A Life of Picasso

by John Richardson

  Picasso. Portrait of Enrico Cecchetti, 1925. Pencil on paper, 34×26 cm. Collection Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski.

  As usual, Diaghilev had other favors to ask, among them a bookplate for the library of Russian books that Kochno was assembling for him. Picasso promised to design one that would be a “quatrain in a universal language … objects rhyme, as words do, in painting melon rhymes with mandolin.”20 A lyrical still life, the Red Tablecloth,21 done the previous December, makes it clear that melon is a perfect rhyme for mandolin. Picasso never did the bookplate, nor did he grant Diaghilev another request: a portrait of his handsome new protégé, Serge Lifar. Picasso had no desire to draw this starstruck narcissist and sent him away.22 Lifar’s mendacious memoir omits this humiliation. Told that Diaghilev had arranged for an unnamed artist to draw him, he had thrown a tantrum at being asked to waste precious rehearsal time. Only later did he discover that the unnamed artist was Picasso. Although Lifar subsequently said he sat for the artist at Monte Carlo, no such portrait has come to light, nor have the twenty-five drawings that Picasso supposedly did of him in Zéphire et Flore23 The only reference to Lifar in Picasso’s Monte Carlo drawings is a forgettable sketch with the young dancer Khoer, who had escaped with him from Kiev two years before.24 Without the dédicace, nobody recognized one of them was Lifar.25

  A painting, originally entitled Odalisque, that Picasso would execute back in Paris may or may not have been commissioned by Diaghilev. It is a large (97×130 cm) horizontal canvas26 after a publicity photograph of the fiery flamenco dancer María d’Albaicín27 (see page 309), whom Picasso had first met when she was starring in Cuadro flamenco. Diaghilev kept her in the company, although she was unable to adapt to classic choreography. Eventually, a suitable role was found for her as Scheherazade in a divertissement for Diaghilev’s ill-fated revival of the Sleeping Princess. Albaicín “was carried in on an exquisite white sedan-chair, and although she had little to do but sway her body and make exotic gestures with her hands, she created a sensation.”28 Although Diaghilev had commissioned Gris to do a drawing of d’Albaicín for the program—as compensation for having lost Cuadro flamenco to Picasso—he may have suggested that Picasso also do a painting of her. Picasso may have had an affair with her. Albaicín had an inane Argentinian lover in tow, but that would not have discouraged Picasso or her. Like him, d’Albaicín was Andalusian and famous for her sinuous sexuality and the staccato of her castanets. She might even have been the reason why Picasso stayed longer than he had intended in Monte Carlo.

  In his 1998 Matisse and Picasso essay, Yve Alain-Bois sees this painting as a prime example of Picasso infringing “explicitly on Matisse’s terrain,” as typified by Matisse’s Odalisque, with a Tambourine.29 Bois is right to say Picasso “infringes,” but, given this odalisque’s origins in a photograph and the fact that it is likely to have been painted first, I do not see it infringing “explicitly,” except in the teasing, playful use of Matisse’s generic title.

  That so many Russian grandees had taken refuge in Monte Carlo pleased Olga. One of the most prominent was Matilda Kchessinskaya, who owned a villa on Cap d’Ail. This chubby, once ravishing star of the old Imperial Ballet had been the mistress of the Tsarevich (later Tsar Nicholas). On his marriage, she had been passed on to Grand Duke Andrei and was now married to Grand Duke Michael. He and other members of the imperial family were living, most improvidently, off whatever they had been able to smuggle out of Russia, notably Kchessinskaya’s million rubles’ worth of jewels. Picasso remembered visiting one or two of the grand-ducal villas, among them the imposing Villa Kasbek at Cannes. Picasso had been amazed, he said, by the profligacy of these exiles: the gambling and boozing, the childish games of hide-and-seek in closets full of ball dresses and uniforms, and the hangers-on (these included Kchessinskaya’s “faithful jester” the female impersonator Baron Gotch).30 Their frivolity did them in. Her jewels sold, Kchessinskaya ended up running a ballet school.

  Serge Lifar in Zéphire et Vlore, 1925. Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Paris.

  In gratitude to the Princess of Monaco and her consort, Prince Pierre, for letting his company use the principality as their base, Diaghilev expected his stars to pander to them—do whatever they could to keep the Grimaldi family happy. When Princess Charlotte needed to regain her figure after Prince Rainier’s birth, Tchernicheva gave her exercises to do. When Prince Pierre’s glamorous cousin, Daisy Fellowes, wanted ballet lessons, Sokolova was dispatched to her villa. The lessons were abruptly discontinued when Diaghilev discovered that Mrs. Fellowes had given the innocent Sokolova cocaine to cure a headache.

  Rather than attend social occasions Picasso preferred to hang out with the dancers and draw them rehearsing Massine’s new ballets. One was Les Matelots, with music by Auric and décor by the Catalan Pedro Pruna. According to Paul Morand, Pruna was “Picasso’s latest discovery,”31 He and another Catalan, the sculptor Apel-les Fenosa, had visited Picasso’s studio in 1923. Originally mistrustful, they both became passionate devotees of the man and his work. Among other kindnesses, Picasso had arranged for Level to give them a combined show at his Galerie Percier in January 1924, with a catalog text by Max Jacob, who would later encourage Pruna to follow his example and become an oblate like him, though in a Spanish monastery. Urged, presumably by Picasso, who would act as best man at his marriage later in the year, Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed to commission Pruna to do the décor for Les Matelots.

  Massine’s other ballet, Zéphire et Flore, had décor by Braque, a scenario by Kochno, and music by Diaghilev’s new prodigy, Vladimir Dukelsky: a prodigiously gifted twenty-year-old friend of Kochno’s, described by the impresario as his “third son,”32 Stravinsky and Prokofiev being the other two. Vernon Duke, as he renamed himself, would soon win fame as a composer of jazz in America. Kochno’s scenario for Zéphire et Flore—a mythological masque, such as an eighteenth-century nobleman might have had his serfs perform in his private theater—turned out to be too precious, Dukelsky’s score too characterless,33 and Braque’s sets too painterly to find favor with the public.

  Braque, who had arrived in Monte Carlo two days after the Picassos, had none of his old friend’s stagecraft to draw on and was averse to acquiring any. Picasso’s all too evident absorption into Diaghilev’s effete world left Braque worried about the state of his old friend’s integrity. He felt out of place in Monte Carlo and when not working would sit “in his bowler hat and bow-tie in the exotic gardens of the casino.”34 Whereas Picasso, elegantly turned out in a navy blue jacket and white trousers, would dart about posing for snapshots on the beach with Olga looking sublimely happy and the ballet boys showing off their muscles. In one of the snapshots Picasso has pulled down the shoulder strap of his bathing suit like the dancers’; in another he has hoisted Paulo up on his shoulders.

  A harmonious stage picture into which the dancers would blend is what Braque was out to create. In this respect his costumes for Tes Fdcheux the year before had functioned too well: like camouflage, in that dancers tended to vanish into the scenery. The same with Zéphire et Flore: the dancers did not appreciate the artistry of this effect. Prince Schervachidze, the scene painter who had done wonders with Picasso’s Train bleu, interpreted Braque’s backcloth so sensitively that it was acclaimed as if it were the original. Braque’s costumes were as beautiful and unsuitable as the ones for Tes Fdcheux: invisible when they blended in; oddly eye-catching (Lifar’s gold lamé shorts and Dolin’s flower-petal tunic) when they did not. Poulenc wrote Picasso that “They simply killed the choreography”35 Although Braque’s inherent painterliness was unsuited to romantic ballet, Diaghilev made the mistake of asking him to design a set for Tes Sylphides. He then compounded the mistake by disregarding Braque’s explicit injunction not to work from his designs until they were finished. Braque promptly applied for a restraining order against the ballet company. He won and would not return to stage design for another twenty years.36 To back up his claim that collaboratio
n was not his forte, the composer Francis Poulenc quotes Braque as saying it was “bad enough taking three people into account—choreographer, painter, and musician—if you have to include a writer as well, all unity is sacrificed.”37

  Dukelsky fared little better than Braque. Like his god, George Gershwin, his real forte was jazz. Diaghilev detested jazz and would be furious to arrive at a rehearsal to find Dukelsky playing “Lady Be Good” or some other popular song, with Lifar, Kochno, and Dolin clustered around the piano.38 Out of Diaghilev’s sight, the boys and girls of the corps de ballet could jive away while Dukelsky strummed and Picasso drew. The frenzied syncopation of the Charleston would continue to reverberate in the artist’s memory. The day after the disappointing premiere of Zéphire et Flore, Diaghilev and the company left for Barcelona. The Picassos, who were looking for a summer rental, stayed on in Monte Carlo so long that Rosenberg wrote asking whether he had become Monégasque.39 This early in the season, they were able to find exactly what they wanted at Juan-les-Pins, and would return a month later.

  Top: Picasso and Olga with dancers on the beach at Monte Carlo, c. 1925.

  Above: Boris Kochno, Paulo Picasso, and Diaghilev in Monte Carlo, 1925.

  Right: Pere Pruna. Vernon Duke and Boris Kochno, 1925. Colored crayons on paper, 61×48 cm. Bibliothèque de l’Opera, Paris.

  Back in Paris in early May, Picasso got down to reworking La Danse. He put everything into it—above all, his “blood and guts,” as he said a year later when asked what his art was about.40 Most radical were the changes to the left-hand side of the composition. Memories of the dancers shimmying away to Dukelsky’s ragtime enabled him to galvanize this figure to the point of menace. To sharpen the focus and tonal contrasts, Picasso has set his figures against a bright, malevolent Monégasque sky. The crucificial dancer at the center is usually said to stand for Olga: her terse little dash of a mouth; her right leg as stiff and straight as if still in plaster; and—a surprise from someone as genitally focused as Picasso—nothing, but nothing, between her thighs.

  The Dionysiac dancer on the left is the antithesis of the central figure. Picasso has punched a hole in her pelvis and reassembled her face as a vagina dentata. She is a maenad all right, a maenad fresh from slaying Orpheus, but she also has a dash of Nina Payne, the American tap dancer, who was “the rage of the Riviera” and the girlfriend of Dukelsky at the time.41 There may also be a dash of Zelda Fitzgerald, who still aspired to be a dancer. This maenad may be the worse for cocktails or cocaine, but she is not, to my mind, convulsed in une grande attaque hysterique, as scholars who envisage her in the Bretonian gaslight of Dr. Charcot’s clinical photographs like to think.42 She is dancing a demonic Charleston. The notion of a Charleston tallies with a fantasy Picasso had described to Diaghilev: “a chorus of music-hall girls [coming] on stage to the music intended for a procession of bacchantes”—and then performing “a French can-can number.”43

  Several decades ago, my Jazz Age interpretation of La Danse resulted in Lawrence Gowing—a distinguished British painter and critic of the time—accusing me of defiling a masterpiece. But the girl is dancing the Charleston. Gowing’s failure to face up to the contemporary nature of Picasso’s vision typifies his generational failure to understand the enormous historical and cultural resonance and relevance—of the way Picasso has plugged the modernity of La Danse into the savagery of antiquity.

  As for Pichot, the pretext for La Danse, he manifests himself in the form of a dark, sinister silhouette at the back. This effigy of death merges with the right-hand dancer, who extends an apparently co-owned hand in a white glove, behind the central figure’s back, to the dancer on the left. The portrayal of Pichot as a dancer might also refer to the Rousseau banquet in 1908, when he “danced a wonderful religious Spanish dance ending in making of himself a crucified Christ upon the floor.”44 It would be very typical of Picasso to invoke the crucifixion in order to conjure up intimations of darkness and death. La Danse is one of Picasso’s most profound and mysterious paintings.

  As soon as he completed the masterpiece, Picasso showed it to Breton, who instantly saw its potential as a surrealist icon. Breton arranged to have it photographed by Man Ray. On June 9 he sent Picasso a letter on paper headed La Révolution Surréaliste, abjectly apologizing for the poor quality of Man Ray’s photographs. He was desperate that his journal should be the first to publish this painting and hoped that Picasso would overlook “cette imperfection de détail.”45 Were Picasso to have second thoughts, he should telephone the following day. Breton could not wait to exploit La Danse. Asked in later years about the surrealists’ adoption of it, Picasso would cite the Pichot connection. My own feeling is that La Danse is convulsive, which does not necessarily mean that it is surrealist. It is sur-realist in the original meaning of the term Apollinaire invented.

  Olga posing in a tutu at Villa Belle Rose, Juan-les-Pins, 1925. Photograph probably taken by Picasso

  23

  The Villa Belle Rose (Summer 1925)

  Around June 10-11 the Picassos returned to the Midi, once again to Juan-les-Pins, which had become the place for the Boeuf sur le Toit crowd to spend the summer working on the now obligatory tan. They settled into the Villa Belle Rose, a large house in a large garden, situated in the town rather than by the sea. This summer Picasso made no drawings of the house; however, a great many snapshots were taken, so we have a good idea of this long-gone villa, which was the setting for this summer’s series of large, powerful paintings, stemming from La Danse. In these works, Picasso delved ever deeper into his labyrinthine psyche. The surrealists have taken credit for the psychic power of this summer’s achievements—unjustifiably, as Picasso made clear to Penrose: “We [cubists] wanted to go deep into things. What was wrong with [the] Surrealists was that they did not go inside, they took the surface effects of the subconscious. They did not understand the inside of the object or themselves.”1

  Now that he had extricated himself from overt neoclassicism, Picasso set about extricating himself from the mandarin atmosphere of the Ballets Russes: no easy task, given his and his wife’s involvement with Diaghilev. Breton’s canonization of him had certainly helped Picasso to reestablish himself as the spearhead of the avant-garde, but there was a price to pay. Breton was determined that Picasso should come out in support of his recent manifesto, Le Surréalisme et la peinture2 The artist was determined to keep his distance. Breton was relentless in this game of quid pro quo, so relentless that he spent July at Nice, trying to get Picasso to lend important recent works to his inaugural exhibit of surrealist painting at the Galerie Pierre in November. Picasso refused to commit himself; in the end Breton got very little. Breton would have far more success with Miró, Ernst, and Masson, and later Dalí, so much so that the poets who had founded the movement would find themselves eclipsed by the painters. However, the painters would end up supporting their impecunious brother poets with a constant supply of saleable drawings, which enabled some of them— Eluard in particular—to become virtual art dealers.

  Other visitors to Juan-Les-Pins included the ambitious André Masson and his wife Rose. On money borrowed from Doucet they had rented the ground floor of a villa, as well as a beach cabana. They were anxious to get to know Picasso and counted on Breton, whose portrait Masson had recently painted,3 to bring this about. The two artists would meet but never become close friends. Picasso felt that Masson was destabilizing and softening cubism—his cubism—and turning it into an art nouveau meltdown. He accused Masson to his face of “setting cubism up on a pedestal, the better to knock it off.”4 Another possible reason for Picasso’s coolness toward Mas-son was that he was the first artist Kahnweiler had signed up since 1914. Masson had effectively stepped into Picasso’s old shoes as the gallery’s leading light.

  Olga curtsying in the garden at Villa Belle Rose, Juan-les-Pins, 1925.

  Kahnweiler arrived at Antibes on August 1 and spent two weeks at the Hôtel Josse. He had driven down with his wife Lucie, her elder sister
Berthe, known as Béro, with her painter husband Elie Las-caux, as well as Lucie’s younger “sister,”5 Louise Godon, known as Zette, who was in fact Lucie Kahnweiler’s illegitimate daughter. Zette was accompanied by her fiancé, Michel Leiris, soon to become celebrated as a poet and ethnographer and, later, the author of one of the finest and most self-lacerating of modern memoirs, LAge d’homme. Hitherto, Zette had refused Leiris’s marriage proposal. This strange, brilliant young suitor would have qualified a generation earlier as a poète rnaudit. It was not until they drove down together from Paris that he was able to persuade Zette to marry him. Despite bouts of manic drinking and attempted suicides, the marriage would work out well. Over the next few years, Leiris would become one of Picasso’s closest, most trusted, and enlightening friends—an antidote to both Cocteau and Breton. Zette, too, would come to play a major part in the artist’s life. She would eventually run the gallery of her stepfather, Kahnweiler, which he would have the foresight to Aryanize as the Galerie Louise Leiris shortly before World War II.6

  Leiris was tortured by guilt, dread, and self-deprecating shame as he confesses to feeling in his autobiographical writings. To conceal the effects of the “barber’s rash” he had suffered from in his twenties, he had covered “his entire face with powder as white as talcum.”7 On one occasion he asked Juan Gris to take a razor blade and carve a parting from the nape of his neck to the center of his forehead “to give himself a geometric air or a ‘sorte dAdarn divin ou de constellation/ ”8 Surprisingly, Leiris is the only one of Picasso’s close poet friends whom he never portrayed; the artist did, however, give Leiris a drawing of Verlaine that looks like him. In the 1960s, Leiris would develop a passion for another painter, Francis Bacon, who would repair this omission. Bacon’s flayed-looking portraits of him are anguish made palpable.