Some objections:
Olga Khokhlova stopped dancing with the Ballets Russes because of an ankle injury that ended her career as a professional ballet dancer. Marie-Thérèse committed suicide four years after Picasso’s death. Is he still to blame for that? Both Maar and Gilot lived to a very advanced age. Did he endow them with longevity?
I do not doubt that Picasso was an insufferable egomaniac and sometimes sadistic to boot. But he was clearly also very charming and that, combined with his celebrity status and his wealth, evidently proved irresistible to many women, as other commentators here have pointed out. So the real question is this: Are we women adult human females? And if so, can we please start treating ourselves as such – in other words as adults with agency who make our own decisions and take responsibility for our own actions? Gilot knew from the outset what she was getting herself into, but did it anyway – and got a best-selling book out of it (which Picasso was unable to suppress). Dora got a house in the country and numerous paintings, which as an ex-lover she was able to sell at a premium. Marie-T also lived comfortably off the many paintings in her possession, while poor Olga got only a château… Anyone notice a pattern here?
Claire D
2 years ago
Men like Picasso – an actual genius – are charismatic. Their energy and powerful personalities, draw people, often other powerful personalities, to them. Men admire and like them, women find them s e x y. That’s how it is, human nature.
So what does this young feminist want ? Shall we cancel Picasso ? Glorify the second rate art of the ladies in question a bit more ? Find a way to hamper and hobble present day geniuses like Picasso so that susceptible women don’t fall for them ?
Just think, without Picasso and his beastliness (he would laugh I think at my describing him thus), there’d be one less feminist article to write, one less cheque in the bank.
I can’t stand The Weeping Woman and the others in that style, but I do appreciate his early works, Blue Period, Guernica, sculptures, pottery and his War and Peace project.
I love this topic! Thanks, Clair!
My art teacher parents* gave me the Time-Life Library of Art Collection when I was eight years old. Looking for the first time at pictures of “The Rape of the Sabine Women” and the sculpture (my favorite) of “The Dying Gaul” formed my tastes. While I and my pre-bra friends giggled at the Rubens’ fat ladies and all the other chubby, eyebrow-less “beauties” throughout the centuries, I came to appreciate and recognize technical skill, and developed an eye and taste for mastery.
Woe, then, when the series moved to the 20th Century. Good God, what happened?! Picasso’s “Guernica” looked to me like a Mad Magazine cartoon. Most of what was coming out of the “art world” was proudly hideous. The only beauty was being produced by commercial illustrators, because most people prefer refinement, wit, skill, and style to ugly inability.
Picasso famously said “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” And frauds like him go for the long con.
*My parents were big Picasso fans: One of Dad’s favorite assignments was to have students make glass and plaster mobiles (a la Calder) of his easily-copied style. Lemme tell you: I’d rather queue up for an exhibition of Patrick Nagel before I’d spend the 30 seconds it takes to walk through the Monet Room at The Clark.
This post belongs in an art gallery! It is so surreal…Did Salvador help you write it?.
Anyone…. a BIG thumbs up from me..Alas, not big enough to wipe those down thumbs away.
Exactly. Why this article was published on Unheard is beyond me.
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
So what? Picasso was a very nasty man. We are interested in him because he was a great artist. As for the women, Maar seems to have had her own artistic career and taught Picasso something. The others seem to have had the same kind of input into Picasso’s art as Monet’s garden had in his.
Somehow Western civilization seems to have lost the ability to see things in three dimensions.
A man can be a magnificent painter as well as a very nasty man.
A woman born a century ago might have been forced to abandon her career, but that has no connection to today and reflects an era where those same women would stay home while the men died like flies at factories, mines and trenches. And that doesn’t necessarily imply she was a genius at the same level as Picasso.
Alan T
2 years ago
A few years ago I visited the Barcelona Picasso museum with my teenage daughter. The first room was dedicated to a selection of 60s line drawings/etchings (whatever they were) of grotesquely fat naked women with exaggerated pudenda (prostitutes in a brothel, presumably) with caricatures of Edward Degas inserted into many of the images, as if to incriminate him, as a punter.
My daughter and I agreed at the sleazy ugliness of the display but what struck me was our opinion did not appear to be shared by the many people who were viewing the exhibition with us. They assiduously studied and admired these works of the great master with no apparent moral response, presumably innured to the corruption on display through its status as art.
R Wright
2 years ago
If Picasso hadn’t been famous would any of these young women even noticed him let alone have relationships with him? He sold them a lifestyle and they sold themselves to him – an aging, cruel man. It is a tale as old as time.
Bernard Hill
2 years ago
…yeah, and ? So, for sure Pablo’s art and life reveals nature in the raw. What’s the deeper revelation the Feminarchy’s got for us then?
It is the same kind of sham argument that trans-activists put up and which the sisterhood demand we all see through and reject.
Jorge Espinha
2 years ago
What about the dictator’s wives? How much of the killings done by Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Franco, Somoza, Noriega, Castro, Ceaucescu or Pol Pot should be also attributed to their muses?
N T
2 years ago
relationships are transactional. whining about it does not do anything to change it. sometimes people get involved with someone who is or will be more successful than they are – oh, wait, that happens in every relationship. it should be more of a compliment to those less-accomplished that they had an impact on the more accomplished.
Sean V
2 years ago
Is the author suggesting that artists’ muses are co-creators of the work they inspire, and as such deserve a share of the profits?
And what if Picasso was gay and his lover/muses were men, or if Picasso was a lesbian and her lover/muses were women – would she have bothered to write the article?
Of course she wouldn’t, because she has no interest in actually exploring the creative process. She just wants a story she can reduce down to “Powerful white male takes advantage of an innocent woman, a woman who has been so broken down by the patriarchy that she is helpless to resist”.
Kirsten Walstedt
2 years ago
He was so physically unappealing. He was very lucky that women value men for who they are and not how they look, the complete inverse of how he valued women. Better just to relate to his work and forget about him as a person.
Yes, women value men for their wallets, men admire women for their breasts
Mmmmh, which is more insidious
Steven Somsen
2 years ago
“male artists throughout history, is also a product of his muses”. No, not true. Picasso clearly is the creator and he for some time intelligently cooperated with his muses. But then, as we are no angels, in the end he abused them as well and did not acknowledge their contribution. Clearly not a nice man. It is hard to combine the two: be truly male, truly creative and fullly respect the female.
Last edited 2 years ago by Steven Somsen
polidori redux
2 years ago
A long article, just to describe a grubby old man. I made an impressive grubby young man, but then I grew up: I am sure that the world is thankful.
Sean V
2 years ago
“Some people try to pick up girls
And get called asshole
This never happened to Pablo Picasso.
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
And so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
Well, the girls would turn the color of an avocado
When he would drive down their street
In his El Dorado.
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not like you.”
Jonathan Richman 1976 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1agI3u1YUjQ
Thanks for posting. I was going to reply along the lines of “that was one thing Jonathan Richman got wrong; Pablo Picasso really WAS an asshole”.
On reflection, however, the song isn’t paying tribute to PP, is it? It’s only pointing out how the asshole got away with it.
It took me a while.
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Artists believe they have a licence to behave badly. I am (eventually) married to one and I am busy influencing him to change tack.
Some objections:
Olga Khokhlova stopped dancing with the Ballets Russes because of an ankle injury that ended her career as a professional ballet dancer. Marie-Thérèse committed suicide four years after Picasso’s death. Is he still to blame for that? Both Maar and Gilot lived to a very advanced age. Did he endow them with longevity?
I do not doubt that Picasso was an insufferable egomaniac and sometimes sadistic to boot. But he was clearly also very charming and that, combined with his celebrity status and his wealth, evidently proved irresistible to many women, as other commentators here have pointed out. So the real question is this: Are we women adult human females? And if so, can we please start treating ourselves as such – in other words as adults with agency who make our own decisions and take responsibility for our own actions? Gilot knew from the outset what she was getting herself into, but did it anyway – and got a best-selling book out of it (which Picasso was unable to suppress). Dora got a house in the country and numerous paintings, which as an ex-lover she was able to sell at a premium. Marie-T also lived comfortably off the many paintings in her possession, while poor Olga got only a château… Anyone notice a pattern here?
Men like Picasso – an actual genius – are charismatic. Their energy and powerful personalities, draw people, often other powerful personalities, to them. Men admire and like them, women find them s e x y. That’s how it is, human nature.
So what does this young feminist want ? Shall we cancel Picasso ? Glorify the second rate art of the ladies in question a bit more ? Find a way to hamper and hobble present day geniuses like Picasso so that susceptible women don’t fall for them ?
Just think, without Picasso and his beastliness (he would laugh I think at my describing him thus), there’d be one less feminist article to write, one less cheque in the bank.
The only genius Picasso displayed was convincing the credulous that his ugly daubs were works of art.
I can’t stand The Weeping Woman and the others in that style, but I do appreciate his early works, Blue Period, Guernica, sculptures, pottery and his War and Peace project.
I love this topic! Thanks, Clair!
My art teacher parents* gave me the Time-Life Library of Art Collection when I was eight years old. Looking for the first time at pictures of “The Rape of the Sabine Women” and the sculpture (my favorite) of “The Dying Gaul” formed my tastes. While I and my pre-bra friends giggled at the Rubens’ fat ladies and all the other chubby, eyebrow-less “beauties” throughout the centuries, I came to appreciate and recognize technical skill, and developed an eye and taste for mastery.
Woe, then, when the series moved to the 20th Century. Good God, what happened?! Picasso’s “Guernica” looked to me like a Mad Magazine cartoon. Most of what was coming out of the “art world” was proudly hideous. The only beauty was being produced by commercial illustrators, because most people prefer refinement, wit, skill, and style to ugly inability.
Picasso famously said “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” And frauds like him go for the long con.
*My parents were big Picasso fans: One of Dad’s favorite assignments was to have students make glass and plaster mobiles (a la Calder) of his easily-copied style. Lemme tell you: I’d rather queue up for an exhibition of Patrick Nagel before I’d spend the 30 seconds it takes to walk through the Monet Room at The Clark.
This post belongs in an art gallery! It is so surreal…Did Salvador help you write it?.
Anyone…. a BIG thumbs up from me..Alas, not big enough to wipe those down thumbs away.
https://www.pablopicasso.net/war-and-peace/
Exactly. Why this article was published on Unheard is beyond me.
So what? Picasso was a very nasty man. We are interested in him because he was a great artist. As for the women, Maar seems to have had her own artistic career and taught Picasso something. The others seem to have had the same kind of input into Picasso’s art as Monet’s garden had in his.
Somehow Western civilization seems to have lost the ability to see things in three dimensions.
A man can be a magnificent painter as well as a very nasty man.
A woman born a century ago might have been forced to abandon her career, but that has no connection to today and reflects an era where those same women would stay home while the men died like flies at factories, mines and trenches. And that doesn’t necessarily imply she was a genius at the same level as Picasso.
A few years ago I visited the Barcelona Picasso museum with my teenage daughter. The first room was dedicated to a selection of 60s line drawings/etchings (whatever they were) of grotesquely fat naked women with exaggerated pudenda (prostitutes in a brothel, presumably) with caricatures of Edward Degas inserted into many of the images, as if to incriminate him, as a punter.
My daughter and I agreed at the sleazy ugliness of the display but what struck me was our opinion did not appear to be shared by the many people who were viewing the exhibition with us. They assiduously studied and admired these works of the great master with no apparent moral response, presumably innured to the corruption on display through its status as art.
If Picasso hadn’t been famous would any of these young women even noticed him let alone have relationships with him? He sold them a lifestyle and they sold themselves to him – an aging, cruel man. It is a tale as old as time.
…yeah, and ? So, for sure Pablo’s art and life reveals nature in the raw. What’s the deeper revelation the Feminarchy’s got for us then?
It is the same kind of sham argument that trans-activists put up and which the sisterhood demand we all see through and reject.
What about the dictator’s wives? How much of the killings done by Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Franco, Somoza, Noriega, Castro, Ceaucescu or Pol Pot should be also attributed to their muses?
relationships are transactional. whining about it does not do anything to change it. sometimes people get involved with someone who is or will be more successful than they are – oh, wait, that happens in every relationship. it should be more of a compliment to those less-accomplished that they had an impact on the more accomplished.
Is the author suggesting that artists’ muses are co-creators of the work they inspire, and as such deserve a share of the profits?
And what if Picasso was gay and his lover/muses were men, or if Picasso was a lesbian and her lover/muses were women – would she have bothered to write the article?
Of course she wouldn’t, because she has no interest in actually exploring the creative process. She just wants a story she can reduce down to “Powerful white male takes advantage of an innocent woman, a woman who has been so broken down by the patriarchy that she is helpless to resist”.
He was so physically unappealing. He was very lucky that women value men for who they are and not how they look, the complete inverse of how he valued women. Better just to relate to his work and forget about him as a person.
Yes, women value men for their wallets, men admire women for their breasts
Mmmmh, which is more insidious
“male artists throughout history, is also a product of his muses”. No, not true. Picasso clearly is the creator and he for some time intelligently cooperated with his muses. But then, as we are no angels, in the end he abused them as well and did not acknowledge their contribution. Clearly not a nice man. It is hard to combine the two: be truly male, truly creative and fullly respect the female.
A long article, just to describe a grubby old man. I made an impressive grubby young man, but then I grew up: I am sure that the world is thankful.
“Some people try to pick up girls
And get called asshole
This never happened to Pablo Picasso.
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
And so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
Well, the girls would turn the color of an avocado
When he would drive down their street
In his El Dorado.
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist to stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not like you.”
Jonathan Richman 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1agI3u1YUjQ
Thanks for posting. I was going to reply along the lines of “that was one thing Jonathan Richman got wrong; Pablo Picasso really WAS an asshole”.
On reflection, however, the song isn’t paying tribute to PP, is it? It’s only pointing out how the asshole got away with it.
It took me a while.
Artists believe they have a licence to behave badly. I am (eventually) married to one and I am busy influencing him to change tack.
More tweeny feminist cookie cutter stuff. Yawn