Was Pablo Picasso really an asshole?
It’s not fashionable to speak ill of the dead, but we, of course, make our exceptions. Although we can’t quite liken the late Spanish artist Pablo Picasso to some of our historical villains – his famous anti-war painting Guernica translates some degree of moral bearing – Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers saw fit to suggest Picasso was an asshole in his 1976 song, ‘Pablo Picasso’.
Despite being released in 1976, the satirical proto-punk hit was recorded in 1972 during a series of sessions produced by the legendary Velvet Underground musician John Cale. The fruit of these sessions eventually arrived in the band’s seminal debut record, with ‘Hospital’ appearing as the only track recorded since 1972. Crucially, during this four-year gap, Picasso died, aged 91, on April 8th, 1973.
Just a year before, Richman recorded the lyrics: “Well, he was only 5’3″/ But girls could not resist his stare/ Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole”. The words didn’t directly label the pioneering Cubist an asshole, but it was implied that he perhaps should’ve been. Had the Spaniard been an upstanding citizen, Richman and the Modern Lovers might have thought twice about releasing such a song just three years after his death, but there was credence to these rather comical lyrics.
Richman explains that, despite his short stature, Picasso could simply walk down the street and attract the ladies. The beginning of the second verse, “Well, the girls would turn the colour of an avocado/ When he would drive down their street in his Eldorado,” hints at a contradictory reaction of sickness, but perhaps the girls turning green are in fact grappling with a severe case of envy.
This lyrical ambiguity has naturally led to mixed interpretations among fans over the past half-century. Thankfully, Richman once cleared up the matter, explaining that the song was more about himself than Picasso.
“I read about him when I was 18. I moved to New York and was intimidated by these girls who I thought were attractive,” Richman told Boston Groupie News in 1980. “I was afraid to approach them. I didn’t have too high a self-image. I was self-conscious, and I thought, ‘Well, Pablo Picasso, he’s only 5 foot 3, but he didn’t let things like that bother him.’ So I made up this song right after I saw those girls. You can picture it; I had this sad little look on my face, and I was thinking, ‘Why am I so scared to approach these girls?’ That was a song of courage for me.”
While Richman wasn’t alluding to Picasso’s reputation in the song, he picks up on two important points: His height and his track record with women. As legend has it, Picasso was a rife womaniser, and nothing short of a six-foot hurdle could stop him from committing adultery.
Not every artist can claim to be a beacon of virtue throughout an entire lifetime, but red flags flutter when someone’s granddaughter says, “He needed the blood of those who loved him.” These are the famous words Marina Picasso once said in an appraisal of her Grandfather’s personal life.
The painter has been deemed a sufferer of the infamous Short Man Syndrome, or Napoleon Complex. Whether his height can be attributable to his hot temper and narcissistic demeanour is a topic of debate, but few disagree that his misogynistic tendencies were deplorable, even by his contemporary standards.
“Women are machines for suffering,” Picasso said to his mistress, Françoise Gilot, in 1943. He intended to suggest that women caused him no end of trouble, but his promiscuous track record meant he was a jet-black pot calling a kettle black. Like a pint-sized Henry VIII, Picasso left an eternity of female suffering in his wake. He once noted that women were either like “goddesses” or “doormats”; in reality, he seemed to convert the former into the latter.
Beyond the various “loves” of his life, Picasso treated his family with similarly unbased contempt. Using his money and status as an influence, Picasso would insist that his children and their partners relied on him for cash flow. When Marina’s parents, Paulo and Emiliénne, broke up, Picasso sided with his son to keep Emiliénne, who was an alcoholic, and Marina in poverty to teach them a lesson.
When the artistic tyrant passed away, his legacy held 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics, 34,000 illustrations and seven significant women – two of whom committed suicide and two who went mad under his oppression.
People certainly would have stared when they saw Pablo Picasso walk down the street or drive around in a Cadillac Eldorado. Some may have turned green with envy, but it’s conceivable that behind closed doors, the ‘A’ word was used by many more.