Thinking about studying Picasso crowds my mind with images. Taking modern art altered my worldview significantly.

Thinking about studying Picasso crowds my mind with images. Taking modern art altered my worldview significantly.

I recall the direct impact of his work in the glorious Barnes Collection in Lower Merion, PA. The rose period canvases are immense and breathtaking.

Barnes’ partner and probable mistress, Violette deMazia, was still living on Foundation grounds; she would speak with you about the paintings if you were lucky, as a friend of mine was. Observing a painting with you, she would ask you what you saw, never tell you what she knew about it, which was likely to be just about everything. There’s information about Violette on a site put up by a trust she established - Violette deMazia Trust. Here’s information about Barnes from the Barnes Foundation site: About Barnes and about the foundation. Following Violette’s death, the gallery has suffered a decline and is seeking, vainly, to find a new home.

There’s a wonderful anecdote I’ve carried with me all these years about the eccentricities of Barnes and deMazia. Here’s one account:

"Dr. Barnes was often impossible to bear. He built the villa for his paintings in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia and then allowed entry only to students of his theories of art and a few outsiders chosen by whim. Poet T. S. Eliot, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, architect Le Corbusier and drama critic Alexander Woollcott asked to see the paintings but were turned down. Erwin Panofsky, the eminent art historian, managed to gain entry but only by posing as someone else’s chauffeur."

The way I heard it, Einstein asked to view the gallery and Barnes was delighted to admit him. He, Einstein, arranged to have Panofsky drive him, dressed as chauffeur. When Einstein asked if his chauffeur could view the gallery as well, Barnes and Violette were delighted with the suggestion. They felt you needed a sensibility unprejudiced by art-world nonsense in order to appreciate the art.

I also recall the wonderful Picassos in the Museum of Modern Art and the huge retrospective they put on in 1980; also Picassos in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

For me, Picasso’s impact on the modern world is akin to his contemporaries Freud and T. S. Eliot.

I recall the importance of Roland Penrose’s book on Picasso and the milieu, particularly the connection with
Gertrude Stein.

The poster made from one of Picasso’s blue period paintings together with the two albums of Miles Davis, Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, were cultural icons for college students of my generation in the early 1960’s.



Old Man with a Guitar







More Picasso


A Self Portrait



Roland Penrose and Picasso