Out of the Woods

For nearly half a century, Pablo Picasso's giant shadow 'had lengthened over Paris. So far, none of the brood of younger painters who had mushroomed at his feet had grown quite clear of that shadow. But last week Andre Marchand, who has long been considered one of Picasso's most promising followers, showed signs. The cause of those signs was the talk of Paris.

Forty-year-old Marchand had had a young girl friend and model whose classic head and swan neck he turned into Picassoid portraits--hammered, twisted, bilious. Then one day--so said Parisian rumor--Picasso had taken Marchand's girl for himself, and put her beauty in a classically simple and straightforward etching (TIME, July 8).

Marchand packed up his brushes, went off into the Burgundy woods. Last week he was back in Paris with the result--one of the season's best shows. There was still an element of Picasso in Marchand's painting but there was a lot of Marchand too, and also a strong hint of a new girl.

Some of Marchand's new paintings, indeed, looked almost like a game of cherchez la femme: his complex, leafy compositions half concealed an ever-recurring nude, as glossy and distorted as a figure on an Etruscan vase.

The neon palette of Marchand's Picasso-period had given way to a cool palette of forest hues: grey-green, apricot, lavender, smoky-blue. Marchand now talks violently against Surrealism ("It's good only for decorating the windows of American butcher shops") and believes that French painting is about to leave restless intellectualism and return to nature.

Marchand eloquently explains the change in his color and composition: "I used to paint mostly on the Mediterranean," he says,"which is a world of fire. But now I have discovered the complexity of the sun seen through the trees, the feel of moss, ferns and mush rooms, the moist wonder of a grey wood in the early morning when the cobwebs are cradling the dew, whereas at the sea you can't get away from the horizontal line. And another thing: where there are lakes and streams in the forest the skies are down in the water and the landscapes are up. It's fascinating because my business is to interview the climate."

Marchand has found a 14th Century greystone house deep in the Chatillon forest north of Dijon. "It is better to lie down in the grass and regard nature intimately," he has decided, "than to spend your life in ceaseless discussions. To read the blossoms and other arrangements of nature, to touch the wonderful textures of things in the woods, with surfaces as exciting as a woman's skin--you can't find that in a cafe."

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