A Life of Picasso

by John Richardson

  Gerald showed such talent that Gontcharova recommended him to Diaghilev, who was looking for someone to restore the company’s tour-damaged backcloths and ready them for the spring season. The impresario was unable to pay much for these services. No problem, the Murphys were delighted to help out for free and have access to rehearsals and to mingle with Diaghilev’s artists and stars. The work, carried out in the company’s Belleville studio, was arduous. The Murphys had to spread the canvas curtains and muslin flats on the floor and work with soft brushes at the end of broom handles, then climb thirty-foot-high ladders to judge the effect. Once the repainting was done, the artists—Braque and Derain as well as Picasso— would come and check. On one of these occasions Picasso’s roving eye fell on Sara. They soon became friends. As their biographer, Calvin Tomkins, has described:

  Americans seemed to fascinate Picasso. Once, in Paris, he invited the Murphys to his apartment, on the rue la Boétie, for an apéritif, and, after showing them through the place, in every room of which were pictures in various stages of completion, he led Gerald rather ceremoniously to an alcove that contained a tall cardboard box. It was full of illustrations, photographs, engravings, and reproductions clipped from newspapers. All of them dealt with a single person—Abraham Lincoln. “I’ve been collecting them since I was a child,” Picasso said. “I have thousands, thousands!” He held up one of Brady’s photographs of Lincoln and said with great feeling, “there is the real American elegance!”8

  There are no traces of Picasso’s cache of Lincolniana in his archive, and such a cache would have been out of character. Gerald’s memory was unreliable.

  Sara’s life in Paris was complicated by the presence of her louche but intensely snobbish sister, Hoytie, who had volunteered for ambulance work during the war and been awarded a lifetime tenancy of an attractive apartment on the quai de Conti. In his roman à clef Le Bal du Comte Orgel,9 Radiguet would pillory Hoytie as Hester Wayne, the drunken, intellectually pretentious American heiress. Hoytie had recently come out as a lesbian and developed an unreciprocated passion for Misia Sert.10

  William James. Portrait of Mrs. Gerald Murphy, 1921. Oil on canvas, 127 x 152.4 cm. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.

  Unable to understand what her sister was up to in working-class Belleville, Hoytie descended on the atelier and told Sara and Gerald they were wasting their time. Years later, when Hoytie’s name came up in conversation, Picasso shuddered—besides being a fearsome drunk, she became a shrill anti-Semite—but, as he admitted, she had briefly been a much more important collector of his work than the Murphys. Her collection included the National Gallery’s The Lovers (1923), MoMA’s great Seated Woman (1926), and the National Gallery of Ireland’s 1924 Still Life with Mandolin.

  Scene painting brought the Murphys together with Picasso and enabled Gerald to blossom in an extraordinarily short time from an unfocused dilettante—he had briefly studied landscape architecture at Harvard—into an accomplished artist with an eye-catching, hard-edged style that owed as much to poster artists like Cassandre as to Léger. Working for the theater inspired Gerald to monumentalize things: “paint small objects on a scale considerably larger than life-size.”11 Gontcharova had likewise left her mark on Gerald’s vision, so had a new mentor, Léger, whose machine aesthetic became a principal guiding light. A token of this new passion was the huge industrial ball bearing that Gerald kept on the lid of his piano. People took it for a piece of abstract sculpture. To accommodate ever larger canvases, Gerald rented a studio in Montmartre with a thirty-foot ceiling. And within less than a year of apprenticeship, he had painted a still life of a razor the size of a mallet (1924), which would cause a stir at the L’Art d’Aujourd’hui exhibition in Paris (December 1924). It would also prompt Léger to hail him as “the only American painter in Paris.”12 After an extraordinarily successful series of vast, hard-edged compositions (1922-30), Gerald lost his self-confidence and packed away his brushes for good. He felt that his work was second-rate, and “the world was full of second-rate painting.”13 Gerald’s oeuvre consists of a mere thirteen paintings, of which the largest, Boatdeck, Cunarder (18 X 12 ft.), and two others cannot be traced.

  The presence in Paris of Diaghilev and his company delighted Olga, and also Picasso: it gave him a pretext to shut himself up in his studio. Clive Bell, back in Paris, reported on May 14, Olga’s “sole topic of conversation is the ballet—which must be unlucky for Picasso as he is sick to death of the whole thing,” not least of having to comply with Diaghilev’s incessant requests14—such as a portrait of Bakst for a book of his Sleeping Princess designs.15 A boil on the end of Bakst’s large nose postponed the sitting until April 1. Bakst gave Picasso one of his designs for Les Femmes du bonne humeur, the ballet in which he had first seen Olga rehearse, but for once Picasso did not reciprocate. He liked Bakst well enough—he was the source of much of Picasso’s stagecraft—but apart from Schéhérazade he disliked his work and failed to give him the portrait.

  Nineteen twenty-one ended with a New Year’s Eve party given by the Beau-monts. Etienne had arranged for Djemil Amik, an exotic dancer described by Jean Hugo as “the black pearl of Caryathis” to dance the New Year in.1617 The main concern of the guests was whether Proust, who was mortally ill with asthma, would or would not appear. “I’m the most troublesome of guests,” Proust had written in answer to Beaumont’s invitation,

  [but] I very much hope to come. I’m feeling rather sprightly at the moment. But in my fear of not being able to come, I’ve been swallowing drugs with such abandon that you’ll have a man who is semi-aphasic … through giddiness. … it will make me a lot of enemies among those I’ve refused, but that’s a consideration only in so far as it makes me all the keener to bring you my good wishes. … I might ask you for a cup of boiling-hot tea on arrival (lime tea, anything), hot enough to burn the throat, not simply very hot. And also not to introduce me to too many intellectual and fatiguing ladies.18

  Proust was a famously demanding guest. According to Edith de Beaumont, the writer’s maid, Céleste, called ten times to make sure that there were no drafts and that the tisane had been prepared to her specifications. “Finally at midnight,” as Jean Hugo described, “there was a tremor in the crowd, and one knew that Proust had arrived. He had made his entrance at the same moment as the incoming year—the year of his death … his face was pale and puffy, he had put on weight. He spoke only to dukes. ‘Look at him,’ Picasso said to me, ‘he’s on the job’ (sur le motif). ”19 Besides the dukes, Proust found time to converse with the artist he had described as “the great and admirable Picasso.” Proust stayed on most of the night, as Picasso said, “on the job”—collecting material for his last volume. However, as Proust wrote Princess Soutzo, “I thought I was making a particular gesture of friendship to the Beaumonts (matched by theirs) by staying up all night at their New Year’s Eve ball. They seem to have thought otherwise, for I wasn’t invited to [their next] party”20— the Bal des jeux.

  Proust was fascinated by Picasso. His maid, Céleste, recalled Prince Antoine Bibesco arriving to take the great novelist to a dinner at the Crillon, “with the object of introducing him to Picasso.” On the stroke of two in the morning, all three of them went to Picasso’s studio to see his paintings. When Proust described them to Céleste, she commented that “the Picasso faces must be a funny sort.” He laughed and said, “I must admit I didn’t understand it much.”21 Picasso met Proust again on May 18 at a supper party at the Hotel Majestic,22 given by a rich Englishman, Sydney Schiff (aka the novelist Stephen Hudson, who would translate Proust’s last volume, Time Regained), and his wife Violet. The occasion was the first night of Stravinsky’s Renard with choreography by Nijinska.23 Besides honoring Diaghilev and his company, the party brought together the Schiffs’ four favorite geniuses: Proust, Picasso, Stravinsky, and James Joyce. Schiff, whom Clive Bell accused of being intellectually and socially on the make,24 was determined that Picasso should help him in his quest for memorabi
lia. To this end, Schiff wrote Proust an unctuous letter (July 21), informing him that the British Picasso, Wyndham Lewis—“has a stronger intellect than Picasso but [he] doesn’t paint as well”25—was doing portraits of himself and his wife. The latter was to be given to Proust, in return for which Schiff hoped that Proust would sit for a portrait drawing by Picasso. “It would only take an hour or so.” Encouraged by Bell, the artist had taken a dislike to Schiff, whom he described as le monsieur qui est trop gentil. Nothing came of this project.26 A day or two after the dinner, Picasso received a nosy letter from Cocteau, who was not at the Schiffs’ supper: “I heard all about your dialogues with Proust.”27

  Except for Picasso, the Schiffs’ geniuses failed to shine. When asked by Proust whether he liked Beethoven, Stravinsky—exhausted from conducting Renard—said he detested his music. “But surely the late quartets?” “Worst things he ever wrote,” Stravinsky snapped.28 Proust fared no better with Joyce, who arrived late, drunk, and inappropriately dressed. “Joyce complained of his eyes, Proust of his stomach. Did M. Joyce like truffles? He did. Had he met the Duchesse de X? He had not. ‘I regret that I do not know M. Joyce’s work,’ remarked Proust. ‘I have never read M. Proust,’ Joyce [lied]…. Thus the two greatest novelists of the twentieth century met and parted. ‘If only we’d been allowed to meet and have a talk somewhere,’ remarked Joyce sadly afterwards.”29 Picasso’s only recorded opinion of Joyce is suspect, coming as it does from Gertrude Stein, who regarded him as a dangerous rival. Stein quoted Picasso as saying that “Joyce and Braque are the incomprehensibles whom anybody can understand.”30 Picasso had no more read Joyce than he had read Stein. His opinion had apparently been formed by Bell, who told Mary Hutchinson, “When I told Picasso that Joyce’s book was not really pornographic—only con-scieusement indécent—he remarked that it was ‘regrettable,’ and we both deplored the modern passion for the dull.”31

  The roaring twenties” had got off to an exhilarating start in Paris on January 10, 1922, when Le Boeuf sur le Toit opened its inconspicuous black door on the rue Boissy d’Anglas. The “Boeuf,” as it soon became known, had its origins in Cocteau’s Mutual Admiration Society, his Parisian tertulia. The regulars included Morand and Milhaud, Radiguet, the Hugos, Pierre Bertins, and Picabias, and the rest of Les Six. Although Picasso shunned this “Society,” he enjoyed hearing about their weekly dinners at Le Gaya, a bar on the rue Duphot, where a pianist friend of Milhaud’s, Jean Wiener, played to a room that was usually empty. In desperation, Wiener and the proprietor, Louis Moysès, had asked Milhaud to ask Cocteau to use their premises for his dinners: fashionable gatherings that guaranteed the bar’s popularity. Cocteau would recycle the conversation generated by these occasions in his short-lived magazine, Le Coq. As the founder of Les Six, the poet felt he had to qualify as a musician by accompanying Auric and Poulenc on a drum that Stravinsky had lent him (“I play it as often as I can,” he wrote to his mother).32 Given half a chance, Cocteau would also perform on “the castanets, drinking glasses, the mirliton and a klaxon.”33

  Spawned by Le Gaya the Boeuf was an immediate success. The walls were lined with drawings by Cocteau and other of the bar’s famous clients. Picasso, too, lent some large drawings but removed them a few years later. They left conspicuous gaps. The most celebrated of the bar’s artworks was Picabia’s Cacodylic Eye (1921); the artist had asked fifty of the visitors to his studio to do whatever they wanted to a canvas.34 The result is a collage of random elements: signatures, graffiti, newspaper clippings, aphorisms, and the like. “The canvas was finished when there was no longer space on it. I find this painting very beautiful,” Picabia said.35

  The Boeuf was soon thronged with the beau monde. Men were expected to wear dinner jackets, women to dress up in Chanel, Lanvin, or Vionnet. Overnight it became the headquarters of what would soon be known as café society: a place where high and low, gens chic and gens louche, could mingle with the leading lights of the avant-garde. Celebrities included Josephine Baker, Charlie Chaplin, the Prince of Wales, Chanel, Ernest Hemingway, the Aga Khan, and Barbette, the American trapeze artist whom Cocteau had discovered and who performed in drag. The French were often outnumbered by Americans—refugees from Prohibition and puritanism. At the Boeuf you could dine and drink and dance and make out with gorgeous young men and women who did not always come free. You could also discreetly score drugs.

  Interior of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, Paris, with Moysès at the left, and Doucet, the house pianist, on the right, 1924. Photographer unknown (inscribed in 1960 to Moysès’s son by Cocteau). Archive Louis Henrion.

  Within a year or so, the Boeuf was being hailed by Jean Hugo as “the navel of Paris,”36 the most energized and energizing establishment of its kind in all of Europe. Although he had no more than a few months to live, Proust, eager as always to investigate social phenomena, insisted that his friend Paul Brach take him to dine there. Proust wore a white tie and tails for what turned out to be a disastrous evening. “Some unbelievable pimps and queers” got into a drunken argument with Brach, which resulted in Proust challenging one of them to a duel.37 Proust was disappointed when an abject letter of apology from the culprit put an end to his farcical show of gallantry. A few months later Proust would be dead, but many of the originals of his characters continued to haunt the Boeuf.

  For Cocteau, the opening night of the Boeuf was marred by the temporary defection of Radiguet. Both Jean Hugo and a jolly pub-crawling painter from London called Nina Hamnett recorded this episode.38 Arriving around eleven o’clock, Ham-nett found the Picassos with Cocteau Marie Laurencin Marie Beerbohm and Moysès the Boeuf’s proprietor. Already a confirmed alcoholic Radiguet had gone to the bar to join Brancusi, one of the very few guests not wearing a dinner jacket. They had both had enough of Cocteau’s shenanigans. “Let’s leave,” Brancusi said. Off they went, with Nina Hamnett, to Montparnasse. The Dôme was about to close— just time to buy cigarettes. Brancusi suggested they go to the Gare de Lyon for a bouillabaisse. It was no good, so they decided to take a train to Marseille as they were, without luggage and without Nina. The Marseille bouillabaisse turned out to be no better. Radiguet exchanged his dinner jacket for a sailor suit, and after a night of debauchery in the vieux port, they boarded a boat for Corsica. The men of Ajaccio seldom let their women out of the house, so Radiguet and Brancusi departed for the mountains, where all they found were hags in black herding goats.39 They ended up in a vast, unheated hotel, where they stayed warm by consuming quantities of Corsi-can brandy. Heaven knows what else they got up to. Ten icy days later, they returned to Paris and an icy welcome from Cocteau. After dropping Radiguet off at the Boeuf, Brancusi left—never to return to the Boeuf and never to be mentioned in print by Cocteau. Picasso, who loathed Brancusi but not as much as Brancusi loathed him, was much amused by this story and would tease Cocteau about it in later years. Cocteau may have had cause for jealousy. Although Brancusi enjoyed telling friends how in his youth he had attended a country dance dressed as a girl and been invited out to dinner by a young officer, he was famously heterosexual. So, up to a point, was Radiguet despite his relationship with Cocteau.

  Radiguet would not have time to develop into the genius that Cocteau cracked him up to be. Although his farouche adolescent manner, surly shyness, and belief in a poet’s obligation to experience the dérèglement de tous les sens evoked Rimbaud, Radiguet was determined to distance himself from that dangerous exemplar. He had chosen a very different one: the sobriety, coolness, and classicism of Madame de La Fayette’s seventeenth-century masterpiece, La Princesse de Clèves. Picasso made fun of Radiguet for allowing himself to be seduced by Cocteau, but he sympathized with the priapic young writer, much as he had with the priapic young Massine. If Picasso agreed to do a portrait charge40 for Radiguet’s first book of poems, Les Joues en feu (published in 1925), it was not so much a favor to Cocteau as it was to a young author whose work carried much more conviction. There was a further link between the painter and the poet. Radiguet
was having an affair with Picasso’s former fiancée, Irène Lagut. Indeed, the title poem in Les Joues en feu is an acrostical ode to her. Irène now belonged principally to Georges Auric, but she had tried to steal so many husbands away from their wives—Braque and Derain, among others—as well as a wife or two away from their husbands, that she was now known by Satie as “Poison.”41 With Radiguet’s connivance, Picasso would start seeing “Poison” again.

  On January 21, 1922, Cocteau arranged for Radiguet to give a reading of his almost completed novel, Le Diable au corps, to the Picassos, Beaumonts, Serts, and Pierre de Lacretelle at the Hugos’ apartment. Surveying the listeners balefully through the monocle he used to camouflage his youth, the myopic young prodigy noticed that Edith de Beaumont had fallen asleep. This was unfortunate,42 given that Radiguet was already working on his roman à clef about the Beaumonts. After the reading, Radiguet shrugged off compliments, saying that “the Comte d’Orgel will be much better.” Little knowing that he might be playing into Radiguet’s hands, Beaumont then announced his plans for a Mardi Gras bal des jeux, that is to say a fancy-dress ball on the theme of games. Here was the climax that the writer needed for his novel. Beaumont immediately started work on the entrées. Picasso enjoyed designing some of the costumes, among them a merry-go-round complete with an organ for Valentine Hugo. She would finish this outfit only just in time for an entrée, which would include her husband as a game of billiards, Misia’s nephew, Jean Godebski, as a house of cards, and—most appropriately in the context of this ball—Radiguet as a shooting gallery. In addition Picasso painted a large decorative panel for the music room where Beaumont gave his parties: a stick figure made of tridents holding a fish next to another figure representing the sun holding a sign saying BAL.