He was the 20th century’s most influential artist – but he was also a monstrous misogynist. On the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, we ask: is it time to mothball the master?
feel like Pablo when I’m workin’ on my shoes,” declared Kanye West in a line – from his 2015 tune No More Parties in LA – that became a slogan. “I feel like Pablo when I see me on the news / I feel like Pablo when I’m workin’ on my house / Tell ’em party’s in here, we don’t need to go out.”
His appeal is as a picaresque who left a trail of abandonments, betrayals and suicides. He is vampire, manipulator, sociopath and narcissist Everything bad you hear about Picasso may be true. But what of the constant innovation, formal and stylistic? The jaw-dropping complexity of his work? Difficulty, as well as pleasure, is embedded in his art. For some, this can never be enough. He paid witness to the tumult of the 20century. Picasso was a sentimental communist, both modern and superstitious. Born in Málaga in 1881, he was a child of 19century provincial Spain, and he brought the upbringing with him.
Even as other “great artists” are beginning to be held to account, Picasso has clung on to his status as the most important, and most famous, artist of the 20th century. Genius transcends misogyny, apparently. It is impossible to separate Picasso’s work from his life, and equally impossible to escape the legacy of his enormous oeuvre. But we can escape the narrow definition of “great” that limits the history of art to men like Picasso.
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