More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God
By Megan • Nov 8th, 2007 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)Michiko Kakukani reports for the New York Times:
“Talking about his own highly eclectic, highly protean style, Picasso once said to his mistress Françoise Gilot: “Of course if you note all the different shapes, sizes and colors of models he works from, you can understand his confusion. He doesn’t know what he wants. No wonder his style is so ambiguous. It’s like God’s. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things. The same with this sculptor. First he works from nature; then he tries abstraction. Finally he winds up lying around caressing his models.”
The comparison to God, like the use of the third person, was deliberate, of course. As John Richardson reminds us in the third installment of his magisterial and definitive biography, Picasso not only worshiped the gods Dionysius, Priapus and Mithra (the god of light and wisdom), but also regarded himself as their confrère — an artist so prodigally talented, so daring and so virtuosic that he could reinvent the universe.”
Megan is a creative producer at Wise Elephant.
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