Picasso was a fucking nonce

AS chat-up lines go, it certainly takes some beating.
'I am Picasso,' the artist told the 17-year-old beauty. 'You and I are going to do beautiful things together.'
More than eight decades later, the story of Marie-Thérèse Walter and her affair with the stranger who took her by the arm that day outside a Paris Metro station is set to become one of the art world's most lucrative encounters.
His landmark painting of the teenager who became his lover is to go on sale next week with an estimate of up to £18million. It is one of a series of works that Picasso's intoxication with Marie-Thérèse inspired. The last one - Nude, Green Leaves and Bust - sold at auction for £70million.
This is the first time La Lecture, which depicts his mistress asleep in an armchair, has been unveiled in London. It was the painting that teasingly introduced his young Parisian muse as part of Picasso's life and work - he was 45 and married when they met in 1927, and kept their relationship secret for years.


Can you imagine what would happen now if a 45 year old married man sidled up to a 17 year old girl outside an underground station, took her by the arm and told her what he was going to do to her?

He was like that until he died at 91, though, Tony. He was the same with Dora Maar (although she was a lot older than 17, so was he than 45), Francoise (21 and 61 and mother to two of his kids) and Jacqueline Roque (mid-twenties when he met her, early thirties when she married him, he was 80) and it's as if the 30s on in Paris had its own set of rules as well - Dalí, Hemingway, Sartre and De Beauvoir, even the squinty fucker Camus just to name a few.

Genius got to play about in Paris at the time. Some of them were literally a law unto themselves.

People with money and or influence have always gotten away with stuff like that.

Picasso wasn't really in that loop though, MG. The Picasso museums in Paris and Nice pretty much only exist to offset his death duties - I don't think money was an issue. The Blue period is hugely celebrated for example but a main factor in the Blue Period was that he got blue paint cheap. Very driven man, seemingly all about the art and the real world very much second. Exiled to a certain degree because of the Spanish Cvil War.

That's the thing about Marie Therese - I doubt if it registered with him that she was 17 and his being 45 was potentially scandalous because he was going to paint her and do so an awful lot. He liked the company of beautiful women but I always get the feeling that was more to do with the art than the actual company.

Very strange bloke in that respect but he is exceptional (in the terms that he is an exception) in that he was so prolific. I doubt there are many artists of any stripe in history whose career spanned seven or eight decades and they never stopped working.

A comment from under the article:

He fooled the Art World....That took about 2 hours to paint, tops, plus years of practice!! LOL THINKS>>>>>What shall I churn out today LOL Picasso said, I am a mountebank, the less people understand my art the more they paid. There is so much money snobbery about famous abstract painters, it seems to be like the emperors clothes. Yes I'm a professional painter.
- Ann, Canada, 31/1/2011 18:37

Nobby Cheese wrote:A comment from under the article:

He fooled the Art World....That took about 2 hours to paint, tops, plus years of practice!! LOL THINKS>>>>>What shall I churn out today LOL Picasso said, I am a mountebank, the less people understand my art the more they paid. There is so much money snobbery about famous abstract painters, it seems to be like the emperors clothes. Yes I'm a professional painter.
- Ann, Canada, 31/1/2011 18:37

You don't pay for the two hours, you pay for the years as you well know, Tone.

His works are probably worth two Andy Carrolls but that's the idiocy in the markets for Andy Carrolls. I've stood in the Hotel Salé in Paris and looked at his collection. It's a different prospect up close than on paper or screen, say, and inside his thought processes are some incredibly simple things (as an example, he takes an old bike saddle and handlebars and fashions them into a bull. Two minutes work and it's mother Spain) that anyone could have thought of but anyone didn't.

He painted for 80 years. Ann will be painting the fucking porch

my niece paints better than that spic spac

wanker

over-rated