Wh en HARRY MET Pablo

The Strange True Story of the Day President Harry Truman Spent with Artist Pablo Picasso

MATTHEW ALGEO when art historian alfred barr learned that Harry and Bess Truman would be going on a Mediterranean cruise in the summer of 1958, he saw a rare chance to get the former haberdasher from Independence, Missouri, interested in modern art. As the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Barr was one of the movement’s most enthusiastic evangelists in the United States. But Truman had proved an especially tough nut to crack. In May 1947, Barr sent the then-president a book about modern art. The title has been lost to history—perhaps it was the latest edition of Barr’s What Is Modern Painting?—but Truman responded with a letter that was characteristically blunt.

I appreciated very much your note of the second enclosing me a book on modern painting. It is exceedingly interesting. I still get in almost the same frame of mind as after I have a nightmare when I look at these paintings.

Some of them are all right—at least you can tell what the painter had in mind. Some of them are really the “ham and egg” style.

I do appreciate highly your interest in trying to convert me to the modern viewpoint in art but I just can’t appreciate it, much to my regret.1

Truman preferred the Old Masters to the avantgarde. “I am very much interested in beautiful things,” he wrote in 1953. “Pictures, Mona Lisa, the Merchant, the Laughing Cavalier, Turner’s landscapes, Remington’s Westerns and dozens of others like them. I dislike Picasso, and all the moderns— they are lousy. Any kid can take an egg and a piece of ham and make more understandable pictures.”2 previous spread and left President hand outside of the artist’s ceramic studio at Vallauris, France, 1958. The unlikely meeting had been arranged by art historian Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (left with Picasso’s Guernica), in the hope that the former president, who had written that modern art gave him nightmares, would actually come to appreciate the style.

But Alfred Barr never stopped trying to convert Truman, even after he left the White House, and when Barr found out the Trumans would be stopping in Cannes on their cruise, he decided to take another shot. Cannes just happened to be where Pablo Picasso lived. Who better to win Truman over to the wonders of modern art than the man who practically invented it? Barr also believed a meeting between the man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of nuclear weapons against civilians would be of symbolic importance. Conservative Republicans in Congress had been attacking modern art for nearly a decade.

Representative George Dondero of Michigan, an acolyte of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, claimed modern art was “Communist-inspired and Communist-connected” and had “one common, boasted goal—the destruction of our cultural tradition and priceless heritage.” Dondero reserved special contempt for Picasso, whom he described as “the hero of all the crackpots in so-called modern art” and “the ‘gage’ by which American modernists may measure their own radical worth.”3

Alfred Barr hoped that, by shaking Picasso’s hand, Harry Truman would send a message, not just to reactionary Republicans like George Dondero but to the whole world: modern art was not evil. And although Truman hated modern art, Barr knew he hated the people who wanted to censor it even more. Harry Truman may have been a philistine but he was certainly no fascist. “We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think,” he declared in a 1950 speech. “We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat.”4

Barr just had to figure out a way to bring together the straight-talking politician from Missouri and the Cubist painter from Málaga, two men whose tastes in politics, art, and life were diametrically opposed and whose personalities were nearly as big as their influence on the twentieth century.

By early 1958, the Trumans had been out of the White House for five years and, for the first time in their twenty-seven years of marriage, were enjoying some financial security. A book deal had netted Harry about $200,000 (nearly $2 million today), and a presidential pension bill that Congress was considering offered the prospect of permanent income.5 So the Trumans decided to splurge a little, and, with their friends Samuel and Dorothy Rosenman, they booked a cruise to Europe. Sam Rosenman was a lawyer and former New York Supreme Court justice who had been one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most trusted advisers and his principal speechwriter. It was Rosenman, in fact, who coined the phrase “New Deal.”6 When Truman became president, he asked Rosenman to stay on as White House counsel, and the two men formed a friendship that fully flowered after they were freed from the constraining protocols of the Oval Office. In retirement, Harry and Sam and their wives, Bess and Dorothy, formed a convivial quartet who enjoyed spending time together.

Sailing from New York in late May on the appropriately named American Export Lines cruise ship Independence, the two couples would spend three weeks touring the Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France. Unlike a trip to Europe that the Trumans had taken two years earlier, which was filled with official engagements and speeches, this one would be a strictly private affair—just two older couples (Harry and Bess were 74 and 73, Sam and Dorothy 62 and 58) enjoying a leisurely vacation.

Shortly before the couples set sail, Alfred Barr made arrangements for the Truman-Picasso summit. The go-between was probably Ralph Colin,

Sam Rosenman’s law partner, who was on MoMA’s Board of Directors. Maybe Barr asked Colin to ask Rosenman to ask Truman if he would be amenable to meeting with Picasso when he was in France. Truman’s reaction to this request undoubtedly would have contained “words of one syllable,” as he liked to say.7 The European vacation was supposed to be a quiet affair. Getting wrapped up in controversy was the last thing Truman wanted. And meeting with the world’s most famous communist after Khrushchev would be controversial.8 Then there was the delicate matter of the 76-year-old Picasso’s compagne, 31-year-old Jacqueline Roque. The couple lived together but were not married (though they would wed in 1961). Mmes Truman and Rosenman definitely would not be crazy about that. But, like Barr, Truman appreciated the symbolic importance of the meeting, that it would show his support for the freedom he cherished most, the freedom of speech, and it would rebuke far-right politicians like George Dondero, who had demonized artists like Picasso. Truman consented to the rendezvous.

Now Barr just had to get Picasso to agree. The artist was notoriously prickly about entertaining guests, but Barr had known him for more than twenty years and had almost single-handedly introduced his work to American collectors.9 It was time to call in a favor.

On May 26, 1958, the same day the two couples embarked the Independence in New York, Barr wrote the great artist.

Dear M. Picasso:

I enclose a copy of a letter introducing two famous gentlemen whom I believe you will find both interesting and entertaining. I hope you will be able to see them.

With my kindest regards to Jacqueline.

Sincerely,

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.10

The enclosed letter read:

Very rarely do I agree to give letters of introduction to you because I know how distracting visitors can be. Yet, I believe that you would be very pleased indeed to receive the two gentlemen to whom I have given this letter. One of them really needs no introduction, since he is the Honorable Harry S. Truman, ex-President of the United States. His companion, Judge Samuel Rosenman, was for many years a close friend and adviser to President Roosevelt and subsequently to President Truman.

These gentlemen are spending some time on the Riviera and are eager to pay you a visit. I hope that you may receive them.

My warmest greetings to you.

Sincerely,

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.11

Truman was not eager to pay Picasso a visit, of course; in fact, he would later claim that it was Picasso who had requested the meeting.12 In any event, Barr sent a copy of the letter of introduction to Ralph Colin, with instructions for him to forward it to Rosenman and Truman. He also provided instructions for calling on Picasso.

May I suggest that they phone or have someone phone Madame Jacqueline Roque at Picasso’s residence. The phone number is Cannes 9-0182, the address, the Villa Californie, Avenue Costebelle, Cannes.

The best time to phone is around eleven in the morning. Madame Roque speaks English quite well. In any case, she and Picasso have a copy of the letter as a harbinger so that they will expect the call.13

After calling in Algeciras, Spain, and Naples and Genoa, Italy, the Trumans and the Rosenmans disembarked the Independence in Cannes on Thursday, June 5, and settled into the Château du Domaine Saint-Martin, a swanky resort in Vence, a commune about 20 miles north of Cannes. Six days later, around noon on Wednesday, June 11, the two couples called on Picasso and Mme Roque. A visitor to the villa a year earlier, the art critic and journalist Carlton Lake, described the scene one encountered upon approaching the imposing residence in the hills overlooking the Bay of Cannes.

Picasso stands at the entrance to the Villa Californie, in Cannes, France, where he hosted the Trumans and Rosenmans for lunch in 1958.

La Californie was purchased by Picasso in 1955, and he lived there with Jacqueline Roque until 1961. Visitors would make their way up a winding path to the mansion.

Finally, with a certain amount of backtracking, I found Picasso’s street. I followed it slowly uphill and after climbing a couple of hundred meters came, on the right, to a villa half hidden by a high black iron fence with a wide, even higher black iron gate. Both the fence and the gate were reinforced with black metal sheeting that closed off the view. Between the wide double gate and a smaller, similarly barred doorway was a marble plaque with the single word Californie incised in it. This, I knew, was my destination. . . . The villa, as nearly as I could tell from outside the iron curtain, was a large, bulky, squarish place with a comfortable 1900 look about it. It was three stories high. The windows on the two upper stories—the only ones I could see—had wrought-iron balconies and were crowned by some rather intricately carved scrollwork.14

When Lake visited, the bell on the gate was broken, so he had to call to the concierge through the mail slot to get her attention (Picasso, a very opposite and left rich man, employed a small army of domestics.) Maybe Truman, who had served in France with the American Expeditionary Forces and remembered at least a sprinkling of French, had to do the same, shouting Excusez-moi! in his Missouri twang. In any event, contact was made, the gate was opened, and the four Americans were escorted inside the mansion.

In scenes from Picasso’s years at Villa Californie, the artist relaxes with his muse, Jacqueline Roque, and feeds his pet goat Esmeralda, who is aptly perched on a likeness sculpted by Picasso, 1957.

Picasso had purchased Villa Californie in 1955 and converted it into a sprawling atelier, filling the cavernous rooms with paintings, drawings, ceramics, and sculptures, all in various stages of progress. Picasso was a hoarder, much to the benefit of art historians—and his heirs, who would donate much of the contents of his homes to the French government in lieu of estate taxes. “He seldom threw anything away, even old envelopes,” his biographer John Richardson wrote, “so his hoard was constantly growing and threatening to engulf room after room.”15 And then there were the animals, a menagerie that included two dogs (a Dalmatian named Perro and a dachshund named Lump), multiple songbirds in cages, and Picasso’s pride and joy, a goat named Esmeralda, who was given free rein of the premises, outside and in.

After a short interval—Picasso always kept people waiting; it was one of his many unattractive peculiarities—the artist and his muse appeared and introductions were made, with Jacqueline acting as the interpreter for the group, though the Rosenmans also spoke some French.

The Trumans and Rosenmans had dressed up for the occasion. Harry Truman wore a navy blue suit with a double-breasted jacket, a triangle of handkerchief poking perfectly out of the left breast pocket. Picasso, on the other hand, was casually dressed in a bright blue sport shirt with dark slacks and canvas espadrilles. The three couples had lunch at the villa. The meal was prepared by Picasso’s cook, a maid named Garance, assisted by Jacqueline. The menu is lost to history, though according to John Richardson, who dined with Picasso at Villa Californie many times, the food served at the villa was usually “simple, basic fare.”16

After lunch—or perhaps before, the timeline is unclear—Picasso gave his guests a tour of the villa. “He had a picture of a goat, and there was the real goat wandering around the yard,” Truman recalled a few months afterward. “I said to him, ‘Do you mean to say that you took this beautiful goat and turned it into this monstrosity and can say to me that they look alike?’ He turned on his heel and walked away. The Boss [Bess] was never so mad at me in her life.”17

Surely Truman exaggerates. Rather than walking away from criticism, Picasso was much more likely to challenge it. Perhaps he responded by telling Truman one of his favorite stories, about an American GI who once came to visit his studio in Paris.

Right after the Liberation, lots of GIs came to my studio in Paris. I would show them my work, and some of them understood and admired more than others. Almost all of them, though, before they left, would show me pictures of their wives or girl friends. One day one of them who had made some kind of remark, as I showed him one of my paintings, about how “It doesn’t really look like that, though,” got to talking about his wife and he pulled out a tiny passport-size picture of her to show me. I said to him, “But she’s so tiny, your wife. I didn’t realize from what you said that she was so small.” He looked at me very seriously. “Oh, she’s not really so small,” he said. “It’s just that this is a very small photograph.” [Picasso bursts out laughing.] It sounds silly, I know, but it’s true. Eh bien, it’s the same story here—[he points to a canvas]—it’s a question of optique.18

Despite their many differences, Truman and Picasso actually hit it off. Truman later described