Picasso’s Pain on Being an Artist
If Picasso saw an attractive subject, like a girl lying on a beach, he would cryptically say :
“What a pity one isn’t a painter! If one was a painter one could do her portrait!”
What did he mean? Picasso’s friends used to cite his remarks on art as though they were a form of popular philosophy, in some way veiled and profound. They couldn’t say Picasso spoke nonsense – he was, of course, highly intelligent – but then, on the other hand, what was he talking about?
He once said to a minor painter:
“You who are a painter, what is stopping you from painting her portrait? You’re so lucky.”1
There’s the rub. Most of Picasso’s remarks about art only make sense when you know the true difference between an artist and a mere painter. Artists always paint their own minds even in "portraits"; a mere painter, in contrast, copies exterior reality as, for instance, making a likeness in a portrait. The latter for a trained craftsman is a piece of cake. It was a difference that Picasso's literary friends, however eminent they were, never understood. Oh how Picasso sometimes wished he was a mere painter; then he could have done a likeness without all the angst of creating visual poetry. It is so much easier.
1. Hélène Parmelin, Picasso Says..... (New York: A.S.Barnes & Co.) 1966, p.42
Posted 01 May 2011: PicassoPortraitureVisual Perception
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