Welcome to Great Art.
For the past few years, we've been filming the biggest exhibitions,
art galleries and museums in the world,
exploring some of the greatest artists and art in history.
Not only do we record landmark shows,
but we also secure privileged access behind the scenes.
We then use this as a springboard
to take a broader look at extraordinary artists.
In the autumn of 1907,
a young Spanish artist showed his Parisian friends a new painting.
So horrified were they, that he rolled it up
and hid it away for a decade.
And yet, it's a painting that changed the course of art history.
The artist was Pablo Picasso.
And in this film, we ask:
where exactly did this genius of the 20th century come from?
This is the dramatic and revealing history of young Picasso.
JAUNTY MUSIC
Picasso es, como tantos artistas del principio del siglo,
una mezcla interesante de muchisima influencia.
Habia un poeta espanol, Antonio Machado,
que decia que la patria de un hombre es su infancia.
La infancia de Picasso es malaguena y su patria es malaguena.
El lo ha recordado durante toda su vida.
Ha recordado sobre todo la luz del Mediterraneo.
Ha recordado los toros que visitaba con sus padres y sus tios,
aqui en Malaga.
Lleva impregnado el flamenco.
Picasso es malagueno, pero tambien es barcelones, tambien es corunes,
y tambien es, al final, un artista que se hace en Paris,
pero su patria, su infancia, es Malaga.
Aunque Picasso estudio a fondo
las tradiciones mas importantes
del arte, germano, italiano, frances,
hay algo en su obra que desde mi punto de vista
nos lleva directamente al sur... a ese sur hibrido, ese sur sintetico,
ese sur en el que distintas culturas historicamente han convivido,
se han encontrado como la hebrea, la arabe, la cristiana.
Yo creo que la clave para entender eso esta
en la misma obra de Picasso,
porque tiene elementos, formas,
claves propias de culturas distintas
a su lugar de origen que es el sur de Espana.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Aqui, en Malaga, Picasso disfruta de los toros...
..disfruta de las palomas.
Eso lo acercaba mucho a Andalucia,
a sus raices, a sus origenes.
Estamos en la misma case donde nacio Pablo Ruiz Picasso,
el 25 de octubre de 1881.
Esta casa habia sido habitada antes de la boda del padre de Picasso,
por el padre y por dos hermanas del padre.
Pero a raiz de la boda de Don Jose Ruiz Blasco con Maria Picasso Lopez,
la familia, ya el matrimonio, viene a vivir aqui.
En esta casa que es donde nace Picasso.
La familia tiene una gran influencia en Picasso,
el caracter de Dona Maria, la profesion de Don Jose,
conforman evidentemente un importante factor de influencia
en su vida y en su obra.
Picasso crece en una familia pequena burguesa malaguena en la que
a traves de la profesion de su padre y los amigos de su padre
entra en contacto directo
con la pintura, con el dibujo, con el color.
Aqui hace sus primeros dibujos, sus primeras tablitas de pintura.
La infancia de Pablo Picasso fue una infancia excitante,
porque estaba vinculado al arte, ya que su padre era maestro,
y por otro lado fue una infancia llena de estimulos visuales.
Malaga era una ciudad pequena. Vivia en una parte
en la cual habia mucha vida en la calle
y eso probablemente afecto
su manera de entender el mundo.
Malaga and the presence of his father
were the key points of his influences.
I would say that when his father was asking him
to draw a pigeon or to go to a corrida with him,
he was building his son with very strong Spanish roots.
We cannot neglect the fact
that Don Jose is very important for Pablo as an inspiration.
He realised that Pablo was more than talented,
and that this needed to be supported.
In 1891, a few days before his tenth birthday,
Pablo arrived in a very different part of Spain, La Coruna,
on the northern Atlantic coast.
Pablo's father, Jose, had secured a teaching role.
And it was here that he really taught his young son
how to paint with oils.
MAN: In La Coruna, my father did not go out
unless it was to go to the art school.
On his return, he painted. But nothing more.
The rest of the time, he looked out the window at the falling rain...
and then, in the end, he abandoned painting for good.
Instead, he gave me his colours and his brushes,
and he never painted again.
Picasso llega a La Coruna el 14 de octubre 1891 proveniente de Malaga
y erito toda la familia hicieron el viaje en barco.
Picasso, el primer ano,
se apunta en el instituto de estudios secundarios
y la escuela de bellas artes estaba en el mismo edificio
que el instituto de secundaria.
Y, a principios de 1895, se crea una nueva asignatura en la escuela
que es figura del natural
y es el propio padre el que paga a los modelos
para que posen para Picasso y sus otros condiscipulos.
Entonces, es aqui donde este salto de Picasso
va a ser mas considerable,
porque en dos o tres meses empieza a hacer muchos retratos.
Picasso va a conseguir unas criticas muy elogiosas
con que ya lo estan comparando con Giotto y con Rafael Sanzio.
Estas pinturas mas que ser consideradas unas obras de un genio,
hemos de pensar que son unas obras de un nino de 13 anos
que ya apunta maneras.
My grandfather realised that the artistic scene was in Barcelona.
Of course, he was very young, 13, 14 years old.
And there is a part of luck in his life,
because when his father was appointed in La Coruna,
was offered to make a switch with someone in Barcelona,
it was just luck,
because Pablo was going to be part of the artistic scene of Spain,
and from Barcelona, everything was possible.
Muy poco despues de llegar a Barcelona,
Picasso ya se matricula en la escuela de Llotja.
La formacion en esa epoca era realmente muy anticuada.
A los jovenes estudiantes, no les gustaba demasiado
porque la academia era basicamente repeticion, copia.
Picasso era muy reacio, digamos, a esa formacion, pero en cambio,
se da la gran paradoja que esa formacion que Picasso tuvo academica
en La Coruna, en Barcelona y, posteriormente, en Madrid,
fue decisiva para su formacion como artista.
Picasso, a pesar de que es un artista que durante toda su vida
querra romper las reglas y transgredir, digamos,
todos los sistemas de ensenanza que tuvo en su formacion,
a pesar de eso es un artista que tiene una base muy solida, muy dura,
una base que le permitio posteriormente desarrollarse de
una forma mas solida como artista.
El Picasso que esta en Barcelona es un artista todavia en formacion.
Muy eclectico, en el sentido
de que se nutre de diferentes influencias
que le llegan desde fuera,
pero todavia no ha definido un estilo propio...
pero mientras tanto las influencias
que recibira seran completamente multi-direccionales.
I think that Barcelona was important for two reasons.
The first, something more academic.
On the other side, you have the people of Barcelona
and those exotic subjects, like prostitutes or local people.
And I think that Pablo in Barcelona
discovered how wide was the scope to see through the people.
And of course, Barcelona was offering a lot of inspiration.
Quan Picasso es comenca a moure en el mon alternatiu,
en els bars i els cafes de Barcelona,
en un primer moment ell es relaciona amb una generacio d'artistes joves
que encara no han adquirit
un estatus important en el mon artistic.
Picasso es un jove artista
qui encara esta intentant navegar el mon artistic
pero a poc a poc s'anira relacionant
amb els grans representants de l'art catala,
que son artistes que en aquest primer moment
no tenen contacte amb Picasso.
He, as a teenager, gets very much involved with a group of artists
around the cafe of Els Quatre Gats, who were politically involved,
because they were sympathisers of anarchism and Catalan nationalism.
He must have been stricken
by this very lively community of young artists.
Cuando empieza a frecuentar Quatre Gats, Picasso va a conocer a Casas,
a Ramon Casas, y a Santiago Rusinol.
Estos no van a tener solamente influencia en su arte,
sino tambien en su forma de ver.
Que es un artista?
Casas y Rusinol se habian ido muy jovenes a Paris,
habian vivido la vida bohemia y tomaban morfina,
era una serie de personajes muy diferentes
a lo que era el padre que era muy convencional.
Entonces, en este momento, cuando Picasso empieza a abrirse
y es cuando empieza a pensar un poco en Paris.
Es en Barcelona, a traves de este contacto
con sus companeros un poco mayores que ellos, que le hablan de Paris,
de todas las maravillas que hay en Paris.
Tenemos este maravilloso retrato del ano 1900,
que es cuando Picasso esta ocupando
el estudio de Calle Riera de San Juan junto con su amigo Casagemas.
En esta obra vemos que Picasso ya ha cambiado plenamente de estilo
con lo que esta haciendo en el momento anterior.
La hermana, Lola, habia sido una de sus primeros modelos.
Esta obra es muy peculiar
porque vemos que aparece Lola sin rostro, pero es un efecto optico.
Si abrimos una ventana por el que entra el sol a raudales
y nosotros estamos en la penumbra, nuestros rasgos no se aprecian, no?
Como Picasso es un pintor fundamentalmente realista,
el esta tratando tal como ve a su hermana.
Lo mas importante de esta obra
es que es uno de los pocos cuadros de los talleres de Picasso.
Picasso tiene muchos talleres, tambien aqui en Barcelona,
cambia mucho de taller y vemos unas representaciones desde las ventanas
y desde las terrazas de estos talleres, los cerrados,
del exterior...
..de paisajes urbanos, de los techos de Barcelona,
estan hechos siempre desde las ventanas de estos talleres.
Pero es uno de los pocos
que representa el taller interior de Picasso.
Y vemos aqui, en el suelo una serie de tubos de pintura aplastados,
que es un poco la reivindicacion de que estamos en su taller de trabajo.
En 1900 cuando pinta este retrato tiene 18 anos,
entonces, es un chaval, un adolescente
que esta abriendose al mundo,
esta aprendiendo y esta cogiendolo todo.
Esta busqueda de color, esta busqueda de libertad,
esta busqueda de la explosion de la vida.
Picasso first went to Paris in the autumn of 1900
because one of his paintings had been accepted
at the Universal Exhibition of that year,
which was the largest ever organised.
It was, of course, a huge opportunity for him
to finally experience the big city everybody was talking about.
MAN: Pablo and I go to cafe-concerts or the theatre.
They think they're doing Spanish dances,
ole ole, caramba, caramba, which left us in doubt about our origins.
The Boulevard de Clichy is full of crazy places.
Everything is fanfare, tinsel, and papier-mache stuffed with sawdust.
Tell our friends to come to Paris,
because there's room for everybody and money for anyone who works.
Rob, kill, assassinate, do anything to come.
Carles Casagemas.
En 1900, il fait son premier voyage en France, a Paris.
Il va faire beaucoup d'allers-retours entre 1900 et 1904,
et il va choisir de s'installer definitivement a Paris en 1904.
Et Montmartre, en fait, est une colonie espagnole.
Il y a enormement d'artistes espagnols a Paris.
Et Picasso lui-meme s'est defini comme un exile espagnol a Paris.
Donc il y a cette double culture qui va toujours persister chez Picasso.
Il restera toujours espagnol, et en meme temps,
il va evidemment se nourrir, pas seulement de l'art parisien,
mais de toute la production d'avant-garde
qui va se derouler dans la capitale francaise.
Quand il arrive a Paris, il ne parle pas francais.
Donc il est toujours avec ses compatriotes espagnols,
et dans cette periode-la, il signe sur ses carnets,
"Yo, Picasso", "moi, Picasso".
C'est deja une declaration, en fait.
Et qui, du coup,
va faire aussi cette identite particuliere de Picasso,
qui se positionne d'emblee comme quelqu'un qui veut conquerir
la scene artistique parisienne.
MAN: We've already launched into work.
Tomorrow we'll light the heater, and we'll have to work furiously.
Whenever there is daylight, we are in the studio painting and drawing.
We all got together at Petit-Pousset and we all got drunk.
Utrillo wrote nursery rhymes, Peio sang bawdy songs in Latin,
Picasso made sketches of people, and I wrote verses.
Carles Casagemas.
Lo que pasa en Paris basicamente
es que se le multiplican los referentes.
Por ejemplo, la gran influencia que tuvo en 1900
es sobre todo Toulouse Lautrec,
pues el pudo ir a Moulin Rouge o a Moulin de la Galette,
son espacios que el conocia solo a traves de publicaciones
o a traves de la memoria oral de otros artistas.
Por tanto, ese Picasso que va a Paris
es un artista que cambia completamente.
MAN: If you were to see us, you wouldn't recognise us,
because we've finally become such hard workers.
All this about women must seem to take all our strength, but no!
Not only do we spend our lives "fondling",
but I've almost finished a painting,
and, to be frank, I think I've just about sold it.
Because of this, we are saying goodbye to the bachelor life...
As of today, we are going to bed at 10:00,
and we're not going out any more.
Pablo Picasso.
The nightlife was much more exciting than Barcelona.
Revues, music halls, cabarets, Pigalle, Moulin Rouge.
You can see it in the artworks.
Pablo moved from the individual human figures
of poor people, of prostitutes,
to a crowd of rich people enjoying themselves,
spending money, with beautiful women, beautiful dresses.
This is Paris in 1900.
I can understand that Pablo would have walked to Paris to see that.
And there were rumours that in Paris, in Montmartre,
the collectors and art dealers were attracted
by new artists and new forms of creation.
En el Museo Picasso de Barcelona tenemos mucha suerte,
porque podemos ver la evolucion de Picasso...
Y realmente podemos ver este salto
que va a hacer en Paris a partir de 1900.
Picasso realiza su primer viaje con su amigo Casagemas
y, luego, se le uniran Pallares y Casas,
en septiembre de 1900 y va a estar cuatro meses.
Picasso va a volver a Espana, va a estar unos meses en Espana...
para regresar en 1901 en el mes de mayo,
con motivo de su primera exposicion en la capital francesa.
Es una exposicion que lo organiza Pere Manach,
que era un joven marchante catalan que Picasso conocio en Paris en 1900
y le habia organizado esta exposicion en la Galeria Vollard,
la importante Galeria Vollard.
Esta es una obra muy importante,
porque vemos como Picasso ya ha absorbido
todos los estilos artisticos que se habian desarrollado
unos anos antes en Paris,
como, por ejemplo, vemos que coge la tematica de Toulouse Lautrec...
..coge la pincelada de Van Gogh,
esa pincelada gruesa y corta, que es de Van Gogh,
pero coge los colores de los otros impresionistas...
..vemos este conjunto de influencias
que Picasso absorbe para luego hacer su propio arte.
When they came to Paris,
there was a big excitement of visiting a new place
with new girls, with a world of entertainment, in fact.
But Casagemas had a natural problem of impotence...
..so his attraction to women was limited.
Of course, Pablo didn't have the same problem.
They meet this girl, Germaine.
And Casagemas is in love with her, and Pablo is getting her.
And of course, Casagemas was devastated.
When we think about the drama of the death of Casagemas,
you have to understand the circumstances.
It was in a cafe. Germaine was seated with friends
and suddenly, Casagemas came to her.
He had a revolver and told her, "This is for you,"
and he shot at her.
But he missed her.
He didn't realise, because she fainted and fell on the floor.
Then he said, "This is for me," and he killed himself.
When you imagine that Pablo wasn't there,
it's extremely painful to imagine,
but he had to face the death of his friend
and to think that he was maybe the reason of his death.
So the Blue Period was fuelled with this tragic moment.
I think that, for Pablo,
it was a struggle to try to survive the death of his friend.
The one he came to Paris with and the one who never came back.
MAN: It was while thinking
that Casagemas was dead that began me painting in blue.
I'm showing what I'm doing to the artists here,
but they think there's too much soul and no form.
It's very funny.
You know how to talk to people like that,
but they write very bad books and they paint idiotic pictures.
That's life.
Pablo Picasso.
La raison pour laquelle Picasso cree, a cette epoque,
la periode bleue, je pense qu'il se cherche.
Il se cherche une identite artistique.
Il cherche ce que lui a a dire en tant qu'artiste.
Et ce traitement tres monochrome de la periode bleue
est une des premieres manifestations
de cette identite artistique de Picasso.
Lo que se conoce como periodo azul canonicamente empieza en Paris
al finales de en 1901
pero basicamente se desarrolla en Barcelona
durante los anos siguientes.
Con escenarios del centro de Barcelona
donde aparecen muchas de las personas
que vemos en las pinturas de Picasso.
Se encuentra con una ciudad,
que crea como todas las grandes ciudades industriales,
grandes bolsas tambien de marginacion.
En cierta manera se forman
unos contrastes a nivel social extraordinarios.
Se contrasten le da a Picasso unos inputs extraordinarios
desde el punto de vista creativos.
Todo lo veremos en diferentes momentos de la creacion picassiana
pero muy especialmente en la epoca azul.
Hay los retratos que pertenecen a personalidades reales,
amigos del propio artista que son perfectamente identificable...
y hay otros basicamente personajes femeninos
de clase social baja, pobres,
que muchos de ellos en realidad pienso son mas bien sublimaciones,
recreaciones de posibles personajes reales.
No estamos hablando tanto de personas que existen
sino casi de conceptos.
A Picasso no le interesa tanto retratar a una mujer pobre
como retratar el concepto de pobreza.
Por tanto, digamos la epoca azul si es cierto que hay
una vinculacion, un sustrato real de los personajes,
pero tiene una gran carga simbolica.
Es una obra muy simbolista de Picasso.
Picasso is special, in that he reinterprets his sources
in a very personal way.
La Vie, of 1903, is the masterpiece of Picasso's Blue Period
that was painted in Barcelona, but very much thinking back
to the experience of Paris with his friend, Carlos Casagemas.
It's an allegory of both life and love,
and in many ways, of an artist,
like Picasso's, coming of age.
In 1904, Picasso moved into a ramshackle building that,
on multiple floors, housed numerous artists and writers.
This was known as the Bateau-Lavoir,
as it reminded some of the laundry boats
that were docked on the River Seine.
This was to be Picasso's home for five years,
and it was also where he would have his first significant relationship.
Picasso met Fernande Olivier, who was a married artist's model,
soon after he moved into the Bateau-Lavoir in the spring of 1904.
And she would be the muse of some key moments
in the young Picasso's artistic development.
Her real name was Amelie Lang.
And they entered into a kind of relationship
which was both artistic and personal.
I think that Fernande was a classical muse in a way,
but also, she was open to any kind of creativity.
And this was very important.
She said that he was very jealous,
locking her up and being after her in a very jealous way.
WOMAN: The Spanish painter is often in front of the door to the building
with his noisy gang of Spanish artists.
I couldn't resist his magnetism, and went with him to his studio.
It was full of large, unfinished canvases.
He must work so hard, but what a mess!
Dear God, his paintings are astonishing.
I find something morbid in them, which is quite disturbing,
but I also feel drawn to them.
Fernande Olivier.
Podia ser muy extrovertido, muy divertido, muy amable,
y en seguida cambiaba su caracter y se volvia mas cerrado,
mas introspectivo.
Pero al mismo tiempo tambien era muy profesional.
Picasso le gustaba trabajar por la tarde
y por la noche hasta muy tarde, dormir por la manana
y continuar toda la tarde trabajando
y toda la noche hasta las cuatro o cinco de la manana
en que tenia la tranquilidad necesaria
para crear sin que nadie le molestase.
Ese modus operandi lo mantendra durante toda su vida.
MAN: You already know how lonely I am,
always in the middle of a commotion
and in the midst of a crowd, which irritates me...
but I'm forced to deal with them because of interest and necessity.
One has to eat... but if it were only that!
When you have to arrange things with other people
and when you want to do something,
it's terrible to be obliged to waste so much time,
sometimes scrounging for the last peseta
to pay for the studio or restaurant,
and believe me, all those struggles and all this trouble isn't worth it,
it's wasted time.
Pablo Picasso.
On peut regarder, en effet, le Nu Assis de 1905,
qui est un portrait feminin, nu, d'une femme assise,
qui est vraiment a la jonction, justement,
entre cette periode bleue et cette periode rose,
et dans laquelle on voit tres bien la transition
et le processus creatif dans lequel Picasso est implique cette annee-la.
On est devant un portrait tres melancolique.
Dans l'elongation des membres et dans le cote monochrome du fond,
en tout cas la partie superieure,
on est dans la periode bleue completement.
Et dans le travail des ocres,
et puis dans cette reintroduction de la couleur,
on est deja vers la periode rose.
Quand on parle de la periode "rose" de maniere assez impropre,
puisqu'en effet, il y a tres peu de rose,
et surtout pour designer en realite un cycle
qui est beaucoup plus large, qui est le cycle des saltimbanques,
qui commence a la fin 1904 et qui deborde un petit peu sur 1906.
The key painting of the Pink Period
is Family of Saltimbanques of 1905,
that represents Picasso's love for the circus,
which he used to attend in Paris,
as well as his intimate life of that period,
by incorporating references to his lover, Fernande Olivier,
as well as to his great friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
And finally, Family of Saltimbanques is very important,
because we see Picasso portraying himself as Harlequin,
an apt alter-ego for Picasso,
because he's a figure of transformation,
and someone who, out of rags,
managed to create a beautiful costume for himself.
A l'ete 1906, Picasso part en Espagne voir sa famille,
et ensuite il poursuit son voyage avec Fernande Olivier,
sa compagne de l'epoque, a Gosol.
Gosol, c'est un tout petit village des Pyrenees catalanes,
qui est vraiment perdu au milieu de nulle part.
On est au milieu de la nature splendide,
mais en meme temps, tres isole.
Et c'est aussi un paysage
fait de couleurs tres ochres, tres seches, tres arides,
qui a ce cote un peu sauvage, en fait.
On est dans une dimension d'un retour aux sources,
qui va correspondre aussi a ce que cherche Picasso a ce moment-la.
Il a deja vu la retrospective Ingres du Salon d'automne de 1905.
Il retravaille sur ces themes de la coiffure, du harem, classiques.
Et on sent un Picasso en recherche de rencontres effectives,
de sujets et de lieux avec ce qu'il cherche dans son travail.
Et on va voir une vraie simplification de son travail,
une simplification des formes, une geometrisation des formes.
Et on va voir ses visages peu a peu se rigidifier
et se transformer en ovales, en ovales pleins,
on sent aussi cette influence de la sculpture,
qui vont, de fil en aiguille, revolutionner son langage plastique.
After ten weeks, he and Fernande headed back to Paris.
It's tempting to over-simplify the development of an artist's career,
but there's no doubt that those ten weeks spent in Gosol
had been transformative.
For Picasso now began preparations
for one of the most significant works of his youth,
indeed one of the most significant works of his life,
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
Pablo visited the Museum of Mankind at Trocadero in Paris.
He was a bit lost in this museum.
In the dusty rooms, where there were thousands of objects
from the colonies, especially from Africa.
It is how he discovered the masks.
MAN: A smell of mould and neglect caught me by the throat.
But I forced myself to stay, to examine these masks,
all these objects that people had created
with a sacred, magical purpose,
to serve as intermediaries between them and the unknown.
And then I understood what painting really meant.
It's not an aesthetic process, it's a form of magic
that interposes itself between us and the hostile universe,
a means of seizing power by imposing a form on our terrors
as well as on our desires.
The day I understood that, I had found my path.
He was impressed, because he was trying to understand
what the process was, because it was frightening.
At the same time, it was like a kind of protection.
And from that moment, he started to observe
what was the simplified representation of the humankind.
So it was a kind of exploration, in this period,
that we call Primitivism.
Primitivism is very much to do with
the encounter with non-Western art.
It includes pre-Classical sculpture, as well as so-called "tribal" arts.
And all of these examples provided artists
And all of these examples
with a different approach to representation
from the one they had learned through academic training.
At this moment in Picasso's career, he is really out to do nothing less
than reinvent the history of western painting
in his own aggressively confrontational,
stylistically disjunctive, provocative terms.
We know he put a lot of time into planning this work.
We can just see from the size of it that it is of tremendous ambition,
and I think he was intent on making people stand back and say:
"I've never seen a painting like this before."
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
started as a narrative scene set in a brothel, of two men,
a sailor and a medical student, surrounded by five prostitutes.
And in time it became a very iconic image
of five female nudes.
This is a picture with a particular erotic charge
that certainly has to do with the putative brothel scenario.
One of the things I always notice when I look at this work
is the way that each one of those figures locks eyes with us.
The title of this painting is extremely confusing,
because first, we speak about demoiselles,
when they are prostitutes,
and we say Avignon, which is a little town in the south of France.
But you have to refer to the Carrer d'Avinyo in Barcelona,
which was the street of the brothels and bars.
En el origen mismo del titulo de la obra
y de cierta iconografia de la obra,
esta en las visitas que Picasso hizo a burdeles de Barcelona.
En cierta manera es toda una iconografia realizada en Francia
pero que toma de referencia momentos de su juventud
relacionados con el momento iniciatico de la entrada de un joven
como Picasso en los burdeles.
Ce que Picasso va reussir a faire entre, on va dire,
ces 14 ans et 1907,
c'est en effet une revolution,
un changement de point de vue sur la representation.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon sont a l'origine
de ce qui va devenir le cubisme, cette maniere de representer
le monde de plusieurs points de vue, un seul plan.
Du cubisme puisqu'il est amene a recomposer intellectuellement
la complexite d'un objet dont on sait bien qu'il ne peut pas,
en tant que structure tridimensionnelle,
se retrouver de maniere exacte sur une surface plane.
Et ca, c'est une vraie revolution.
It's very interesting that in the space of ten years,
attitudes to the whole issue of Primitivism in art,
and also to Les Demoiselles, changed quite radically.
When Picasso first showed Les Demoiselles to his friends,
they reacted very strongly and very negatively,
considering it a complete failure.
Andre Derain even said
that one day they will find Picasso hanging behind the painting.
The legend is that everybody was shocked and appalled,
but I think when you really begin to look at
the literature and the commentary, that the responses were more mixed.
I think what is, it seems to me, very true,
is that this was a picture that surprised, and shocked, and upset.
But that isn't necessarily a pejorative thing,
that's a great thing.
It's a cause for argument, and debate, and dissent.
Then, in the '30s, it comes to New York,
and it is acquired by the Museum of Modern Art,
and it's included in the first big exhibition
MoMA did in 1939 of Picasso's work.
And I imagine it's been on our walls ever since.
Picasso es un artista de referencia,
aun hoy despues de tantos anos de su muerte, sigue siendo una referencia,
no solo para los estudiosos sino tambien para los propios artistas.
El gran artista famoso en su vida
que es capaz de jugar con los medios de comunicacion a su alcance...
que es capaz de durante todo su recorrido vital y artistico
de estar siempre en un nivel altisimo y de referencia.
Desde luego hay una cosa que es muy importante
y es que Picasso no se canso nunca de experimentar.
Que era un hombre que estaba, yo diria,
un poco a disgusto con su obra,
y que siempre intentaba continuamente avanzar o especular
sobre otros temas.
Creo que vive de frustracion que es lo que hacia Picasso,
no estar nunca de acuerdo consigo mismo.
Por eso tenemos esa cantidad tan grande,
tan ingente de ceramicas, de grabados, de dibujos, de oleos.
Yo personalmente calculo unos 50,000.
Todo un mundo y todo un universo,
que nos ha llegado para comprender el siglo viente,
que el siglo viente,
al fin y al cabo, Picasso es el resumen de todo ese siglo pasado.
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