It’s not always easy to like Picasso the man. He treated others, especially women, as provisional muses who could be disregarded once the flame died out, or another crossed his path who made it bigger and brighter. (Or yet a common third scenario: the artist would juggle multiple women and take advantage of them simultaneously.) Too often he viewed human beings as objects, not as persons to be genuinely respected. And he callously played out this cycle again and again and again.
Picasso the artist is easier to admire — though as someone whose life and work was so intimately tied together, we can never really examine one part without considering the other. But regardless of his moral failings, Picasso has had an unequaled influence on 20th century art. His restless imagination, stimulated by robust sexual drives and ceaseless creativity, produced art that can’t be ignored, even if you find much of it grotesque.
Behind The Artist, a series presented by Let’s Pix, gives viewers an abbreviated biography of the Spanish-born artist in the episode When Pablo Became Picasso. Rather than try and show the whole of his life — an impossible task in this amount of time — it focuses on roughly the first third of his life and career. From a young artist developing his talents under the guise of his father, to a rebellious, groundbreaking, non-stop experimenter who became “an icon of the 20th century,” the episode offers an excellent foray into Picasso.
The relationship between father and son is emphasized. Jose Ruiz, an artist and art teacher, helped bring his son into the world of art. The young boy not only observed his father at work, but was given encouragement, lessons, and an overall conducive environment in which to pursue his precocious gifts.
As time went on and as the family moved around Spain (mainly because of financial necessities), Pablo developed to such an extent that his father essentially gave up practicing his own art. A clear example, as Jose was abundantly aware, of son surpassing father — and at an incredibly early age.
A whole episode could be devoted to exploring Picasso’s relationship with, and reaction to, his father. The boy witnessed the “psychological collapse of his role model” after the family had moved to the north of Spain and Jose suffered intense melancholy. He recovered and seems to have returned to his regular personality, but already by this point one gets the sense that the young Picasso had started to think of himself as an independent artist, not one beholden to his father.
At whatever rate this independence was developing, it was clear by 1900 — with Picasso living in Paris — that the young artist had unsquashable intentions to become something original, bold, and the center of attention in the art world. (It was also around this time that he started to sign his work “Picasso,” and in doing so distanced himself — subtly yet signficantly — from his father yet again.)
We know, of course, how this all turned out. But the documentary shows a number of the struggles before some of his biggest breakthroughs.
Among those struggles were financial desolation, the confusions of young adulthood, and the suicide of his close friend. But they were also starting points. Despite having to temporarily retreat back home due to penury, he worked through what came to be called his Blue Period: a time intensely focused on making sense of the death of Carles Casagemas, the friend who had taken his life (and to whom Picasso had, perhaps, not been the most thoughtful friend).
But after producing the deeply reflective La Vie (1903) and working through “the darkest chapter of his life,” he met one of a long string of lovers, Fernande Olivier.
It was the pinnacle of the next couple of years, a time which also saw the beginning of friendships with the poet Apollinaire and soon-to-be patron, Gertrude Stein. The great story of Stein and Picasso is that, in the process of trying to paint her portrait, he was forced into an intense period of having to rethink his approach to art. He couldn’t quite capture her, couldn’t quite make sense of what to do.
But in Gosol, Spain, during a trip he took with Fernande, he soaked up new influences and sights, among them a 12th-century statue of Virgin and Child. What had been a time of stifled creativity — in which he was unsure of what direction to move — now became a period of absolute ferment. It enabled him to resolve the hindrances in fashioning Stein, and indeed so much more.
The documentary closes with the year 1907, when Picasso — determined to out brilliance Matisse in the most profound, most ingenious way he could — came up with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Few paintings can stand next to it in its influence on 20th century art. If Picasso isn’t easy to admire as a person, his lightning rod of a painting which transformed the trajectory of art — and created when he was just 26 years old — is something to admire (however nuanced you need that admiration to be).
Spectatio 