"Others have seen
what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."
He was born
dead. Then he breathed life—and revolution—into art.
His story
begins at 11:15 p.m. on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. The delivery had been
difficult. Now the baby boy lay motionless, stillborn. The midwife gave up all
hope on him and ministered to his mother.
As fate
would have it, though, the boy's uncle was a doctor, and he had attended the
birth.
But how to
get the lifeless infant to breathe?
"Doctors
at that time used to smoke big cigars, and my uncle was no exception. When he
saw me lying there, he blew smoke into my face. To this, I immediately reacted
with a grimace and a bellow of fury."
Later the
world would react with astonishment, amazement and even outrage at the limitless
hurricanes of art produced by this feisty painter. His greatness is as
overwhelming as his baptismal name—Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan
Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr
Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.
Aficionados
of the occult believe some eerie conjunction of planets and stars swirled as he
was born, and that the midnight moonlight bathed the city's white houses with
supernatural force.
Features Frantic and Flattened
Could that
explain why so many of Picasso's paintings depict people with fractured,
shattered faces—eyes lopsided, noses jagged, teeth jittery—their features
frantic and flattened?
There's
more to the story. On the night of Christmas 1884 when Picasso was three, a savage
earthquake rocked his town, killing more than 800 people across Spain. "My
mother wore a handkerchief on her head, I had never seen her like that
before," he recalled a half century later. "My father seized his cap
from the coat-stand, threw it round his shoulders, took me in his arms and
rolled me in its folds, leaving my head exposed."
Once safely
at the rock-solid home of a friend, his very pregnant mother experienced her
own tremors, giving birth to her second child three days later—on a basement
floor.
Calamitous Quake
Psychoanalysts
of the professional (and amateur variety) have speculated that the traumatic
birth, the calamitous quake, and witnessing of the bloody throes of delivery
birthed in Picasso some psychic dislocation, giving him an inspired and, yes,
distorted vision of reality.
True or
not, Picasso gave the art world jolts throughout his long life. His styles were
indeed born and reborn every few years.
Even as a
child Picasso was the essence of art itself. Young Pablo was drawing before he
could speak. (His first word was lapiz—pencil.)
He delighted his family with paper cut-outs of animals and flowers. He signed
and dated one of his earliest drawings when he was six. Fittingly, the fairly
well drawn "Hercules with his Club" depicted the muscular and bearded
divine hero (nude except for a fig leaf) wielding his weapon as confidently as
Picasso would use a paintbrush.
"I
never did children's drawings," said Picasso. "Not even when I was
very small—never." No wonder that this great master also said, "All
children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once as we grow
up."
MORAL: When someone blows smoke in your face
or the world is falling down around you,
see the beauty of your situation.
or the world is falling down around you,
see the beauty of your situation.
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