Name: Life with Picasso
ISBN: 9781853812330

Carlton Lake

Françoise Gilot

Francoise Gilot was a young painter in Pasis when she first met Picasso - he was sixty-two and she was twenty-one. During the following ten years they were lovers, worked closely together and she became mother to two of his children, Claude and Paloma. Life with Picasso, her account of those extraordinary years, is filled with intimate and astonishing revelations about the man, his work, his thoughts and his friends - Matisse, Braque, Gertrude Stein and Giacometti among others. Francois Gilot paints a compelling portrait of her turbulent life with the temperamental genius that was Picasso. She is a superb witness to Picasso as an artist and to his views on art.

Life with Picasso

Sarah Christine Gill

She had a long, narrow, somewhat decadent-looking face framed by an ornate coiffure that reminded me of Rigaud's portrait of Louis XIV in the Louvre. 

Before my first afternoon visit to the Rue des Grands-Augustins, I telephoned Picasso in the morning to make an appointment. I arrived on time, wearing a black velvet dress with a high white lace collar, my dark-red hair done up in a coiffure I had taken from a painting of the Infanta by Velázquez. Picasso let me in. His mouth open. ‘Is that the kind of costume you put on to learn dropped engraving?' he finally asked. 

Certainly not, I told him. But since I was sure he hadn't the slightest intention of teaching me engraving, I had put on the costume that seemed most appropriate to the real circumstances. In other words, I was simply trying to look beautiful, I said. 

He threw up his hands. 'Good God! What nerve! You do everything you can to make things difficult for me. Couldn't you at least pretend to be taken in, the way women generally do? If you don't fall in with my subterfuges, how are we ever going to get together?' He stopped. He seemed to be reconsidering his criticism. Then he said, more slowly, You're right, really. It's better that way, with the eyes open. But you realize, don't you, that if you don't want anything but the truth-no subterfuges you're asking to be spared nothing. Broad daylight is pretty harsh. He paused, as though he felt unsure. Well,' he said, ´we've got plenty of time. We’ll see.

DURING THAT WINTER and spring of 1944 I worked harder than ever at my painting. Sometimes whenI went to the Rue des Grands- AugustinsI would take a drawing or a painting to show Pablo. He never gave me any direct criticism. His instruction was always in the form of general principles: for example, You know, we need one tool to do one thing, and we should limit ourselves to that one tool. In that way the hand trains itself. It becomes supple and skilful, and that single tool brings with it a sense of measure thatis reflected harmoniously in everything we do. The Chinese taught that for a water-colour or a wash drawing you use a single brush. In that way "erything you do takes on the same proportion. Harmony is created in the work as a result of that proportion, and in a much more obvious too, fashion than if you had used brushes of different sizes. Then, too, forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates invention. It obliges you to make a kind of progress that you can't even imagine in advance.' 

Ri Liu

A very relevant book for the current time on an iconic art monster. Such a shame that historically, we deemed it appropriate to coddle these men, allowing them to carry on like children just because of their talents in a specific field.

Life with Picasso

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