Picabia subsequently ripped off the collage elements and painted the outline of a femme fatale over the ruins of the portrait.  This canvas exemplifies Picabia’s creative methods, investigated in detail here using X-radiography and other technical imaging, material analysis, and a contemporary photograph