Olga Picasso by ACC Art Books

Gallimard

Gallimard Musée national Picasso - Paris

From 1917 to 1935, Pablo Picasso shared his life with Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the Ballets Russes whom he married in 1918. Until her death in 1955, Olga would carry the memory of their life together in a large steamer truck containing memorabilia from her career as a ballerina, along with many letters sent by her family that remained in Russia, and dozens of photographs from these years: Olga with Picasso, Olga with their son Paul, society events, trips to Barcelona, Naples, and Monte Carlo. These documents, some of which have never been published before, cast a new light on Olga’s extraordinary destiny, the artistic output of the painter during this period, and the influence of his first wife over his work, long beyond their separation. Paintings, drawings, and etchings—from the classical portrayal of a pensive, melancholy woman, absorbed in reading sad news from her family, to the violent portrayals of the late 1920s—illustrate the dark metamorphosis to which the artist subjected his model and his own work, paralleling the changes in their married life over time.

CONTENTS

09 Olga’s trunk

Bernard Ruiz-Picasso 15

icasso never had a Neoclassical period— P just an Olga period Joachim Pissarro

Muse and model

Melancholy

Olga Picasso as model: a domestic revolution Émilie Bouvard

76 105

Story of a life Olga Picasso: between France and Russia Thomas Chaineux

110

A new direction

148

Motherhood

160

Paul

182

Metamorphosis

186

On the screen

193

lga on the screen: another facet of Madame Picasso O Émilia Philippot

202

Bathers

210

Circus

220

Studio

230

Bullfights and crucifixions

249

lga in the 1930s: O “the worst time of my life” (Pablo Picasso) Charles Stuckey

256

Eros and Thanatos

275

Olga’s lives Caroline Eliacheff

287

Olga’s roles: her portrayal by biographers Michael C. FitzGerald

294

Chronology

296

List of works exhibited

305

Selected bibliography

306 Contributors

Olga’s trunk Bernard Ruiz-Picasso

The exhibition “Olga Picasso” is the culmination of extensive research into the archives that my paternal grandmother, Olga Khokhlova (1891–1955), left me, which shed much light on the years she lived with Pablo Picasso. My aim is to share the discovery of their contents and the multiple elements that influenced and marked Picasso’s work during his life with Olga. “Olga’s trunk” Olga was born on June 17, 1891, in Nizhyn, then located in Russia (now in northern Ukraine), in the region of Chernigov. She died in 1955, a few years before I was born, so I never knew her. She was, in my eyes, a “mysterious” grandmother, as my father spoke of her only on rare occasions. Yet her existence hovered in the background, as he faithfully followed the Russian custom of sitting quietly in the living room for a few minutes before leaving on a trip, so we could prepare ourselves mentally and think about what we may have forgotten. In addition, there was Picasso’s large portrait of Olga in red chalk that held pride of place in the living room of our Parisian apartment. From time to time, my father would imitate her dance steps: it made me laugh to see him try to be as light and supple as a ballerina! The Boisgeloup property in the Eure département of France that Olga and Picasso had purchased in 1930 and that my grandfather gave to my father in the 1950s is an important link between my grandmother and me. I spent most of my vacations at this “château,” as it is called in the region; and in one of the empty rooms—there were a lot of them—was a large steamer trunk [opposite]: “Olga’s trunk.”

153. Olga Picasso’s steamer trunk, early 20th century, 116 × 55 × 55 cm.

It was only much later, after the untimely death of my father, that my mother opened this famous trunk. Some of the drawers contained photographs still in their Kodak envelopes. These photographs told the life story of my grandmother: Olga with Picasso, Olga with my father, my father’s childhood, trips to Barcelona and to Monte Carlo [pp. 94–95], the sculpture studio at Boisgeloup, and many more. Other drawers had stacks of letters in French and in Russian, held together by small pink and blue silk ribbons. There were also dance slippers, tutus, a crucifix, an Orthodox Bible in Russian, tear-off calendars, and ballet programs. Nearly the entire contents of this trunk came from the time when Olga was living with Picasso. My father had retrieved it. This trunk contained his mother’s personal effects, found after she died at the Beau-Soleil clinic in Cannes, on February 11, 1955. 9

MUSE AND MODEL

Olga Khokhlova (1891–1955), Picasso’s first wife, lived with him from 1917 to 1935. She became the painter’s favorite model from their first encounter and was his most widely depicted female figure starting in the 1910s, playing a prominent role in the early 1920s. Olga Khokhlova à la mantille, painted during the fall of 1917, when the artist accompanied the dancer and the Ballets Russes troupe on tour as they performed Parade in Barcelona, is one of his very first portraits of the young woman. Picasso depicted her with naturalism and a certain reserve, giving her, significantly, a typical accessory of a traditional Spanish costume, improvised from a doily taken off a pedestal table. With Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil, executed several weeks later from a posed photograph, his fiancée made a majestic entry into Picasso’s work, at that time influenced by a reinterpretation of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s classicism. In the early 1920s, she was the inspiration for large antique-style nudes and reading figures that were a departure from the precise representations and idealizations of the earlier portraits. From the start, the multifaceted portrayals of Olga covered the entire range of the artist’s styles and reflected the disparity that existed at times between the model and her image in Picasso’s work.

172. Pablo Picasso, Olga au col de fourrure [Olga

in a Fur Collar], 1923, oil on canvas, 116 × 80.5 cm.

239. Attributed to Émile Deletang, Portrait of Olga Khokhlova, seated with a fan, Montrouge, spring 1918, gelatin silver print, 24 × 18 cm. 156. Pablo Picasso, Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil [Olga in an Armchair], spring 1918, oil on canvas, 130 × 88.8 cm.

MELANCHOLY

When Olga met Pablo Picasso in 1917, the country she had left several years earlier to join Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe was in the throes of a historic upheaval: the February Revolution leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, followed by the October Revolution that overthrew the provisional government, and then the ensuing civil war that lasted several years. The young ballerina lost all contact with her family between October 1917 and 1920, and when their correspondence was finally reestablished, the news from her mother, Lydia, and sister, Nina, was alarming. While her father and her brothers had joined the counterrevolutionary forces, as colonel and officers, respectively, the construction of the new Soviet society suddenly plunged the family into a precarious position. Olga was omnipresent in Picasso’s work at this time. The many classical-style portraits that the artist made of his wife depict her in an almost canonical way, appearing static and pensive. Her fixed, and most often absent, expression was perhaps the outward manifestation of her concern for her family. Picasso perfectly captured the full ambiguity of this woman, whose beauty, enhanced by the expressiveness of an Ingres-like line and classical curves, is bathed in a deep, gentle melancholy, a reflection of the tragic situation and her helplessness in the face of the crises her family was enduring.

[not exhibited.] Olga Picasso, circa 1923, flexible negative, 10.9 × 6.9 cm, FABA. 34

September 12, 1918 Dear Olga, You married my dear Pablo two months ago, and today is my onomastic [name] day, and I want to celebrate these two events by dedicating these lines to you, to express my pleasure at hearing from the lady in the villa where you live that you are highly appreciated and that you are happy. I pray God for your lasting happiness and that you can love and take care of your husband and that he do the same for you, because by loving each other, you can forgive the failings of one another. . . . Much love. Your mother, Maria

210. Olga Khokhlova, San Sebastián, 1916, gelatin silver print, 10.6 × 6.5 cm. 12. Letter from Maria Ruiz-Picasso to Olga Picasso,

September 12, 1918, handwritten in black ink on beige paper, 13 × 11 cm.

37. Pablo Picasso, Femme lisant [Woman Reading], 1917, charcoal and Conté crayon on paper, 26.8 × 19.5 cm.

89. Pablo Picasso, Jeune fille assise [Young Girl,

Seated], March 15, 1921, graphite pencil on paper, 57.5 × 52.1 cm.

94. Pablo Picasso, Portrait d’Olga [Portrait of Olga],

1921, pastel and charcoal on paper mounted on canvas, 127 × 96.5 cm.

April 19, 1921 My dear little Olyuna,

May 1, 1921

I learned by chance that someone was leaving for Paris today or tomorrow, and so I’m trying to quickly write a few words. I very much fear I’ll be late. I am so sad that I haven’t received any letters from you recently. Pl ease, write and tell me how you are doing? How is your health? Did God give you a boy or a girl? Are you the one breastfeeding? In short, tell me all the details. As usual, I am living with Nina and Oleg. Nina learned that her husband is in Erevan. Lately, I have been unwell. But it is because I’ve lost hope of receiving any information about Papa and Kolya. . . . I so much want to tell you things, but I don’t have time. I’m going to take this letter to a lady who lives fairly far away from us. I am sending it to you through her. If you receive this letter, I don’t know how to thank this lady. She is a person of high character. If it is someone else who delivers the letter, ask them how you can send yours to me. There you go, my dear little Olyuna, I send you hugs and lots of kisses. Please give your husband my regards. May the Lord protect you!

My dear little Olyenka,

Your mother, who loves you.

I’m very worried that I haven’t had a letter from you. This is the third time I’ve written you and I don’t know if you are receiving them. Please write and tell me how you are. Are you breastfeeding the baby yourself. I still don’t know if you had a son or a daughter. . . . I just received a letter from Volodia that he sent a year ago. He wrote it on May 17, 1920. He said that in early December 1919, Papa fell ill with typhus. Did he recover from it, we don’t know. We also don’t know where he is. You can imagine what I’m feeling. . . . How difficult life is. I share my thoughts with you, because there is no one else to talk to. Nina doesn’t understand anything at all and does not share my sadness.

[in the margin] Lots and lots of love. Write me. Nina is not home now, otherwise she would have written you. I have not yet received the last sum of money.

[in the margin] I send you hugs and lots of big kisses. My best regards to your husband. May the Lord protect you all! I love you with all my heart. Mama. Write.

19. Letter from Lydia Khokhlova to Olga, in which she provides the latest worrisome news of her family, specifically, telling her that her father fell ill with typhus. May 1, 1921, black ink on paper, 21 × 26.3 cm (unfolded), 21 × 13.2 cm (folded). 273. Olga Picasso in the living room of the apartment at 23, rue La Boétie. In the background, the “Paravent” [cat. 154, p. 135] painted by Picasso, Paris, circa 1922, gelatin silver print, 6.5 × 11 cm. 56

18. Letter from Lydia Khokhlova to Olga, telling her that her brother Vladmir has reappeared and that her sisterin-law Olessa has died. April 19, 1921, black ink on paper, 21 × 26.4 cm (unfolded), 21 × 13.2 cm (folded). 57

29. Postcard from Oleg Tamrouchi to Olga Picasso,

30. Letter from Aleksandar Deroko to Olga Picasso, Belgrade, January 14, 1928, black ink on paper, 27 × 21.3 cm.

wishing her Happy Easter and asking Paul to send him a postcard of Paris. April 14,1927, color print, purple ink on paper, 8.9 × 13.6 cm.

March 24, 1928 My dear little sister Olyussenka! The day before yesterday, March 22, I was received at the Ministry of War by General Hadžić. He very generously promised to transfer me to active duty as soon as the new budget is approved (starting April 1). He spoke to me in Russian. . . . The meeting did not last long, barely three or four minutes. Happy with this successful visit, I left the Ministry to visit Mr. Deroko. . . . The following day, yesterday, in other words, around noon, I went to see Madame Hadžić and I gave her the drawing and Mr. Deroko’s calling card. Madame Hadžić was very friendly. She gave me the impression of being a very nice lady. She asked me about Petersburg and, in general, showed interest in me, in my life in Russia as well as here. She obviously liked the drawing a great deal (it was wrenching for me to give it to her, dear Olenka!). She told me that she felt uncomfortable accepting such a precious drawing, as she clearly knew it was very valuable. She thanked me for this gesture. . . . Now, my dear little sister Olyussenka, I have high hopes and I am happy to know that all my visits have been successful. But I am still worried and I pray to God that everything works out. I am counting on my transfer to the army. Without work, it’s very hard, I am cutting back on all fronts. I have to think before spending a single dinar, can I really do it? And I often go without the basic necessities. If it wasn’t for you, my darling dear little Olyussenka, things would be very difficult for me. I wouldn’t know what to do, and wouldn’t be able to fight against despair. I don’t know how to thank you enough for everything, my dear little sister Olyussenka, and dear Pablo. I hope that God is generous and that things get better, I live with this hope. Write me more often, dear Olyussenka. Your letters are my only source of happiness.

31. Letter from Nikolai Khokhlov to Olga, telling her

he gave Picasso’s drawing to Ella Hadžić, the wife of the Serbian minister of war, to help him receive a military promotion. March 24, 1928, black ink on paper, 29.4 × 14.3 cm ; 22.7 × 22.8 cm.

84. Pablo Picasso, Olga pensive [Olga in a Pensive Mood], autumn 1920, charcoal on paper, 62 × 47 cm. 66

295. Nina Tamrouchi, Olga Picasso’s sister,

236. Vladimir and Olessa Khokhlov, Olga Picasso’s

at Anapa beach on the Black Sea, September 5, 1925, gelatin silver print, 6.5 × 8.9 cm.

brother and sister-in-law, circa 1917, gelatin silver print, 13.9 × 9 cm.

287. Oleg Tamrouchi and Arkadik Khokhlov (Olga Picasso’s nephews), Tiflis, October 24, 1924, gelatin silver print, 8.5 × 13.4 cm.

266. Nikolai Khokhlov, Olga Picasso’s brother, Serbia, 1922, photo postcard, 13.8 × 8.8 cm.

211. Count Jean de Strelecki, Portrait of

Sergei Diaghilev and Alfred F. Seligsberg, New York, April 1916, gelatin silver bromide print, 23.5 × 17.8 cm.

216. Ballets Russes troupe aboard a train bound for Boston, 1916, original photo postcard, 9 × 14 cm.

62. Pablo Picasso, Portrait de Serge de Diaghilev et Alfred F. Seligsberg, d’après une photographie du comte Jean de Strelecki [Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev and Alfred F. Seligsberg, from a photograph by Count Jean de Strelecki], early 1919, blended and erased charcoal and graphite pencil on paper, 65.4 × 50.2 cm. 82

Olga’s roles: her portrayal by biographers Michael C. FitzGerald

Twenty-two years ago, William Rubin, the longstanding director of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, invited me to contribute an essay about Olga for the catalogue of Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation (1996). I chose to write about how biographers of Picasso had portrayed Olga, and I found what I believed was convincing evidence that she had been maligned. Rubin refused to publish that essay. Edited for length, the text is published here for the first time. 1

“Olga was the golden crown I held over your heads in the Russian Church—the woman with a fan, and Paulo at rue La Boétie dressed as Harlequin—and our entire shitty but wondrous life.” 2

Jean Cocteau (February 14, 1955)

“Vain and vapid, she was easily bored. She was also socially pretentious, and she became a shrew.”

William S. Lieberman (1994)

Three days after Olga Picasso died on February 11, 1955, Cocteau wrote this brief elegy and mailed it to Picasso. It begins without salutation and ends simply, “je t’embrasse / Jean.” Upon unfolding the sheet, the reader is plunged into an evocation of Olga and her life with Picasso during the late teens and early twenties. Cocteau had indeed held a crown over the couple’s heads during their wedding on July 12, 1918; he had witnessed Picasso painting her as the “Woman with a Fan” in early 1918; having remained an intimate friend during the following decade, no one was better qualified to speak of those years than was Cocteau. 4

* While preparing this essay, I benefited greatly from the advice of Judith Cousins, a meticulous scholar and friend. Texts in italics are additions to the original. 1 William S. Rubin, ed., Picasso and Portraiture:

Representation and Transformation, exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1996.

2 Letter from Jean Cocteau to Picasso, Musée

national Picasso-Paris archives.

3 Introduction to pamphlet accompanying the

exhibition “Picasso and the Weeping Women: The Years of Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 12– September 4, 1994.

152. Studio furniture: chair, late 19th century,

75 × 60 × 90 cm.

286

4 The painting is now known as Portrait d’Olga dans

un fauteuil, spring 1918, Musée national Picasso-Paris, MP55 [cat. 156, p. 29].

For him, the cardinal images were grand and ceremonial. Their formality suggests transcendence over the mundane, the dominance of the “wondrous” over the “shitty” events that also marked their turbulent lives. This celebration of Olga is appropriate to the occasion, but it is nonetheless unexpected because it comes twenty years after the marriage had ended, twenty years that had been punctuated by acrimonious confrontations between Olga, Picasso, and the women who succeeded her in his life. During those years, Cocteau’s own letters to Picasso rarely if ever mention Olga, terminating instead with greetings to Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, and finally Jacqueline Roque. The surprise is that 287

Cocteau would have chosen to mark Olga’s death at all, and that he would have thrust Picasso so directly into reverie without showing antagonism toward her. William Lieberman’s characterization derives from these latter years, when he knew Picasso and it was popular within the artist’s circle to ridicule Olga. Her elderly irascibility and possessiveness toward Picasso are vividly recorded in Françoise Gilot’s accounts of her encounters with Olga during the late 1940s. Since then, however, Gilot has largely forgiven her, though art historians have rarely been so generous. Increasingly, Olga has been reduced to a caricature: a tight-fisted bourgeoise whose predatory nature was revealed by her erratic, desperate behavior in old age. Although not without precedent in the early accounts of Picasso’s life, this conception of Olga has been elaborated primarily by biographers who began to work after World War II and knew very little, if anything, of Olga firsthand. Its persistence reflects more than a willingness to despise a person Picasso had long ago attempted to banish from his presence. It speaks to a profound ambivalence many historians feel toward Picasso’s life and art during his years with Olga. 5

5 Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso,

New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964, pp. 196–199.

6 Interview with the author, December 1994. 7 Rosalind Krauss, “We Lost it at the Movies,”

The Art Bulletin, December 1994, p. 580.

8 Touching on the aesthetic issue, Alfred H. Barr,

Jr., wrote in Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1946, p. 128: “Defying the chronic modern prejudice against prettiness and sentiment, he made a series of sweet figures of women in classic draperies, mothers dandling babies, a pair of ineffable lovers, harlequins. . . . and the Woman in White, which demonstrates Picasso’s ability to breathe new life and charm into so exhausted a style as the neo-classic.” In Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1996, I have argued for more inclusive conceptions of modern artists’ relations with contemporary society, especially in regard to involvement in the art market (see particularly pp. 3–13).

9 Within the parameters of this essay and the limits

of documents presently available for consultation, I can do no more than suggest some of the apparent inaccuracies in previous accounts of Olga’s life. The increasing accessibility of documents in Russia, and perhaps also of papers that remained with Picasso, gives hope that it will soon be possible to write a full biography. Natasha Semyonova, a scholar in Moscow, is pursuing this goal.

10 Fernande Olivier, Picasso et ses amis, Paris, Librairie Stock, 1933, and Souvenirs intimes, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1988; Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, op. cit, and Françoise Gilot, Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art, London, Doubleday, 1990; James Lord, Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. Lydia Gasman’s dissertation, Mystery, Magic and Love in Picasso, 1925–1938: Picasso and the Surrealist Poets, Columbia University, 1981, contains material from the author’s interviews with Marie-Thérèse Walter.

Although the marriage endured from 1918 until the separation in 1935, it effectively ended in the mid-1920s with their estrangement. Their years of married life were those when Picasso frequented the beau monde, and his art primarily addressed a wide range of historical Western styles, loosely gathered under the term Neoclassicism. Many art historians consider this departure problematic, if not repugnant, because it is perceived as a repudiation of a vital, avant-garde imperative associated with Cubism. Rosalind Krauss condemned Picasso’s “turn to neoclassicism,” writing: “This peculiar and momentously reactionary alternative to Cubism is a deep conundrum for historians of modernism.” His aesthetic eclecticism and participation in fashionable events contradict widely held beliefs in the exclusivity of modernist art and the isolation of avant-garde artists from established society. Although Krauss and some other art historians choose to dismiss biography as a factor in addressing Picasso’s Neoclassicism, many others see it as ineluctably tied to his life with Olga. In their desire to absolve Picasso of responsibility for his problematic departure, some even grasp Olga as a scapegoat. At an extreme, she is cast as the figure whose demanding will and conventional tastes drove Picasso to deviate from his proper path, a road that he only regained when he detached himself from her and befriended the Surrealists in the mid-1920s. 7

Olga Picasso deserves serious reconsideration. Not only because she has likely been misrepresented, but because an accurate understanding of her life will also shed light on Picasso’s during this enigmatic phase of his career. By illuminating Olga, the nature of Picasso’s involvement in both Neoclassicism and Surrealism could be more cogently understood. In attempting to disentangle the art and life that have sometimes seemed so seamlessly intertwined, the portraits are the crucial point of intersection. Cocteau’s blend of rituals defines the problem, and the images of Olga are touchstones. Unfortunately, we cannot turn to Olga’s words. Unlike Fernande Olivier and Françoise Gilot, she did not write her memoirs, nor was she profiled by an intimate friend, as was Dora Maar. Despite living into the 1950s, when attention to even minor episodes of Picasso’s life mushroomed, Olga appar10

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11 As the contents of this catalogue evince, the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Para el Arte is engaged in a meticulous analysis and publication of Olga’s papers. As this process continues, Olga’s voice will likely emerge in documents such as those associated with the legal proceedings of the marital separation. 12 Among the many people I have questioned about

Olga, two were particularly close to the Picassos during the time of their marriage: Micheline Sinclair (daughter of Paul Rosenberg) and Daniel Wildenstein (son of Georges Wildenstein). Although both were children during the 1920s, they grew up in close proximity to the Picassos on rue La Boétie and saw them on a nearly daily basis. As adults, both maintained cordial relations with Picasso and Olga after the separation. Among those still living, they are probably the most knowledgeable about the Picassos’ daily life during the 1920s and 1930s. Daniel Wildenstein told me that he possessed a group of Olga’s letters to his mother, but declined to permit me to read them. As far as I know, no scholars have seen these letters. Daniel Wildenstein was born in 1917 and died in 2001; Micheline Sinclair died in 2006. Independently, both Sinclair and Wildenstein have told me they strongly disagree with the characterizations of Olga that appear in the Picasso literature. They remember Olga as a woman of generosity, warmth, and great personal flair. Without wishing to denigrate Picasso, they believe that Olga has been distorted by historians because of her behavior in later age and a desire to justify Picasso’s abandonment of her. Neither wished their specific remarks to be quoted.

13 Most of the writers I will discuss had at least a

passing acquaintance with Picasso, although a few apparently did not meet him.

14 Michael C. FitzGerald was born in 1953.

ently never spoke to a historian or a journalist about her years with him. Her papers, whether sequestered in the Picasso archives or preserved by correspondents, have not been made public. Few people who knew her are still alive, and fewer still are willing to speak of her for attribution. Like Picasso’s Neoclassicism, Olga herself remains a conundrum. 11

The available accounts of Olga are almost exclusively written by authors concerned with Picasso, and they essentially split into two categories: those by witnesses who befriended him long before he met her, and those by commentators who met him after the marriage had ended. (In this sequence, I write as a member of the first generation of art historians too young to have known either of them. ) While divided chronologically, these two groups are frequently united in their criticism of Picasso’s life and art during those years. Advocates are extremely rare. 13

As Hélène Seckel has subtly but firmly shown in her catalogue on Picasso and Max Jacob, the poet’s participation in Picasso’s and Olga’s wedding did not prevent him from soon concluding that he was being excluded from his old friend’s life. In 1921, Jacob wrote to Moïse Kisling that “if you had seen my last interview in November with Picasso, you would have cried! as I did afterwards,” because Picasso had received him “with the greatest coldness.” And in an undated note, Jacob lamented to Picasso the intervention of “a third party,” whom he accused of isolating the artist from his past companions. 15

15 Hélène Seckel, Emmanuelle Chevrière, and Hélène

Henry, eds., Max Jacob et Picasso, exh. cat., Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Musée Picasso, 1994. The following quotations are from this exhibition catalogue published by the Musée Picasso.

16 Interview with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, quoted in Pierre Cabanne, Le Siècle de Picasso, vol. 2, Paris, Denoël, 1975, p. 94. 17 Roland Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work,

London, Victor Gollancz, 1958, p. 213.

18 Letter from Georges Braque to Daniel-Henry

Kahnweiler, dated October 8, 1919 (Isabelle MonodFontaine, Claude Laugier, and Sylvie Warnier, eds., Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, exh. cat., Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994, p. 126).

19 Maurice Raynal, Picasso, Paris, Crès, 1922, p. 104. 20 Letter from Maurice Raynal to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, dated September 2, 1919 (Isabelle MonodFontaine et al., Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, op. cit., p. 126). 21 “At Paul Rosenberg’s, Pablo Picasso ran down the

main staircase, hugged me long and hard and let me into the room upstairs where his paintings were. I was looking at a big portrait in what is called the ‘Ingres style’: the formulaic pose, a deliberate sobriety seemed to be repressing a pathetic secret; the baroque only appeared a little in the line, in the arrangement of the principal volumes. What was the meaning of these paintings: was this an interlude, beautiful but without significance, pleasant for the hand to produce, while the soul, tired of the path taken, stood back? Or else, in a time when men were ruled by hate, when Romance circumspection took a stand against nebulous German metaphysics, did [Picasso] feel attacked by countless people who suspected him of strong affinities with the Germans and accused him secretly of connivance with ‘the enemy’? Was he suffering from moral isolation in a ‘foreign’ country? Was he trying to align himself with the specifically ‘French’ side, and did these paintings reflect the turmoil of his soul?” Wilhelm Uhde, Picasso et la tradition française, Paris, Les Quatre Chemins, 1928, pp. 55–56.

22 In discussing Picasso’s Neoclassicism, none of

these authors specifically addressed his relations with his wife. Published accounts of Picasso’s life do not discuss Olga until well after their separation.

Whether Jacob meant to implicate Olga, Cocteau, or another member of the beau monde (as Seckel speculates), this idea of Picasso being manipulated by his entourage would grow, and increasingly Olga would be identified as the intruder. Speaking of his serious concern over Picasso’s direction after World War I, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler admitted without further comment that he was sure Olga had influenced it. Some contemporaries specified their dislike of Picasso’s behavior with Olga. Georges Braque apparently “disapproved of Picasso’s new manner of living and despised the way he appeared fashionably dressed at the theatre,” even though he affirmed to Kahnweiler his continuing belief in Picasso’s “talent.” Maurice Raynal openly averred that Picasso’s involvement with the ballet led to works that “returned to the most decorative tradition and appeared totally bereft of the imagination that we have always expected from Picasso.” Juan Gris said simply, “Picasso still makes beautiful things when he has the time between a Russian ballet and a society portrait.” 16

But it was Wilhelm Uhde who most powerfully stated the double-edged betrayal felt by many of Picasso’s prewar confreres when he described an encounter at Paul Rosenberg’s gallery. In Uhde’s opinion, Picasso had not only repudiated Cubism, or at least its predominant hold on his art, but he had also adopted a manner that seemed to capitulate to the pompier. Uhde differed from his contemporaries only in seeking an explanation in international politics, rather than in the immediate circumstances of Picasso’s marriage and his involvement with the Ballets Russes. 21

Within Picasso’s circle, four spoke publicly in his defense—André Salmon, André Level, Pierre Reverdy, and Cocteau. Cocteau’s support is not surpris22

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