Was picasso gay

Others — too many to list — will tame him by matching his works with those of other artists (El Greco, Max Beckmann, Nicolas Poussin, Joan Miró), with writers (Gertrude Stein) or with lovers (Fernande Olivier, Françoise Gilot). In June, the Brooklyn Museum will mount a show, co-curated by the comedian Hannah Gadsby, looking at Picasso through a feminist lens, placing him beside such artists as Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta and Kiki Smith.”

Picasso lived to a ripe age and was creative till the end.

The point being a disconnection between great art created by deeply flawed individuals.

During his lifetime, at the height of fame and fortune, he basked in adoring critical and media attention as a stumpy, stocky bull of a man. That doesn’t include the forgeries.

While the general public may embrace, enjoy and comprehend Picasso’s early Blue and Rose periods they are flummoxed by cubism which, in collaboration with Georges Braque, came hard on the heels of the gut wrenching and violent breakthrough “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” of 1907.

The less they know about art the more reliant the public is on biography.

Picasso in his underwear, Picasso in a bow tie.

By 1912 Picasso had invented collage by attaching oilcloth, newspaper clippings and other materials to the surface of his paintings. Best to dial back on the hyperbole and let the facts tell the story. As a macho ersatz matador he waved a red cape at women in erotic rituals of blood and sand. Her bedroom revelations were an opening salvo of ever more virulent character assassinations; arguably, deservedly so.

Picasso had a lifelong inability to provide support and empathy to friends, lovers and family.

Executed with with great fluency and confidence. That approach proves to be relatively accessible compared to the deconstructionists, ersatz philosophers, and social justice harridans.

Compared to which it was delightful recently to read Sue Roe’s evocative “In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art” (Penguin Books, New York, 2014).

The accessible and witty book conflates biography, anecdotes, and sharp critical analysis.

His biographies did much to promote the work of Vincent van Gogh and make Michelangelo more accessible. Oh really Sebastian. Anti-fascist Picasso, communist Picasso, peace dove Picasso. As an expatriate Spaniard in Paris he embraced the Minotaur as signifier of his creative persona.

It’s now been fifty years since his death (8 April, 1973).

It’s a maudlin tale of the pampered artist, isolated by gatekeepers, feeding on himself, and out of touch with other artists. But a “mess” come now. Problematic? Now that Picasso had become interested in Polynesian sculpture himself, now that he owned a Marquesan tiki which Gauguin himself would certainly have appreciated, he may have felt a return of those feelings of identification with his former favorite.

Prostitutes were a consistent subject in his work. For Picasso this was a surprise.