Picasso in the Big Apple, Summer 2010

Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 17-August 15, 2010.

Picasso: Themes and Variations, March 28-August 30, 2010

Rineke Dijkstra, I See a Woman Crying (Picasso's Weeping Woman), a 12 minute video, in her exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery, June 29-August 21, 2010.

God: Well, Pablo, I see you brought over 700,000 visitors into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in just 17 weeks. Felicidades! Congratulations!

Pablo Picasso: Muchas Gracias, Dios. I hope those Starn twins are grateful that I got so many people to see their Bamboo forest up on the roof. Who goes to a museum to see a bunch of trees when you have Central Park right there--for free?

God: True, true. You realize, of course, that a Brad Pitt movie can bring in over 700,000 receipts in one weekend, even if it's a dud.

Picasso: Dios mio, that guy can barely handle six kids, while I--at the age of 70--could handle six women! Olga Koklova (that Russian princess drove me crazy), Marie-Thérèse (my classical angel), Dora Maar (she spoke Spanish but, ay caramba, what issues! Even Lacan couldn't help her), Françoise Gilot (Andy Warhol figured her out) and Jacqueline Roque (my saint who took care of me in my old age) ... plus my darling daughter Maia with Marie-T ... muñeca mia, my little doll.

God: Yes, Pablo, we saw them all at the Met and MoMA. I believe the curator at MoMA calls your obsession with yourself and women "Themes and Variations."

Picasso: Si! I am an open book, a diary--and I am proud of it. My art is my story. And, as Gary Tinterow, that Engelhard Chairman of Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Met said to Charlie Rose, everybody loves a good story. I am an "endlessly fascinating story." ENDLESSLY--that means mucho exhibitions on my work FOREVER!

God: Oh, so you heard that Anne Umlaut is planning a show about your Guitars for MoMA in 2011?

Picasso: Si! And, You know--oh Omniscient One--that guitarron was supposed to be a farce, a kit, so that anyone--with or without talent--could make my art: just put together the parts, et voilà: la ultima broma, the ultimate prank, art that isn't unique. Marcel Duchamp turned these plebian ideas into an upside down pisspot. What nerve!

God: I noticed that the Met had only one sculpture, just Fernande Olivier's bumpy head from 1909. Was this revenge after a fight during your summer vacation in Horta de Ebro, Spain?

Picasso: Oh, Fernande--I loved the shape of her body. Very womanly. That head is about my head--my instincts that sculpture should be transparent. I was trying to sculpt in planes. I figured that out three years later with the Guitar series.

God: So were you pleased that the Met put together all their Picasso pieces (over 300 paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and that sculpture)?

Picasso: Si, that was good. I understand their collection is the second largest in the US. Pretty good for a bunch of gringos.

God: Did you like the arrangement? It was in chronological order--not very original, in my opinion.

Picasso: Es verdad. They decided to tell the Picasso story everybody knows: Blue, Rose, Cubism, Neoclassicism and Surrealism. Maybe that's okay because everyday someone hears the name Picasso for the first time. This was a show for beginners.

But, the best story in this show was hardly apparent to anyone but me and those people who went to the Gary Tinterow lectures back in the early spring.

God: Oh, you mean the story about how you refused to acknowledge that little Blue Period porno piece with you and a prostitute. You know you did that one--why deny it when you have drawn much naughtier stuff?

Picasso: I didn't deny it because it's about sex. Hombre, you still don't know me, do you? No--I thought I looked so bad in that one, I decided to pretend it was done by one of those less talented neighbors at the Bateau Lavoir, like Kees van Dongen. Take a look at those eyes: they are straight out of Kees' "make-up case" style. Only Moïse Kisling can make eyes look more mawkish than that. (By the way, we called Kees and Moïse "Kiki"--get it : Kees and Kiki. And, you know that model Kiki of Montparnasse? Man Ray made her back into a violin.)

God: Pablo, you're rambling--what's the story that Gary forgot to tell the visitors?

Picasso: During the first lecture and in a tiny footnote in the catalogue (page 32), my pastel of Woman in Green (Madrid, Spring 1901). I did that woman after Carlos Casegamas' suicide in February. I was thinking that she had Germaine Pichot's haughty look, that Carlos really fell for. Poor guy. You know he killed himself because he couldn't have her. She rejected him. What a hussy!

God: So?

Picasso: I am getting there, Holy of Holies. So, the conservator Rachel Mustalish noticed that Castilian Village (which belongs to a private collection in New York) has the imprint of the pastel Woman in Green still on the reverse side. Is that cool or what?

God: So?