Talk:The Weeping Woman

message: Can someone with expertise please address the issue of her hat? It has features in common with antique American badges worn before the World Wars at conventions of firefighters, labor-unions, political parties, and such. Examples, with the same fringe as her hat has (made out of tight-coiled metal (springs you could say) in the same metallic finish, golden, silvered, coppered, or bronzed in color as the case may be) and the same rosette/cockade as her hat has, abound:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/18/b5/b9/18b5b9df52425bf9ea72c9f8a3ca19cf.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f5/c5/74/f5c574430c42e5fd555b4ea8d91b8ede.jpg
For that reason, the ornamentation on her hat (including not only the above but also the blue lining and gold piping) and its style look very much like a uniform-hat of an organization (military, political, or professional).
If the hat IS an allegiance-statement or uniform, it's in the colors of the Catalan Estelada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estelada_blava.svg
, and, the painter being Picasso, that might be relevant. One thing needing addressing is how the aspirations for Catalan Independence played during the Spanish Civil War. Sources indicate that being Catalan or being Basque did not settle the issue of which side (or, rather, which of the COALITIONS of sides) you fought for. It's all a lot of analysis and untangling that I'm sure someone else has already done, so it shouldn't be ME retracing it all NOW.
The rosette/cockade formed from textile (obviously) is claimed by some to be a FLOWER, even with that metallic-spring fringe hanging from it!?!?   What BLUE flower is that large and stiff? It is no flower, but a formed-and-stiffened textile.
See ornament/insignia front-and-center on the hat on the woman 2nd from right in this Spanish Civil War photo of women:
http://66.media.tumblr.com/93a0d674b4927bdc14ed61eacd2b0e0d/tumblr_nkrg2kLliI1qhwxd2o1_1280.jpg
and see also the hats of the Civil Guard, which are much the same today as at that time:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Guardia_Civil_a_caballo_Dos_de_Mayo_2008_n1.jpg
Picasso's Weeping Woman's hat is a hybrid of those two hats. Bear in mind Picasso would not have felt an obligation to create a historically-accurate document. He might have used Catalan colors in the hat because that's what his layout needed at that point. But the hat still represents composites of Civil-War hats in his mind at the time, and is therefore a uniform-hat, not a "glamour hat" that some sources state, with insignia, not a flower. Or not. Maybe he DID paint something specific and did so with historical accuracy. Hence my request for an expert in costume-history to sort this.
So: DOES this hat and its style and ornament/insignia express an affiliation (military, social, partisan, political, ethnic, professional) and if so do the colors express Catalonian nationalist aspirations and if so how does that play in the War occurring in Spain at the time this was painted? That the Internet lacks answers to these OBVIOUS questions (for they are not even RAISED, let alone ANSWERED, at the prominent sites) for a painting of THIS stature in 20th-century history is oversight raised to the level of criminality.2604:2000:C682:B600:F18E:94C5:60E0:1971 (talk) 02:56, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Does the Weeping Woman's hat bear partisan or military insignia?