(Paris) The #metoo movement has made violence against women a social issue that even Pablo Picasso, who died almost 50 years ago, cannot seem to escape, a subject that museums and his grandson, Olivier , wish to approach, but with “accuracy”.
Posted at 11:18 a.m.
Since the 1980s, several controversial books have painted negative portraits of the idol of modern art, whose work has been nourished by his relationships with the women in his life.
Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, Jacqueline Roque… so many “muses” whose names have been mentioned many times in the history of art, who speak of “very different identities, personalities “And” relationships on which my grandfather never spoke publicly, “said Olivier Widmaier-Picasso to AFP.
The latter devoted two books to the painter, born in 1881 in Malaga and died in 1973 in France, in Mougins, “by questioning his still living entourage and the family archives” to “set the record straight”.
“Missing” work
“There were ups and downs, violent works, others very tender, very gentle, we realize each time that after having exhausted his inspiration, he moves on to something else”, adds the son of Maya Widmaier-Picasso, born of the union of the Spanish artist with Marie-Thérèse Walter, a “privileged confidant of her father until the 1950s”, according to him. “Without his women, the work would be missing. »
“#metoo damaged the artist”, recognizes Cécile Debray, director of the Picasso museum in Paris, interviewed by AFP on a feminist podcast created by Julie Beauzac, including an episode devoted to Pablo Picasso (Separating the man from the artist) was followed by 250,000 people.
However, there is no question of tackling the subject “in a frontal and unambiguous way”, continues the director of the museum.
This podcast gives the floor to Sophie Chauveau, journalist and author of Picasso, the Minotaur which describes, she told AFP, “the irresistible and devastating hold of the genius on those who loved him”. Mme Chauveau claims to have investigated “for years” without however having access to the family archives.
She evokes a “brilliant” painter as much as a “violent”, “jealous”, “perverse” and “destructive” man, “great seducer” who does not hesitate to conquer and abuse very young women.
“Assertions without reference to historical, approximate and anachronistic sources”, deplores Mme Debray.
“Idol to tear down”
“The attack is all the more violent because Picasso is the most famous and popular figure in modern art. An idol that must be destroyed,” adds Mme Debray.
Picasso’s descendants never attacked the book, preferring “not to shed any additional light on it”, according to Olivier Widmaier-Picasso.
“How do you resist such a personality? he wonders. “There are those who made it and some who struggled. I don’t think it was voluntary and conscious, I think he had such a creative force that he devoted himself to his art from an early age and finally, at the end of his life, he was faced the canvas all by himself and didn’t need anyone,” he adds.
However, it is impossible to avoid a debate, he concedes, like the two representatives of the museums in Paris and Barcelona.
But “you have to show the work in a didactic, rich and varied way, in its formal radicalness, through a broad presentation of the collection and inviting contemporary looks”, explains Ms.me Debray.
Among these looks: the French artist Orlan and his series Crying women are angrywhich offers a reinterpretation of Picasso’s work “to put the woman-subject back at the center”, the Belgian visual artist Farah Atassi, who re-examines the question of the painter and her model, or the French visual artist Sophie Calle, programmed in Paris.
“This reflection on Picasso and the feminist or feminine gaze on his work is an eminently current debate, which must not be diverted or caricatured”, adds Mr. Guigon.
In Barcelona, the Picasso Museum has launched a series of workshops and symposiums inviting specialists, art historians and sociologists to offer a multiplicity of points of view on the work, which are also illuminated by exhibitions devoted to Picasso’s sister. , Lola Ruiz-Picasso, or Brigitte Baer, an art historian specializing in Picasso’s engravings.