Memories of Art Class

It was August 1966, and as a new year of school started at Laon AFB, in northern France, I walked into a greatly diminished class than the year before.  In June there had been two complete classrooms of fifth graders, now there was only half a classroom of sixth graders!  We barely had enough members to field a soccer team - if we were to let the girls play!  And we were sort of missing a teacher and the girls really did not care about soccer at all ...

NATO was pulling out of France, at de Gaulle's insistence, and all of the bases were being drained of work statements, mostly being transferred to Upper Hayford in England (the secret base known as Upper X) or Germany.  Of course, this also meant that families were being sent either to England or Germany.  We however sat dead in the water.  We were German and the British seemed reluctant to have the "enemy" on it shores, so to speak.  Or maybe it was just that what father did was appalling to British senses concerning nuclear weapons.  But, for our return to Germany required the US Statement Department to get involved, father feared arrest, mother feared the German's would not allow me to leave once I was there, etc...  All very convoluted, all very involved, all very much the product of Cold War hysteria.

So, the school needed a few weeks to catch up with hosting a new school year ... so we were offered a 10 day trip to Austria for glacier skiing - which I had just returned from a week earlier ... or ... a chance to take a class from Pablo Picasso.  Well, since I was not allowed to even draw a line on paper at home, for father's hatred of artists was so great! - I sort of lost the skiing paperwork so it looked like I could only stay home or go on the art trip.

Even in my third story loft, I could hear that fight that night between my parents on the first floor over that one!  In the end father had to choose between him taking the time off to stay home with me or let me go.  :)  Yeah, I knew I would at long last get an art class!

In the end, six of us were relocated to Marseille, in southern France and turned over the tutelage of Pablo Picasso.

First off, he was an 84 year old grumpy old man, he really did not care much for kids, he did however like almost any woman and the nuder the better.  I was 11 and really did not care about the surrounding nudity and since I was raised in a God-less family, well it was "what-ever" to me.  And worse, questions of any kind were really not allowed during the lectures.  I spent my free time going through his paintings and observing color, technique and subject matter; the others were on the beach or trying to get polio eating the local ice cream.  I also went through books of his works.  There was little else to do.  But, I was going to use every single moment for art in some form or another!  I was in hog heaven!

On the last day, Picasso turned to me and said, "Christophe, do you have any questions for me?"

I thought, oh what the heck - I did have a burning question for him, so I presented him with his painting from 1901, First Communion:

And I then contrasted his Dora Maar:

So, I asked him, "If you can paint like this," pointing to the Communion, "then why would you ever paint like this?"; pointing to the Maar.

Pablo, with a twinkle in his eye replied, "I paint like this" pointing to the Communion, "but it is this that people will pay for.", pointing to the Maar portrait.

I followed up with, "Well, if you did Maar in a Cubist Style, then why does the cat look normal?"

He laughed, "Well, I liked the cat better ..."  and laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was only this past week, as I was preparing to do a presentation on Picasso for an art class, I discovered that Picasso followed up my visit with him by sitting down and painting this watercolor in the following days:

Seems he truly was a master and still had "it".
I also think he was proving to himself that he still was the king ...
I may not care for the vast bulk of his work, but when I see this above picture done by an 84 year old man - I am brought to tears at the thought of the talent this man possessed!
I do not care either for "picture perfect" paintings, such as First Communion, but where the subject is the focus and the remainder is left up the mind of the viewer - awesome!
And this was in watercolor, as hard a medium as there is!
You were awesome Pablo ...