Picasso

When I was a child, my mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you'll become a general. If you are a monk, you'll become the Pope. Instead, I was a painter and became Picasso." "I'm going to show you how great I am." "I just want to say it on the bottom of my heart. I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody!" Hello, and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. Today, we are talking about Pablo Picasso, the world famous artist. There are a lot of reasons to study Picasso, even if you are not an artist and don't aspire to be one. One is the way he branded himself. All I have to do is say Picasso and a number of associations come to your mind. Greatness, inventiveness, controversy. His name is synonymous with 20th century art and with greatness. When you saw from that quote, all he had to say was, "I am Picasso," and you know what that means. One of Picasso's biographers, Patrick O'Brien, wrote that Picasso was "the most famous, the most controversial, in many ways the most influential, and undoubtedly the richest artist of his age." He was a drass man of genius and there is probably no single artist except Giado or Michelangelo who can justly compare with him in being responsible for so radically altering the course of art in his time. It's also a story, to me, about innovation and creativity and how to push boundaries. So if you're someone who wants to be creative, who wants to be innovative, or someone who wants to make a name for yourself, then this is a story for you. My sources for this episode are Picasso, a biography by Patrick O'Brien, and the mini-biography of Picasso by Gertrude Stein. So with all that said, let's get into it. This is Picasso. On October 25th, 1881, in Malaga, Spain, a child was born who was given the name Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paola Juan Nepumuqueno, Maria de los Remedios, Cipriano de la Santísima Teninidad, Ruiz y Picasso. OK, I know that was more than a mouthful. That was a few mouthfuls. He would have been known simply as Pablo Ruiz, the most people. Picasso was actually his mother's maiden name, and that was the naming convention, still is, in hispanic countries. Typically, you get both names. So Ruiz and Picasso, in this example, usually people would just go by their foot. Your father's name, for short, but you had both technically in your name. We'll talk later about why he dropped Ruiz and ended up going with Picasso as his last name. But for now, as a child, he would have been known mostly as Pablo Ruiz or Pablo Ruiz Picasso. Malaga, where he was born, is in southern Spain. It was by this point a pretty working class city that relied on a lot of agriculture. Patrick O'Brien writes that, quote, "The Ruiz family belonged to that traditionally almost non-existent body, the Spanish middle class." Which is pretty funny and also true. Spain, historically known as a place of a lot of extremes, extreme wealth, and a lot of poverty. Picasso had an interesting relationship with his father, who was a painter, who indoctrinated him to be an artist from his very first moment. Supposedly, Pablo's first words were "peace, peace," which was short for Lapis, he was trying to say "lapis," which is a Spanish word for pencil. So Pablo was really born into the art world. O'Brien writes, quote, "Don Jose," that's his father, was a good teacher, with a considerable share of technical knowledge. And later, when he found that he could teach him no more, he ceremonially handed his brushes over to the boy and never painted again. So the relationship with his father was very complicated. On the one hand, he always venerated him as a reliable and authoritative man, you know, Don Jose. And yet, there was also an aspect of perceived weakness because, you know, Picasso surpassed him as an artist. And I think it's difficult to surpass your father at such a young age, Pablo did it when he was in his teens. You know, this is the person who is supposed to be the unshakable rock of your life. The man who is supposed to guide you through life. And now, you know, you're like 13 years old and you're the man. So later in life, Picasso would sometimes paint his father as a passive presence in erotic scenes, essentially depicting him as a cuckold, perhaps an indication of the impotence he perceived in his father when he overtook him as a young teen. The relationship with his mother was very different. Here's what O'Brien writes, quote, his mother, however, stood quite apart. The relationship between them was uncomplicated love on either side, with some mixture of adoration on hers. And it is perhaps worthwhile recalling Freud's words on Gerta, with whom Picasso has often been compared, quote, "Sons who succeed in life have been the favorite children of good mothers." Okay, and this is something I have seen over and over again. That statement is true. Sons who succeed in life have been the favorite child of good mothers. The greats often have these complicated relationships with their fathers, but it appears that as a mother, you basically can't love your son enough. So Thomas Edison, Napoleon, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, William Randolph Hearst, all these people had doting mothers who showered them with love and affection, and you can add Picasso to that list. So Pablo Ruiz was small, and the most distinctive thing about him was his eyes. Patrick O'Brien writes, "He had, in fact, a most luminous and striking eye, a singular, penetrating gaze, always the first thing that people noticed." I commented on this on the Alexander Hamilton episode. He also had a striking gaze, as did many others, Steve Jobs comes to mind, but in every instance people are transfixed by their steady and unbreaking gaze. It seems to pull people in and capture their full attention, and Picasso had that as well. He is from an early age of prodigy. I mentioned that he overtook his father early on, but that's not because his father was necessarily a bad artist, but rather because Pablo Ruiz was exceptional. He just obviously had an incredible talent for drawing and painting from a very, very early age. Not, however, have any perceptible aptitude for anything else. He's an extremely indifferent student. He would just get up and leave school in the middle of the day in Malaga. He never paid attention. He was never a good student at anything, except for art. In fact, there's a great story from when he's very young, and he's at school, and he's really bad with numbers, and he could barely tell time. And he's in school, and he sees his uncle walking by, and he yells out to his uncle to come get him out of school. And his uncle shouts back, "When do you get out?" He calls back at one, because not being able to tell time, he thought that one would be the earliest possible time since it was the lowest number. But thereby, he condemned himself to the rest of the morning in school. In 1895, when Picasso is 14, the family moves to Barcelona, where his father was working at the school of fine arts. Pablo is admitted as a student, even though he is much too young, but his output, at this point, already had artistic merit, and he takes the entrance exam, and he aces it. Accounts vary, but he finishes the assignment well ahead of time. I've seen some people say that applicants were given a month, and he finished in a week. Others have said applicants were given a week, and he finished it in a few hours, but everyone agrees that he aces the entrance exam, and is a star student at the school of fine arts in Barcelona. And in fact, he quickly outgrows it, and so in 1897, at the age of 16, Pablo goes to Madrid, where he once again aces the entrance exam in a record time. At both schools, his attendance is sparse, as he frankly probably doesn't have much to learn from the teachers, and he spends most of his time observing daily life and painting. Painting on his own, not necessarily doing the school assignments. His output, from this time, when he's only a teenager, is very high quality, and some of the paintings verge on the precipice of masterpieces, like extremely high quality painting, from a boy who's just a teenager, one of the things that he's known for, is taking these trips out to the countryside with his artist friends to paint. It reminds me quite a bit of Arnold Schwarzenegger, how he would go out into the forest and lift weights with his bodybuilder friends. So here's what O'Brien writes about one of these excursions. He says, "They set off with a mule, provisions a dog, a small boy, and Polaris, that's his friend, and Polaris's younger brother, Salvador. They went as far as the mule could go, made a fire, and camped for the night in the open air. The next day, carrying their easels and color boxes, Picasso and Polaris climbed up through the forest, and eventually found their cave. Here they stayed for weeks and weeks, painting, drawing, and walking about, bathing in the nearby stream, collecting firewood, and sometimes fossils. They slept on a deep bed of scented grass and leaves, and just outside the cave, they kept a great fire burning until late at night. Every few days, Salvador brought them food, bread, wine, rice, beans, potatoes, stockfish, salt, pork, oil, and, among other things, Picasso learned to cook. Okay, so this is interesting to me, the comparison between Schwarzenegger just going out into the forest to just lift until his arms or legs couldn't take it anymore. And Picasso also going out into the countryside to just paint. So I think especially early on in your career, these retreats can be a great way to remove distractions and focus on mastering your craft. So he eventually leaves Madrid, where he goes back to Barcelona, and joins the intellectual and artistic ferment that was growing there. Barcelona was a center of the growing modernist movement. And the modernists met at a famous cafe called the Quatre Gots. And even though he is one of the youngest artists there, Pablo quickly becomes the unofficial leader at Quatre Gots. So how does he become the leader? Not through any politicking, not through, you know, glad handing and getting to know people, but through sheer talent. Okay, so here's another quote, says, when he was 18 penniless and unknown, he was accepted as a leading figure at the Quatre Gots, even by those who disliked him. He was not that he talked much. In fact, he was often silent, moody, withdrawn, absorbed, or apparently bored, as well he might have been with some of the morphine creeps who frequented the place. He was always easily bored and more easily as the years went by. But when he did speak, he spoke well. often wittily, and always with the unconscious authority of a man who could already draw and paint better than any of the artists there, except perhaps one, no now. Okay, so as always, the quickest way to leadership is not to ask for it, is not to try and, you know, politic your way to the top, is just to be so good that they can't ignore you. And that's what Pablo was already, so good that people have to recognize him as a leader of this movement in Barcelona. Well, Barcelona was a leading center of modernist thought and art, but not be center. That was Paris. Paris was where the action was. And so Picasso decides he needs to be in Paris. And he moves to Montparnasse, which is the neighborhood of Paris that housed the avant-garde modernist artists. At this point, he's desperately poor, selling a few paintings here and there, and only getting by with some generous subsidies from back home. One of the ways he gets by is by eating very little. If you've listened to this podcast for long, that won't surprise you. He was always a very light eater, but especially in these early days, if you've seen pictures of Picasso when he's older, he's got maybe a slightly sturdy, filled out frame. He was never fat, but he was a little thicker as an adult. But when he's a young man, he's very, very thin, notably thin. O'Brien writes, quote, "As far as food was concerned, he was naturally abstemonious. And although he smoked continually, he drank little wine and his upper teeth was mineral water." A contemporary, Max Jacob, put it even more succinctly. He was commenting on Picasso and his roommate. And he said, "Neither Picasso nor his roommate used to eat." That's it. That's how he described his eating habits. Picasso did not use to eat. That's how abstemonious he was. Now early on in Paris, he still got roots back in Spain. Plus, he needs financial support from his family. So he's back and forth a little between Spain and Paris. But as time goes on, he spends more and more time in Paris. In 1901, his good friend, Casa Gamas, commits suicide. And this kicks off what becomes known as the Blue Period for Picasso. The Blue Period runs from 1901 to 1904. The paintings are often somber and almost always use blue as the predominant color, hence Blue Period. But it's a mistake to think of it as one long depressive episode. He could still be sociable and happy, and the fascination with the color blue seemed to transcend the mere association with melancholy. So, in other words, he was transfixed by the color for its own sake and not just for its emotional associations. There is certainly a sad depressive undercurrent to many of the paintings, probably most of them. But that's not all it is. During this time, he's heavily influenced by another artist, Cézanne, a French painter. And in fact, Picasso hated to mention influences. He hated this concept of searching for other people's styles and influence in paintings. He thought that a painting stood on its own merit. But the only people who he ever mentioned as direct influences were Cézanne and Van Gogh. And kind of Matisse, but we'll get to that later. One of the things that is constantly emphasized in all these lives is you need to find your tribe, your people. People who can push you, collaborate with you, connect you to opportunities, give you ideas. And Picasso definitely finds that in Paris in Montparnasse. He makes friends with the other painters in Paris, but also with the other artists, especially writers. And that was who really formed the core of his social scene early on. So the modernist writer Gertrude Stein wrote, quote, "His friends in Paris were writers rather than painters. Why have painters for friends when he could paint as he could paint?" It was obvious that he did not need to have painters in his daily life. And this was true all his life. He needed ideas, anybody does. But not ideas for painting. No, he had to know those who were interested in ideas, but as to knowing how to paint, he was born knowing all of that. Okay, that is probably something of an exaggeration. Obviously, no one is born knowing how to paint. But that's not too much of one. He was already extremely advanced in painting. And so yeah, like he didn't need tips. He was more just looking for people with interesting ideas that could inspire him. It reminds me a little bit of my conversation with Mr. Beast, Jimmy Donaldson, and I was asking him like, "What YouTubers inspire you?" And he's like, "You know, I watch YouTube because I like YouTube, but I'm not really taking tips and tricks from other YouTubers. Like, I know YouTube. I know how to do this." And so it's interesting to see that similarity between the two of them. In 1904, he once again becomes consumed with a color this time of rose. So from 1904 to 1906 is considered his rose period. And it does reflect more comfort, a more settled social scene. You know, at this point, he is firmly settled in Paris. He's got his group of friends. And he's got a generally sunnier disposition. Although, once again, it would be a mistake to associate this period with just a single emotion. It's not like every painting during the rose period is happy and cheerful, just as not every painting during the blue period is depressing. And for both periods, these paintings, you know, you might have in your mind, you think Picasso, okay, you think Cubism, that has not come yet. And so the paintings that he's drawing during these periods are more continuation of modernism, which is sort of, if you don't know a lot about art, think about kind of impressionism going down that track a little bit more. Okay, they're kind of impressionistic, I guess, is the best way to describe it. It's around 1907 that things start to get weirder for Picasso. This is what is known as his primitivist movement. And it is here that his paintings start to get more abstract, more two-dimensional, more primitive, right? That's the name. One of the things that has long been debated is the extent of influence of African art on his painting from this time. There's a big fad at this time of modern artists getting interested in primitive art, okay, especially old African tribal masks and things like that. And Picasso always denied that these had a particular influence on him. Again, this is someone who didn't like to acknowledge influences generally. And so it kind of rubbed him the wrong way when people were like, "Oh, all these paintings come from this influence of African tribal masks." And he'd say, "No, they came from me." And how I was feeling in my thoughts. But on a certain level, like, okay, maybe it didn't really influence him in a direct sense, as he said, although he did acknowledge it a little bit later. What can't be denied anyway is that this African tribal art had a big influence on the scene in Paris. And that then, of course, influenced the direction of Picasso's art, because he was moving in the same direction as a lot of people. He was an innovator. He was kind of leading out in that way. But he was definitely not the only one. And he was not even the first one to be going in this direction. I've been referring to him as Picasso now. I should mention that he had slowly transitioned the way that he had signed his paintings from Ruisse or Ruisse Picasso to Pablo Arpicaso and then just Pablo Picasso or Picasso. Some people see this as a rejection of his father. That's probably overstated. It was more a simple move to be unique. Ruisse is quite a common name in Spain. It's not exactly Smith, but it's not much less common than that. There are a lot of Ruisse's, but Picasso is a very unique name of mysterious and indeterminate origins. Some people have ascribed Morish origins to the name. Others think there is a Sephardic Jewish connection. No one knows for sure exactly where the name comes from. But the important thing is like, there are very few people in Spain with the last name Picasso. It's very uncommon, very rare. And so Pablo, you know, wanted to stand out. He would be one of many notable Ruisse's in the world. I mean, go Google the name Pablo Ruisse. I just did it. And even today, there are like a bunch of famous Pablo Ruisse's. There's an Argentine singer. It looks like a soccer player, a baseball player, an artist ironically. Of course, none of these people were alive at the time. But the point is that it was a name that a lot of people had, kind of like Ben Wilson, completely unremarkable. But there is only one Pablo Picasso. And so he uses that as a way to set himself apart. Just another indicator that he is someone special. So I don't know. Maybe there's a lesson there. Maybe I should start going by my middle name, Dow, because there are comparatively few Dow's out there. You know, I don't know. Hello, and welcome to How To Take Over the World. This is B. Dow, Wilson. We'll see. But I think O'Brien says it quite well. Here's how he sums it up. He says, the real significance of this unusual striking name is that it had at least some influence in setting its owner slightly apart of making him feel that he was not quite the same as other people. A feeling that was to be reinforced by several other factors quite apart from that isolating genius, which soon made it almost impossible for him to find any equals. Okay, so I've talked about the blue period, the rose period, and his African or primitivist period. But I haven't mentioned any specific paintings. One of the difficulties in doing so is that there are just so many of them. He was incredibly prolific. Here's a good quote about that again from O'Brien. He says Picasso was one of the hardest working painters, sculptors, drassmen, etchers that ever lived. Where do I get this power of creating and forming? I don't know. I have only one thought. Work. I paint just as I breathe. When I work, I relax. Doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired. It's still often three in the morning before I switch off my light, he said. And this would continue for basically his entire life. You know, finally in the last two years before he died, he slowed down a little, but he would just paint and paint and paint for his entire life. Friends died, lovers came and went, wars came, wars ended, spring summer fall winter, poverty riches, through it all, Picasso maintained an almost unparalleled level of output. He was just addicted to painting. He loved it. He was good at it. As you said, he painted like he breathed. It was habitual. It was almost like a tick. He worked out everything, all of his emotions, his feelings about the world through painting. So that is to say, there are some paintings more famous than others through all of these periods, but there are none that stand out so much as to be truly error defining. It's just an extremely high level of extremely high quality output, okay? In baseball terms, I know only 50% of my audience is American, so some of these sports analogies I know. But in baseball terms, he's just hitting triples the entire time, triples, triples. In terms of his work style, he has this pure obsessive work style, where he embraced chaos and just forgot about all comfort, everything except for work, okay? Here's a quote about that. This is from a friend who said, "I usually found him in the middle of the studio, near the stove, sitting on a rickety chair, rather a low one, as I remember. The discomfort did not worry him in the least. He fixed the canvas on the lowest notch of the easel, which forced him to bend almost double as he painted. If he had to look attentively at the palette, it was on the floor, a mass of white in the middle of other colors, mostly blue, dotted around the edge. He still kept a sideways eye upon the canvas. His concentration never left either. Both were in his field of vision, and he took in both at the same time." Okay, so I love that style. Like, I've been guilty of this, right? Of thinking I need to optimize my work setup. I need just the bright number of monitors, and I need an ergonomic keyboard and ergonomic chair. Meanwhile, Picasso just can't think about anything except for painting. He's got his palette on the floor, and the easel is too low, and he's got a bend to paint. He didn't care about any of that. He just wanted to get to painting as quickly as possible. He had no distractions, nothing in his room, except for the canvas and the paint. This reminds me of this idea of setting apart. He had set apart a space to paint, and when he painted, he had set apart that time. To paint. And nothing was going to distract him. Nothing was going to come between him and painting. So that idea of setting apart, I think, is really powerful. So when I was 19 years old, I served a mission for my church. I was one of those dorky guys with the white shirts and ties and nametags, and I walked and biked the streets of El Paso, speaking Spanish, trying to convert people to my church. Church Jesus Christ, the Lord of Saints, Mormonism. And before I left home to go serve in El Paso, I was set apart. A leader of the church put his hands on my head, gave me a blessing, and set me apart as a missionary. And what that meant was that for those two years, they were literally a set apart from normal life. I wrote home once a week, and I called home on Christmas and Mother's Day, but otherwise I didn't speak to my family for two years. Didn't have a smartphone, didn't talk to my friends, other than writing letters once a week. I didn't go to the movies, didn't play video games, didn't have a computer, didn't listen to music, two years of my life were just set apart for this one purpose of serving this mission. And that is setting apart on a big scale, right? Two whole years of my life were set apart, but I think you can also do it on a much smaller scale. Set apart two hours, for example, two hours of complete focus and commitment. And I think you see that in Picasso's work style, the same idea of setting apart. While he was working, he was set apart from the world, no distractions. And I think it's similar for Picasso, to me, great, now I'm comparing myself to Picasso, in that painting was spiritual for him. Someone asked him why he didn't paint any religious art. And his answer was, what do you mean by religious art? It's an absurdity. How can you make religious art one day and another kind of the next? Okay, so in other words, everything was religious to him. If your painting didn't touch on fundamental ideas of universal truth and experience, then what the hell were you doing painting in the first place? Okay, painting was sacred to him. That's why it was so set apart. Another quote I love from O'Brien on this, quote, nothing shows his sense of the sacred more clearly than his saying that a really good painting was good because it had been touched by the hand of God, whose existence, of course, he denied from time to time. Okay, I think in order to do great work, in some sense, you must regard it as sacred, like Picasso did. And that might seem out of place depending on your line of work, but I don't think it is. I think through a commitment to craft and workmanship, almost any effort can be made sacred. It reminds me of the story I've heard of a composer. I think it was Felix Mendelssohn, but I'm spitballing here, so don't hold me to that. But when he worked at home in his private office, composing music, he would be wearing his finest clothing, like a big suit with a waistcoat and everything. And someone asked him why he wore such fine clothing while composing alone, and he said, because I'm going before God. And Machiavelli actually wrote something similar that he wore his finest clothing when writing because he felt like he was going to commune with the eminent men of the past. And I think all of this applies even when you are not a believer, as Picasso was not. But everyone who achieves great things, even those who are not believers in the strictly religious sense, like Napoleon, like Picasso, like Steve Jobs, they all believe in something bigger than themselves, whether they call that fate or destiny or providence. And I believe that's a very powerful idea that will raise the level of your work. When you like Picasso, set apart that time for your work and view it as an opportunity to be touched by God, right, to commune with that greater power than yourself. And you can see this in Picasso in the way he regarded money. He was a person, right? So of course he recognized the need to make money, and he often used money as a competitive benchmark. You know, it didn't bother him at all when his paintings fetched a big price on the open market. But he actually didn't like to sell his paintings. He grew attached to them and he preferred to keep them when possible and got annoyed when he heard of buyers reselling them. In fact, he hated to finish paintings because as long as they were unfinished, they were alive. But as soon as he was finished, they were done. He referred to them as dead. He couldn't paint them anymore. So of course he did finish a lot of paintings, as I said, he was extremely prolific. But calling them done always came with a great deal of reluctance and resistance from Picasso. And that was because he had this almost religious attachment to his paintings. As long as we're talking about Picasso's work habits and his extreme output, it's worth pointing out that he was not a shut-in at this time. He loved to corouse, to be social, to talk with friends, to visit musicals, to party basically. And I think people who plan out their days by the minute and don't make any time for fun are not only unhappy, but are not on the path to greatness. From Napoleon to Julius Caesar to Benjamin Franklin to Picasso, great achievers always make time to have fun, A, because you need it. Right? You just need it. It raises your spirits. You're going to feel better. But also because the things that you enjoy in life, the things that are fun to you, they inspire you, and often they can influence your work. And it's just an essential part of a vital, productive life. This is a mistake I see a lot of people make. They are ambitious, and they want to dedicate every second of every day to their work. And that's just not realistic, nor is it optimal, even if it was realistic. We see from time and time again, from people like Picasso to Benjamin Franklin to Napoleon, they make time for fun. It matters to becoming great. Picasso, for him, is very important to be surrounded by these other great artists. I had tried to take that to heart. And so I have tried to surround myself with other great podcasters. I want to tell you about one of those podcasters, one of those podcasts. It's called Founders by David Centra. It's like how to take over the world, but specifically for founders, people who found companies. And he goes through the great founders in history and draws out great lessons to learn. It's an incredible podcast. It's extremely well done. I've been listening for years, his recent episode on J. Paul Getty. I actually, he did two episodes recently on J. Paul Getty. I love those. I would listen to those. But he also focuses on other figures that founders look up to, and one of those is Napoleon. And he's got some great episodes on Napoleon. And so I love listening to those and comparing them to my research and my reading on Napoleon to see what someone with a founder mindset specifically takes away from Napoleon's life. So it's an incredible podcast. If you love how to take over the world, you will love founders. Go give it a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, he's sort of working through the popular styles. He's one of the best painters. He can copy almost anyone. You know, if someone says do a matease, he can quickly sit down and do a passable pestish of matease. And there are distinctive elements to Picasso, but more than anything, he is versatile and searching, trying to find something new. It seems like his work is building towards something, although neither he nor anyone else knows what that is yet. Some other things about Picasso from this time, he was a great walker. He loved to take long walks through Paris to think and observe, especially at night. And this is another thing that tends to unite great achievers. They are great walkers. And Nietzsche said that all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. And Schwarzenegger talks about how important walks are to him to his creativity, Steve Jobs, when he had meetings, oftentimes liked to take those meetings on a walk rather than sitting down across a desk. So I think walking is an underrated part of creativity, something that mattered a lot to Picasso. Another thing we're pointing out about this time period is that, you know, he was a horrible student, as I said, he was also just horrible at most things, other than painting. Not that he was an inherently untalented or stupid person, quite contrary, obviously. He was naturally witty, charismatic, perceptive, he had a great memory. It's just that he was so consumed with painting and so sure of himself and his abilities that he could hardly be troubled with other matters. So for example, O'Brien writes, "At no period of his life did time mean much to Picasso, still less punctuality. writing a letter. finding an envelope a postage stamp were only a little less of a torment than doing up a packet and sending it away. The hand that could model the most satisfying statue of a goat known to man could only with the greatest reluctance be brought to make a parcel. And even then the resulting bundle with its inadequate paper and odd bits of string could scarcely confront the post. Okay, so this is someone who is completely feckless in his day-to-day life can barely send a package, right? Like, he's handing these things over to the postmaster who's like, what is this? But he's able to get by because he has a string of lovers and agents who recognize his talent and are able to sort of shepherd him through life. So great geniuses like Picasso often need to be protected and taken care of because their minds are so consumed with their work that they struggle with the duties of day-to-day life. And I know that this sort of thinking is kind of antiquated people take pride these days and being a normal person, being a man of the people, right? I do my own laundry, I do my own dishes, but personally, I don't think there is anything noble in doing your own cooking and cleaning. I do a fair amount of mine out of necessity, but I don't like toot my horn about it. Okay, I do think geniuses, and I'm not trying to let myself in with them, but geniuses should be enabled in this way, even if it creates a little bit of, you know, primadonna syndrome, as it did with Picasso. Like, yes, he was a primadonna, frankly, in a lot of different ways. But I mean, what do you want? Would you rather have Picasso spending 10% of his days, you know, doing laundry? No, I'm glad that he spent that time painting and creating. Okay, so from this sort of African primitivist period, he makes the leap to what would be his most lasting contribution to the world of art, cubism. A painting called Le Demoiselle de Avignon is generally considered to be the first cubist work by Picasso or by anyone for that matter. Although you can go look it up. I know you're going to have trouble googling it based on my pronunciation. Le Demoiselle de Avignon, try again, maybe that's helpful. It's not a complete statement of what would become cubism. It definitely has cubist traits, but you can tell that he's kind of working it out in real time. But with this painting, Picasso thinks he has landed on something and produces a number of cubist paintings, which he keeps himself and then he unveils to some artist friends one night in a sort of coming out party. O'Brien describes the reaction. He says he called some chosen friends to his studio, wishing to communicate this message from another world whose aesthetics were based not on conventional beauty still less on anecdote, prettiness or charm, but on some great force without a name. They could not grasp it at all. Their only reactions were shock, alarm, regret, dismay, some nervous or indignant laughter. Even the recipient Shkukain shook his head and said, what a loss to French art. Now keep in mind, these are not like people he's pulling off the street. These are not people like you and me. These are modern artists, okay? People who already have their heads in the world of the weird and esoteric and the forward looking. But even to this select group, this is too far out. This is too bizarre, too weird. They can't grasp it at all. And cubism is indeed really hard to understand, even harder to explain. I won't pretend to fully grasp it myself. Understanding it is difficult in part because Picasso refused to explain it. Here's a quote from Picasso himself. When we invented cubism, we had no intention whatsoever of inventing cubism. We simply wanted to express what was in us. Not one of us drew up a plan of campaign, and our friends, the poets followed our efforts attentively, but they never dictated to us. Okay, as I said, Picasso hated explaining his art. So there was no statement on, you know, this is cubism, this is why we did it, this is what it means. No, he just, this is it. He put it out in the world. He believed that art should stand on its own merits. If you wanted any explanations, consult the art. You'll find all your answers there or not. And if not, it's not for you apparently. Later in life when Picasso was famous in his art, very valuable, a woman asked him what one of his paintings represented. And he responded, ma'am, that painting represents 20 million francs. And, you know, O'Brien writes that when people asked him what stuff meant, he would commit himself, quote, to use mockery, bad faith and self-contradiction with baffling skill. Okay, so if anyone actually didn't know not to ask him the stuff and did ask him, hey, what does this mean? He would answer with non-sequitors, with riddles, with just, he would troll them essentially. He would troll them. And I actually think that Picasso's refusal to explain himself is one of the attributes that explains part of the popularity of Cubism. I tend to agree with his argument that art should stand on its own, but it was also a great marketing technique, although I don't think he meant it as such. But I mean, think about it. It creates a sense of mystery, a sense of gravity. It challenges the viewer. You figured out. And people always value more highly those things that they work for. Okay, so this lack of explanation makes it more difficult to explain Cubism. But I will try. I'm not an artist. I'm free to do so. And of course, take all this with a grain of salt as I am quite honestly way out of my death here. I know some things about history and some things about some things, but painting is really not one of them. But this is just how I understand it. Okay, the stock explanation, if you like, go to Wikipedia that you get about Cubism is that it represents perspective and time. Okay, so you're able to see an object through space and time by seeing it from multiple perspectives simultaneously. Okay, so yeah, these cubes and one might represent, you know, an element of the object from the front and another from the side and one from the future and one from the present. I am not satisfied by this, especially because I just don't think it accurately captures what it's like to see a Cubist painting. Okay, when I look at a Picasso from this Cubist era, I don't feel like I'm seeing something through time from multiple perspectives. I understand it differently. Here's how I understand it. For most of time, the history of art is the history of trying to more realistically render the real world. That is why Da Vinci was so revolutionary because he was able to use perspective and shadow and shading to more realistically render three dimensional objects. And it only progresses from there with painting becoming more and more realistic over the centuries. Of course, there's always an element of meaning, of passion capturing beauty and emotion. So it's definitely not as simple as more realistic equals better, but that is one major thrust of artistic development. However, in the 19th century, you reach sort of an endpoint. And this coincides with photography. It is now possible to render the world completely realistically through photos. And also painting techniques were becoming so advanced that they too did not leave much room to work with. There just wasn't much to do in terms of rendering objects more accurately. And so you see the opposite movement, beginning with impressionism, rather than trying to faithfully render things, the objective is to deconstruct reality, to capture the essence of something, the artistic mayor of it, the emotion by rendering it less realistically. Right? How little can I give you and have you still get the essential meaning of what I'm trying to communicate here? So impressionism is the start of this where you have the general form of a thing, but without sharp details. And then cubism is a major step in which most basic components are there just enough to give you an idea of something. So if you think of a cubist painting of a violin or a face, you basically could not give less information and still have an idea of what is being depicted. Okay, so this reaches kind of an endpoint, right? Like cubism, yeah, in that way it is interesting, right? I can take a face and what is the least amount of information with the least amount of context that I can give you and you still get what I'm trying to get across. The only possible progression to be made is what you eventually get with Pollock and Rothko, where the communication is further deconstructed into pure color. There are a couple steps in between, obviously, abstractism, purism. But that is the long arc of it, essentially. Okay, this doesn't explain all of art because something like surrealism moves on a different axis, I think. But this explains a lot of what cubism was. The creative act of demonstrating the essence of a thing with as little information as possible. And if you want to see a deeper meaning to it, perhaps maybe this was the idea that by avoiding the superfluous, you can see more clearly into the heart, the meaning of a subject, right? I'm stripping away everything else by communicating the minimum possible visual information. You can see straight into the heart of the thing. Are you not distracted by shapes and lighting and shading? All you see is the emotion, the essence. I'm not sure cubism necessarily does this successfully, but that is how I understand it. And again, I want to make clear this is not from any of my reading for this episode. This is just me thinking about it and trying to work out what is going on here because all Picasso says about it is that, quote, we simply wanted to express what was in us. It's obviously not super helpful as an explanation. O'Brien refers to it as, quote, an anarchist bomb tossed into Western European painting. Well, whatever it's in Intention, Cubism is deeply unpopular at first as you just heard, but of course it is a subject of great curiosity from fellow artists who are trying to understand it. Again, like I said, there's that mystery that you figured out. And so all these artists are like, yeah, I want to understand. I want to figure out what you're getting at here. And as we all know, it would grow over time to become an extremely popular and influential movement. I also think that it's, as I said, it's mystery was a part of, it's a lure. I also think it's controversy. It's unpopularity is a part of the point, right? It challenges you. There's a great story from the book Becoming Steve Jobs. He's at next and he wants to make a splash. So he comes up with this idea of two programmers working on two computers, one a sun system, which is one of their competitors, and one working on one of their computers, a next computer. And of course, they're carrying out the same task. And the programmer working on the next computer finishes much earlier than the sun programmer, and has time to play games while the sun guy struggles to finish his work. And Mike Slade, who's the head of marketing for next, comes up with a different idea. And he has this elaborate campaign outlined. And Steve Jobs tells him, nope, and this is a quote, the only thing that counts is picking a fight. If you'll remember, one of his other best ads, the 1984 ad, was also all about picking a fight. And Steve was right, picking a fight is probably the best way to get attention. If you're walking down the street and you see two guys on the corner playing basketball, you may or may not stop to watch. But if you're walking down the street and you see two guys throwing punches at each other, you have to stop and see what's going on. So I think one of the things that explains Cubism's success is that it essentially picks a fight with art world. It says, no, art is not about being pretty or beautiful, it's not going to make you feel comfortable, it's controversial by its very nature. Now Cubism is the major innovation of Picasso's life. And he would never have another one like it. That doesn't mean that his experimentation stopped there. He did experiment with other styles over the years, including surrealism. But he was never a master of any of those, nor was he a great innovator in those fields. So one great artistic innovation of his lifetime and it was a great one was Cubism. Okay, so that is really the 19 teens and into the early 20s that Cubism is happening. He's innovating there, it starts with his deeply unpopular movement and people are intrigued by it. And it starts to gain some acceptance, especially in artistic circles and starts to gain popularity through the 19 teens. I guess I'll kind of skip through the 1920s, as my intern Michael said, the plot basically boils down to, he's happy, he's sad, he's happy, he's sad. And through it all, he paints, he never stopped painting. The 1930s bring us probably Picasso's most famous painting, Guernica. It was painted in response to a massacre in the Spanish Civil War. His Spanish Civil War is kind of a preview of World War II. It's a conflict between Spanish fascists led by Francisco Franco and Spanish communists. The point is the city of Guernica, the fascists bomb it. Franco's German allies actually, they were the ones with the air power. So fascist Spain is supported by Hitler and the Germans and they bomb the city of Guernica, which is the small city outside of Bilbao. They kill a number of people, including some civilians. It was originally reported to be something like 1500 civilians killed out of a town with only a population of 7,000. Okay, so it's this horrible massacre. It turned out upon further investigation, the true number was probably much lower, perhaps as low as 150 civilians killed. But for our purposes, at the time, everyone is running with this 1500 number and it seems like this huge atrocity. Now, Picasso had always been a vaguely left-wing person, but he had tried to stay mostly a political, for whatever reason. I think it just didn't concern him. Art was what mattered to him. But Guernica is his first piece of political art, and it's the first time that he includes a political statement. So actually, before he finishes it, he releases a statement on the massacre. He says, "The Spanish conflict is reactions fight against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing but one unceasing war against reaction and against the death of art. How could it be thought even for a moment that I was in agreement with reaction and evil?" In the picture I am now working on, and which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent work, I clearly express my loathing for the military cast that has plunged Spain into a sea of suffering and death. Okay, so he releases that statement as he's working on Guernica, and when he completes it, it is a masterpiece. It's a major success when it comes out. It's a black and white cubist painting, and while I wouldn't call myself Cubism's biggest fan, it does seem to lend itself uniquely well to expressing the horrors of war. You have this twisted expression of this massacre and the lack of context and the multiple perspectives that the confusion really does well in conveying the senselessness and ugliness of a massacre. And again, Guernica is the only painting where he was forthcoming about explaining its purpose and the symbols. One interviewer described his interaction with Picasso like this, "Picasso kept nodding his head," as I spoke. "Yes," he said. "The bowl there represents brutality, the horse of the people. Yes, there are you symbolism, but not in the others." During the same interview, he observed a purpose of his political consciousness. There is no deliberate sense of propaganda in my painting. Except in Guernica, I said. Yes, he replied, except in the Guernica. In that, there is a deliberate appeal to people, a deliberate sense of propaganda. Okay, and Guernica is kind of a watershed moment for him. He always tried to be as apolitical as possible. But the conflicts of the 1930s and 40s forced his hand. So first there was Guernica and his statement in opposition to the Franco-led Spanish government, and then there was the German occupation of Paris during World War II. Picasso chose not to leave Paris. He was just too much his home to abandon it, and the only other place that he could call home, Spain, was already ruled by fascists. And during the war, he didn't participate in any armed resistance. He had no contact with intelligence agencies. He wasn't part of the underground or the resistance. He undertook no heroic actions during the war. But I mean, he was in his 60s by this time, and past the age of wartime heroics, if he had ever had that sort of disposition, which I don't think he ever did. There is one famous, though untrue story of him explaining where he was going at a German checkpoint in the city. And the soldiers were skeptical of his claim that he was an artist. And so there's an, you know, who are you really? And so he pulled out a miniature painting of Guernica on a postcard and showed it to the soldier who replied, "You did this?" And Picasso supposedly replied, "No. You did." Okay. Again, not true, but a fun story. What he really did do during World War II was suffer through harsh conditions and continue to paint. He did join the Communist Party in the 1930s, but even that was marked by some amount of mutual distrust and disappointment. His statement upon joining the party was pretty milk-toast, here's what he said. My joining the Communist Party is the logical outcome of my whole life and of the whole body of my work. For I am proud to say that I have never looked upon painting as an art intended for mere pleasure or amusement. Since line and color are my weapons, I have used them in my attempt at gaining a continually greater understanding of the world and of mankind, so that this understanding might give us a continually greater freedom. Okay. It's not the world's most eloquent or persuasive argument in favor of communism. Having said that, Picasso was a useful piece of propaganda for the Communists for a time. However, he was never very doctrinaire. When we're leaked about the gulags in the USSR, Picasso was quite critical of the Stalin regime and never involved himself in politics as much as the Communists would have liked. There's a good quote from the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, who is in fact pretty right wing, and I think his quote demonstrates how people felt about Picasso's half-hearted embrace of communism. Dalí said, Picasso is a painter, so am I. Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I. Picasso is a Communist, and neither am I. Okay. So he was a Communist, both Communists and non-Communists didn't fully buy it. I think it's maybe more appropriate to think of him as an anarchist or as someone who was fundamentally left-wing in orientation, but apolitical. After the war, Picasso does a number of things. He had explored a number of different mediums. He had sculpted previously, but he does much more of it after the 1940s. He also tries his hand at pottery. He does some illustrations for books. He creates backgrounds and scenes for ballets composed by Eric Sati. He even tries his hand at poetry, which you can still read, and is frankly not that good. He innovates a little bit in his painting, again nothing like Cubism, though. Here's what O'Brien says about it. From this time onwards, he repeatedly revolutionized his own painting, drawing and sculpture. But these were personal revolutions, since by definition, he could not throw down what was already laid in ruins. Okay, in other words, like if we view Cubism as a deconstruction, there just wasn't that much left to deconstruct when it came to art. During this time, I haven't spoken much of his personal life. He had married in 1918 to a woman named Olga that had separated very acrimoniously in 1935, and since then, he had had a number of long-term relationships. Picasso's love life is very interesting to people. He could be very warm and friendly and loving, like a true spaniard of that time. He could also be extremely possessive, controlling, neglectful, and even abusive. I will spare you the dirty details of his many dalliances, affairs, and mistresses. I will sum it all up by saying Picasso is one of the most impulsive men I have ever read about. Pure Dinesian will. And that is part of what made him great. He's painting what is an expression of those impulses of that will. And it's a big part of what made basically every single one of his relationships such a disaster as well. You know, often our flaws are the flip side of our greatest virtues. That was true in the case of Picasso. Before the war, he had been somewhat famous, mostly in artistic circles and amongst collectors. But it's after the war that he became famous famous in a way that people actually knew. So listen to this quote. Before the war, he had been a very well known painter, famous at least by name among all Europeans who knew anything about art, vaguely notorious among the general public. But it did not spread far beyond his own world. His reputation, though great, was largely a matter of hearsay for those out of reach of the galleries in the capital cities. And I find that fascinating as well. It's just interesting to me that Picasso was more famous than any of his actual paintings were. I think that is one of my biggest takeaways. The greatest creation of Picasso's life was Picasso, right? Picasso, the legend. Yes, he was born Pablo Ruiz Picasso, as well as like 30 other names that you heard at the beginning. But Picasso, that word, that was the creation, that was his own creation, right? And he did this through branding through his unique name, his unique style of dress, more than anything he did it through cubism, his unique invention for the world. He also did it by his strategic silence, his refusal to explain himself by remaining in enigma. He has a quote that I think explains well, at least a piece of how he created this mystique, this persona. Now you have to understand that during this quote, he is trolling. As I said before, he could be very sarcastic. He liked to troll his detractors. So that's what he's doing here. So don't take this 100% seriously. But I think there is an element of truth in it as well. Here's what he said. I myself, since cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and critics with whatever bizarre extravagances passed through my head. And the less they understood, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, rebuses, and arabesques, I became famous very quickly. And for a painter, fame means selling, making money, making a fortune, growing wealthy. So today, as you know, I am famous and I am rich. But when I am quite alone, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in an ancient splendid sense of the word. Giato and Tiscian Rembrandt and Goya were true painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and to the utmost of his own powers has exploited the silliness, the vanity, and the stupidity of his contemporaries. Now, obviously, he was not really so cynical. And the expressions of his art were very sincere. And yet, I do think he had an intuitive understanding of how his expressions and lack thereof affected people. And I also think he had an intuitive understanding of what would upset the public, and he enjoyed that. You know, the fact that he's trolling shows that he enjoys trolling. So yes, cubism was more than just the cynical attempt to excite and annoy and anger the public. But I do think there was an element of that as well that he knew it would have that effect and he liked that. Well, again, and this is one of the three lines of his life, even as he becomes very, very famous after World War II, he never stops painting, O'Brien summarizes it this way. He was a man who never stopped working all his life, whose output has been estimated at over 15,000 paintings, to say nothing of his sculpture, engravings, and countless drawings. The crowning moment of his life is in 1971. The Paris that he had entered as a starving artist, more than 60 years previously, celebrated him in grand style. Quote, "The great gallery of the Louvre itself was rehung, and some of the most illustrious names in the history of art having been moved aside, eight magnificent Picasso's took their place. It was a most delicate triumphal stroke, worthy of the nation and the man." Well, this apex of his career actually came very near to the end of his life, Picasso had always had an extreme phobia of death. He had trouble discussing it, didn't want to be around it, rarely painted it, he wouldn't paint any self-portraits after he started to visibly age, and he didn't even attend his father's funeral. So it's merciful that his death came rather suddenly on April 8, 1973. He died of a pulmonary edema and heart attack. He'd been having dinner with some friends the night before his heart attack. Supposedly, his last words were, "Make a toast to me. Make a toast to my health. I can't drink anymore." And then he left his guests saying, "And now I must go back to work." He was up painting until 3am, that morning, Picasso woke at 11.30, unable to move, and by 11.40, he was dead. So I'll wrap up here. I'm going to kick out the non-paying listeners here. If you'd like to hear all of my takeaways and my end notes, you can go to takeoverpod.supercast.com or if you are listening in Apple podcasts, you can go subscribe right in the app. Also as a reminder, if you would like a premium subscription, but for whatever reason, you can't afford one. Maybe you are a student, maybe you just got laid off. It doesn't matter the reason. Go ahead and send me an email at [email protected] and I will give you one of your premium for free. You don't have to explain yourself. Just say, "Hey, Ben, I want premium and can't afford it." Or, "I'm a student," or whatever. And I'll get that all set up. OK, until next time, thank you for listening to "How to Take Over the World." (upbeat music) One small note I forgot to mention, Picasso was dyslexic. He was horrible at spelling, and notably, he would reverse letters and especially question marks he would draw the wrong way. This actually extended to his art, where his matadors would sometimes accidentally end up left-handed because he tended to invert things in his brain. So my good friend Cliff is also one of these people who's very smart and also dyslexic, and that made things tough for him because he was a super go-getter. But you know, it's a major hindrance in your life if you have trouble reading. So he created Speechify, a platform that turns any written content into audio. I use it all the time for articles that people send me that I want to read, but I just know that I'm never gonna get around to it. So I essentially just turn them into podcasts by putting them into Speechify, and then knock them out in 15 minutes in the car by listening at two or three X speed. I also use Speechify for the research for this podcast because I read so much material for these episodes, so I have to read fast. And I find that I can read much faster if I read something and listen to it at the same time. I can actually get through pretty dense material at three X speed or faster. So anyway, Speechify is great. Picasso would have used it if it had been around while he was alive. Go check them out at speachify.com/ben to get 15% off Speechify Premium. You get amazing premium voices with Speechify Premium, including you can listen to an AI version of yours truly. So check them out that is speachify.com/ben.