Double Portrait with Hat

c. 1936–37

Double Portrait with Hat, c. 1936–37. Dora Maar (French, 1907–1997). Gelatin silver print, montage with handwork on negative; image: 29.8 x 23.8 cm (11 3/4 x 9 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of David Raymond 2008.172 © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Maar sandwiched two negatives of the same model and painted the background and hat (or is it a decomposing halo?) onto the negative. Softening the emulsion, she scraped and lifted it off, techniques that involve destruction and suggest disintegration. The face evokes depictions of female faces in the art of her lover, Pablo Picasso, especially his 1938 paintings of weeping women for which Maar was the model. Dora Maar scavenged the two faces from a magazine assignment she did on springtime hats.