Dora Maar, the Fierce Muse

Two of Picasso's best-known works, including *The Weeping Woman*, both have his fifth muse, Dora Maar, as their model. We said earlier that Marie-Thérèse was so gentle and compliant that Picasso found himself drawn to a woman of the opposite temperament, and Dora Maar was that woman. Compare her photo with Marie-Thérèse's: her features are stronger and the air about her quite different. Dora spoke fluent Spanish, Picasso's mother tongue, and understood art deeply, so the two had plenty in common. Above all, she was a photographer and an intellectual, someone he could talk about art with, and she took quite a few photographs of him.

The two share some unusual stories. They were introduced by a colleague named Paul. When Picasso said he had run out of inspiration and needed something new, Paul suggested he meet another artist and introduced him to Dora Maar. At dinner in a restaurant, Dora spread her palm and fingers flat on the table, fixed her eyes on Picasso, and suddenly pulled out a small knife. Then she began stabbing the point rapidly back and forth between her splayed fingers, the kind of game kids play with pens at school, only with a knife. At some point she slipped and cut her finger and it bled, but she just kept calmly staring at Picasso. He asked what on earth she was doing, and a conversation between the two artists began. As they parted, Dora boldly told him, "Come to my studio when you have time. I'd like to photograph you." Picasso took her bloodstained glove with him, saying he wanted to remember the day they met. Drawn to each other, they began seeing each other in earnest.

There's another story. When the dog Dora Maar kept died and she was grieving, Picasso comforted her in an unusual way, rather than giving her a lavish gift or buying a new puppy. Whenever she seemed to be thinking of the dog, he picked up a piece of paper or tissue lying nearby, tore it and poked holes in it to make a cute dog's face, and handed it to her. That paper dog's face is a work he made to console her. Portraits of Dora Maar, meanwhile, often have vivid colors and many straight lines, and through them we can sense the strong impression she left on Picasso.