This work delivers a barrage of puns, transforming the language of fine art into one far less refined. The inscription at the top, Portrait a l’huile de Ricin! (Portrait with castor oil), connects castor oil, a foul-smelling substance, with l’huile de lin (linseed oil), the binder used in oil paint. Another inscription reads Ratelier d’artiste (False teeth of the artist), a play on atelier d’artiste (artist’s studio). Peinture crocodile (Crocodile painting) associates art with the hypocrisy of crocodile tears.

Gallery label from

2011.

Provenance Research Project

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

Francis Picabia, Paris.

Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia (the painter's wife).

1930s - 1966, Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966), acquired by exchange with Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia.

1966 - 1968, Estate of Jean Arp / Marguerite Hagenbach Arp (Jean Arp's widow), Clamart, France, and Locarno-Solduno, Switzerland, inherited from Jean Arp.

1968, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased from Madame Jean Arp.

Provenance research is a work in progress, and is frequently updated with new information. If you have any questions or information to provide about the listed works, please email [email protected] or write to:

Provenance Research Project
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019

Medium Oil and enamel paint on cardboard
Dimensions 50 3/4 x 35 3/8" (129.2 x 89.8 cm)
Credit Helena Rubinstein Fund
Object number 1309.1968
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Francis Picabia

Francis Picabia

French, 1879–1953 79 works online

In 1922, Francis Picabia wrote, “If you want to have clean ideas, change them like shirts.” Throughout his audacious and inventive career, which spanned almost 50 years and encompassed painting, performance, poetry, publishing, and film, Picabia lived out that prescription.

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