Try to talk about his art, and you have to decide which Pablo Picasso you\u2019re dealing with: the ground-breaking inventor of Cubism, the neoclassical artist of the 1920s, or the political painter of the 1940s?<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
His personal life is no more coherent. Is the real Picasso the womanizer with the endless stream of lovers? The hard-hearted jerk one former mistress called \u201cmorally worthless\u201d? The bitter old man who refused to see his own children? Or the charismatic lover, beloved husband, and loyal friend?<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
To try to understand Picasso you must view him as you would one of his Cubist portraits. Just as in Cubism you often see both sides of a face in profile, with Picasso you need to see all sides of the artist all at once. It\u2019s no easy task, holding this baffling, intimidating man in your mind. But whoever said Cubism was easy?<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso was christened with the lofty (and lengthy) name Pablo Diego Jos\u00e9 Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Mar\u00eda de los Remedios Cipriano de la Sant\u00edsima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso\u2014but let\u2019s stick with plain ole Pablo. He was raised by a pack of women, including his strong-willed mother, grandmother, four aunts, several cousins, and two sisters, all of whom indulged him to a ridiculous extreme. His father, Jos\u00e9 Ruiz, was himself an artist of indifferent talent who worked as a curator of a regional museum; he taught his son to draw, and by the time Pablo was twelve he had so outstripped his own talent that Papa handed over his brushes and never painted again. Later, Pablo took to signing his paintings with his mother\u2019s name, Picasso, rather than his father\u2019s, perhaps as an homage to his mother\u2019s primal strength.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
By age thirteen, Picasso was enrolled at art school in a class of twenty-year-olds. After stints at academies in Barcelona and Madrid, he moved to Paris. Speaking no French and dead broke, he barely survived, eating little and rooming with friends in miserable apartments. Eventually he could afford his own apartment, which he shared with his new lover, Fernande Olivier, and a menagerie of dogs, cats, mice, and a small ape. (Picasso loved his pets but didn\u2019t take particularly good care of them. They had to fend for themselves for food: When an enterprising cat brought home a sausage, it fed the whole household.)<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso painted for several years in solemn tones of blue, a time that henceforth became known as his Blue Period, which in turn was followed by the slightly more cheerful Rose Period. Over the years, his lines became bolder, and he began using simple shapes such as ovals, triangles, and circles to depict objects and figures. About the same time, Picasso was introduced to African art and became entranced by the powerful forms and bold abstractions of ceremonial masks. These two influences\u2014geometric abstraction and African masks\u2014came together in a revolutionary painting from late 1907, Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon, named for the Avignon Brothel, a whorehouse in Barcelona.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
The painting shows five prostitutes presenting themselves for inspection to clients. Les Demoiselles is composed in harsh-edged shapes. A breast is a jagged triangle and a leg a jutting block; several of the women\u2019s faces resemble African masks. Even Picasso\u2019s most ardent supporters were flabbergasted by the painting. The collector Leo Stein dismissed it as \u201camusing\u201d; Stern\u2019s sister Gertrude called it \u201ca veritable cataclysm\u201d; and dealer Ambrose Vollard described it as \u201cthe work of a madman.\u201d Even now, with eyes trained by a century of Modernism, the painting is still challenging. Picasso calls into question the entire tradition of painting the female nude. He deliberately evokes icons of beauty, and then demolishes them.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Les Demoiselles pointed the way toward Picasso\u2019s next artistic period. In fall 1908, he and his friend Georges Braque submitted to the Salon d\u2019Automne several paintings that completely ignored perspective, shattering their subjects into multiple flat surfaces. Henri Matisse made a slighting comment about how the paintings were just \u201clittle cubes.\u201d The term caught on, and thus Cubism was born.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
In Cubism, subjects are broken up and reassembled in geometric forms; because no single viewpoint is given precedence, you might see the front and the side of an object at the same time. Cubism quickly became the first \u201c-ism\u201d in modern art: Hordes of artists furiously debated its proper aims and approaches, and before long the style became loaded with rules and intellectual theorizing, little of which Picasso endorsed.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
At least by now he was making enough money to move into a decent apartment, although he remained as much a slob as ever. Friends describe the artist living among towering piles of papers, receipts, canvases, empty bottles, and crusts of bread through which tiny paths gave access to the bathroom or the easel.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Fernande, meanwhile, drifted away from their filthy nest, and Picasso began an affair with Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva. The outbreak of World War I shattered his circle of artists, and life grew more dismal when Eva died of tuberculosis in 1916. A distraction presented itself the next year when Picasso designed sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, along the way falling in love with the Russian dancer Olga Koklova. They married in 1918.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
The end of the war and Olga\u2019s pregnancy (a son, Paulo, was born in 1921) brought out a desire for traditionalism in Picasso. He entered a neoclassical period, painting scenes of mothers and children and images from Greek mythology. By the mid-1920s, however, his relationship with Olga had deteriorated into a series of tantrums, scenes, and sulks. The couple formally separated in 1927, but Picasso refused to divorce her because, under French law, the two would split his now considerable estate.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Instead he started a new affair with a Frenchwoman named Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, with whom he had a daughter, Maia. That didn\u2019t stop him from also taking up with a talented photographer named Dora Maar in 1936. He first saw Maar at the popular caf\u00e9 Deux Magots; she took off her gloves, laid her hand on the table, and stabbed between her fingers with a sharp knife. When she missed, blood spurted into the air. Picasso was entranced.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso had celebrated the creation of the Spanish Republic in 1931, and he despaired at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, particularly when Nationalist forces besieged his hometown, M\u00e1laga. In April 1937, the undefended village of Guernica was hit by wave after incendiary wave of Luftwaffe bombers. It\u2019s a sad statement that today 1,600 casualties doesn\u2019t seem like that many, but in 1937 it was profoundly shocking. Picasso suddenly felt thrust into a fundamental battle between good and evil. He had previously been asked to paint a large mural for the Spanish pavilion of the Paris International Exhibition, and he decided to depict the horrors of the bombing.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
The result is the enormous canvas Guernica\u2014nearly 111\/2 tall by 25 1\/2 feet long. Painted in black, white, and gray, the painting deliberately evokes newspaper photographs and shares the same startling documentary quality. Surrounded by wailing women, a soldier lies broken on the ground like a statue hewn into pieces. A wounded horse screams, and a menacing bull advances from the left. Above it all, an electric light bulb shines as an all-seeing eye. Two touches of hope are a candle held by a swooping woman and a small flower growing beside the fallen soldier. With Guernica, Picasso became the inheritor of Francisco Goya\u2019s legacy, using all the techniques of Modernism to paint the truth of human suffering.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
He felt he had found his calling in fighting the forces of evil through his art, but the stakes were raised when German forces broke through the Maginot Line and invaded France. The danger to Picasso was real. He had taken a public stand against fascism, his work had been proscribed as \u201cdegenerate,\u201d and he was suspected (incorrectly, but not that it mattered) of being Jewish. His first instinct was to flee to the Atlantic coast, and he could have escaped to England, the United States, or South America. Instead, he deliberately returned to Paris. It was the most courageous decision of his life.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso endured an endless parade of German officials trooping through his studio. They checked, double-checked, and triple-checked his papers; they questioned him about the whereabouts of Jewish artists. Picasso simply smiled and handed them postcard reproductions of Guernica. According to lore, once the German ambassador picked up a postcard and sneered, \u201cSo you did that, Monsieur Picasso?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d Picasso said, \u201cYou did.\u201d Although most biographers discount the story, it\u2019s easy to imagine the brash artist taking such a bold stand.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Somehow, Picasso survived the Occupation, and the Liberation of Paris marked the beginning of a period of remarkable fame. He became the first art celebrity, and some critics say his work suffered as a result. The style of his later years is varied; he completed political pieces similar to Guernica, Cubist-influenced paintings, and colorful landscapes that are almost Matisse-esque. One of his most memorable later works is a bronze sculpture of a pregnant goat titled La Ch\u00e8vre (She-Goat). Constructed from discarded materials including cardboard, plaster, broken jugs, and a worn-out basket for the belly, the work is perversely fun, with the goat appearing both absurd and defiant.<\/p>\n
The artist\u2019s personal life continued to be complicated. About 1944, he had begun a long affair with Fran\u00e7oise Gilot that produced two children, Claude and Paloma, but she became annoyed by Picasso\u2019s affairs and left him in 1953. His next long relationship was with Jacqueline Roque, whom he met when she was twenty-seven and he seventy-two. They married in 1961, a few years after Olga\u2019s death. Jacqueline worshipped her husband\u2014she liked to kiss his hands and referred to him as \u201cThe Sun\u201d\u2014and his children and friends complained that she shut them out of his life. In truth, he had developed a passion for privacy, especially after Gilot published a highly unflattering book about him.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso remained remarkably healthy and energetic until the late 1960s, dying of heart failure in April 1973. His output was staggering. He left behind him some 1,900 paintings, 3,200 ceramics, 7,000 drawings, 1,200 sculptures, and 30,000 graphic works. Equally amazing is his influence, as profound as that of Michelangelo four centuries years earlier. Every artist since has had to acknowledge his work, either by building upon it or by renouncing it. No matter what your opinion of Picasso, you have to admit that, after him, Western art was never the same.<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Picasso lived a tornado of a life, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. Dora Maar had a nervous breakdown when he left her for Fran\u00e7oise Gilot. Paulo, his eldest son and namesake, never found any career or pursuit other than as his father\u2019s chauffeur and ended up a hopeless alcoholic. Gilot\u2019s children Claude and Paloma were shut out of their father\u2019s life after their mother\u2019s tell-all book; his last wife, Jacqueline, even banned them from their father\u2019s funeral. The anguish didn\u2019t stop with Picasso\u2019s death. Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter hanged herself, and Jacqueline Roque Picasso shot herself. Even the next generation was affected: Paulo\u2019s daughter Marina penned a book blaming her miserable childhood on her grandfather, and her brother Pablito killed himself by drinking peroxide. Dora Maar might have been on to something when she said to Picasso, \u201cAs an artist you may be extraordinary, but morally speaking you\u2019re worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n
Secret Lives of Great Artists<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n Elizabeth Lunday<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Try to talk about his art, and you have to decide which Pablo Picasso you\u2019re dealing with: the ground-breaking inventor of Cubism, the neoclassical artist of the 1920s, or the political painter of the 1940s? \u00a0 His personal life is no more coherent. Is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=900%2C609&ssl=1","rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=900%2C609&ssl=1",900,609,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg",900,609,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg",900,609,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=300%2C203&ssl=1",300,203,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=900%2C609&ssl=1",900,609,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=900%2C609&ssl=1",900,609,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=900%2C609&ssl=1",900,609,true],"portfolio-square":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=570%2C570&ssl=1",570,570,true],"portfolio-portrait":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=600%2C609&ssl=1",600,609,true],"portfolio-landscape":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=800%2C600&ssl=1",800,600,true],"menu-featured-post":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=345%2C198&ssl=1",345,198,true],"qode-carousel_slider":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=400%2C260&ssl=1",400,260,true],"portfolio_slider":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=500%2C380&ssl=1",500,380,true],"portfolio_masonry_regular":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1",500,500,true],"portfolio_masonry_wide":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=900%2C500&ssl=1",900,500,true],"portfolio_masonry_tall":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=500%2C609&ssl=1",500,609,true],"portfolio_masonry_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=900%2C609&ssl=1",900,609,true],"portfolio_masonry_with_space":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=700%2C474&ssl=1",700,474,true],"latest_post_boxes":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=539%2C303&ssl=1",539,303,true],"woocommerce_thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1",300,300,true],"woocommerce_single":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?fit=600%2C406&ssl=1",600,406,true],"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/post-1991.jpg?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1",100,100,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/author\/admin\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Philosophy<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Try to talk about his art, and you have to decide which Pablo Picasso you\u2019re dealing with: the ground-breaking inventor of Cubism, the neoclassical artist of the 1920s, or the political painter of the 1940s? \u00a0 His personal life is no more coherent. Is the...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34310,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34289\/revisions\/34310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}