Ma Jolie by Picasso in the Museum of Modern Art, July 2007

Pablo Picasso. (Spanish, 1881-1973). "Ma Jolie". Paris, winter 1911-12. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 25 3/4" (100 x 64.5 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest.

Gallery label text
2006

"Ma Jolie!" (My pretty girl), the refrain of a popular French song, was Picasso's pet name for his lover Marcelle Humbert ("Eva"). These easily legible words form a stark contrast to the nearly indecipherable image of Eva playing a string instrument. A triangular form in the lower center is strung like a guitar; below the strings can be seen four fingers; an elbow juts to the right; and in the upper half, what may be a floating smile is barely discernable amid the network of flat, semitransparent planes.

Publication excerpt
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 66

Numerous elusive clues connect "Ma Jolie" to reality: a triangular form in the lower center, strung like a guitar or zither; below the strings, four fingers, with an angular elbow to the right; and in the upper half, perhaps a floating smile. Together these elements suggest a woman holding a musical instrument, but the picture hints at reality only to deny it. Planes, lines, spatial cues, shadings, and other traces of painting's language of illusion are abstracted from descriptive uses; the figure almost disappears into a network of flat, straight-edged, semitransparent planes.

Yet "Ma Jolie," an example of high Analytic Cubism, is actually a painting on a very traditional theme—a woman holding a musical instrument. The palette of brown and sepia is reminiscent of the work of Rembrandt, and Picasso emphasizes the handmade nature of the brushstrokes, underlining the artist's human presence. At the bottom of the canvas Picasso also inscribes a treble clef and the words "Ma Jolie," (my pretty one)—both a line from a popular song and a reference to his lover Marcelle Humbert. A kind of stand-in for the woman who can barely be seen, the phrase "Ma Jolie" is clear, legible, colloquial, and suggests conventional prettiness—although this was one of the most complex, abstract, and esoteric images of its day.

Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79051