on meeting picasso for the first time who could’ve predicted in 1910 that pablo picasso would one day be known worldwide as the inspiration for the name of google’s software application which organises digital photos? given time, gelett burgess might’ve figured it all out. here is his introduction of picasso to the world: It is the most picturesque spot in Paris, where the wide Rue de Ravignan drops down the hill of Montmartre, breaks into a cascade of stairs and spreads out into a small open space with trees. Picasso comes rolling out of the café, wiping his mouth, clad in a blue American sweater, a cap on his head, a smile on his face.Picasso is a devil. I use the term in the most complimentary sense, for he’s young, fresh, olive-skinned, black eyes and black hair, a Spanish type, with an exuberant, superfluous ounce of blood in him… Picasso is colossal in his audacity. Picasso is the doubly distilled ultimate. His canvases fairly reek with the insolence of youth; they outrage nature, tradition, decency. They are abominable. You ask him if he uses models, and he turns to you a dancing eye. “Where would I get them?” grins Picasso, as he winks at his ultramarine ogresses.The terrible pictures loom through the chaos. Monstrous, monolithic women, creatures like Alaskan totem poles, hacked out of solid, brutal colors, frightful, appalling! How little Picasso, with his sense of humor, with his youth and deviltry, seems to glory in his crimes! How he lights up like a torch when he speaks of his work!I doubt if Picasso ever finishes his paintings. The nightmares are too barbarous to last; to carry out such profanities would be impossible. So we gaze at his pyramidal women, his sub-African caricatures, figures with eyes askew, with contorted legs, and—things unmentionably worse, and patch together whatever idea we may have…He’s too fascinating as a man to make one want to take him only as an artist. Is he mad, or the rarest of blaguers? Let others consider his murderous canvases in earnest—I want only to see Picasso grin! …Picasso gets drunk on vermillion and cadmium. Absinthe can’t tear hard enough to rouse such phantasmagoria! Only the very joy of life could revel in such brutalities. excerpted from: “the wild men of paris” by gelett burges in the architectural record (1910).

on meeting picasso for the first time

who could’ve predicted in 1910 that pablo picasso would one day be known worldwide as the inspiration for the name of google’s software application which organises digital photos? given time, gelett burgess might’ve figured it all out. here is his introduction of picasso to the world:

It is the most picturesque spot in Paris, where the wide Rue de Ravignan drops down the hill of Montmartre, breaks into a cascade of stairs and spreads out into a small open space with trees. Picasso comes rolling out of the café, wiping his mouth, clad in a blue American sweater, a cap on his head, a smile on his face.

Picasso is a devil. I use the term in the most complimentary sense, for he’s young, fresh, olive-skinned, black eyes and black hair, a Spanish type, with an exuberant, superfluous ounce of blood in him…

Picasso is colossal in his audacity. Picasso is the doubly distilled ultimate. His canvases fairly reek with the insolence of youth; they outrage nature, tradition, decency. They are abominable. You ask him if he uses models, and he turns to you a dancing eye. “Where would I get them?” grins Picasso, as he winks at his ultramarine ogresses.

The terrible pictures loom through the chaos. Monstrous, monolithic women, creatures like Alaskan totem poles, hacked out of solid, brutal colors, frightful, appalling! How little Picasso, with his sense of humor, with his youth and deviltry, seems to glory in his crimes! How he lights up like a torch when he speaks of his work!

I doubt if Picasso ever finishes his paintings. The nightmares are too barbarous to last; to carry out such profanities would be impossible. So we gaze at his pyramidal women, his sub-African caricatures, figures with eyes askew, with contorted legs, and—things unmentionably worse, and patch together whatever idea we may have…

He’s too fascinating as a man to make one want to take him only as an artist. Is he mad, or the rarest of blaguers? Let others consider his murderous canvases in earnest—I want only to see Picasso grin! …Picasso gets drunk on vermillion and cadmium. Absinthe can’t tear hard enough to rouse such phantasmagoria! Only the very joy of life could revel in such brutalities.

excerpted from: “the wild men of paris” by gelett burges in the architectural record (1910).

April 2, 2010
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