Yet another view of this unusual man.
TO HELL WITH PICASSO
Picasso – that man, or at least his work, has been an obsession of mine and has
taken up a great deal of my time and my mind.
He just never got it wrong – he could take up a pencil, draw a few squiggly lines,and
there was a masterpiece.
He could draw a woman with a tiny little head and two eyes on the same side,
enormous great legs, flopping on a beach, yet there was beauty!
He would take a baby’s pram and go for a walk, especially past rubbish dumps: he
found an old bicycle saddle and metal handlebars, took them home, put them on the
wall together, and there was the bull’s head to perfection.
Then there was the famous goat, made from mainly an old wash-basket, afterwards
cast in bronze. He seemed able to work in any medium and quickly, with no trouble.
And we must not forget his incredible burst of creative pottery – a friend of mine owns
one of his jugs – I have implored her not to let it get chipped.
Certainly not a “nice” man – he seems to have been selfish, rather cruel, I would
imagine quite coarse, a total egotist, over- sexed, beastly to his women, and I believe
that, with all his millions, he was very mean.
But then I do think that geniuses have a right to be horrible [as so many of them
were.] Mozart wasn’t a nice man, but who cares, as long as we have their wonderful
legacies.
His real implosion on my life came with Guernica. He managed to express his
passionate grief in the painting of the results of that terrible bombing. The Spanish
Civil War was horrific, brother against brother; worse somehow than the Bosnian
horror, but Guernica was the result of a quite casual experiment. The German High
Command needed practice for their bombing raids, and General Franco gave them
the go ahead to use this little market town as a target.
In his painting – a tragic monochrome - he has the Bull, which he always uses as a
symbol of aggression; the wounded horse – the victim; the woman screaming in grief
holding her dead baby, and all these {are} figures of death and destruction.
A huge Guernica always hung in the sitting-room of my old house. Lots of people
used to say “Mary, why do you have such a depressing picture hanging there?” My
answer was, “Because I can’t live without it.” I couldn’t find a suitable {place} in my
{new} house, so I hang it in my carport – its quite safe, can’t get rained on. I will
always love it – I think that he could see into the soul of humanity.
So, “To Hell with Picasso” [but I will always love him.]