February 7, 2015

"People say I should appreciate my inheritance, and I do, but it is an inheritance without love," says the granddaughter of Pablo Picasso, Marina.

She has 10,000 works of Picasso art, and she's about to sell them off, one by one, to turn them into money "to redistribute to humanitarian causes." The first work she will sell is "a 1935 work called La Famille which depicts a family in an arid landscape."
“It’s symbolic because I was born in a great family, but it was a family that was not a family,” she said.

That is possibly an understatement of her true feelings. In her 2001 memoir, Picasso: My Grandfather, she describes a man who was “incapable of love”. How her father died two years after the artist under the “yoke of his tyranny … betrayed, disappointed, demeaned. Destroyed.” And the tragedy of her brother, Pablito, “the plaything of Picasso’s sadism and indifference”, who later killed himself. She also wrote disparagingly of the people who granted him power and “raised him to the level of God: the experts, art historians, curators, critics, not to mention courtiers, parasites, bootlickers."
The author of the books "Art as an Investment," Melanie Gerlis, commented on the effect Marina's sales might have on the market: "I don’t think auctions and dealers are going to say this is a disaster, it won’t take a ton of business away from them, they may see it as just a shame."

There are different kinds of shame.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm likely in the minority, but I'm actively glad we live in a world of easily accessed media in which less recognized family members (or employees)that had to perhaps suffer under a dominant personality that society worshiped at least get their postmortem say.

YoungHegelian said...

Commie putz (personally, not artistically) loves mankind, treats friends & kin like shit. That's a dog bites man story.

But with a collection like that, I wouldn't be surprised that offers are made to take the whole collection for a museum & provide her & her charity with a sizable annuity for X number of years.

traditionalguy said...

The world gets to see the new art that Picasso entranced us with. Wow! Picasso gets an A++.

But on the issue of any man's first job which is being a strong loving father, Picasso made a ZERO.

Birches said...

Great commentary.

I have nothing to add to your six words.

m stone said...

As SOJO points out, we get the "postmortem say." And it is that some families are literally cursed. Here's a case of at least three generations caught in a very dark world, one that may have preceded the artist.

Perhaps the worst kind of shame. From without.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Good for her. Sell it all. Move on. Lift the curse.

Michael K said...

Picasso was a significant figure in the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy two of the major figures of the 1920s Paris era.

He was besotted with Sara, who rejected his advances. He then painted himself and her out of a painting of her after this but she was a major figure in many of his works.

'The Pipes of Pan: Picasso's Aborted Love Song to Sara Murphy,' an article to be published in the May issue of the magazine Art News.

Moreover, he says the monumental painting 'The Pipes of Pan,' in the Musee Picasso in Paris, a work that depicts two young males, began as a four-figure composition that included Sara in the role of Venus and the artist himself in the role of Mars, but that her rejection of him caused Picasso to eliminate Sara from it. New infrared photographs of the painting, he writes, support his conclusion that the composition began with a figure of Venus and changed radically. Secret Side to a Public Life

He painted a nude of her based on this photo and it is doubtful that he saw her nude as she never was known to cheat on Gerald. I can't find a photo of the painting bright now. It has the long string of pearls that she was famous for wearing to the beach.

Michael K said...

" man's first job which is being a strong loving father, Picasso made a ZERO."

He was a minus as a husband as he kept trying to seduce the wives of his friends.

jr565 said...

Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. Except, he was.

mccullough said...

If he were my grandfather, I'd burn those paintings.

Paul said...

God bless her for using the money she makes from the paintings to help other people.

What he did with no love she shall do WITH love.

Billy Oblivion said...

So I guess someone did call Pablo Picasso an Asshole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGcffXXZYEg

dreams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.