Is Picasso a target of social media cancel culture? Artist’s many women, and his attitude towards them, make him ‘an idol that must be destroyed’, says guardian of his legacy
- Pablo Picasso had two wives, at least six mistresses, numerous lovers and offered some combustible quotes about women’s status – a challenge for his advocates
- Picasso museums have invited women artists to contribute to the debate and are holding workshops on his legacy, something that divides even his grandchildren
.png?itok=arIb17P0)
Pablo Picasso’s track record with women certainly would not make the Spanish artist a feminist pin-up today.
There were two wives, at least six mistresses and numerous lovers – and a tendency to abandon them 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”).
“Obviously #MeToo tarnished the artist,” said Cécile Debray, director of the Picasso Museum in Paris, France.
“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.”
Art meets fashion in 6 Paris museums’ celebration of Yves Saint Laurent
Not that the issue is 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 Picasso’s most famous portraits, The Weeping Woman).
Its 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 says some of the things being said about Picasso are anachronistic and given to “conjecture and assertions without historical references”.
Still, she welcomes the challenge, saying: “The history of art is nourished by the questions of our time and new generations.”
Women were necessary to his creations and without them, there would have been something missing
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.”
Some, like Marie-Therese Walter, were young and vulnerable muses who felt discarded (she later killed herself), he said.
But others, like Françoise 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.”
Picasso oil painting sells for more than US$100 million at New York auction
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.”
