Interlude
Diary of Pablo Picasso
I don’t know why I am driven to write these words.
I keep recalling Malaga in 1899. I was eighteen at the time. My career in Spain was going nowhere. Despite learning my craft from my father, I felt I still had much to discover about art and the world. I needed to move away, develop now in my own way, and open up to the warm influence of a muse.
That was when I met her. I suppose I was ripe for the picking.
She took me to bed and whispered to me afterwards as I slept. She told me in my dreams of my great future. Explaining all the hardship I must endure first. I didn’t think this was anything more than a dream at the time. Even so, a few days later I began to make plans to leave Spain and the urge to move on grew until I couldn’t remain in the country of my birth any longer.
In 1900 I found my way to Paris. By then I had almost forgotten this mysterious woman who had told me she was a seer. In Paris I met numerous women and enjoyed many good times. But they all drifted away from me, or I tired of them, because none gave me the inspiration I craved. I worked hard, not always with success, and some of those hardships that had been predicted came to fruition.
I looked always for new models to bring a fresh element to my work. I had live-in lovers, friends – or rather hangers on – who spent time admiring my work, cooing with appreciation and sycophantic expression.
But then I met Marcelle. She had red hair and blue eyes and was all I needed—for a time.
“I want to paint you,” I said. I saw her as she loitered in the market place. How could I resist?
“I’ve heard that line before,” she said. She walked away from the market, I followed.
“I’m an artist.”
“Of course you are.”
My French was imperfect at the time, unlike her own. Yet somehow I knew she hadn’t been born there.
“You aren’t a local girl,” I said. “You have a freeness about you. As though you don’t belong anywhere, but belong everywhere all the same.”
She laughed. “You’re insane.”
She cast her eyes around the market place: as though challenging all the other women who stood and watched as we passed by.
“What is your name?” I asked. And when she told me, I frowned. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” She was so familiar to me. My mind flashed back to Spain and to my muse there.
Marcelle merely said, “How could we?”
I saw her in the market many times before she finally agreed to let me paint her. By then I was having success selling my works to wealthy Americans. I even offered to pay her for her time.
But I had a problem that held my interest in Marcelle at bay. My mistress, Fernande Olivier. Fernande was a jealous lover and never let me paint other women without her supervision. Marcelle offered me a solution: I could set up a studio in her apartment.
“I’m modest and I wouldn’t like others to see me,” she said. “There are always too many people around at your place. And I wouldn’t want your wife to misunderstand.…”
“She’s not my wife,” I said, but accepted her offer and slowly moved in blank canvases, an easel, and all the paints and brushes I would need.
I painted Marcelle for the first time and posed her wearing nothing but a white sheet. Only one breast was exposed, and part of one leg. But the painting didn’t please me, it angered me.
I destroyed the canvas before Marcelle had a chance to see it.
“Picasso, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“I must paint what I see. But still it isn’t right,” I tried to explain.
“I’m sure it was wonderful. Please, start again. And let me see it this time.”
I went back to work and Marcelle had stood patiently, posing for me. As was my want, I refused to let her see the painting until I finished it a few days later.
I had drawn her face very much in the style of my earlier Spanish art, but now there were artifacts appearing in the picture. Marcelle had inspired me to draw on something I had seen in the market place: African masks and artwork. The painting was full of these things with her, looking so normal, and so beautiful, in the center of it all.
“You need other models,” she suggested to me. “Women willing to pose for you, perhaps some could wear the masks.”
I agreed. The fire of stimulation had been ignited behind my eyes.
I took a fresh canvas and my easel and paints and left her for several days.
Eventually I returned with the new painting. Marcelle looked younger than ever, as though she had been renewed somehow, revitalized. I placed it on the easel and Marcelle roused herself from her bed and came to look.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She looked at the painting. Five women, all nude, and two wore African masks as she had suggested. One was in a very provocative pose where she squatted, legs apart.
“What will you call it?” she asked.
“Le Bordel d’Avignon,” I said.
“The Brothel of Avignon,” Marcelle repeated and she laughed loud and hearty, drunk on my art. “I love it.”
Looking back, this was the moment my true greatness began.