Fille née sans mère (Girl Born Without a Mother)

Picabia, Francis. Fille née sans mère (Girl Born Without a Mother). Pictured in Cowling, as no. 65, sixth plate between pp. 48 and 49, described p. 42.

In her introd., Cowling calls Fille "a characteristic example of [FP's] . . . machine style of the 1915-18 period and of the nihilism and iconoclasm of the Dada movement as a whole. Implicitly comparing the illustration of locomotive wheels [sic] purloined from some mechanics' manual to a female divinity conceived immaculately, Picabia underlines his blasphemous intent through the use of a gold background normally reserved for icons and altarpieces" (9). The brief discussion in the text notes that the title for Fille and other of FP's "machine works" came from a French dictionary translating Latin and other foreign phrases, and compares Fille "to more explicitly sexual machine images Picabia executed in 1916-18, such as Machine turn quickly and Amorous parade," as well as other works with "obvious religious references" (42). Without the title, however, the work itself looks like a drawing of the part of some large machine with two strange things about it: (1) a background that appears to be gold bricks, and (2) the absence of about some 60 degrees of arc from the top of the wheel literally central to the machine (one locomotive wheel). See under background, H. Adams, "The Dynamo and the Virgin (1900)". Keyword here: "Dada."