Francis Picabia—1920

The triple portrait claim is absurd. Naming Cézanne, Renoir, and Rembrandt—three pillars of European painting—only to depict a stuffed monkey amounts to mocking the very concept of reverent authorship. Their “portraits” are lifeless, literally stuffed.

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Rather than depicting an image, Picabia mounts a real, three-dimensional stuffed monkey to the surface. It breaks the picture plane entirely, violating the flatness of traditional portraiture and turning the canvas into a stage for mockery.

The invocation of Cézanne, Renoir, and Rembrandt by name is a direct citation—but one that ridicules rather than honors. It reduces high modernist and classical traditions to the level of kitsch and taxidermy.