Exploring Women's Bodies: misogynist

This may not get me many fans, but I'm going to tell you how I really feel about Picasso.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts here in Richmond currently (through May 22) has the only East Coast showing of an exhibit of Picasso's work from the Musee de Picasso in Paris which is being renovated right now. There are approximately 175 works by this man most people call the world's most important artist. Don't get me wrong - it is an impressive show. It is beautifully displayed. The museum has done a fantastic job with the works, and Richmond is very fortunate to have them here.

That said, the exhibit has re-affirmed for me that I do not like Picasso's work.

When I was 21 and living in Freiburg, Germany, I learned there was an exhibit of his paintings of women in Basel, Switzerland, so I took the train an hour or so to go see it. It felt like the opportunity of a life time, and I didn't want to miss it. I wasn't an artist at the time, but, still, it called to me strongly. When I got to the museum, I got out my journal, as was my wont, and began to look at the paintings. I liked to write about art as I was looking at it so I could build up my opinions about it or sketch something I saw which I particularly liked. After I'd looked at about 20 pictures, I noticed I was feeling pissed off. It had occurred to me that Picasso hated women. I didn't have any biographical data to back up that hunch, but it felt clear as day to me. Occasionally he painted women realistically, but generally he fragmented them. I didn't have a problem with cubism, per se, rather, it was the consistency with which he did it to women as well as the expressions he would put on their faces.

In the intervening years, I have read more about Picasso, and none of it has helped me revise my opinion more positively. I have learned that he was almost never without a woman and, though he aged, the ages of the women didn't increase. He had two wives, four children by three women, and several of his women died by their own hand. In almost every case, he left the woman he was with for another woman. The guy was a jerk.

What I've noticed is that the first paintings he would do of his woman would be realistic and relatively beautiful, then, the longer he was with them, the more fragmented the pieces would become. (The pictures on this page are all of the same woman, Dora Maar and are in chronological order.) One speaker I listened to said that he didn't care what he painted - subject matter was irrelevant - he would just use it as an opportunity for him to get out his feelings. I understand that well, but it seems to me like he was incredibly insensitive and boorish towards these women in the ways he painted them.

When I saw this current exhibit, I noticed that it is difficult to get a sense of the women's personalities from the paintings. They have vacant stares (if they aren't horrifyingly grotesque). Yet when I look at the men he painted, I have a sense of who they might have been. I can make up a story about their personalities. It is usually positive.

I don't like feeling this way about Picasso because I want to admire him and think he's fantastic, but I just don't. Looking at his art still leaves me feeling like I've watched films of women being abused and disrespected and disregarded - very skillfully.

(Below is a link to a very interesting website which outlines the many relationships Picasso had and which children he had with whom. It'll give you more information about what a cad he was.)

http://www.sapergalleries.com/PicassoWomen.html

And here's an article about the then-17-year-old young woman he had a 2 year affair with after Francoise had the sense to dump him. Yikes!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/8259674/ns/today-entertainment/

And a review of a book by Arianne Huffington about Picasso and his loves. I'm definitely not the first person to see him as a misogynist!

http://www.epinions.com/review/Picasso_by_Arianna_Stassinopoulos_Huffington_and_narrated_by_Natascha_McElhone/content_42773220996