MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to Picasso in 2023

Picasso in 2023 (3)

(Picture: KhanAcademyTurkce)

(Picture: Argentina)

(26.6.2023) Françoise Gilot, who passed away early this June, was probably the woman who shaped the discourse on Picasso the most. Fifty years after the death of Picasso, one has to state that the history of the struggle of love and separation that united these two persons has not yet been written. This struggle was epic, and, on some level, continued after Picasso had died. And what has to be said here and now, is that the public that at best superficially is taking interest in Picasso (or Gilot) today, has probably not the slightest inkling of the dimensisons of this struggle. What I am doing here, hence, is to gather a few thoughts, as to the situation in biographical writing on Picasso, as I see it.

1) A Picasso Biography is Lacking

John Richardson, whose Picasso biography remained a torso, was often – and is often, in his biography – a raconteur. How often does he – did he state that: Françoise Gilot told me; or: Jacqueline told me. Upon which he tells a story or relates an information that, usually, he does not question at all. Richardson’s strength was probably not critical biographical writing at all (he was helped by Marilyn McCully; other people did help him with volume IV), since Richardson was simply gathering, taking in (like a sponge), what there was to gather, to retell. But his biography, again, remained a torso. In other words: although Richardson did write also on the later years of Picasso’s life elsewhere, his actual biography does not even begin to discuss the abovementioned struggle of love and separation. And he probably would not have discussed it very critically either, since Françoise Gilot was one of his sources. And although he had howled with the wolves, in terms of harshly criticizing Gilot’s book on Picasso, when it had appeared in print in the 1960s, he had managed to find a good relation with Gilot later (and also to pay her respect for her book).

2) A Bad Comic Strip or a Good Graphic Novel

Those who know that Picasso had also very problematic sides, and those who know only this, are today making a fuss of their knowledge on Twitter and elsewhere. But it does often seem that those people who have heard that there was, in the early relation of Picasso and Gilot, a very ugly scene with a cigarette, do not even know that Gilot chose to live with Picasso and to have children with him after that scene. This particular detail is crucial, because the story that unfolded was not one-dimensional at all, and if I am speaking of an epic struggle of love and separation, I am chosing my words very carefully. Even the tone Françoise Gilot was chosing, when speaking on her years with Picasso, was not always the same tone. Fifty years after Picasso has died, one has to realize that Gilot did give her side of the story for five decades. She did influence the discouse on Picasso with her 1965 book (in cooperation with Carlton Lake); but also by speaking to biographers and filmmakers, and especially by speaking to one biographer, Arianna Stassninopoulos-Huffington, who drew on what Gilot and others told her, to write an extremely biased book (which again was the basis of a film etc.). And this bias is, at times, everything some people know (and have adapted), whose only interest seems to be to ›roast‹ Picasso, as one particularly guilty example of toxic masculinity. And this is not to say at all that there was no toxic masculinity in Picasso. But what we need is not a bad comic strip (bad due to bad simplification), but a complex graphic novel, that takes into account that perspectives on this struggle of love and separation there are many. And many scenes (some of which are only to be found in Cocteau’s diaries), have remained rather unknown.

3) The Art Fair Perspective on Picasso

Since Picasso still seems to sell very well, one does hear, from time to time, that portraits of Jacqueline Roque, or of Françoise Gilot, have been sold for lots of money. And this is usually more or less it. The superficial view of Picasso, and of Picasso painting portraits of women, is the view that Picasso did destroy them (or, in the case of Gilot had not found the time to destroy her). But of the complex situations that paintings by Picasso usually reflect, one does only know, if such portraits are put in context. One has to know of the particular roles, of the particular place that for example Jacqueline Roque had in Picasso’s life, in his house (one of these roles was simply to be present, when, in another room, he was painting, and there was communication by voices between them), and then, and only then, one is also able to appreciate what these portraits are about at all: about presence, a particular presence in the life of one particular man, and if one has understood that, one is able to find a more general understanding of what Picasso’s art, with its intense biographical dimesion, is about, and of what it is about also without that the biographical dimension being focussed on all of the time, and in a more generalized sense. This is also the more ›precious‹ side of Picasso’s art, and the struggles that fuelled this art have to be known in full complexity, and not only superficially. Fraçoise Gilot, who did manage to establish a very intelligent and critical discourse on Picasso, would deserve better than what we are seeing, in terms of Picasso criticism, in 2023.

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