Reminder: Pablo Picasso was a bit of an asshole
Artists can be a temperamental sort. Even among the painfully reclusive, an artist requires some serious confidence—a belief that their truth is worthy of presenting to the world, and the world in turn deserving to receive that truth. Sometimes (though hardly always and never inevitably), this ego can manifest itself in the artist being what some might call an asshole. As an excerpt brought up on Twitter yesterday by Slate’s Ruth Graham reminds us, the great Pablo Picasso was certainly no exception. (Despite, of course, what The Modern Lovers might have to say on the subject.)
The line in question comes from the artist Françoise Gilot, famously one of Picasso’s muses, in her recently reissued 1964 memoir with Carlton Lake, Life With Picasso. Gilot recounts Picasso’s response to her leaving him, an equally vicious and pathetic attempt to big-time her as she walked out the door.
Even if you think people like you, it will only be a kind of curiosity they will have about a person whose life has touched mine so intimately. And you’ll be left with only the taste of ashes in your mouth. For you, reality is finished; it ends right here. If you attempt to take a step outside my reality—which has become yours, inasmuch as I found you when you were young and unformed and I burned everything around you—you’re headed straight for the desert.