Repetition

In 1936, Marie Laurencin painted the picture La Répétition (The Rehearsal). At first sight, nothing sets it apart from a conventional genre painting. A group of young women have gathered to create an artistic performance. One is holding a songbook, another a guitar for the music, another is making a dance step, while the two others look on.
The picture has probably suffered from the painter’s reputation for frivolity. But it is no less than a reworking of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: the same curtains held open by one of the models, the same number of female figures in a triangular composition, the same chromatic rhythms and a dog replacing a still life in the foreground. Except that everything here is painted in bright colours, with both an attractive and a dark effect. Far from underlining heterogeneity, all the painting is marked by a principle of duplication. In French ‘répétition’ means both ‘rehearsal’ and ‘repetition’, and the painter’s repetitive approach is embodied in the fact that all the faces are identical. This is not a sign of the artist’s idiosyncrasy, but a deliberate ploy: a duplication of the duplication.