Picasso [Documentary]

a wa wait wa the minor half man and half bull Victor and victim Pablo Picasso's favorite symbol for himself a creature of the light and a creature of the Shadows its home is the Labyrinth and its fate is [Applause] death every actor creation said Picasso is first of all an act of Destruction the hand of the artist is the hand of the [Applause] Matador [Applause] [Music] Picasso said his first love fond Olivier had a nature that sought its own torment Barcelona and a literary Cafe called the four cats already in 1900 it was inhabited by writers and Poets musicians and Painters among them the young Pablo Picasso Picasso impressed his friends by sketching them in the fashionable Cafe style of tulus lre we spoke of him one of his sitters later remembered as a legendary hero and that was how Picasso Drew himself only 19 yet already his eyes seem to have stared into the darkness of the [Music] world science and charity which won the gold medal at the malagar Fine Arts exhibition of 1897 Pico was 16 when he painted it his father posed as the doctor this was to be the first of the many Death Beds by which the young Picasso [Music] stood coruna cold and wet a town Picasso detested his sister Maya de concepion died here of dpia at the age of eight his family came here when Picasso was 10 his father was professor of art at the local [Music] Academy The Academy of Fine Arts where Picasso was enrolled as a student in 1892 so quickly did he learned that at the age of 14 his father bequeathed to him his pallet and brush and according to Legend swore never to paint again at the age of 14 said Picasso I drew like Raphael I never drew like a child Malaga where he was born in 1881 Picassa could draw before he could speak in Malaga if the wind comes in from the southwest it said you can smell the desert he was 3 years old when his father took him to his first bull fight in the Malaga ring his first drawings were bull fighting scenes many years later the poet Ramon Gomez was to write in Malaga I found an explanation of what Picasso is and I understood to what degree he is a matador and how whatever he may do it is in reality [Music] bullfighting 1900 the the young Matador makes his first visit to Paris in coruna he had learned to draw like Raphael in Paris he adopts the style of tulos L Trek and the brush Strokes of Vincent Van goof 1901 Picasso finds himself at another deathbed his friend the poet cagas who' accompanied him to Paris commits suicide over a tragic love affair Picasso Mourns him in a flurry of Van golike brush [Music] Strokes [Music] for Picasso his friend was a victim of the war between the Sexes cagus was sexually impotent taunted and rejected by his lover he tried first to shoot her when he missed he shot [Music] himself [Applause] just as van gof had sent his severed ear to the woman who taunted him so in the bull ring the Victorious Matador is traditionally presented with the ear of the conquered bull Picasso could not bring himself to go to his defeated friend's funeral it was only months later that he would paint this portrait of kagus on his Deathbed [Music] wrapped up in his big winter coat cold alone a sad self-portrait of 1901 it was thinking of kagus that made me start painting in blue Picasso later remembered the color drained out of his art to be replaced by an exaggerated pity for Hungry mothers and their children children when she heard of her son's death the mother of kagus dropped dead from the [Music] shock haunted faces crowed Picasso's Vision staring out over the rooftops of Barcelona he saw only a sad nocturnal [Music] blue 1904 blue gives way to Pink the Terrors of the previous years find a face in the mated figure of the madman 1905 the rose period Picasso himself is harlequinn the poet apollinaire is his fat Jester friend Picasso has found a family of acrobats to accompany him he begins his first great love affair with Fernando Olivier they set up home together a new Serenity enters his [Music] art the dark ghosts of the blue years will return to haunt their maker but for the time being their era is [Music] over Theo was claimed that he could look directly into the sun 1906 gool in the Spanish Pyrenees the sunlight begins to stream into Picasso's art he was back in his native Spain among people he knew and faces he recognized in Paris Picasso had seen an exhibition of primitive Iberian sculptures he is Amazed by the simple geometry of the figures the fierce expressiveness of the faces the willowy nuded boys of his Rose period solidify suddenly in into painted wood a self-portrait of 1906 Picasso becomes Picasso a square for his torso a cylinder for his neck an oval mask for his head two pieces of coal for his eyes Picasso comes to gool in the summer of 1906 accompanied by Fernando Olivier it was to be a momentous holiday away from the shifting ephemeral world of modern Paris with Spanish soil under his feet and a Spanish sun over his shoulder in the clear panan light Picasso Could See Clearly again rooftops as solid as sunlit rocks [Music] A Primitive Force has found a form in which it can be preserved the human body becomes a piece of ancient [Music] sculpture Picasso Paints the traditional Catalan Dance of the sardana like a human Sun the Dan's raised arms imitate the sun's Rays it is to be the first of many such dances in in his [Music] art primitive Elemental Pagan forms as old as the Catalan [Music] peasant [Music] to see things as they are that was the ambition Picasso set himself in these faces inspired by Iberian sculptures Picasso seems to have scraped away the surface of the modern human being to discover the ancient ancestor within us all Fierce nude she seems to have been carved roughly out of wood the knife marks [Music] remain a disguised self-portrait of 1907 as a boy his mother had dressed him up in a sailor suit to have a direct Vision he said that is the thing another child with its mother this time the idilic scene is fraught with ancient terrors in years to come Picasso would claim to have African blood in him through his Spanish Moorish ancestors but in June 1907 the real moment of the pipany in the ethnography collection of the Trocadero Museum Picasso discovers the fetishes tribal masks and fertility figures of Africa and the South Seas at that moment he later claimed I realized what p painting was all [Music] about leel Davon a brool scene which changed the course of 20th century art when Picasso's closest associate Brock first saw it he said said it was like swallowing paraffin Andre Dera warned Picasso one day we'll find you hanging behind this huge painting it's such a cursed Enterprise Picasso called it his first exorcism painting it would protect him against evil female Spirits he was suffering from venial disease at the time Hort EO the Spanish mountains in 1907 a large Memorial exhibition devoted to sesan is held in Paris Picasso and Brock explore sesan's manner with a new understanding landscape with two figures treat everything in nature said cizan according to the sphere the cylinder and The Cone [Music] Picasso divides intersects separates and reorganizes the forms of a human head to paint he said is to destroy the great classicist Landscapes wrote szan are those where light is spiritualized where a landscape is a smile flickering with Keen intelligence a phous Critic looking at these new Landscapes complains of little houses like cubes the name [Applause] [Music] sticks men with Mand L he studies the figure wrote The Poet apollinaire as a surgeon dissects a corpse there is no vanishing point no Horizon no perspective No Beginning No End just the hard solidity of space a humble guitar seen from the front and the side at once Picasso I do not paint what I see I I paint what I know in African art Picasso had found a way of exerting A Primitive power over the human figure in his Cubist paintings he learns how to hold the figure steady while he examines it from all sides measuring it stripping away its surface cutting into its solidity rebuilding it Picasso we were trying to go in the opposite direction from impressionism that is why we abandoned color emotion and feelings we were searching for an architectonic basis capable of restoring order out of angles and curves segments and sections shallow Hollows and protrusions Picasso assembles a new human [Music] figure each step every simplification leads to another 1912 Picasso feeling he is losing sight of the visible World introduces a real fragment of chair caning into a still life the real is no longer merely represented it is included Jean CTO the only Pleasures the analytical cubis permits himself self of the objects found upon a cafe [Music] table the auster work is executed with the rigor of a mathematical series a Spanish guitar is taken apart over and over again then put back together in its exquisitely simple new form as a challenge to the old art Picasso introduces a whole range of humble new materials into his collages squares of wallpaper his Morning News it's the most radical change in the artist's way of seeing since the discovery of [Music] perspective by 1913 it seems as if there is nowhere for cubism to go except into the realm of pure abstraction the Picasso refuses to take what many consider to be the obvious Next [Music] Step there is no abstract art he writes you must always start with something afterward you can remove all traces of reality but the object will have left an indelible [Music] mark wall reliefs wooden cutouts guitar-shaped assemblages having come so close to destroying the old objects Picasso begins to create cupboards full of new [Music] ones where previously he had shattered he now begins to build old instruments find a new form for a new century a bottle of bass and an old newspaper Rise Up from the table like a tottering Eiffel Tower for the first time critics begin to speak of Picasso as if he was a magician the Catalan sculptor fenosa passing by the artist studio hears Picasso shouting to himself I am God I am [Music] God 1914 to 1916 Picasso returns with a Vengeance to painting cataloging and recapitulating all the audacious new techniques he has developed he dedicates a set of pictures to his new girlfriend Eva Picasso is Happy the Great War passes him by a playful exuberance lights up his art man with pipe man with mustache man with chimney suddenly Picasso emerges from his decade of cubism with a characteristically abrupt change of style to everyone's astonishment he's become a follower of angra in his portrait of Olga Picasso introduces us for the first time to the beautiful Russian ballerina who is soon to become his wife in Olga Picasso found a companion appropriate to his new social status as a successful and immensely fashionable Young artist by choosing angra as his model he was choosing the most elegant Society portst of them all [Music] an inveterate hoarder Picasso kept everything Olga's dress remained in his private collection [Music] [Music] e Picassa explained the demise of cubism having understood that Collective Adventure was a lost cause each of us went away alone like vanov towards an essentially tragic [Music] experience not for the last time in his career Picasso measures himself against the art of the past a new order enters his art we have to go back to the Greeks and the Egyptians we belong to a time in in which there is no order or Cannon enabling us to subject artistic production to rules the Greeks and Egyptians had that it's as if Picasso having watched Europe disintegrate into the Great War is trying single-handedly to bring order and Stillness back into the world he paints a pair of Village dancers in the Heyday of impressionism Renoir had brought the same Village couple to life but where renoir's dancers Skip and bounce Picasso's tragic couple gaze out [Music] immobile it was szan who said he wanted to make impressionism and art of the museums it's Picasso who turns impressionism to [Music] Stone the war over Picasso sets about putting his own life in order he marries Olga cocklover they settle down to a comfortable Bourgeois existence Olga doesn't approve of Picasso's Bohemian friends so they stop coming to visit Picasso finds himself [Music] alone his so-called neoclassical works are imbued with the same Gravity the same massive frontality of the gool paintings Picasso has invented a race of Giants and giantesses [Music] they appear naggingly familiar but the world has never seen their like [Music] [Music] before the reading of the letter a deliberate Masterpiece of 1921 7 years after Brock and a poire go off to the war Picasso remembers his friends the tragic news has finally arrived from the [Music] front [Music] [Music] [Music] the pipes of pan on the shores of the Mediterranean where he was born Picasso listens to an ancient [Music] Lament [Music] e Picasso since vanov we have all been self-taught one could almost say primitive painters the be at beitz with Olga Picasso begins a lifelong habit of spending his Summers on the beach wives and Mistresses would come and go but the sea would always be there women bathers watching a plane Jo Le 1920 Picasso gently mocks his bathers they Bob around in the water like Curious sea lions already they have begun to resemble the rocks on the beach it is on the beach that pigasso plays out his greatest classical tragedy the war of the Sexes figures on a beach 1931 has sheer physical passion asked one critic ever been made so palpable in in paint their tongues are like knives their mouths devour their heads are tiny their passion awesome figure throwing a stone the bather has become an archaic War Machine a Roman catapult when I paint I always try to give an image people are not expecting and beyond that one they reject the body of the bther has become indistinguishable from from a pile of stones on the beach seated woman with a book A Moment Of Peace on the Battleground her head is enthroned her body enormous and immobile Picasso's bathers a Critic writes Sun themselves like lazy dinosaurs on the [Music] beach in 1921 Olga gives birth to a baby boy Paulo at the age of 40 Picasso becomes a father for the first time on the beach the neoclassical holy family takes a tranquil holiday it's Picasso paints Paulo on every birthday until the boy is four he paints him as a little Harlequin a miniature version of himself later on paa would often be in trouble with the police in the end he becomes Picasso chauffeur the domestic Bliss doesn't last nor does the neoclassic style Olga proves to be a difficult and jealous companion Picasso lashes out at her in a portrait of awesome [Music] savagery summer 1925 the kiss when I love a woman that tears everything apart especially my painting everybody criticizes me because I've had the courage to live my life in Broad day light with more destruction than most others a painting is a sum of [Music] destructions [Music] never before in art has the image of woman being torn apart with such [Music] ferocity woman in a red armchair Picasso attacks Olga's Bourgeois world with Fierce surrealism he complains to his friends that olar is always screaming at [Music] [Music] him Olga's psychic storms lead her to a nervous breakdown Picasso paints her as a reptilian vagina [Music] denata for the first time since his childhood Picasso chooses a religious subject the crucifixion yet he declares himself a convinced atheist it's not Christ to is being crucified it's himself the colors are the red and yellow of the [Music] Cora the terror reaches a climax in woman with stiletto based on David's great death of Mara the Assassin bursts in upon her victim in the bath she is the now familiar fanged mouth he is the tiny head she threatens to [Music] Devour the bath overflows with blood the letter remains unfinished bullfight death of the Matador for the critic Michelle Larice the Spanish bull fight was the only truly tragic entertainment surviving in Western Europe for Picasso the Cora becomes a ritualistic reenactment of the struggles of Life Picasso had been going to the bull fight since he was three he too too comments upon its sexual charge in the ring the bull is continually replaced he is Everlasting for Picasso the bull becomes a symbol of both life and death if man is a Savage bull then woman becomes a picador horse constantly sapping the Bull's strength Every Act of Creation is first of all an act of Destruction [Music] a guitar made from the very floor cloth used to wipe away the blood after Picasso's domestic bull fight with Olga in 1926 Picasso had originally intended to cover it with razor blades in the end he pierced it with nails another guitar made this time from a crucified [Music] shirt I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the Invader just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands the minor the body of a man and the mind of a bull according to mythology Athenian youths boys and girls are ritualistically sacrificed to assuage the Minor's enormous appetite the minor becomes Picasso's favorite Alter Ego the age-old tragedy is given modern death of the woman bull fighter her exposed genitalia temped the Bull's horns how to escape the Terrors of the domestic Cora Picasso turns once again to the Tranquil world of classical Antiquity you know I met love says the tart the leading female character in Picasso's play desire caught by the tale he has scraped knees and he begs from door to door Picasso it's hard to say whether he wants to awaken her or kill her [Applause] [Applause] Picasso a minor keeps his women in luxury but he reigns through Terror and they are happy to see him die warm flesh in one hand iced champagne in the other in 1933 the surrealist writer George batai starts up a new literary magazine he called it motor Picasso draws the first cover the minor writes batai man Beast blindly wandering through the Labyrinth into which he has fallen he's dizzy disorientated for he has lost his seat of Reason his head now 1935 Picasso's domestic situation is becoming intolerable he later describes it as the worst time of my life in dant's Inferno the minor guards the seventh circle of [Applause] hell in the greatest of the minor etchings a young girl leads the creature deeper and deeper into the darkness her face is a likeness of Picasso's teenage mistress Mary ter valter 1937 the outside world intrudes brutally upon the Minor's private hell German bombers called in by the fascist General Franco attack the B town of gika after 3 hours of continuous bombing gika is destroyed Picasso sides fiercely with the Republicans he is appointed director of the prao museum and commissioned to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion in the World's Fair the result is gica [Music] the cast is familiar the screaming mother and child the bull representing forces of brutality and [Music] darkness the Savaged horse once again as during his blue period Picasso all but dispenses with color in Stark black and white he Mourns the tragedy of Spain death is always present in the solitudes and Caprices of the Spaniards writes Picasso's friend the poet to while Franco rules G remains on show in New York with the dictator's death Picasso's powerful and enigmatic Masterpiece finally returns to Spain in its gray Museum bunker behind bulletproof glass conditions of War still Prevail gica marks the end of the minor cycle another had begun in 1926 with the painter and his model again dispensing with color Picasso the most famous draftsman of the 20th century sets his line free it knits itself into mysterious knots and arabesques it seems to lose its subject but finally it solidifies into a female foot Picasso is painting in code Picasso painting is never Pros it is poetry it is written in verse with plastic [Music] Rhymes plastic Rhymes are forms which reverberate among themselves responding to other forms or to the space surrounding them Picasso is commissioned to design a monument to his old friend apollinaire the result surprises everyone it is his most abstract work to date e I want a balance that can be grasped instantly just like a juggler catching a ball and not a readymade balance which sits there [Music] inert Picasso's code becomes more audacious in 1929 he meets a 17-year-old girl outside a Parisian department store and seduces her in this joyous still life he paints a secret portrait of her her head is a bowl of fruit her breasts a pair of ripe upturned apples Picasso represents himself as an old [Music] jug Picasso is 50 Marie terz valta becomes his greatest model captivated by her Youth and Bel Ness he paints her obsessively over and over again the color surges back into his art the old Painter dispenses with code his beautiful teenage lover becomes a subject of a Charming sequence of [Music] portraits Marie terz reading Picasso plays with his model's cacious outlines the plastic Rhymes become rhymes of [Music] color sculpture the greatest shock Picasso is inspired to make a series of monumental heads of his young lover once again he goes in search sear of the Primitive Marie th's features are brutally simplified into thick pillows of form Picasso turns her into an ancient Easter Island head maritz is a quiet simple girl she reads a lot and she sleeps a lot she is devoted to [Music] Picasso once again he paints her as if she were a basket of luscious fruit ripening in the Sun [Music] [Music] [Music] the idil can't last Picasso and Mary teres carry on their Affair furtively on the beach in the garden [Music] Picasso cannot bring himself to leave Olga Marie teres sleeps on for me said Picasso there are only two kinds of women goddesses and [Music] doormats the artist's cace model is punished with straight lines the old picture looked on the mirror says nothing but Mary teres is f to spend the rest of her life devoted hopelessly to Picasso later when she hears of his death Mari terz commits [Music] suicide 1935 36 Picasso's domestic situation becomes so complex that for the first time in his life he finds he can't paint he turns instead to writing the poet Paul elard asks for an anonymous analysis to be made of Picasso's handwriting the graphologists verdict this man loves passionately and he kills that which he loves Picasso takes a new mistress the Yugoslav photographer and surrealist Dora Mar he comes across her in a cafe playing with a pen knife she becomes his Weeping [Music] Woman once again Picasso evolves a new code of line and color for his new mistress daar all straight lines and Jagged angles in hard red and [Music] black Marie terz all curves and caresses in soft blue and yellow [Music] [Music] [Music] the outrageous Fashions of the 30s appealed to Picasso's comic nature they provide him with a raw materials for his extravagant portraits of costumed women he displays a marked predilection for flamboyant [Music] hats in Picasso's portraits the hats become a physical extension of the [Music] [Music] sitter Picasso adds yet another woman to it harim nush elwad the beautiful wife of his friend Paul elard N is famous for her extravagant [Music] hats in a series of disquieting portraits Picasso combines the face of doramar with the features of his Afghan Hound kbec his intention he later claims was to show the animal side of women has childhood ever looked so monstrous Mari teres finally gives birth to a baby girl Picasso calls her Maya after his own dead sister when I was there age he remarks at an exhibition of children's art I could draw like Raphael it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them Maya strongly resembles her father Picasso identifies with her Picasso's own father had specialized in paintings of doves and pigeons Maya looks more and more like a fat baby Picasso a sadness and introspection enter his art 1941 with the war raging around him Picasso decides to stay in Paris a German soldier visits him in his Studio looking round at the dark brooding wartime still lives the soldier asks the painter did you do this no replies Picasso you did a tribute to those who have fallen Picasso the wealthiest artist who has ever lived raids his garbage heap for the materials out of old Nails broken jars thrown away bicycle handlebars scraps of cardboard he assembles a goat's skull and a burning candle Picasso God is simply an an artist like all the others he invented the giraffe the elephant and the cat but he hasn't got a style he continues experimenting Picasso any everyday object is a vessel a vehicle for conveying my thoughts just as Christ used Parables that's the way I use objects out of two wine jugs a wicker basket a palm frond some broken pottery and scrap metal Picasso constructs a she goat heavily pregnant I don't try to Express nature rather as the Chinese put it to work like nature girl jumping rope 1950 made out of real kitty shoes real rope and a wicker basket broken pottery chocolate boxes and a cake pan Picasso has a new mistress the painter franoise giio franoise is persuaded to Bear him two more children the boy Cloe and the girl Paloma Spanish for dove baboon with young 1952 Picasso is 70 he has grown obsessed with his own fertility two toy cars taken from his children are used to make the baboon mother's head white canvas in studio what is left for him to paint Picasso decides to set the bar as high as possible he turns for inspiration to the past and takes on the Old Masters reworking pictures by Anga dequa mané and above all perhaps the greatest Spanish painter Velasquez Picasso identifies the characters who interest him most in Velasquez's Great Masterpiece Las meninas he's fascinated by the young infanta she reminds him of his own Maya in a series of irreverent quotations Picasso puts the rich cast of Velasquez painting through the trials of Alice in [Music] Wonderland you must always try to imitate someone else but the fact is you can't you would like to you try but you make a botch of the whole thing and it's at that point where you make a botch of everything that you are [Music] yourself painting art or devilry he himself asks the question [Music] jacene Rock his last wife in the pose of an odalisk from dea's great painting of the women of algers turban by matis Body by [Music] Picasso when matis died he left his odalis to me as a [Music] legacy matis his great friend and rival dies in 1954 when all is said and done Picasso writes there was only matis now he is alone still life with bull's [Music] [Music] skull view of can Picasso is the best known artist in the world fabulously Rich he swaps a single painting for a house in the south of France he owns chatau and Villas all along the French Riviera Picasso used to be a great artist complained his old friend Brock now he's only a genius the bull has been Tamed [Music] reclining nude and man playing a guitar 1970 Picasso is 89 years old yet he's painting more than ever more quickly than ever there is time for one last odalisk brutally stripped more naked than the [Music] others [Music] an Enterprise such as this he looks back on his career requires all the resonances of a passion which is [Music] self-sufficient one last bullfight One Last Sword [Music] venag a final resting place behind high stone walls security fences and guard dogs the legend awaits its end in [Music] isolation but there's to be one last great surprise Picasso the inveterate hoarder has been saving key works for his own collection carting them from home to home Villa to Villa mistress to mistress pictorial momentos of his life the most important times the most important people all have been packed away and saved Picasso leaves his collection to the French nation in the otel Sal in Paris the Picasso Museum sorts out the fragments of creativity 80 years of the most powerful creative production of our times have come to an end for portrait of the painter overwhelmed and self- mutilated a gardener figure with the beard of an ancient mariner in a wicker armchair against a background of wild Flames all this compels us to interpret this last portrait as that of essential solitude but this canvas has its secret for the strongest thing about this figure its powerful strangeness and its almost obscene quality derived from what seems to be an amputated hand Picasso remains Picasso to his very last breath he dies on April the 8th 1973 he is 92 his last recorded words are painting remains to be invented for [Music] for for

Channel: Janell Glemser

Views: 429,783

Keywords:

Id: 6a6Ch_R-OLM

Length: 80min 39sec (4839 seconds)

Published: Sun May 11 2014