Hey guys, its Karin, Welcome to Little Art Talks!
Throughout this month, I’ve been sharing some of the greatest love stories of art history.
Their sweet and passionate love stories, the drama, the affairs - but also what it was
like to be artists, partners, and sometimes collaborators.
What kind art did they make, and how was their art influenced by their partners?
So, if that sounds interesting to you, keep watching this video and also don’t forget
to subscribe.
So far I’ve talked about couples where both people were artists: Frida Kahlo and Diego
Rivera were both artists.
Marina Abramovic and Ulay were collaborators.
But another very common relationship we see in art is the artist and his muse.
Now, when we’re talking about muses, there’s no one quite as inspired by his beautiful
women as Pablo Picasso.
Now this is the guy who once said, “Love is the greatest refreshment in life”, and
boy did he get his refreshments.
Often multiple refreshments at the same time and he liked them extra fresh!
This is a really bad joke, I apologize.
Pablo Picasso hardly needs an introduction.
The spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, etc. etc. is regarded as one of
the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.
While he was deemed a prodigy in his youth, he's also known for his ever evolving style
and innovation: such as co-founding the Cubist movement.
He’s also very well known for his paintings of women, many of which are the most expensive
paintings to ever have been sold.
Today’s video is all about Picasso’s muses: Who were these women and how did they inspire
the art of Picasso throughout his career.
In his lifetime, he was married twice, and had four children by three women.
But he also had many affairs.
I’ll warn you now, some of them, ok, many a lot of them, didn’t end so happily ever
after.
I won’t be sharing all of them with you today, because that would be ridiculous, but
I am going to share -um- a couple- maybe 6 or 7?
(I didn’t count before hand…
I will share the stories of 7 of these women who are now immortalized in Picasso’s work.
Picasso showed an interest and skill for drawing at a young age.
He was taught by his father, who was also an artist and taught in the School of Fine
Arts.
The young Picasso received a traditional, academic education in the arts- learning by
copying the works of masters and drawing plaster casts and live models.
At just 13 years old, his father felt his son had surpassed his own abilities, and Pablo
was accepted into an advanced class at the academy.
Picasso traveled to the art capital Paris in the late 1890s, where he would be exposed
to more Modernist works, and incorporated a Symbolist influence in his practice.
His early years in Paris were ones of extreme poverty- he shared a small room with his friend,
and even burned his work for warmth.
This period is called the Blue Period (1901-4), characterized, as suggested by the name, a
predominantly Blue / Blue-green palette.
Subjects include gaunt mothers with children, prostitutes, and beggars.
Blindness was a common theme during this time.
The Rose period, which followed, is more cheery in style and tone- with orange and pinks.
The subjects also changed- many featuring circus people, acrobats, and harlequins.
This period was influenced by his warm relationship with Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who
became his model and mistress.
She appears in many of his Rose period paintings.
Picasso began to find success as an artist by 1905, as a favorite among American art
collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein would become a principal patron of Picasso’s- displaying his works in her
informal Salon in her Paris home.
There, he met many artists, like Henri Matisse, and other collectors.
He also joined an art gallery.
Several of Picasso's early Cubist works (1907-9, sometimes called Picasso's African Period
and Proto-Cubism) were inspired by Olivier, such as Head of a Woman (Fernande), and he
even later admitted that one of the figures in his infamous Demoiselles d'Avignon was
modeled on her.
(Sorry if I pronounced that wrong.)
After garnering some fame and fortune, Picasso began to lose interest in Olivier, as she
reminded him of more difficult times.
So of course, he goes and has an affair.
He began an affair with Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva Gouel.
Eventually Fernande and Picasso separated in 1912, and Eva moved in with him.
Twenty years after their relationship, Olivier wrote a memoir of their time together, called
“Picasso et ses amis” (Picasso and his Friends).
In it, she tells how she was essential to him during these years of artistic and personal
struggle- as they spent practically all their time together.
She kept him company, was his lover, made the home, entertained their friends, and protected
his privacy as he worked late into the night.
But she also reveals the difficulty of living with a creative genius- whose dark moods and
jealousy would sometimes turn violent against her.
Picasso and Eva headed for Avignon, and met Georges Braque and his wife Marcelle later
that summer.
It was during this time that Picasso developed Cubism with Braque.
Picasso's Cubism is divided into phases: The first is Analytic Cubism (1909–1912).
These works were often monochrome, with brown neutral colors.
Cubism is often described as objects being taken apart- a study of the shapes of objects.
They portray the subject from multiple vantage points on one plane- allowing the viewer to,
with one look, have a simultaneous impression of the object in a three dimensional space.
Picasso's time with Eva coincided with Synthetic cubism (1912–1919), in which he worked with
Cubist collages and papier collé- incorporating cut paper fragments, such as newspaper clippings.
While Picasso never painted Eva, he would declare his love by including his nickname
for her: Ma Jolie, which means my pretty one.
Though they visited Picasso's family in Barcelona to discuss marriage, their relationship was
cut short when she contracted tuberculosis or developed cancer, and passed away.
He was devastated by her premature death.
After her death in 1915 to 1917 was Picasso’s Crystal period, or Crystal Cubism, in which
his works were highly geometric and minimalist.
Picasso continued to paint uninterrupted in Avignon despite the outbreak of World War
I in 1914.
Following the period of upheaval of WWI, a number of prominent European artists rejected
the extreme avant-garde art and instead worked in a neoclassical style.
This movement, called “return to order” revived classicism and realistic painting,
and was evident in many of the works of the 1920s, including Picasso’s.
Perhaps influenced by his first trip to Italy in 1917, paintings and drawings of this period
recall his earlier works in a classical style, as well as the works of Raphael and Ingres,
as seen in this portrait of Olga in an Armchair (1918)
He met Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova while designing the costumes and set for a
ballet she danced in.
She left the group to stay with Picasso in Barcelona, and the two moved to Paris, where
they married in the summer of 1918.
Khokhlova introduced Picasso to the life of the rich, high society and formal dinner parties.
The two had a son Paulo Picasso.
However, Khokhlova’s taste clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and their relationship
deteriorated from constant conflicts.
He began a secret affair with 17-year old Marie-Thérèse Walter in 1927.
She was heavily featured in his Vollard Suite of etchings, a set of 100 etchings made in
the neoclassical style.
Khokhlova learned of the affair in 1935, when Walter became pregnant.
(Is anyone else impressed that Picasso had an affair that lasted 8 years?
I- I feel like that’s a *long* time to keep a secret)
Khokhlova immediately took her son with her to the south of France and filed for divorce,
but Picasso rejected it, unhappy with the fact that French law required them to halve
their belongings.
So, Olga remained his official wife until she died in 1955.
Marie-Thérèse gave birth to their daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, and the two stayed
with Picasso when Olga left.
Picasso’s paintings of Walter, such as Le Rêve (1932), are often described as very
sensuous.
His relationship with the young blonde was probably very centered on their sexual relations-
no surprise there- as images are almost melting with idyllic eroticism.
Her calm, guiltless enjoyment of her own sensuality and the artist's complete satisfaction.
It’s often pointed out that Picasso has painted, it appears, his own erect penis,
in the face of his model.
However, Walter was ignorant of art and offered Picasso little on an intellectual level.
His next muse was surrealist photographer Dora Maar, who both stimulated and challenged
Picasso.
Picasso called her his “private muse.”
She spoke Picasso’s native Spanish and shared his political concerns.
While portraits of Walter were ones of satisfaction and brightness, Maar’s images were dark,
and she was often painted in pain, as in The Weeping Woman.
Maar was also Picasso’s partner during a difficult time for his politically- her inner
turmoil in these images perhaps showed Spain’s agony in the Civil War.
(1936-9)
Understandably, Walter was pretty jealous when Picasso fell in love with Maar.
And, apparently the two accidentally met in Picasso studio while Picasso was working on
Guernica, Maar was actually helping him out by documenting the process.
She would photograph it in various stages and he would use it in his creative process.
Anyways, the two accidentally met one day, and when they demanded he choose between the
two, she said he was just so happy with the current situation, he couldn’t choose between
the two.
And if they made him choose, they would have to just fight it off amongst themselves…
*sigh*
And guess what?
They actually began… to wrestle… *slow clap*
Oh my gosh…
I don’t even know if that’s the worst part, because later, when Picasso’s recounting
this memory, he calls it one of his “choicest memories”.
Mm..
He really enjoyed it, huh?
Picasso supported Walter and their daughter Maya financially, but he never married Walter.
During the Second World War, tension mounted as Paris was occupied by the Nazis.
Picasso’s portraits of Maar became even more violently abstracted.
He retreated into his work, continuing to paint and sculpt using smuggled bronze from
the French Resistance.
Picasso’s art didn’t fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this
time and was often harassed by the Gestapo.
One time while his apartment was being searched by the Gestapo, one of the officers stumbled
across a photograph of Guernica, and he asked well, did you do this?
And Picasso famously replied, “No, You did.”
That’s pretty good actually.
After the liberation of Paris, Picasso grew tired of Maar and started a romantic relationship
with a young art student named Françoise Gilot.
They moved in together and eventually they had two children: Claude and Paloma.
During their ten years together (Spoiler: they didn’t stay together) they didn’t
marry (Because he was already married to Olga, and was still married) but they did have a
relationship that revolved around art.
He painted La femme-fleur when Matisse announced that he will create a portrait of Gilot, where
her body will be pale blue and her hair leaf green.
On the nature of her relationship, she said in an interview, “ I could not say that
it was a sentimental love.
It was maybe an intellectual love, or a physical love, but certainly not a sentimental love.
It was love because we had good reason, each of us, to admire the other.”
This was the time of his greatest fame, living the millionaire life on the French Riviera,
cut off from external reality.
As I mentioned, Picasso had many affairs with women, even ones with an even greater age
disparity than his and Gilot's.
So it’s interesting to note that by his 70s, Picasso created a number of paintings,
ink drawings and prints with the same theme: an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover
of a beautiful young model.
Gilot later wrote in her 1964 book Life with Picasso that his abusive treatment and infidelities
prompted her to leave him with their children in 1953.
Picasso was very unhappy about that, and when she left, he told all art dealers he knew
not to purchase her art.
She instead married someone else in 1955.
Remember Picasso’s first wife, Olga Khokhlova who he refused to divorce?
Well, in 1955 she passes away, so now Picasso is free to remarry as he pleases.
So he goes off to Gilot, and says Hey, divorce your husband and marry me instead.
That way our children, Claude and Paloma will become my legal heirs.
So she goes ahead and actually does it.
She divorces her husband in 1962, expecting to marry Picasso so that their children would
become his legal heirs.
But - HUGE BUT- he tricked her, he actually tricked her!
Because by then, he had already secretly married another woman, Jacqueline Roque, in 1961 the
year before.
So he was basically trying to get his revenge against her.
He was apparently still really mad that she left him.
So yea, they never married and he married another woman.
By the way, he was also very angry when she published her book.
He did all sorts of things trying to stop its publication.
And when it was published he was so angry that he never spoke to Claude and Paloma again.
And their relationship never healed from that.
Even when he died- he passed away- his second wife prevented their children Claude and Paloma
from attending his funeral.
So their relationship is... pretty bad.
*sigh* So many things..
That make me..
So sad reading this… *sigh*
Anyways, let’s talk about the new wife, yeah?
So who is the new wife?
Jacqueline Roque worked in the pottery studio where Picasso made and painted his ceramics.
She was 27, and he was 72.
Apparently he romanced her by drawing a dove on her house in chalk and bringing her a rose
every day until she agreed to date him- and that was six months later.
The two were married for 11 years before he passed away.
Devastated after his death, she actually killed herself by gunshot in 1986.
Picasso created more art based on Roque than any other woman.
In one year he painted over 70 portraits, and in their time together, he made over 400
portraits of the demure Roque.
In his final years, these images were the most tranquil, capturing her sharp features
and almost classical stillness.
That’s a pretty sweet ending to this video, right?
I hope you enjoyed this video on Pablo Picasso and his various muses.
I also know that this video is late, but hopefully you can understand why- Originally I was just
going to do Picasso and Gilot (Also, sorry if all my French pronunciations are really
bad.
I know they’re bad.)
But just doing the script, I felt like I needed to tell the full story and I ended up with
a total of 7- originally I was going for 5, but then I was like “No I need 6” and
then I was like “*sigh* I really want to include Eva as well” so…
I ended up with 7, and this video turned out to be pretty long.
There’s a lot of them.
There’s so many women, I’ve even made a chart of all these women.
This life up there is Picasso’s life.
These are the years.
Just a handful of the women are the different colors.
The squares are their time together, and then the lines are the women's lifetime.
So, um.
Look at that age difference right there.
Impressive, isn’t it?
Anyways, I’ll make a better chart and put it- I’ll post it on our Facebook.
Yeah!
I should do that.
Follow us on facebook!
Hopefully you can tell why it took a while to make this video and you enjoyed it.
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