Does it really matter how Picasso treated ‘his’ women if the end result was some of the greatest art of the past 100 years? For example, one has only to compare the photograph he took of one of his wives, Olga, to the portrait it inspired, Olga Picasso dans un fauteuil (Olga Picasso in an Armchair) in the winter of 1917 to see that he transformed this somewhat stern, cold looking individual into a soft, timeless, transcendent beauty.
A provocative question, sure. And yes, it does matter how Picasso treated ‘his’ women, and this subject is the premise of Brian McAvera’s play, Picasso's Women.
Actually, the production, as staged at Dublin’s Focus Theatre, draws together three plays, each one focusing on a specific woman from the artist’s life. Namely, Fernande, Olga and Gaby. Mary Monynihan is directing the play about Olga, and, as a fan of Picasso’s work, I had to ask first about the press release’s claim that all these women were ‘seduced, adored and cruelly discarded’ by Picasso, and that this ‘exposes the brutal, personal magnetism of the great artist’. Actually, Olga left him!
“She did, yeah, with their son,” Mary responds. “And she was described as suffering from madness at the end of the relationship, but how much of a role Picasso played in that is the question. You could suggest her ‘madness’ was partly as result of the way he treated women. Before working on this play, I only knew Picasso as an artist, I knew nothing about his personal life, and I would say it was questionable the way he treated women and people in his life. Art was everything to him. His life revolved around it and the amount of work the man produced is incredible. But on a personal level it’s hard to say if he ever found happiness, even though he had so many relationships with women. And so many of these relationships did break down in ways that must have affected him badly. Olga stalked him for years, even when he was with a new lover. But that is part of the magnetism of the man the play explores. And I think he genuinely loved the women, there was huge passion involved and these were strong sexual relationships and the women were his muses. But I think he wanted to see how far he could push people to prove they loved him.”
Picasso also had to push art as far as he could. What is Mary’s response to the suggestion that ultimately, irrespective of how Picasso treated women, or they treated him, he immortalized women such as Olga by using them as muses.
“Definitely you could argue that position, and many people do,” she says. “Some even claim that his styles as an artist changed as the women in his life changed, though I don’t know exactly how true that is. Either way, it’s great for us working on the play, in terms of visuals, because there are so many pictures of these women, from very realistic representations to very surreal representations. You could see in his paintings a very abstract reflection of what was happening in his life, in terms of the different stages his relationships were going through.”
In fact, many of the women in Picasso’s paintings change from being beautified in the beginning of a relationship, such as Olga, to being presented as ugly and even monstrous.
“That is true, and Olga said when he started painting her that she wanted to recognise her face. And there is a series of very realistic representational portraits of Olga where, towards the end of the relationship you can see the grotesqueness that does reflect what’s happened in their life together. But what I love about Picasso’s Women is that Brian has taken the lives of women such as Olga, who most remember, if at all, as simply Picasso’s wife and muse, and tell us their story from her point of view.”
But, in the end, does Mary like Picasso?
“Yes, I do – with a question mark! Because there is this idea that because the man was a genius he can get away with so much. So should we separate the artist from the man. He was a right bastard in terms of how he treated women but he did produce magnificent art, and then you ask, ‘Is a woman prepared to put up with that because they love someone?’”