A Life of Picasso Read online

  Whether or not Doña María approved, Olga was dead set on marriage. The Russian Revolution’s descent into a bloodbath had left her with no alternative. By now she would have seen how rapturously Picasso was received in France and Spain and would have realized that he was far more of a celebrity than she could ever be. Her best hope of stardom was to sacrifice her far from stellar career as a ballerina and become Madame Picasso. And indeed, the airs Olga would give herself once the ring was on her finger would remind Cocteau of a dancer taking a curtain call. The only problem was that Olga was as adamant as Diaghilev had said she would be about sleeping with him: apart from her gift for dancing, her virginity and her looks were her only assets.

  In the thirteen years since Picasso had lived there, Barcelona had greatly changed—largely as a result of the war. Neutrality had brought prosperity. Most of the young artists who had been lured away to Paris earlier in the century had returned home. After 1914, it was Barcelona’s turn to beckon. The city was also full of refugee artists, headed by Robert Delaunay and Albert Gleizes, a couple of draft-dodging Parisian modernists who lived off rich wives and shared an envious hatred of Picasso. The enormously gifted but embittered simultaneist, Delaunay, and his Russian wife, the designer Sonia Terk, had systematically tried to drive a wedge between him and Apollinaire. Braque and Derain, who were stuck in the trenches, felt far more violently about these so-called pacifists than Picasso did.

  Another resentful refugee was Marie Laurencin, who had had to leave France after marrying a German painter, the handsome, bisexual (like herself) Baron Otto von Wätjen. Now that she was a baroness, this intrepid climber was out to storm the bastions of Spanish society to ensure that the ladies of the court collected her relentlessly pretty pictures and not the work of other refugee painters. Laurencin was an old friend of Picasso’s—an old friend he thoroughly disliked. For dropping Apollinaire, the lover he had picked out for her, Picasso had dropped her. A letter from Laurencin to Henri-Pierre Roché confirms that his dislike was reciprocated. She had seen Picasso, she wrote, “very show-off with his décors—preoccupied with his success, having slept with every woman in sight—in short remarkably screwed-up as a painter and so Spanish and would-be flirtatious—Sentimental stroll to a church but too crass for the two of us.”21 “Flirtatious … sentimental… crass”—it sounds as if Picasso had made a pass at her.

  Wives with French passports—Juliette Gleizes, Gabrielle Buffet Picabia, and Nicole Groult (Paul Poiret’s art-dealing sister who had left her husband for Laurencin)—were able to make sorties across the frontier, though these were not without risk. Nicole Groult was detained as a spy when she nipped into France to ship a bundle of Picabia’s diagrammatic tableaux mécanomorphes off to Marius de Zayas, his New York dealer.22 Picabia’s wife, Gabrielle Buffet, had a similar adventure. Questioned at the frontier by a customs official about one of her husband’s mecano-morphic works, she said it was a portrait of her. “You can’t fool me,” the official said, “it’s a propeller for a fighter plane, but you can proceed. Your thing is not going to work.”23

  Picasso’s feelings for Picabia, who had left Barcelona shortly before he arrived, would always be ambiguous. The fact that they spoke Spanish together—Picabia’s paternal family hailed from Galicia24—made for friendliness on Picasso’s part. He was amused by Picabia, but also often irritated by him, and sufficiently intrigued to filch from his works of the mid-1920s. After launching his magazine 39125 on January 25, 1917, Picabia had left Barcelona for New York. Picasso and Picabia, who were much freer spirits than Gleizes or Delaunay, enjoyed taking potshots at each other. In the first issue of 391, Picabia had satirized Picasso’s Ingresque portrait of Max Jacob in a crude drawing of a seated male figure with a photograph of himself superimposed on it. The drawing is inscribed “Max Goth” (nom de plume of Max-imilien Gauthier), whom the photograph does not in fact portray. The accompanying text, entitled “Odors from all over: Picasso penitent” and signed “Pharamousse” (one of Picabia’s pseudonyms), reads as follows: “… Pablo Picasso has decided to return to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts … [and] is now the head of a new school which our collaborator unhesitatingly joins. The Kodak published above is the solemn sign of it.26

  Picasso did not take Picabia’s mockery seriously27 In issue no. 4 of 391, Picabia wrote a spoof statement in which Picasso boasts of his position as “King of cubism.”28 If this infuriated the lesser cubists, so much the better. Picabia’s numerous letters to Picasso over the next five years are mostly affectionate. When the poet Pierre de Massot asked to do a portrait of him for some publication or other, Picabia wrote begging Picasso to do it instead: “You will do it much better than I.”29 On Picabia’s return to Barcelona in October, he and Picasso got together at a bullfight. Picabia’s dadaist daring and devilry amused him, much as Tristan Tzara’s would. Eight years later, the two artists would see each other on an almost daily basis. They do not appear to have quarreled, they simply went their separate ways.

  Diaghilev’s company had never danced in Barcelona, and since Nijinsky was billed to appear, the eight performances at the Liceo opera house were sold out. In her determination to get Nijinsky into bed, the Duchess of Durcal had followed the troupe to Barcelona. Romola wrote:

  Jealousy never entered my head. I was even rather pleased when Vaslav returned later than usual one night, but this escapade had quite a different effect on him than I had expected. He was mournful and told me frankly: “Femmka, I am sorry for what I did. It was unfair to her, as I am not in love, and the added experience that perhaps you wanted me to have, is unworthy of us.”30

  In Russia dancers were expected to have sexual relationships with royalty or the nobility, so Romola was anything but displeased by her husband’s affair with La Durcal. What did displease her was Diaghilev’s democratic decision to publicize the entire company rather than individual stars. Romola encouraged her susceptible husband to believe that this was aimed at him.

  Francis Picabia. Max Goth, satire on Picasso’s 1915 portrait of Max Jacob. From 391, no. 1 (January 25, 1917). Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

  Worse was to come. All of a sudden Nijinsky refused to go to South America. Diaghilev retaliated by invoking their contract: “I will force you to go,” he said. The following morning, “as Diaghilev was crossing the entrance hall of his hotel… he noticed [the Nijinskys’] luggage piled up near the door.”31 Despite being billed to dance that evening, Nijinsky, egged on by his wife, had arranged to take the night express to Madrid. Citing a Spanish law that required a performer who had been billed to appear to do so, unless sick, Diaghilev’s lawyer had the Nijinskys arrested as they were about to board the train. In desperation the dancer telephoned the Duke of Durcal in Madrid, who called off the authorities and arranged for a powerful lawyer, Francesc Cambò—to represent him. In the end, Nijinsky had no choice but to dance that night and the remaining five or six nights. After Diaghilev promised to stay in Europe, Nijinsky agreed to leave on the South American tour, which proved an ill-fated venture. In the course of it much of the scenery burnt up and, according to Anser-met,32 Nijinsky showed the first symptoms of mental illness. Diaghilev had to give way on one point. Romola insisted that her husband be paid in gold after every performance.

  On July 4, the company boarded a steamship for Montevideo. To nobody’s surprise, Olga stayed behind,33 as would Diaghilev and Massine. Just as the boat was about to leave, she and Picasso arrived on the quay to say a fraught goodbye. Olga would miss Nijinsky, who had been very helpful to her. He had chosen her as one of the nymphs in the original production of L’Après-midi d’un faune, because she was quick to learn the rhythmically complicated steps that were unlike anything that had been done before. Olga had also been on the same transatlantic crossing as Nijinsky when Romola forced herself on him. She shared Diaghilev’s distaste for this Hungarian interloper.

  Farewells were strained. The dancers were sailing under a neutr
al flag, but, as everyone knew, U-boats sometimes made mistakes. Also, the company’s coffers had been so depleted by war and revolution, and backers were so scarce that this might well be the company’s last trip. For Olga, separation from her fellow dancers—her surrogate family—was especially painful. Fortunately, Diaghilev and Massine had decided to stay on in Barcelona for the summer—much cooler than scorching Madrid—so Olga did not feel forsaken. And the charming fishing village of Sitges was nearby, where Misia’s next husband, José María Sert was painting murals for a house that the Chicago millionaire Charles Deering was restoring.34 Deering enjoyed having Diaghilev and his stars around.

  Picasso was happy that he no longer had to share Olga with the company. Most days, if he was not working, he and Massine would meet at their favorite hangout and go sightseeing. Since they were both ardent womanizers, kept on a short leash by their respective lovers, sightseeing included a lot of whoring. Just as well that Massine, never the easiest or friendliest of men, and Olga liked each other. They chattered away in Russian; he also helped her practice. This was a priority. She fully intended to dance again as a guest star when the company returned from South America.

  If the locals found Picasso distant, it was because they saw him in Diaghilev’s reflected light. For all his avant-garde success, the impresario had coagulated into a monster of elitism, who took no interest in other people, unless they were very gifted, very grand, very powerful (Bolsheviks as well as American millionaires), or very handsome. The Catalans’ pride in being Catalan would have struck Diaghilev as impossibly provincial. Why bother with them? The locals felt every bit as disdainful about him. What was their hero, Picasso, doing with this alien fop, with the white streak in his dyed black hair (hence his nickname, “Chinchilla”),35 not to mention the redundant prop of a monocle, the Fabergé jewelry, the clouds of Guerlain’s Mit-souko, and the haughty, heterosexual boyfriend on his arm? Neither Diaghilev nor any of his associates attended the dinners that fellow artists gave for Picasso in Madrid or Barcelona. There is no mention of them or Massine, for instance, at the banquet organized by friends and admirers at the Lyon d’Or on July 12. Santiago Rusiñol and Eugeni d’Ors could not make it (there was another reception for Grego-rio Martínez Serra, the author of El corregidor y la molinera, the one-act farce that would provide the scenario for Tricorne); otherwise, most of his old friends attended.

  The departure of the company left Diaghilev, Massine, and Picasso free to focus all their attention on the Spanish project. They were soon joined by the country’s greatest composer, the exceedingly shy Andalusian, Manuel de Falla—described by Stravinsky as “even smaller than myself, and as modest and withdrawn as an oyster.”36 After hearing the exhilarating incidental music that Falla had composed for Martínez Serra’s El corregidor y la molinera, Diaghilev and Massine decided that this could be adapted to the great Spanish ballet that would become Tricorne. Falla accepted the commission, but said he would have to study Spanish folk music and dances before he could successfully translate the jota or the farruca into a modern musical idiom.37

  To help him with the flamenco dances and play the star role, Massine summoned the fantastically gifted Gypsy dancer Felix Fernández García. To perfect his technique, the remorselessly driven Massine set about squeezing every last drop ofduende, the lifeblood of flamenco, out of Fernández. By the end of July, Diaghilev decreed that he and Massine, Falla, and Fernández should embark on an extensive tour of Spain—Saragossa, Burgos, Salamanca, Toledo, Seville, Córdoba, Granada—“to study native peasant dances”38 and gather musical material for Tricorne. Picasso and Olga did not join them. Work and visa problems kept them in Barcelona. 39

  Picasso. Olga Lying on a Sofa, Barcelona, 1917. Pencil on paper, 15.5 x 23.5 cm. Collection Marina Picasso.

  5

  With Olga in Barcelona (Fall 1917)

  With Diaghilev and Massine gone, Olga found herself marooned in a country where she had yet to learn the language and where few spoke French, let alone Russian. Nor was she able to communicate with her family in Russia or her surrogate family, the dancers who were off in South America. Neither Doña María nor the family of Picasso’s sister Lola took Olga to their hearts, nor did Picasso want her to consort with his raffish Bohemian friends. Fraught with worry at the news from Russia, Olga became totally reliant on Picasso, with whom she had fallen passionately in love. When he was off working in Padilla’s studio, Olga stayed in the Pensión Ranzini. To keep in shape, she exercised every day at the barre in a local dance studio. Otherwise, as drawings reveal,1 she spent her time on her sunny balcony reading, keeping her tights and tutus in good repair, and waiting for her visa to come through. So long as she was a member of the troupe, Olga had had no difficulty crossing frontiers. Now that she was stateless, jobless, and without a passport, she was stuck in Spain.

  Evenings, Picasso would pay court to Olga. She liked to get herself up in the Chanel outfits she had bought in Paris, or the gauzy black dress2 that her fiancé had picked out for her at the fashionable Grand Gérard shop on the Ramblas. This is the dress she wears in the bravura portrait of her holding a fan, Olga in an Armchair? painted on their return to Paris. Picasso would take Olga for a paseo—as he had taken the novias chosen by his mother all those years before in Málaga—and they would walk ceremoniously up and down the Ramblas, arm in arm in the dusk. Picasso was exceedingly proud of Olga and enjoyed showing her off.44 In later years, he liked to tell how a Gypsy on the Ramblas offered to read her palm. When asked her name, Olga said, “Carmen.” “Mine’s Olga,” the Gypsy replied. Russian archness, Picasso said, was no match for Gypsy guile.

  Meanwhile, Picasso had set about painting a lifelike portrait of Olga,5 costumed à I’espagnole like Fatma, the girl who had sat for him a few weeks earlier. Picasso’s His-Panicization of his Russian fiancée would include some of the same elements—the spit curl and the mantilla—that he had used on the Moroccan model. If Olga’s mantilla is less convincing, it is because Picasso had improvised it out of a fringed lace tablecloth he had pinched from his hotel in Madrid. These fanciful trappings are at odds with the sitter’s melancholy gaze. Despite its iconic importance as the first portrait of her, it is not particularly affectionate. Olga’s reproachful eyes and pursed lips look ahead to the cruel, exorcistic portraits Picasso would paint of her fifteen years later, when their marriage had soured. With hindsight, one can discern a certain inevitability.

  At first, Olga would not allow Picasso to spend the night in her room at the Pensión. For someone as sex-obsessed as Picasso, the brothel would have become a daily or nightly necessity. The stress generated by Olga’s adamant resistance could well explain the ambiguity and coolness of her expression in the portrait. However, the closeness that sitting for the portrait entailed seems to have melted Olga’s resolve. She finally allowed Picasso to sleep in her room. He confirmed this to his sister, Lola; Miró also reported that Picasso slept at the Pensión Ranzini, going back to his mother’s apartment only to shave.77

  Charming drawings in the pages of Picasso’s sketchbooks reflect their ever increasing intimacy8 We finally see Olga in a negligee with her mane of reddish hair loose around her shoulders or done up in a chignon. And yet, for all their love and warmth, these drawings reveal no trace of the predatory physicality that would make Picasso’s images of Olga’s successor, Marie-Thérèse, so insidiously sexy. One of the few drawings to evoke desire, rather than pride of ownership, is a study of a languorous-looking Olga on a chaise longue, clutching a teddy bear—Daddy’s little girl, but very much a woman.9 In another touching sketch of her on her balcony, dated July 21, Picasso portrays her feeding the caged canary that he had hung in her window. It is inscribed “El canario y la canaria chica.”10

  Although Picasso had intended to give the portrait of Olga to his mother, the sitter was so delighted with the likeness that she insisted on keeping it, and it has remained in the family ever since.11 A large cubist drawing, which Palau calls Olga as a Great Lady12
(Olga as a Spanish lady would be more accurate), includes the rest of her figure on an additional sheet of paper. This suggests that Picasso contemplated doing a full-length portrait of her wearing an authentic mantilla and holding a closed fan in her right hand. Palau mistakes the fan for the baton of authority held by most of Velázquez’s equestrian sitters and illustrates one of them by way of confirmation.

  Instead of following up with a portrait of Olga as a modernist manola, Picasso chose to do a full-length cubist painting of the celebrated music hall performer Blan-quita Suárez.13 He had seen her late in June at the Teatro Tivoli in a zarzuela called La gatita blanca (The Little White Kitten). Picasso makes much of Blanquita’s hourglass-shaped bodice, her comb, as tall and black as a witch’s hat, and her fan, conspicuously open, in her left hand. Blanquita is dancing alone on the stage in a funnel-shaped beam of gray light. In this and two other related figure paintings, Picasso is out to give cubism an appropriately austere Spanish resonance, much as his compatriot, Juan Gris, had done in his previous year’s paintings. Blacks, whites, and grays are set off against dark reds and browns. Equally Gris-like is the contrast of rectilinear and scallop-edged planes—but trust Picasso to make Gris’s calculated harmonies look decidedly dissonant.