2 comments about Picasso (Famous Children).

1. I read this to my 5 year old and he loved it. The pictures were appropriate for the story and he wanted to know about each one of them. The book explained them all. The story was just enough for his age.



2. Compared to Pablo Picasso by Ibi Lepscky, this book gives children a much better idea of the circumstances of Pablo Picasso's early life. This book makes for a wonderful first introduction to Picasso the artist.

5 comments about Picasso, My Grandfather.

1. It goes without saying that any reader of this book will feel that life was certainly not good to Marina and Pablito Picasso when they were children and teenagers. The largest portion of this seems to be attributed to their wayward mother and absent, defeated father (Picasso's eldest son, Paulo).
   
   I felt for Marina while reading this book because I believe her segment of the family was particularly affected by Picasso's actions, which was tolerated and not handled appropriately by her parents (as it appears to have been by Francoise Gilot, who took firm charge over the direction and happiness of her children by getting them away from the direct influence of the "Minotaur" as the others did not).
   
   Marina Picasso gives real insight into the idea that Picasso had a true horrific and demeaning psychic powerhold over the Olga side of the family. Which was - again - obviously allowed and even condoned by her parents, Paulo and Emilliene.
   
   No doubt Picasso was a self-absorbed man and Jacqueline exploited her position and authority over the "other" families. However, to attribute Picasso's powerhold for the direct troubles in this particular family is the pitiable part. But this was indeed their fate, or so it seems from Marina's perspective.
   
   This book is a good read and I commend Marina Picasso for this account. It does offer strong insight into the Olga side of the family, and their desire to hold onto the Picasso mystique.
   
   And it should be noted that Marina uses her "Picasso" money to help others (as with her Vietnamese foundation for orphans).



2. Before you send Marina to trial, you must walk a mile (or more)in her shoes. There is always the "he said, she said" story to any tale, but I must tell you, being isolated from ones family member, no matter what the circumstances, can be devistating. Not to mention the influence of one very powerful figure head of the family, in which everyone seems to define themselves. Make no mistake, I count Picasso as one of the great artists. But most artists are tragic. The great ones suffered for it and made the ones around them miserable. Any great invertor's, artist's, scientist's, revoluntionist's, etc offspring will contest. Everything is sacrificed for the creators "art" no matter what "medium" form it comes in. We all carry a cross.
   Even though he is one of my favorite artists, I am glad I heard Marina's side of the story. Bitter you say?? She could have claimed so much, but instead chose to use the money she received to help others. As an adoptive mother from outside my own country, I can only applaud her efforts. Marina, I think you are wonderful. I hope to someday do great things in my son's native country. I have seen great suffering there, worse than any other I have known. I can learn from adversity and make good.



3. The matador stops the bullfight to pay homage to the artist. He turns from the bull to climb the stairs and doff his hat to the great Picasso before he completes the kill. In a tribute to the artist, he severs the defeated animal's air and tosses it to the artist's feet. The spectators understand this to be an act of respect, of devotion for the great Picasso, himself an archetype of fight and victory and transcendence. Here is the legendary rebel who fearlessly confronted fascism in all its brutal horror with art receiving a token of the animal whose life represents life itself.
   
   Here is a severed ear, yellow cartiledge, fur matted with blood, the remnant of a mighty beast reduced to a walk-on role in the gaudy pageantry of the Spanish bullfight.
   
   Here is the story of Marina Picasso, granddaughter of the great Picasso. Picasso My Grandfather is less a work of literature than an act of revenge on the man who deprived the author and her brother a grandfather. He couldn't help it, according to this account. Picasso was an artist; as such, he invested his every breath, his every resource--right down to the scrap metal he found on the side of the road--his every relationship to his artistic vision. For this his public adored him, his family longed for him, and a number of his lovers and associates died by their own hand.
   
   The bullfight episode of this memoir, at which Marina, Pablito, and their father Paulo were present with the great Pablo, captures the bittersweet and tragic of these relationships. The rest of the text is unforgiving and unyielding as it blames Pablo Picasso for every evil that befell his son Paulo and Paulo's family. Marina's pain and hunger for love, for affection, and for connection explode in every passage but burn with steady passion in this one. Like it or not, she is Picasso's granddaughter; she understands his peculiar passion too well.
   
   The world loves Pablo Picasso for the art he has given it. For his refusal to see things in the usual way. For his refusal to accept the pretty in place of the beautiful. For his courage in facing the struggle of the human soul with itself, with meaning, with life.
   
   As I read Marina Picasso's book, I felt it was none of my business, that I ought to put it down. But I could not. I wanted to know everything she had to say about the artist whose works have asked me what exactly it is to be human, what I know of suffering, and what I know about how I love.
   
   Marina points out that the matador was so rapt with her grandfather's attention that he allowed the bull to suffer in its dying, to be humiliated by the turned back. What an awful thing. Nevertheless, this image also turns me to Picasso, to wonder about the human being who said, "to make a dove, you first must wring its neck"--the same artist who said "when I don't have blue, I use red." You stop at nothing, you use everything, to acheive your goals, which are of course are the passion of your heart.



4. One reader called this a book of self pity. What is "self pity?" Do you mean that if a person experiences a personal tragedy or trauma of one type or another they are not allowed the humanity of recognizing that they, too, are human? They are not allowed to mourn? They are not allowed to come to terms with the truth?
   
   They are not allowed to tell the truth lest it stir up guilt in abusive parents and grandparents other than Picasso? They are not allowed any measure of justice?
   
   Telling the Truth is not Self Pity. "Self Pity" involves giving up and refusing to struggle toward health and happiness. Obviously Marina has engaged in this struggle. Not only has she gone to the necessary trouble of coming to terms with the cause of her suffering, she also has gone on to a state of improved well-being and a life of selfless and effective service as evidenced by her work among the orphans of Vietnam.
   
   As a bonus, she leaves, by way of her book, an aid to others who must engage in a similar struggle.



5. Marina hasn't much understanding about truly tragic childhoods...let's see, private schools, living in the south of France, wow, such misery! Her grandfather didn't owe her a damn thing, and why didn't her mom and dad work? If I were Pablo, I'd crawl out of my grave and take my money back.

No comments about Picasso : Collected Writings (French Language Edition).

2 comments about Pablo Picasso: The Communist Years.

1. As a working politician over the past sixty years in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, I experienced first-hand the sinister and underhanded role of Communists as putative allies and ultimate enemies. From the American Student Union in the 30's ("The Yanks are not Coming!) to the subversion of the McGovern campaign in 1972, American Communists, as disciplined and treacherous as their counterparts in Russia, sought violent Revolution as their doctrinaire goal under cover of a liberal "alliance" both here and more importantly in the unstable Fourth Republic. Gertje Utley's book, "Picasso, The Communist Years" shows bit by closely honed and researched bit, how Picasso lent his name and prestige to this debilitating process in France. With neither the background nor the political intellect to comprehend the logical consequences of his support for a repressive and hypocritical dictatorship, Picasso became the willing dupe of his Communist masters draining support for liberal political leaders and causes in France and elsewhere during the critical years of Communist dominance over the peoples of Eastern Europe. Utley connects Picasso's art and personality during this period with political views which were naive and egotistical in their origin and mischievous in their application. It is difficult to think of a greater challenge to an art historian than to attempt to describe the aberrational behavior of a great artist and the tangential effect of that behavior on his or her art. Utley's book is a readable and fascinating description of the macabre process by which Picasso was drawn into a realpolitik which aimed to destroy the very basis of his own artistic liberty.



2. This beautifully-illustrated book studies Pablo Picasso's artistic and political work after he joined the French Communist Party in 1944. `An illustrious son of democratic Spain', he opposed Franco, aided the resistance in Paris and championed France's post-war cultural renaissance.

   Utley details Picasso's creative efforts and depicts the care and constant reworking with which he conceived, executed and reproduced his designs in different media, whether murals, paintings, sculptures, posters, postcards, prints, brooches, key chains or pottery. She disposes of the well-travelled lie that Picasso admitted that his work was all a blague, a trick played on the public. In fact, as she shows, the alleged conversation was drawn from Il Libro Nero, a collection of fictitious interviews written by Giovanni Papini.

   Utley shows how `a strategy elaborated at the highest levels of the American government' presented the art of the New York School as a living manifestation of democracy as opposed to communism. The US state promoted Abstract Expressionism, to make New York supersede Paris as the capital of Western art. It promoted the notion of the Nietzschean artist, the individualistic, introspective genius in his ivory tower, free from all social and political concerns, casting Picasso as the `anti-artist', compromised because committed.

   Yet this is a deeply anti-communist account of a good communist. Utley sneers at what she calls the communists' `illusory goal of bridging the gap between art and the people', and at `the inadequacies of the artistic policies and aspirations of the French Communist party'. It is clearly beyond the comprehension of the author, an American academic based at New York University, that Picasso was a loyal and active Party member for the rest of his long life - which says more about the author's limits than the subject's!

   Her stale caricature of `repressive Party' and `servile member' fails completely to explain how people of the calibre of Picasso and his friends Paul Robeson, Pablo Neruda, Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard could be Party members. Were they all dupes? Unlike, say, an American academic, who cannot imagine how anyone cannot trust the US state?

No comments about Picasso and the Age of Iron.

No comments about Picasso: A Day in His Studio (Art for Children).

No comments about Picasso and Jacqueline.

No comments about Making Time: Picasso's Suite 347 (American University Studies Series XX, Fine Arts).

No comments about THE PRIVATE WORLD OF PABLO PICASSO : The intimate photographic profile of the world's greatest Artist.

No comments about A Century of Artists Books.