"Picasso had the Midas touch and knew it. He also knew it meant not only riches but trouble. “If the things I really love—water, the sun, love—could be bought, I’d have been ruined long ago,” he once said.
Even from the grave he still has it. In May his painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter sold for more than $106m—the highest price ever for an auctioned art work. Midas is still making trouble. All the carrying on about Picasso's colossal prices feeds the belief that everything he touched reveals his genius. As a result, it gets harder and harder to look at one of his works and actually see it.
In early summer when I heard that “Picasso: the Mediterranean Years (1945—1962)” was about to open, I decided to skip it. I didn’t feel like trekking across London to King’s Cross to see a parade of glittering “masterpieces” worth multiple millions. Yes, his biographer, John Richardson, was curating and the site was the glamorous Gagosian gallery. But, no, I’d had enough. Fortunately, my husband, who is not a cheerleader by temperament, or even the artist’s greatest fan, did go and kept asking, “Have you seen the Picasso yet?” This week I finally went. If you are within striking distance, don’t miss it. The show, on until August 28th, is a joy. read more »"
The whole thing's well worth reading and isn't much longer than the excerpt provided here. I understand the writer's reluctance, feeling much the same before seeing Picasso's exhibition at the Met. Like him, I was also glad I did see it, if only for the drawings, unfamiliar to me and therefore, a real revelation. (I saved this note initially, though, for the quotation, which I am sure will provide an epigraph to some poem at some point.)
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