there's this:
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| from https://uploads3.wikiart.org/images/pablo-picasso/las-meninas-velazquez-1957-4.jpg |
There is a room full of paintings by the artist formerly known as P. Ruiz-Picasso that document his absolute obsession with Velazquez's Las Meninas, and later paintings continued to suggest that that did not abate. After my earlier fixation with the Velázquez painting at the Prado, I was charmed and fascinated by the master's consuming one, and perhaps a little smugly justified. Here, the subject and one of scores of interpretations/variations. Did that room demonstrate that the notoriously egotistical master was humbled? Maybe. I feel that perhaps he felt the balances in the paintings were iconic, sort of the Golden Mean, but not.
A story by our guide, Marta Rioge. Some time ago, two of her clients were told that they were to see the Picasso Museum here in Barcelona that day on their walking tour, as we had been. We were all for it, but that couple said, "Oh no, we don't want to see that. We don't like Picasso." It seems that a friend of theirs, an architect, had shown the painter an unearthed clay object that he was immensely proud of having discovered, whereupon Picasso dipped his fingers in paint and dragged them across the clay treasure, remarking, "There. That is now very valuable." Great story, I think. Another that Marta shared is that Picasso famously once remarked that "If I grew up to be a soldier, I would be a general. If I grew to be a clergyman, I would be the Pope. I grew up to be Picasso."
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| Side by side Las Meninias, the original by Velasquez, and Pablo Picasso's "copy", untitled by the painter, as were all his paintings (from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f2/21/e9/f221e90671a5245412616446f2debdb2.jpg) |
