Mechanical drawings
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In March 1915, Picabia prepared a series of mechanical drawings published in the art periodical "291". He represented Alfred Stieglitz as a camera ; Paul Haviland as an electric lamp; Marius de Zayas as a complex arrangement of a woman's corset attached to a spark plug which was itself attached to an engine and Agnes Meyer as a spark plug. Picabia represented himself as a composite horn-cylinder-spark plug (appropriate for a man who was to own some 120 cars during the course of his life).
For a description of these five portraits, see Francis Naumann, New York Dada, 1915-23 (New York: Harry Abrams, 1994) 60-61. Of the five, three include the name of the person represented (de Zayas, Stieglitz, Haviland). The fourth, Picabia's self-portrait, includes the phrase, "C'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait." The fifth drawing, titled Portrait d'une jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité, was proposed by William Innes Homer to be a portrait of Agnes Meyer.