REFRAMING PABLO PICASSO AND DORA MAAR IN GRACE NICHOLS’S “WEEPING WOMAN”

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The Guyanese poet Grace Nichols’s ekphrastic poem “Weeping Woman” in her Picasso, IWant My Face Back challenges Pablo Picasso’s iconic status in twentieth-century art. Written inthe form of a dramatic monologue, the poem gives voice to Picasso’s model, muse and lover, DoraMaar, who was a Surrealist photographer before she had an affair with Picasso. Unlike traditionalekphrastic poems which involve the description of a fixed, silenced and gazed beautiful imagethrough a male persona who is also a gazer of that image in poetry, Nichols transforms Maar’sobjectified position in Picasso’s painting into a subject by voicing her critique of the artist’s cubistart, his use of colors as well as his geometric figures, and of his maltreatment of her. Throughthis ekphrastic stance, Maar reconstructs her identity as a photographer and rids herself fromthe artist’s domination over her in his art and personal life. Hence, the aim of this article is todiscuss in what ways Nichols’s poem problematizes the privileged status of the male artist overhis silenced female model and acknowledges the artistic talent of the woman through the use ofekphrasis.