“Although
this book is a novel, and thus a work of fiction, I have taken the greatest
care to recount events as they are known to have occurred. Various subplots,
and the motivations of some of the characters, however, can only be fictionally
drawn, since Eva left so little of herself behind for the world to discover.
Because much of her life remains a mystery, as well as do some elements of her
death, it became incredibly important to me to honor her memory by being as
accurate as possible with the parts of the story that are known. Through those,
I have respectfully woven plausible details and events in order to create the
world of Madame Picasso.
One fact
that touched me deeply while doing my research was discovering that the
half-finished painting of Eva, which is mentioned toward the end of the novel,
had gone missing and was found fifty years later, only after Picasso's death.
It had been hidden among his private things, perhaps too dear to him to share
with the rest of the world, or to part with. To support my supposition in that
regard, the acclaimed historian, and personal friend of Picasso, Pierre Daix,
revealed in his work, Picasso Life and Art, about Eva that "when we spoke
of her two thirds of a century later, tears came to his eyes. They had truly
lived together, and Pablo, when success came, needed her."
Filling in
the blank spaces around the facts in a compelling and likely way, in order to
join them with fiction, came in part, not just by studying Picasso's work for
hints of their life together, but also by absolutely pouring over every word
and nuance of Eva's correspondence with their good friends, Gertrude Stein and
Alice B. Toklas. The letters, accented with little scribbles by Picasso
himself, and his own added sentiments, read like a treasure trove of gossip, news,
and poignant revelations about the part of her world Eva and Picasso tried
desperately to keep private. They were a young couple happy, clearly in love,
and with a sense of humor. In writing this novel, I was in search of the
essence of the elusive Eva, and I think that was best found through Eva's own
words.
Woven
throughout her beautiful, sloping penmanship, the spirited underscoring of her
signature, is a sense of humor, a tender heart, determination, and, most of
all, a great enduring love for Picasso. I was profoundly moved by the love they
shared, the struggles they endured, and the bittersweet end that I believed
marked Picasso, and changed him forever.
MY
MEMORABLE MEETING
One of the
best things about writing novels based on the lives of real historical figures
is going to places where they lived, and worked, getting a true sense of their
lives to try and breathe life into their stories for readers. Last summer,
while I was researching the story behind MADAME PICASSO, I was given the
opportunity of a lifetime to interview a man who, for 30 years, was a close
friend of Pablo Picasso. To sit and speak at length with a person who had
actually known the great icon was probably the most unique, and daunting,
prospect I had yet faced as a writer. Meeting the famed French photographer at
his Provence
The actual
event, however, became more than that, it was an adventure.
An
international celebrity in his own right, Lucien Clergue certainly cuts a
daunting figure, even across the internet. I had done my homework prior to our
interview and found a distinguished looking, almost regal, white-haired
gentleman whose intensely pointed gaze leapt off the page at me. But that
seemed strangely fitting, considering the legend of Picasso's own powerful
stare. Slightly unnerved by the prospect of meeting, I went on to view the
iconic, sensual black and white photographs that first brought Clergue fame in
the 1950's. Their abstract nature, the essence of them, reminded me of
Picasso's later work, and so further tied the two men together in my mind, even
before we met.
The plan
seemed simple enough: I was to be met at my hotel by a liaison who would walk
me through the cobbled back streets of the French village to the unmarked
studio where Monsieur Clergue has lived and worked for decades. There was no
time limit set for our meeting, and I was told nothing other than that he was
tired after a delayed flight back from Italy
My question
was answered, as my guide and I were ushered up a flight of ancient stone steps
and into the commanding presence of Monsieur Clergue. Seated behind a massive
carved oak desk, surrounded by soaring walls ornamented with photos of himself
with Picasso, plus several priceless works of art, Clergue sank against the
back of his massive leather chair, steepled his hands, raised his eyebrows and
said very simply, "So then, what can I do for you?"
It was
clear to me then that he was wary of writers who wanted to tread on the memory
of his friend. That was something to respect and a point on which we could
agree. In my novel I sought only to humanize Picasso, and thus, to honor him.
So as our liaison excused herself and left the office, I decided to buck up and
make the moments count. After a short exchange in which he told me of several "hit
pieces" on Picasso he had witnessed recently, he admitted that he was,
indeed, cautious of the motives of writers. I told him of my project, my
background and my commitment to the story.
Suddenly,
as if clouds had cleared away from the sun, he gave me a reserved little grin
and said, "Ask away. What would you like to know about Picasso?" I
had, in that moment, been given a modicum of his trust. I opened my notebook
then, and went to work.
Over the
next hour and a half, I heard story after story about the private Picasso, some
tender-hearted things, some acts of kindness and generosity, that don't often
figure into stories about the brash, womanizing artist. Even knowing what they
were getting into, some of the women, Clergue explained, were happy to attach
themselves to Picasso's fame and money anyway. But, he said, when it was over,
there was more benefit in tell-all biographies and accusations, than in
silence. Whether Clergue had a point or not, the world will never know. What I
do know is that Lucien Clergue was a man staunchly defending his friend, one
who was no longer here to defend himself, and I respected that.
As a
novelist, it is not for me to judge Picasso's actions, or his choices. Rather,
I believe it was my task -- and my incredible opportunity -- to learn some
amazing private details about someone who was, first and foremost, a man, one
with strengths and weaknesses, like any other man, but who, along the way,
became the most famous artist of the 20th Century.
Picasso was
an icon, one who loved, and who erred, who triumphed and failed. What I hope to
do in MADAME PICASSO is share a bit of that man and his great love for his Eva.”
Anne Girard
was born with writing in her blood. The daughter of a hard-driving Chicago
After
earning a bachelor's degree in English literature from UCLA and a Master's
degree in psychology from Pepperdine
University Southern California .
When she is not traveling or writing, she is reading fiction
Pablo Picasso's love affair
with women
'Picasso: Challenging the Past' opens at the National Gallery next week.
Mark Hudson looks at how the artist saw the women in his life - as either
goddesses or doormats.
13 Feb 2009
/ The Telegraph / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/4610752/Pablo-Picassos-love-affair-with-women.html
'Women are machines for suffering,"
Picasso told his mistress Françoise Gilot in 1943. Indeed, as they embarked on
their nine-year affair, the 61-year-old artist warned the 21-year-old student:
"For me there are only two kinds of women, goddesses and doormats".
From Rembrandt and Goya to Bonnard and
Stanley Spencer, male artists have drawn obsessively and immensely productively
on the faces and bodies of their wives and lovers. But no one used and abused
his women quite like the greatest artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso.
Looking at the extraordinary images in a
new Picasso exhibition that opens later this month at the National Gallery in London
Of the seven most important women in
Picasso's life, two killed themselves and two went mad. Another died of natural
causes only four years into their relationship. Yet while Picasso had affairs
with dozens, perhaps hundreds of women, and was true to none of them – except
possibly the last – each of these seven women shines out as a crucial catalyst
in his development as an artist. Each stands for a different period in his
career, representing a complementary or opposing ideal that inspired the
evolution of a new visual language. Just as they became obsessively involved
with him, so he was dependent on them.
Loyal, generous and affectionate when it
suited him, Picasso could be astoundingly brutal, to friends, lovers, even
complete strangers. Yet he felt real, often anguished passion for each of these
women – a passion he explored in tens of thousands of paintings, drawings and
prints, in which he attempted to capture not just the way these women looked,
but the totality of his feelings towards them.
Fernande Olivier, the first great love of
the Spanish artist's life whom he met in 1904, was far from a pushover.
Incorrigibly lazy and promiscuous, but with a lively and independent mind, this
statuesque redhead was a popular artist's model, a kind of "it" girl
of the Parisian avant-garde. To the young Picasso, who had arrived in Paris from Barcelona
Physically obsessed with her languid,
bemused presence, Picasso moved from the poetic romanticism of his Rose Period
to a new way of working inspired both by the dynamism of modern Paris and by
the enduring values of Mediterranean culture on which he was to draw all his
life. In 1906, Olivier accompanied him to the village of Gosol in the Spanish
Pyrenees, where the cubistic traditional architecture and her strong, sensual
features were endlessly analysed in a vast body of drawings that led to the
most influential painting of the 20th century – Demoiselles d'Avignon.
As Picasso worked on this definitive canvas
in the suffocating heat of his Montmartre
studio, he was consumed with jealousy and anger towards Olivier who had
temporarily walked out on him – this emotional violence feeding into a work
that blasted the Renaissance idea of fixed perspective out of the window and
changed the course of Western art.
When Olivier took up with a minor Italian
artist in 1912 in
an attempt to pique his jealousy, Picasso began seeing her close friend, Eva
Gouel, the most elusive of the seven women. Frail and slender, she appears in
only two photographs and her personality remains an enigma. Picasso's time with
her coincided with the moment of synthetic cubism, in which observational
elements were synthesised into semi-abstract compositions, often including
collage or text. While Picasso never painted Gouel, he paid homage to her in
several of these paintings, by including the words Ma Jolie – my pretty one –
which is perhaps the most overtly affectionate artistic gesture he made to any
of his women. While he was apparently devastated by her death from tuberculosis
in 1916, this didn't stop him carrying on a simultaneous affair with one Gaby
Depeyre.
Picasso's marriage to the Russian dancer
Olga Khokhlova in 1915 coincided with a complete reversal in his artistic
direction – from world-changing abstraction to relatively conservative
neoclassicism. His portraits of Khokhlova have a restraint and serenity
inspired by the 19th-century master Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
Yet just as Picasso's artistic restlessness
couldn't be contained for more than a few hours, so the desire of the socially
ambitious Khokhlova to tame the now wealthy artist soon began to suffocate him.
As their relationship disintegrated and she became increasingly delusional, his
depictions of her and women in general grew ever more hateful – tortured masses
of teeth, limbs and vaginas.
While Picasso's sense that he could do what
he liked with absolutely anyone increased as his fame and wealth grew, he
stayed with Khokhlova out of a residual desire for bourgeois respectability and
the deeply ingrained Spanish idea that however unfaithful, a man doesn't leave
his wife.
Picasso kept his relationship with the
youthful Marie-Thérèse Walter – just 17 when he met her – secret from Khokhlova
for eight years. Blonde, of equable temperament and athletic physique – but
completely ignorant of art – Walter was immortalised in images of melting,
idyllic eroticism in which we feel her guiltless enjoyment of her own
sensuality and the artist's complete satisfaction in regarding it.
If Walter offered Picasso little on an
intellectual level, his next great muse was the one who came closest to
challenging him on his own terms – an artist and photographer closely involved
with the Surrealists. He first encountered the mesmerising, raven-haired Dora
Maar across the tables of the Café aux Deux Magots, stabbing a knife between
her fingers till she drew blood. Picasso asked to keep her bloodstained gloves.
When Maar and Walter later met in his studio, the ensuing argument degenerated
into an all-out catfight between the two women, an incident Picasso later
described as one of his "choicest memories".
Maar was Picasso's partner during the
period of his greatest political engagement, her inner turmoil standing in for Spain Guernica
When Picasso threw her over for the much
younger Françoise Gilot in 1943, Maar suffered a complete mental collapse,
followed by nun-like seclusion.
"After Picasso," she famously
declared, "only God." Lest it should be thought that Picasso had
things entirely his own way, the case of Gilot is instructive. This young
aspiring artist – just 21 when they met – seems to have handled Picasso's
cruelties and perversities with amazing deftness, and was the only woman to
leave him entirely voluntarily, with her dignity more or less intact. She bore
him two children, with whom they lived a relatively normal family life for nine
years. But was this domestic stability good for Picasso's art? While he
captured Gilot's features in a series of radiant drawings and etchings, this
was the period of his greatest fame, when his millionaire life on the Cote
d'Azur was cut off from external reality, and it was all too easy for the
artist to "play Picasso" in art and life.
The last of Picasso's great loves was, on
the face of it, the one most in control. Picasso created more than 400
portraits of the demure Jacqueline Roque, who he married in 1961. The most
memorable imbue her sharp features with a watchful, almost classical stillness
that harks back to his Blue period paintings of nearly 70 years before. Roque,
you feel, was the one who finally got Picasso to behave, and created a tranquil
base for his last years.
Yet even her story ended in tragedy. In
1986 she killed herself, 13 years after Picasso's death. Like the other six
women, she had collaborated in what is arguably the greatest artistic oeuvre of
all time. Whether it was worth the pain, only she would be able to say.
Picasso: a lifetime in muses:
Fernande Olivier
(1881-1966; with Picasso 1904-1911)
After an abusive childhood and a violent
teenage marriage, Olivier escaped into Paris
Eva Gouel
(1885-1915; with Picasso 1911-1915)
Born as Marcelle Humbert, she was the girlfriend
of fellow artist Louis Marcoussis when Picasso became involved with her in
1911. Little is known of the frail Eva. While Picasso later claimed he knew
greater contentment with her than anyone else, he carried on an affair as Eva
lay dying of tuberculosis in 1915.
Olga Khokhlova
(1891-1954; with Picasso 1917-1935)
Picasso's Ukrainian first wife, and the
mother of his eldest child Paulo, was a dancer with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes,
and one of the few people of either sex to stand up to the artist. After their
separation in 1935, she bombarded him with hate mail. But since Picasso refused
to divide his assets with her, as required by French law, they never divorced.
Marie-Thérèse Walter
(1909-1977; with Picasso 1927-1936)
Picasso met the blonde 17 year-old outside
the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris
Dora Maar
(1907-1997; with Picasso 1936-1944)
Born Henriette Theodora Markovitch, of
Croatian and French descent. A talented artist and photographer, this
Surrealist icon – powerfully portrayed by Man Ray – had a tragic air, caused,
Picasso believed, by her inability to have children. She ended her days
surrounded by dust-encrusted relics of her time with Picasso.
Françoise Gilot
(b.1921; with Picasso 1944-1953)
This level-headed law student abandoned her
studies in favour of art and began an affair with Picasso at 21. She gave him
two children, Claude and Paloma, and recalled their nine-year relationship in
the best-selling Life with Picasso. Later married to American vaccine pioneer
Jonas Salk, she still paints.
Jacqueline Roque
(1927-1986; with Picasso 1954-1993)
A sales assistant in the Madoura Pottery
Studio in Vallauris, where Picasso created his ceramics, Jacqueline met Picasso
in 1954, when she was 27, and became his second wife in 1961. While she
quarrelled with his children over the division of his estate, they collaborated
in the creation of the Musée Picasso. She shot herself in 1986.
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