PARIS —
Pablo Picasso’s track record with
women certainly would not make him a feminist pin-up today.
اضافة اعلان
There were two wives, at least six mistresses, and
countless lovers — with a tendency to abandon women when they became ill, a
voracious appetite for prostitutes, and some eye-popping age differences (his
second wife was 27 when he married her at 79).
Some of the quotes attributed to him would probably
cause Twitter’s servers to combust if he said them now (“For me there are only
two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats”).
None of this is new — it has been recycled through
books and articles from (sometimes traumatized) family members since soon after
his death in 1973.
But in a post-MeToo world, it poses a challenge for
those who manage his legacy.
“Obviously MeToo tarnished the artist,” said
Cecile Debray, director of the Picasso Museum in Paris.
But she added: “The attacks are undoubtedly all the
more violent because Picasso is the most famous and popular figure in modern
art — an idol that must be destroyed.”
‘Perverse, destructive’
But the issue is not being
brushed under the carpet.
The Paris museum has recently invited women artists
to respond to the debate, including “Weeping Women Are Angry” by French painter
Orlan (a reference to one of his most famous portraits, “The Weeping Woman”).
The sister museum in Barcelona is holding workshops and talks this May with art
historians and sociologists to unpack the issue.
The experts are, however, critical of some recent
hit-jobs on their beloved master.
An award-winning French podcast on the topic has
reignited the debate, leaning heavily on a 2017 book by journalist Sophie
Chauveau, “Picasso, the Minotaur”, for whom the artist was “violent...
jealous... perverse... destructive”.
Debray said some of their claims were
“anachronistic” and given to “conjecture and assertions without historical
references”.
But she still welcomed the challenge, saying: “The
history of art is nourished by the questions of our time and new generations.”
‘Animal sexuality’
Nor is it simple to separate
the artist from the art.
Of her grandfather’s women, Marina Picasso once
wrote: “He submitted them to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them,
ingested them, and crushed them onto his canvas.”
But, says another grandchild Olivier Picasso,
depicting
Picasso as a monster risks removing the agency of the women who loved
him.
Some, like Marie-Therese Walter, were young and
vulnerable muses who felt discarded (she later killed herself), he told AFP.
But others, like Francoise Gilot, knew exactly what
they were getting with Picasso and had no problem walking away when they had
had enough.
“Some came out of it well, but for others it went
badly,” he said. “It’s all very complicated — these women don’t resemble each
other.”
The paintings themselves show some of that
complexity.
“There are violent works, others that are very
tender, very soft... Each time, after exhausting his inspiration, he moves on
to something else,” he said.
“Women were necessary to his creations and without them,
there would have been something missing.”
Read more Culture and Arts
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
