Picasso: A Biography

by Patrick O'Brian

  When they arrived they walked straight into Picasso’s landscape. “I’m not trying to make anyone believe I have the second sight,” he said, almost uneasily, when he was telling Antonina Valentin about it. “But everything was there, just as it was in the picture I had painted in Paris: I was absolutely amazed. And it was then that I grasped that this landscape was my own.”

  It was indeed: the same sea that bathed Cadaqués, the same sun that blazed on Málaga. And here, sitting in a restaurant that smelt of hot olive-oil and looking at the evening sea, sometimes as dark as his wine, he was as much at home as he could be anywhere.

  Some years later, when the Surrealists thought it their duty to demolish the existing order by outraging the bourgeoisie, Miró walked about Paris saying, “Down with the Mediterranean,” and in explanation he pointed out that the Mediterranean was the cradle of our whole Greco-Roman culture. Few would deny it, least of all Picasso: and here on its shore he turned back to the classical world whose air he had breathed in, though with a Moorish tinge, with the first gasp of his uncle’s cigar, and which he had seen fresh and lively in the ruins of Pompeii.

  The various aspects of his classicism took two main forms: the one a long-continued series of exquisite line-drawings of mythological subjects, often as realistic as those portraits of his friends; the other paintings of colossal women, great sculptural nudes whose volumes are studied with loving care. A splendid example of the first is a centaur carrying off a young woman: she is struggling and pulling his hair, but he looks quite pleased. Most of Picasso’s centaurs do, and so, quite often, does his early Minotaur, a far more important character who was presently to make his appearance. Horses and bulls were naturally of great symbolic significance to Picasso; there were subtle degrees of identification, sometimes for fun, sometimes in deadly earnest; and in later years the Minotaur was to assume the most tragic appearance. But those times were still far away, and in the early twenties the classical figures wrestled, conversed, and raped with a wonderful serenity, bathed in their own clear day; for, as Picasso said to Kahnweiler, when they were talking about painting and the imitation of light, “the line-drawing has its own innate light, and does not imitate it.”

  The colossal women are calm too, but theirs is a calmness that arises not only from their remote, almost expressionless faces, but even more from their noble mass, their generally immobile volumes. They are more nearly related to Picasso’s earlier excursion into the ancient world, to those great brick-colored nudes he painted just before bursting out of all Western tradition with the “Demoiselles,” than the mythological drawings are to the horse-riding boys and ephebes of 1905: and it appears that in those days he was thinking more in terms of archaic Greece, whereas in 1920 Hellenistic sculptures, bas-reliefs, and even frescoes and mosaics were present, and far more clearly present, to his mind.

  Picasso would not have been Picasso if this new departure alone had satisfied him. During these months at Juan-Ies-Pins he also painted an unusual number of landscapes and many beach-scenes, often with his giantesses in the sea; but he had not yet said nearly all he had to say in the Cubist idiom, and a quantity of still-lives, some as rigorous as anything since 1914, flowed from his pencil, pen, and brush.

  He also perpetuated if not his race (for there could scarcely be a flock of Picassos any more than a flock of phoenixes) then at least his name: he begot a child in June; and as Olga’s condition became more evident so his interest in the subject of maternity revived.

  In his circus days and before he had drawn and painted many poignant studies of mother and child. Often they were young, fragile women, pretty and wonderfully graceful, and in most of the pictures there was some degree of social comment. Overt comment had vanished long since, perhaps with the “Demoiselles”; and now he was thinking on another plane. These women are great massive figures, not particularly young, with huge stubby hands and feet: milky, even lymphatic, godlike, often detached. They have no resemblance to Olga whatsoever.

  The full time for his maternities had not yet come, however: in autumn he took the pregnant Olga back to the rue La Boëtie and plunged into the ballet once again. Diaghilev had asked him to provide the setting and costumes for Cuadro Flamenco, a suite of Andalusian songs and dances with traditional music arranged by Manuel de Falla, himself a Grenadine. Gris said that Picasso took the commission away from him and Diaghilev’s unbusinesslike ways may have given some color to the suspicion; but in any case it was Picasso who did the work. He returned to his idea of a theater within a theater, and this time it was a nineteenth-century Spanish theater that appeared on the stage of the Gaîeté-Lyrique—rows of red-plush boxes against a black and gold background, with rich nineteenth-century Spaniards in them: the costumes, since they were to be worn not by ballet-dancers but by real Gypsies from Sevilla, were as traditional as Falla’s version of the music. The setting was perfectly adequate; it was amusing; it neither aimed at nor attained any higher level.

  There was a certain amount of adverse criticism, and not only from the purists of Montparnasse; but Picasso was untouched, because only a few weeks before the opening-night Olga had given him a son.

  Curiously enough Picasso had never been a father before, and now he was absolutely delighted. He was filled with good will towards all men (except Braque and Juan Gris) and even to all women: he went up to Gertrude Stein in a gallery and said, as she puts it, oh hell, let’s be friends, thus taking the first step in a reconciliation that lasted, though tepidly, the rest of her days.

  But there was nothing tepid about Picasso’s reaction to young Paulo, nor to motherhood: within a few days of the baby’s birth, his father drew him avidly feeding, and these sketches continued at very frequent intervals—a fluent and most loving line—while at the same time the great series of vast, hieratic maternities began.

  Chapter XII

  MONEY has always been banished from civilized conversation; yet it has a profound though unclean interest of its own and in the privacy of his closet a writer may, for example, calculate Jane Austin’s 24.8% on an edition of seven hundred and fifty and compare it with modern publishing practice. And a biography that aims at showing Picasso in the round cannot be squeamish in this respect, because money meant a great deal to him.

  Just what it meant cannot be summed up in a neat single phrase, since the meanings varied from the plain equivalent of food, shelter, and materials in the early days, to a complex symbol later on, and to power later still, with an infinity of shifting nuances between these on the one hand and freedom, success, self-esteem, and the pleasure of giving on the other. His attitudes varied too: he could be mean with it, particularly in small and daily things; and he could be open-handed—in 1958, when Alice Derain and Marcelle Braque told him that Fernande, now a deaf, arthritic old woman, was not only sick but needy, he stuffed a million francs (about £1,000 in those days: a good year’s living) into an envelope and sent it off, although she had vexed him to the heart in 1933 by publishing Picasso et ses amis, reminiscences of their years together, which, though far more restrained than Françoise Gilot’s, nevertheless violated his sacred privacy. But one of its meanings, from the time of his recognition onwards, was that of a yardstick by which he could gauge his standing within the group of painters who might be thought of as his peers. Even late in life it made him uneasy to hear of a picture of Braque’s being sold for a swingeing price, and now, in 1921, he followed the Uhde and Kahnweiler sales with the closest interest.

  Since both Uhde and Kahnweiler were Germans, their pictures had been seized in the first days of the war, and this year they were to come up for auction. They formed the most important body of Cubist paintings ever put on the market at one time, and probably the largest collection of Picassos ever brought together in Paris up until that date. And like almost everything to do with Picasso the published accounts are confused if not contradictory.

  Without naming him, Gertrude Stein states that the expert in charge of the sale, in diabolical leag
ue with the older merchants, meant to kill Cubism by discouraging the public and keeping the prices as low as possible; that on being reproached at the sale by Braque he called him a Norman pig; that Braque stuck him to the ground; and that the buyers being frightened off, the pictures went for very little.

  Yet the expert in question was Léonce Rosenberg, and it seems strange that the nursing mother of so many Cubists should have wanted to ruin them. On the other hand, the danger of flooding the market with hundreds of pictures was apparent even to the most unbusinesslike. But we do have the list of prices, and these prices, though low, show a triumph for Picasso over the other Cubists. A triumph too, now that he had been in his grave eleven years, for Henri Rousseau, whose works did very well indeed, one of them, “Femme en rouge dans la forêt,” fetching 30,500 francs (£ 587), the highest price in the first day’s sale.

  The Uhde sale began on May 30, 1921; and in 1921 the exchange rates were approximately fifty-two francs to the pound sterling and thirteen to the dollar.

  During this first day seventeen Braque paintings fetched 10,904 francs, the highest price being 1,703 francs for “La Guitare.” Thirteen Picassos fetched 65,094 francs 25: “La Joueuse de mandoline” reaching 21,150 francs, while the portrait of Uhde went for 1,938 francs. The more important Kahnweiler sale began a fortnight later, when twenty-two Braques were sold for 25,114 francs and twenty-six Picassos for 36,403 francs. These figures give the sale-room scale of values thus: Picasso averaged 3,203 francs, Braque 891, and Gris 537 francs.

  Before this, at the very beginning of 1921, the Leicester Galleries in London had put on a show of seventy-two Picassos, representative of his oils (including the “Femme en chemise”), gouaches, watercolors, papiers collés, drawings, etchings and dry-points from 1902 or 1903 to 1919: the preface was by Clive Bell, and since 1912, when he wrote, “… the latest works of Picasso … leave me cold. I suspect them of being descriptive, of using form as the Royal Academicians use it, to convey information and ideas. I suspect Picasso of having come for the moment under the spell of the Futurists,” his views had so changed that he could now explain why Picasso rather than Matisse was the enormously influential leader of the modern movement, a point that he made with great force not only in the catalog but also in The Athenaeum, his essay appearing in both. The graver critics were respectful, if not laudatory. The Telegraph said, “… were Picasso not Picasso we would look and pass on. But we have before us sufficient proof of what he could accomplish if he would not to give expression to our profound sadness in facing him in his cubistic developments.” And the Burlington’s article corrects the impression that England was then very, very far behind the times; to its readers at least Picasso was obviously a familiar figure: “Picasso is the object of more worship and more abuse than any contemporary painter … this alone gives special interest and importance to the exhibition of his works at the Leicester Galleries. Almost every phase of his development is to some extent illustrated… the familiar Blue phase, with form more emphasized, but overlaid with sentiment.… Difficult to believe the exhibition is really representative of the artist’s best work: it shows his versatility and technical skill… it is another question what rank Picasso will take as a creative artist … Picasso’s present Ingres phase must be singularly disquieting for those who believe that in cubism truth was at last found.”

  The right-wing and gutter press hooted away just as it might be expected to hoot: the Conservative Morning Post, wrote, “It has been said that Pablo Picasso’s art has a logic of its own like that of music. What sort of music? The caterwauling love songs of cats in the night? That is the only kind of music suggested by Picasso’s cubistic diagrams at the Leicester Galleries.” The lower-middle-class but equally Conservative Daily Mail had the stock piece dating from Turner about a picture’s being upside-down: “A Cubist conception of a packet of tobacco by Pablo Picasso, arch-apostle of this extraordinary art. We are not sure, however, if this is the right way up.” And the Sketch, having observed that it was “a cheap business to sneer at what one does not understand” went on, “But to draw a few triangles and a segment of a circle, colour them crudely, stick on some patches of cement with sand in it and call the whole ‘Nature Morte’ smacks of idiocy,” while the headlines in the Graphic and the Evening News read FREAKS AT £700, KING OF CUBISTS IN LONDON, and CHAMBER OF HORRORS FOR THE WEST END.

  The only familiar phrase that seems to be lacking is “a child of seven could do as well”: otherwise everything is in order.

  Harsh newspaper articles never had much effect on Picasso, although being insatiably curious he always read them attentively; on the other hand he did like praise, particularly intelligent praise, and Clive Bell’s piece must have been honey to his heart. At this time he was more obviously pitted against Braque, but it was Matisse who really worried him, then and for the rest of his life, Matisse at whom he looked with a mixture of uneasiness, respect, and emulation.

  Picasso read no English, not a word; but Kahnweiler, who had spent some time in the London money-market before becoming a picture-dealer, was fluent in the language, and he could have translated Bell’s article for his friend. Kahnweiler came back to Paris as soon as he could after the war and he tried to prevent the sale of his pictures. In spite of his valuable contacts he was unsuccessful; and in spite of his long association with Picasso he was unable to dislodge Paul Rosenberg. Picasso’s memory of the sordid hours of haggling when the merchant used to wear down his resistance at the Bateau-Lavoir may have had something to do with this; for although it is clear from his writings that Kahnweiler was an unusually perceptive and intelligent dealer, the mercantile side with its love of buying cheap and selling dear often prevailed, and his deeply-rooted passion for bargaining was as strong as ever in Françoise Gilot’s time, forty years after he first began to harass the young Picasso.

  In the early twenties things looked bad for the dealer; but with the help of his sister-in-law, the wife of Michel Leiris, he did manage to open a gallery again: many of his former painters, including Juan Gris, came back to him, and after many years his tenacity, Picasso’s friendship for him, and Rosenberg’s departure for New York eventually resulted in his becoming Picasso’s chief dealer once again. Picasso liked what he was used to. and the deeply conservative side of his nature meant that custom might outweigh though not wipe out resentment.

  Since Olga was still feeling the effects of having her baby, she and Pablo did not go far away for the summer of 1921. He found a house at Fontainebleau, under forty miles from Paris, and there they stayed for the modest joys of a northern holiday. The place was large enough for Picasso to be isolated from the roar and squalor of a baby; and at this time he was about as domesticated as it was in his nature ever to be. He drew the stuccoed villa and its interior repeatedly, using a particularly fine pencil line and piling up the niggling detail in a kind of gentle, touching mockery.

  He did express a certain impatience at times, but for once Picasso was sharing the common lot, and this was a period of singular happiness, of great creative energy. The baby, cleaned and produced at stated intervals, was a fascinating new object, earthy, genuine, timeless, peculiarly his own, and one that he drew again and again. Yet even more important was its action as a catalyst; for without the presence of the baby Picasso would scarcely have carried out his sequence of maternities, which, although they are intimately related to his monumental neo-classic women, have a special quality of their own. Until babies reach the human stage they are so alike that they can hardly be told apart, and it is impossible to say whether these sucklings are in any way portraits of the infant Paulo, but in all probability they are not, since the mothers have nothing whatever to do with Olga. Olga was about five foot four, a little shorter than her husband, and these are vast mild women, with simplified classical features; they exist very calmly, on another plane, unaffected by earthly contingencies; often they recline in an absolute landscape of unrelieved, almost undifferentiated, strand, sea, and sk
y; and they wear a simple, vaguely classical garment from which their high, unsensual bosoms escape. When they do sit in an armchair, it looks strangely irrelevant, an intruder from our ordinary world rather than an anachronism.

  At the same time—how often Picasso’s biographer must begin his paragraphs with these words—and in the same place, he painted the two large, very closely related pictures which are generally held to be the high mark and the summation of synthetic Cubism: both are called “Trois musiciens aux masques” and both are just that—three masked musicians sitting tightly side by side in a line behind a table. In the one, the darker picture, they are a pierrot playing a wind-instrument, a harlequin playing a guitar, and a monk holding the score, while a dog lies under the table. In the other the harlequin has changed places with the pierrot and he is now playing a fiddle; the pierrot has the wind-instrument; the indeterminate monk has become a friar, a Cordelier, and he has an accordion: the dog has vanished. In both the figures are huge: physically they would be about ten feet tall if they were to stand up, but they are really huge because of their significance, and, on another scale, because of their tiny hands.

  Having made several preliminary studies he set to work on both pictures at once in what must have been a most enviable fever of creation: except in the “dog” picture, where a passage of traditional perspective gives depth, they both obey the strict Cubist canon, and space is the result of flat, generally rectilinear planes alone; the colors are often vivid, and in spite of a good deal of somber blue they should be cheerful. Yet the word is altogether wrong for the “Musicians,” and the wrongness lies not only in the scale and obvious importance of the pictures: these masked figures of traditional amusement possess a menacing quality, particularly in the case of the “dog” version, and I believe that the reason for it is that the “Musicians” are essentially magic, that the pictures give certain unnamed spirits a form and thereby exorcise them. They are part of that African revelation which Picasso had so many years before.