Muse Who Dumped Picasso: John Richardson Tours Gagosian
Picasso biographer John Richardson stopped in front of “Bather Wringing Her Hair,” in which the artist’s mistress and muse Francoise Gilot appears as an awkwardly arched nude with her hair twisted in her chubby fists.
“Whenever I see it I think: ‘I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,’” said Richardson, 88, as he recently led journalists through “Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris- Vallauris, 1943-1953.”
“And that’s what she was doing at that point. She left him a few months later.”
This is the fourth grand show curated by Richardson for the Gagosian gallery. Imbedded in the exhibition is a sampling of paintings and drawings by Gilot, now 90. According to Richardson she still paints every day. A self-portrait shows a high degree of competence, though many others in the Cubistic mode suffer by comparison.
Gilot was 21, Picasso 40 years older, when they met in Paris in 1943 during the Nazi Occupation. In the following decade she bore him two children, Claude and Paloma.
In 1953, she became the only woman to ever leave the artist.
Woman Drawing
“What she wanted to be perceived as was an artist who had her own style and her own personality,” said Richardson, patrician and stylish in a navy-blue seersucker suit.
“And Picasso never took her very seriously as a painter and made terrible jokes about what she did.”
He noted one exception, “Woman Drawing (Francoise)” painted in 1951. It shows a woman gazing at a piece of paper and holding a brush or a pen in her hand.
“It’s one of the most important images of Francoise,” Richardson said. “Suddenly he decides to see her drawing.”
Richardson, who has spent half a century writing about his friend, pointed out a flower motif that appears in several paintings, saying that it represents the “hideous tiles” at the couple’s house in Vallauris in the south of France.
He stopped in front of a group of striking, mostly black- and-white lithographs from 1948 featuring images that depict Gilot wearing a top with puffed Renaissance-style sleeves. The outfit, in fact, was a “smelly” goat’s-fur coat Picasso brought back from the World Peace Congress in Poland that year, Richardson said.
Little Monsters
The exhibition also includes many paintings of the couple’s young children. Most hang in a room Richardson calls “a nursery.”
“Picasso is the only great master who could paint children without sentimentalizing them,” he said.
“His children are brats. They are little brutes. They are mean-spirited, naughty, nasty.”
In “Paloma sur un fond rouge” (1953), the child is crouching on a red carpet looking menacing despite her pigtails as she reaches with meaty, blocky fingers for a yellow car.
“Picasso adored Paloma but he does always turn her into a predatory monster,” Richardson said.
Gilot’s realistic 1952 painting “Les peintres” depicts three generations of artists, including Picasso, Gilot and communist painter Edouard Pignon.
“Of course one of the aspects of their life in Vallauris was that Picasso became a Communist Party member,” Richardson said. “And although Francoise would rather forget it, she too is on the roster of the Vallauris Communist Party.”
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Picasso was commissioned to do a portrait for a communist literary newspaper, Richardson said. He based it on a photograph of Stalin at the age of 25.
“The Communist Party was furious; it didn’t look like their beloved generalissimo, the man they revered so much,” said Richardson. “And that soured Picasso very much on being a communist.”
“Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953” runs through June 30 at 980 Madison Ave.; +1-212-744-2313; http://www.gagosian.com.
Muse highlights include Jason Harper on cars.
To contact the reporters of this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
John Richardson
Paul Goguen/Bloomberg News
British art historian John Richardson, an expert on the works of Pablo Picasso.
British art historian John Richardson, an expert on the works of Pablo Picasso. Photographer: Paul Goguen/Bloomberg News
"Femme au fauteuil N.1 (d'apres le rouge)"
Maurice Aeschimann/Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
"Femme au fauteuil N.1 (d'apres le rouge), December 30" (1948) by Pablo Picasso. The lithograph portrait of Picasso's muse Francoise Gilot is included in "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953," through June 30 at the uptown Gagosian Gallery in New York.
"Femme au fauteuil N.1 (d'apres le rouge), December 30" (1948) by Pablo Picasso. The lithograph portrait of Picasso's muse Francoise Gilot is included in "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953," through June 30 at the uptown Gagosian Gallery in New York. Photographer: Maurice Aeschimann/Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
"Woman drawing (Francoise)"
Phyllis Hattis Fine Art via Bloomberg
"Woman drawing (Francoise)" (1951) by Picasso. The painting depicts his muse and lover Francoise Gilot.
"Woman drawing (Francoise)" (1951) by Picasso. The painting depicts his muse and lover Francoise Gilot. Source: Phyllis Hattis Fine Art via Bloomberg
"Sitting Woman"
Israel Museum Collection/Alex Maguy via Bloomberg
"Sitting Woman'' (1949) by Picasso. It is one of 141 works by the Spanish artist in "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953," an exhibition at Gagosian Gallery. The painting is on loan from the Israel Museum.
"Sitting Woman'' (1949) by Picasso. It is one of 141 works by the Spanish artist in "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953," an exhibition at Gagosian Gallery. The painting is on loan from the Israel Museum. Source: Israel Museum Collection/Alex Maguy via Bloomberg
"Maternite, October 30"
Maurice Aeschimann/Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
"Maternite, October 30" (1948) by Pablo Picasso. The oil portrait of mother and child, reminiscent of a playing card, shows Gilot in the role of queen mother.
"Maternite, October 30" (1948) by Pablo Picasso. The oil portrait of mother and child, reminiscent of a playing card, shows Gilot in the role of queen mother. Photographer: Maurice Aeschimann/Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
"The Telephone Call"
Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
"The Telephone Call" by Francoise Gilot. The 1952 oil on canvas is one of 29 paintings by Gilot in the exhibition "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953."
"The Telephone Call" by Francoise Gilot. The 1952 oil on canvas is one of 29 paintings by Gilot in the exhibition "Picasso and Francoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953." Source: Gagosian Gallery via Bloomberg
Rate this Page
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions.