A Life of Picasso

by John Richardson

  Picasso would draw repeatedly on two other sculptures in the Museo Nazionale collection: one for his women, one for his men. For his women he chose the so-called Farnese Hera, a Roman copy of a fifth-century Greek Artemis. Some of the large classical heads that Picasso did in pastel at Fontainebleau (1921) have exactly the same neckline as this bust.34 They are also similar in scale. For his ephebes he used the head of the famous Farnese Antinous. Over the years, these exemplars would be absorbed into Picasso’s imagery and become generic types, just as they had done for earlier neoclassicists. Oddly enough, none of the photographs of the sculptures from which he worked has surfaced in Picasso’s archive, leaving one to wonder whether this inveterate hoarder might have destroyed the evidence of his appropriations.

  Picasso returned to Rome around April 22 and stayed there a week or so. Every other day, a long, comically plaintive letter would arrive from Cocteau. He was furious at being back in freezing Paris—“me void dans mon aquarium glacial”35— furious at having his press releases and other promotional “texts” for Parade turned down by “that hippopotamus of the Volga,” Diaghilev. To his dismay, Cocteau had discovered that Diaghilev had employed the mischief-making Michel Georges-Michel as his Roman spokesman. In this capacity, he had sent Maurice de Brunoff, who printed the Ballets’ programs, a peremptory cable, “REFUSE ANY TEXTS OR DRAWINGS BY COCTEAU.”36 Besides pressuring Picasso to take his side against this treacherous underling, Cocteau’s letters are full of messages to his beloved Maria Shabelska.

  On April 28 or 29, Picasso left Rome to join Olga and the rest of the company in Florence, where they were to give a single evening performance on Monday, April 30, at the Teatro Massimo. Olga danced in three of the five ballets on the program. Cocteau told Paul Morand that the performance had been a failure and that the audience cried “Basta! Basta!” Believing that they were applauding him, Bakst had taken a curtain call; the more they jeered, the more he bowed.37 In the entr’acte at the Teatro Massimo, Picasso was introduced to a seventeen-year-old painter, Primo Conti, whom Alberto Magnelli and the Florentine futurists were championing. Conti wanted to show Picasso a collage and was brought to his box (shared with Larionov, Magnelli, and the futurists Palazzeschi and Antonio Bruno). “So you too are a prodigy,” Picasso said to him. This prodigy failed to fulfill his futurist promise.

  Picasso was taken on a tour of Florence by Magnelli,38 who had been marginally involved with Balla in the preparations for Parade. Together they visited museums, churches, and palaces. Magnelli does not specify what interested Picasso beyond mentioning “primitives,” presumably in the Uffizi, and the Michelangelo sculptures of Night and Day in the Medici Chapel, which would later leave their mark on his work. Magnelli also took him to his studio, where he was obliged to admire this artist’s latest “explosions lyriques.” What, one wonders, would Picasso have felt had he known that a permanent display of this artist’s bland work would one day be housed in the same complex as his Temple de la Paix at Vallauris.

  The revolution had deprived Olga of a valid passport, so she had to make the trip back to Paris with the rest of the dancers on a group visa. Picasso had been away in Italy for no more than ten weeks, but in those ten weeks his social map had changed out of all recognition. Over the next year, everything else in his life, but most importantly his style, would assume a new pattern. Eighteen years would go by before he returned to his Bohemian roots.

  3

  Parade

  Picasso arrived in Paris on May 3, 1917, and returned to his dreary villa in suburban Montrouge. Olga, whose propriety obliged her to live under a separate roof, moved into a suite at the Hôtel Lutétia. After a three-month absence, Picasso was eager to catch up with old friends, above all Apollinaire. Though still suffering from his head wound, “L’Enchanteur,” as he was sometimes known, was allowed to leave the hospital during the day to help in the censor’s office. The previous fall, Apollinaire had understandably been hurt by Picasso’s decision to work with the pushy, would-be modernist, Cocteau, when he—the closest friend Picasso would ever have—was in hospital recovering from his trepanation.

  In December 1916, Apollinaire had written to Picasso suggesting that they get together and discuss “our characters, our griefs, in a word our friendship…. My feelings for you are alive, but there are places where they bleed.”1 They had gotten together and by the time Picasso left for Rome, they were reconciled. Now that he was back in Paris, all was forgiven and forgotten. Far from showing any animosity, the ailing poet was now prepared to put up with Cocteau, the ambitious upstart who, as he surely knew, was out to replace him.

  While in Rome, Picasso had received a letter from Apollinaire (March 22, 1917)2 suggesting that they collaborate on a project that had first been mooted in 1910: an illustrated edition of a short story by Cervantes, “The Scholar Made of Glass.” (This delightful story tells how a shy peasant scholar is given a love potion by an amorous grandee; the potion leaves the scholar convinced that he is made of glass; he allows no one to touch him and travels around on a donkey, packed in straw like a bottle.)3

  Picasso wrote back to Apollinaire “on behalf of Diaghilev” asking him to write something for the ballet company; he also confirmed that he would do the Cervantes book. Apollinaire went on to request two engravings for a book of recent poems, Vitam impendere amori. Picasso agreed to both these suggestions but in the end did neither. The poet André Rouveyre did the illustrations instead. However, Apollinaire came up with the essay for the program that Diaghilev had asked him to do.4 Picasso wanted Apollinaire’s essay to promote his views rather than Cocteau’s; and to the extent that it included a new word, “sur-realism,” it fulfilled its role. Picasso claimed to have had a hand in inventing this word, but a letter to Paul Dermée suggests that Apollinaire had asked other friends to decide whether the word should be “sur-realism” or “super-realism.”5

  Picasso. Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, 1917. Pencil on paper, 27 x 21 cm. Private collection.

  On returning to Paris, Picasso had gotten in touch with Gris, who reported to Léonce Rosenberg that he was finding the milieu of the Ballets Russes “a little depressing for an artist…. Too many beautiful women, too many jewels…. Long live the studio and clothes splashed with paint!”6 In his eagerness to identify with “clothes splashed with paint,” Picasso agreed to attend a dinner in his honor after the opening of Parade, to be given by Max Jacob, the Grises, the Henri Laurenses, the Lipchitzes, and other old and new Montparnasse friends. He would come to regret his acceptance.

  Even if Picasso had envisaged returning to Bohemia, Olga would never have fitted in. She wanted to be a glamorous ballerina married to a charismatic celebrity fêted by the beau monde. As a descendent of a once noble family that had come down in the world he was willing to satisfy Olga’s aspirations; and Diaghilev’s backer, the manipulative Misia Edwards, was all too ready to launch Olga in the treacherous waters of Parisian society.

  Misia, who appears in Proust’s great novel as Princess Yourbeletieff—“the youthful sponsor of all these new great men”7—was Polish but had spent her early years in St. Petersburg and spoke fluent Russian. She welcomed the Russian Revolution as “an immense ballet,” which would bring Diaghilev to power as minister of culture and the rest of his clan, “Gorky, Argoutinsky, Benois and Bakst to top positions.”8 Although the future Madame Picasso deplored the revolution, she took a liking to the future Madame Sert. Misia would be a witness at the Picassos’ wedding and godmother to their son. However, for all her panache, Misia was famously dangerous. Known to Cocteau and others as “Tante Brutus” for her backstabbing proclivities, she made a show of being nice to Olga but later admitted to Picasso that she was “the most emmerdante and … boring woman” she had ever known.9 And then, unexpectedly, when Picasso wanted a divorce in 1936, Misia, who had recently lost her third husband to her closest friend, was the only one of his circle to speak up for Olga in court.

  Tante Brutus, also known as Tante Tue-Tout, ha
d reason to befriend Olga; she was determined to add Picasso to her pantheon: Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard, Bon-nard, Félix Vallotton, all of whom had painted major portraits of her. Now that she was a celebrity, Misia expected Picasso to come up with another gratifying image of her and sent him photographs to work from.10 Picasso did indeed paint Misia, but instead of the Ingresque tribute to her belle époque charms that she had hoped for, he made a cubist mockery of her prognathous jaw, mean little mouth, brioche-shaped coiffure, and pearls the size of ping-pong balls.11 I doubt if he showed Misia the portrait. It was never published in Picasso’s lifetime and is identified here for the first time.

  Picasso. Portrait of Misia Sert, 1918. Oil on canvas, 64.5 x 46 cm. Private collection.

  Picasso seems not to have introduced his Russian fiancée to a couple of Russian patrons of art and literature—Serge Férat and his “sister” Baroness Hélène d’Oettingen12—who had formerly been a close friend. Olga is unlikely to have warmed to this raffish grande amoureuse, who had entertained both high and low Bohemia in her lavish apartment, or to her so-called brother—in fact an ex-lover—who had been the on-and-off keeper of Picasso’s former fiancée, Irène Lagut. Picasso would not have wanted Olga to meet any of the participants in the farcical events, which had resulted in Irène breaking off her engagement to him and returning to Férat.13

  As for Picasso’s elderly, Chilean mother figure, Eugenia Errázuriz, she had already met Olga in Madrid and could be counted on to be supportive. However, in her love for the man as well as the artist, she would not have thought any woman good enough for him and had no intention of relinquishing her maternal hold on him. Nor had Picasso any intention of breaking with this patron, who understood him and his work better than any other woman. Also, Eugenia was exceedingly generous. By the end of the war, she was sending Picasso and Stravinsky a thousand francs a month, as well as care packages of tobacco. Eugenia would insist that Olga and Picasso spend their three-month-long honeymoon with her at Biarritz: a sojourn that would delight the husband but leave the wife wary of accepting further invitations to stay with this benevolent tyrant. Besides presiding over the beginning of their marriage, Eugenia would preside over the end of it. When the Picassos broke up in 1935, this frail, iron-willed seventy-five-year-old grande dame, whose extravagant patronage had left her impoverished, moved into the rue la Boétie to look after him.

  Encouraged by Satie, Picasso had deleted many of Cocteau’s more egregious gimmicks from his original Parade libretto. He had also made crucial additions: three gigantic Managers—“shills” would be a more accurate term—and the famous rideau rouge; these additions stamped the ballet as more Picasso’s than Cocteau’s. Originally three Managers had been envisaged; Cocteau wanted all of them to be Negroes. Picasso insisted on diversity: a mustachioed French one with a pipe, a starched shirt front, and a walking stick (Diaghilev?) an American one with a megaphone and a papier-mâché skyscraper sprouting from his shoulders—a reprise of his skyscraper-like Seated Man of 1915-16—and a third one in the form of a Negro minstrel astride a canvas horse played by two dancers. According to Gri-goriev: “The dancers detested these costumes, which were a torture to move about in…. they, too, had to do a lot of stamping, which was intended to suggest conversations between them … a relic of the fascination exercised over Diaghilev by pure rhythm divorced from music.”14

  The addition of a dummy Manager to the back of the “Horse” proved unwieldy; it kept falling off and had to be jettisoned. The Horse remained and brought the house down with his solo. Picasso’s sketches reveal that the black Manager was originally to be a sandwich man.15 Maybe the inspiration for this was Géry Pieret, Apol-linaire’s former secretary-companion and nemesis, responsible for the poet’s arrest and Picasso’s questioning by the Sûreté in 1911. After returning from the Wild West, Pieret had proposed to gallop around Paris with sandwich boards on his back advertising Bostock’s Circus. A sketch of the sandwich man mounted on a pig conveys Picasso’s feelings about Pieret.1617 Another of the sandwich-man drawings makes scurrilous fun of Misia.18

  Satie may have also had a hand in the concept of these eight-foot Managers. They are caricatures of the uncouth giants Fafner and Fasolt, the builders of Valhalla in Wagner’s Ring—a work the composer abhorred. Satie had pilloried Wagner once before and would do so again in his and Picasso’s next masterpiece, Mercure.19 As he told Debussy apropos Wagner’s famous motifs, “there is no need for the orchestra to grimace each time a character comes on the stage.”20 Although Picasso’s giants upstaged his gimmicks, Cocteau realized that they added badly needed ballast to the concept of Parade. Their stamping and stomping mimicked the roar of war and reduced Cocteau’s little cast to “the stature of puppets or playing cards.”21 The inter- play between these realistic performers and the unrealistic Managers set up a disorienting dynamic, for which Apollinaire’s new word, “sur-realist,” was a perfect match.

  Picasso. Costumes for French Manager, Circus Horse, and American Manager from Parade, 1917. Musée Picasso, Paris.

  Picasso’s other all-important contribution to Parade was the rideau rouge: something for the audience to focus on while listening to the overture, described by Satie as “very meditative, very solemn, and even a bit dull,”22 the better to make the Managers’ irruption onto the stage all the more of a shock. Cocteau wanted the curtain to mimick movie credits and be emblazoned with the stars’ names.23 Once again, Picasso would have none of it. He wanted his rideau rouge to portray backstage as if it were onstage and insisted on an updated allegorical version of his 1905 Saltim-banques painting.24 The curtain was the first thing Picasso tackled after signing his contract. Long before leaving for Rome, he had completed a maquette25 that corresponds in most respects to the actual curtain. He executed the final design in Rome, but it was lost or destroyed after being squared up in the scene-painting studio that Diaghilev used in Paris.

  Because time was short—only two weeks between his return from Rome and the premiere—and Carlo Socrate, Diaghilev’s scene painter, arrived very late, Picasso supposedly had to begin work on the huge 10-X-17-meter curtain himself. He had to climb up and down a very tall ladder, similar to the one in the curtain, in order to gauge the general effect from a distance. Picasso is said by Massine to have taken great trouble over the curtain: “while his assistants … [used] large brushes, he meticulously painted in the details himself with a small toothbrush.”26 This was not corroborated by the artist. A year or two later, when Diaghilev asked Vladimir Pol-unin—the Russian-born, London-based scene painter who would work on Tri-corne—to restore the delicate tempera curtain, Picasso denied any responsibility. He stated: “that the [curtain], hurriedly painted by someone in Paris, was unsatisfactory, that it required to be repainted before almost every performance. The black tones so damaged the white ones, and vice versa, that instead of clearly defined black and white surfaces, there remained only patches of nondescript colour.”27 Polunin turned down the job. In recent years the curtain has been restored, but it is only a shadow of what it must once have been. Theatrical lighting might bring some life back to it. Picasso would have taken that factor into consideration.

  Like his symbolist Saltimbanques evocation of Bateau Lavoir Bohemianism, the rideau rouge situates his strolling players, painters, and poets in a whole other world of the spirit. Both works conform to Picasso’s father’s old-fashioned precept that a young artist should envision his career as a sequence of important compositions, which would win him fame and fortune at the Salons. Where the rideau rouge differs from the symbolist Saltimbanques with his elegaic Le Nain-like mood is in its irony and art populaire look. In the Parade curtain Picasso evokes the corniness of the little vaudeville theater in Rome he had visited with Berners. “A skillful parody of popular scene painting”28 is how Alfred Barr characterized it.

  Whereas the Saltimbanques had been conceived as a symbolist manifesto, Parade’s rideau rouge was intended to reassure the public that far from being pro
-German or pro-Bolshevik or a fumiste, Picasso was not an iconoclast, as chauvinist philistines had maintained during the war. It was also intended to prepare the audience for the shock of the thundering Managers. He realized that a spectacular manifestation in a prestigious theater could win him a wider audience and promote his image more effectively than any gallery show. Picasso had another problem. Parisians were more familiar with his name than his work. And no wonder, there had not been an exhibit of his work since 1910. Fearful that the pioneer achievements of his cubist artists29 would be contaminated by being lumped together with the work of “copycat” cubists,30 Kahnweiler, his former dealer, had never allowed any of them to exhibit either at his gallery or at the Salons.

  Cocteau always insisted that the plot of Parade could not have been simpler. He had merely followed Larousse’s definition of the word: “a comic act, put on at the entrance of a traveling theater to attract a crowd,” and then asked himself what would happen if the “parade” failed to attract a crowd? What if they mistook the “parade” for the actual performance and drifted away, abandoning the players to their fate? This would transform an ephemeral incident into an ironical metaphor of rejection. The simplicity of the original idea is what attracted Picasso, but Cocteau insisted on overdecorating his metaphor with flashy modernistic frills. Picasso and Satie threw out as much as they could, but that did not stop Cocteau from boasting that his libretto could be interpreted metaphysically, aesthetically, even politically. Cocteau’s pretensions would earn him the undying contempt of the emerging dadaists and future surrealists, who were taking over the avant-garde and intent on keeping him out.