Some of My Lives

by Rosamond Bernier

  So I went down to Antibes and got a first look at the outside of the medieval fort—the Château Grimaldi—that dominates the harbor and that guarded the secret of Picasso’s new activities.

  Thanks to his unpredictable generosity, I was the first person from the outside world to see what he had done there, and to publish it. But it wasn’t easy.

  At that time Picasso was living in very ordinary rented rooms, right over the main highway to Cannes. He never cared about décor or his surroundings. He took his meals at the café, Chez Marcel, across the street, which is where we were to meet.

  I went and waited. Finally, Picasso came down the road with Françoise, looking strong and very brown, in white shorts, red-and-white T-shirt, and sandals. I could tell right away that he was in a bad mood. It turned out that an American dealer had been to his studio, and by mistake Sabartés had let him buy certain pictures that Picasso didn’t want to sell.

  I knew better than to even mention seeing the new work. Picasso was very polite and seemed glad to see me, but he acted as though he had no idea why I was there.

  Eventually, I discovered how it had come about that he was working in the old fort. Picasso was a Mediterranean by birth and by temperament. He loved the sun, the beach, and the sea. Once Paris was liberated, he couldn’t wait to get back to the south of France. Nor could he wait to get away with his new love, the beautiful twenty-six-year-old Françoise, but he had no house, no studio, no place to work except those crowded rented rooms.

  At this point a local teacher of Latin and Greek who doubled as curator of the Grimaldi fortress had a brilliant idea. (His name was Jules-César Dor de la Souchère.) The fortress had been a somewhat halfhearted regional museum before the war, with a scattering of Greco-Roman remains, dolls wearing Provençal costumes, and Napoleonic souvenirs, but it had not reopened.

  There were splendid empty spaces at the top. Why not, the curator reasoned, offer them as a studio to Picasso? There was always a hope that if he went to work there, he might leave something behind.

  That is exactly what happened, after quite some hesitation on Picasso’s part (he always hated having to make up his mind). What he left behind is to this day the great attraction of Antibes. The old Grimaldi fortress became the Antibes Picasso Museum. But I wasn’t able to storm that fort for an agonizing week. Picasso was a specialist in such trials, as his future biographer Roland Penrose, an old friend of mine, knew all too well.

  The day after my arrival he invited me to join him at the public beach. In those days, he used the beach as his salon, giving appointments there. The group consisted of Françoise Gilot; two Barcelona nephews; his thirty-year-old son, Paulo, whose main interest was high-powered American motorcycles; his great friend the poet Paul Eluard; and a few hangers-on. Sometimes Olga, still legally Picasso’s wife, although they had been separated for many years, would stumble along too. According to French law, if they had divorced, Olga would have been given half of his studio and its output, so he didn’t remarry (Jacqueline) until Olga died in February 1954. At the time, Françoise referred to Olga as “my mother-in-law.”

  Picasso reigned over this scene in blazing sunshine, while supplicants and/or dealers from Paris tried to protect themselves with makeshift arrangements of shirts. Picasso, of course, enjoyed their discomfort.

  We would swim, eat bouillabaisse at two hundred old francs a plate at either Chez Toutou or Chez Nounou, and hunt for interestingly shaped stones on the beach. Competition was fierce for these, with Picasso intent on the chase. Once he picked up a pebble, looked at it, and said, “Oh, we know that one. I saw it last year.” And he threw it back.

  Walking on the beach, I was astonished at the amount of gossip Picasso knew: just who was sleeping with whom, who was leaving whom. When I mentioned this to Éluard, Paul said, “But of course, everybody tells him. You can hardly expect people to talk to Picasso about art!”

  This went on for about a week. It was entertaining but nerveracking. Picasso knew very well why I had come—after all, he had invited me. I knew I should not be the first to say anything. Finally, casually, as though he had just thought about it, he asked, “Shall we go and see the paintings?” but he added quickly, “Although, bathing is much more fun.” Incidentally, he claimed that he was the only man who could make love underwater. I am not in a position to verify this.

  So I finally saw the Antibes paintings. At the time of my first visit to the improvised studio, there were twelve paintings on panels, none of them signed.

  “Are they finished?” I asked. Picasso smiled: “As long as there is a picture around and I’m anywhere near, it’s in danger.”

  Antibes had originally been settled by the Greeks, who called it Antipolis. In the vast spaces of his attic studio, Picasso had dreamed up a mythical population of early settlers: pipes-playing fauns, gamboling centaurs, well-endowed mermaids, and, queen of the scene, Françoise, with exuberantly flowing hair.

  In their honor, and to mark his intentions, he wrote “Antipolis” on many of these paintings and drawings.

  “It’s a funny thing,” Picasso commented. “I never see fauns and centaurs in Paris; they all seem to live around here.”

  Nothing ever curbed Picasso’s endless powers of invention. That summer, there was no canvas to be had in Antibes and no proper paints. Picasso didn’t care. Before the necessary supplies arrived from Paris, he improvised—as he always loved to do. “This is a port,” he said. “They must have good marine paint, and that paint is meant for wood.” So he got plywood board, housepainter’s brushes, and went to work.

  Naturally, the delicate question arose as to what would become of the Antibes series. Picasso’s habit was to cram a place where he worked to the bursting point, then turn the key and move on. He owned a number of studios in and around Paris, and bank vaults too.

  But this wasn’t his property. To make up his mind about anything was always a major hurdle. He first announced his intention of “lending” the series, keeping everyone on tenterhooks. Finally, after much discreet but considerable prodding, he agreed that the works could stay where they were.

  So there they are, the pride of what is now called the Antibes Picasso Museum.

  So I finally saw the Antibes paintings, and wrote about them and had them photographed for Vogue. This was a considerable coup in art circles and publishing circles. Vogue’s reaction: Mrs. Chase took me to tea at the Paris Ritz and said gently, “My child, I hear you are not in the office much of the time.” I answered that it was difficult to be gathering fascinating material in Antibes while sitting in the Paris office. She thought that over, then said, “But you must remember that if people are nice to you, it is only because of Vogue.”

  And from Condé Nast headquarters I had a message from the then editor of House & Garden: “Since you are on such good terms with Picasso, ask him to send us color suggestions for autumn decoration.”

  I had another world first of which I was understandably proud. Matisse himself had invited me to visit him at Vence, where he told me all about his plans to decorate the chapel that is now world famous, Sainte Marie du Rosaire. Vogue published my text and accompanying illustrations with no author’s name up front; my name appeared in very small type in a turn at the back of the book.

  I realized that I was producing too rich a fare for Vogue and that I should think of another outlet. It took some years to bring it about, but the first issue of my own magazine, L’ŒIL, hit the stands, very quietly, I admit, in January 1955.

  L’ŒIL Begins with a Gift from Picasso

  In the 1950s in Paris there was not much on offer in the way of art publications at an affordable price. There was the large, sumptuous Verve, edited at first by a wily Greek, known always by just one name, Tériade. It had magnificent color plates and erudite articles by well-known poets and authors and was correspondingly expensive.

  There was Connaissance des Arts, almost exclusively devoted to interior decoration, and a few trade sheets.


  I had been making invaluable contacts with the leading artists of the day. I was interested in photography and had worked with talented photographers. I cared about good design and good writing.

  With the enthusiasm of the innocent, I launched myself into the creation of a new art review, in French. My aim was to produce a lively publication with attractive layouts and well-written, readable texts by experts who did not pontificate, something of top quality that young people on a tight budget could buy. My dream was to see it read on the metro. Eventually, I managed it.

  I had a French partner, which made fiscal arrangements feasible. Nevertheless, ingenuity and improvisation were essential.

  It was through my old hard-drinking companion in Geneva, Albert Skira, that I was introduced to the Swiss printers the Imprimeries Réunies Lausanne. They had only worked with a four-color process for fine-arts reproduction. Offset, far less expensive, was the medium for advertising booklets for watches or chocolates.

  After many lunches with Monsieur Lamunière and Monsieur Heng (I discovered the fine Swiss way with potatoes, the rösti), they rose to the challenge of printing a high-quality publication in offset. We were able to establish a price for eight full-color pages per issue that would come in at the equivalent in today’s money of forty-eight cents a copy on the newsstand.

  We acquired a small office on the ground floor of a building next to the Hôtel des Saints-Pères. A window in the office gave onto the courtyard, and sometimes I would leap through, not quite up to Nijinsky in style. We had one assistant, a part-time secretary and an enthusiastic rugby player named Bob Delpire to do our layouts. (He is famous today and has his own highly successful publishing firm specializing in photography). First problem: a name.

  Several possibilities, such as Vue, were already taken. I wanted to emphasize the visual presentation. I tried writing out L’ŒIL, and I liked the way the E backed into the O. We had a motto: all the arts, from all countries, from all times. It sounds better in French. That was it.

  I had become friendly with Fernand Léger. Our first cover had a detail from his last great painting, La Grande Parade. The original is in the Guggenheim today. Léger was only one of our high-powered artist friends who gave their benediction to our venture.

  That brave first issue, January 1955, presented the kind of nourishing and seductive mix that was our aim. It started out with that eminent British literary critic, Cyril Connolly, writing about the eighteenth-century Bavarian rococo. Cyril’s prose was matchless, but so was his laziness. I knew that without close supervision he would spin his article in the stacks of the British Library instead of going to look firsthand.

  So we took him ourselves and drove around Austria and southern Germany to see the splendors of those joyful churches and libraries. By now this circuit is high fashion, but at the time no one was interested. That summit of Bavarian rococo, the meadow church at Wies, was not even in the index of the Blue Guide to Germany.

  I had always had a fondness for that life-loving sixteenth-century French king, François I, who brought Italian art to his country. This culminated in his château at Fontainebleau, where, among other things, he kept the Mona Lisa in his bathroom.

  The leading authority on the subject was Charles Terrasse, who, incidentally, was related to Pierre Bonnard. He was director of the Fontainebleau château that had just reopened after the war. He lived on the job, so to speak, in a little house near the entrance.

  My mission was to persuade him to take the time to write an article about the School of Fontainebleau for a magazine he had never heard of, for an editor completely unknown to him.

  I went out to Fontainebleau on a chilly November day. Like most people when discussing their specialty, he was fascinating. The hours slipped by. The November light was waning fast.

  “But I must show you,” he said. “Come with me.” And he led me at a brisk pace across the cobblestoned courtyard, up the famous double staircase into a completely dark interior.

  Electric light had not yet been installed, but he knew every step of the way so well that he clearly saw every statue, every stucco relief, every garlanded fresco. I didn’t. “Here we have a panel painted by Il Rosso,” he would say, pointing, as I strained through total darkness. Our entire tour of the château took place like that.

  But we parted good friends, and he did write the article.

  To round out that January 1955 number (besides an article on Giacometti), we had an interview with the venerable dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who had been Picasso’s on-and-off dealer for fifty years. He had outlived and/or outwitted the competition. Picasso never really liked his dealers. He felt he had been royally robbed when he first arrived in Paris. The exception was Ambroise Vollard, for whom Picasso made many illustrations for his editions. But Kahnweiler had created a profitable German market for Picasso, and he had staying power over the long course. Kahnweiler also became Georges Braque’s first dealer and presented Braque’s first exhibition in Paris.

  We accompanied the interview with a photograph of Kahnweiler taken by Picasso in 1912, and in a routine way we gave Picasso his photographic credit. He was absolutely thrilled. He took back a copy of L’ŒIL to his quarters in the rue des Grands-Augustins and proudly showed it to every visitor. “There’s an intelligent art review,” he said. “They know I’m a photographer.”

  To commemorate the occasion of the first issue, my copy was signed by Picasso, Braque, and Kahnweiler. Braque was an early champion of L’ŒIL.

  From then on, every month I went to Lausanne, and at 6:00 a.m., not my favorite hour, I was at the Imprimeries Réunies to see the issue through the press. Color corrections were made by hand in those days. I stood by to watch the color proofs churned out and to correct as well as I could.

  Naturally, we had to accumulate material well in advance of that first issue because we had nothing waiting in the larder. It was a high-wire act.

  We owe our first big publicity coup to Picasso. When he heard about the plans to start an art review, he sent a message of solidarity via Kahnweiler and said that he had “un regalo” for me, a present. It turned out to be the equivalent of a gold mine.

  He was sending me to his sister, Doña Lola de Vilató, in Barcelona. I was the first person to be so honored. She had kept in her care a large body of his work that was totally unknown. None of it had been published. It included early sketches and family portraits and a substantial group dating from 1917.

  All he asked in return is that when I got back, I would come and tell him all about my visit and show him some photographs. He had not seen his family since 1938; he had vowed he would never return to Spain while it was under Franco’s rule. He had never seen his family’s present apartment.

  Picasso had painted the 1917 works when he had come to Barcelona with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He had fallen in love with one of the dancers, Olga Koklova, and was not letting her out of his famous mirada fuerte. Later he was to marry her, with predictably disastrous results.

  As a proper Spaniard, he didn’t bring his mistress home. They stayed at the Rancini, an old hotel by the port, with a view of the Christopher Columbus column. He was to make a famous painting of the column. I saw it at the time of my visit to the family. Later it became a poster for the future Picasso Museum in Barcelona.

  When he was returning to Paris, he simply didn’t want to bother packing up the work he had done in Barcelona. He left it all with his sister, and she had kept it gathering dust for all those years.

  Apparently, I was the first person Picasso had ever sent to the family. They had been alerted about my arrival and were in a high state of excitement.

  I had been somewhat surprised, on telephoning when I arrived in Barcelona, to be told, “Come right away! Come tonight! At half past eleven.” Since I knew his sister, Doña Lola de Vilató, was aged and a semi-invalid, this was an unexpected hour. In true Spanish style, the family lived by night.

  The family apartment, at 48, Paseo de Gracia, was in o
ne of the solid bourgeois buildings that lined the street. There was no exterior indication that it might contain unexpected treasure. The smoothly running elevator was in sharp contrast to Picasso’s ramshackle staircase.

  “We’re so glad to see you,” they greeted me exuberantly, on opening the front door. I said I was glad to see them, but in fact I couldn’t see a thing. The place was in almost total darkness. They introduced themselves: Lolita, a daughter of the house, and two sons, Javier and Pablín. “We don’t know what happens to our lightbulbs,” Lolita explained. “The fuses, they blow like that, for nothing.”

  They steered me into the salon. There too the light was dim; only one part of a lamp was functioning. I could just make out a round shape swaddled in blankets, emerging from an armchair. It was Doña Lola. She suffered from acute arthritis, and it was painful for her to dress. But she presided like an empress from her cocoon of coverings. When Picasso saw the photograph we later published in L’ŒIL, he said, “Isn’t she splendid! She looks like a bullfighter’s mother.”

  They thought it very dashing for a young woman to have made the journey from Paris by herself, but it had never occurred to any of them to actually go to Paris themselves. They spoke fondly of Tío Pablo, but it was clear that they had no idea of his worldwide fame.

  There were no hushed tones around the invalid here. One nephew played the guitar, and the others danced and sang around Doña Lola. The merriment continued until the wee hours.

  Obviously, I was burning to see the work, but Spanish hospitality and folkways had me sitting in the family circle, sipping little glasses of sweet Málaga wine, and exchanging family news. They talked about Pablo’s mother, Doña María. She was very much like him, they said, short, dark, vivacious. She believed in him implicitly. After he had gone to Paris, she wrote to him once, “Now I hear you are writing poetry. I’m willing to believe it. If I hear next you are saying Mass, I’ll believe that too.”

  However, Pablo’s father was Pablo’s opposite in every way, tall, thin, and fair. His friends called him “el inglés”—the Englishman. Pablo often recorded his careworn face.