A meeting with Picasso

 

Now read the text.

A meeting with Picasso

(Prodromou Luke. Rising Star. An intermediate Course. – Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2001.)

Picasso gave me a glance and looked me straight in the eyes. He was dressed in a light grey business suit, a blue cotton shirt and a tie. There was a bright yellow handkerchief in his breast pocket. His hands were small and solid. I introduced myself and Picasso offered me his hand immediately. He had a warm, sincere smile which made me feel relaxed.

I explained that I had always been interested in his work. I told him that at his recent exhibition I had suddenly understood what he wanted to say. I wanted to get to know him personally and to ask him if my analysis of his paintings was correct. If they were, I said, I wanted to write about the paintings in America.

Then I described for Picasso my interpretation of his painting 'The Sailor'. I asked him whether it was a self-portrait. I wondered whether the sailor's suit, the net and the red butterfly showed Picasso as a person trying to find a better world. He listened carefully and finally said: 'Yes. It's me, but I did not mean it to have any political meaning at all.'

I asked if he saw himself as a leader. Picasso nodded seriously and said: 'Yes, I realize it.' I mentioned how we had often discussed his work back in New York, especially the 'Guernica' painting, his most well-known painting. I talked about the symbolism of the bull and the horse. Picasso kept nodding. 'Yes,' he said 'the bull represents brutality, the horse the people. Yes, there I used symbolism.'

I asked: 'Why do you paint in such way that it is so difficult for people to understand?' 'I paint this way,' he replied, 'because it's the result of my thought. I have worked for years to get this result and if I take a step backwards it will be an insult to people.'

'It is quite impossible,' he went on 'to explain why you do this or that. I express myself through painting and I can't explain through words. I can’t explain why I did it that way. For me if I sketch a little table, I see the size and the thickness, and I translate it in my own way.'

Махачкала, 2019