Carlos Casagemas, Picasso's friend who
was impotent, killed himself on February 17th 1901.
The approximate year of the birth, in a
shack, in New Orleans of Louis Armstrong.
Devastated by his death, Picasso
painted several portraits of him while he lay dead on his bed, the
life draining out of him.
Pain found the brushstrokes.
He had turned blue, the cold setting
in, showing the fragility of existence.
Picasso entered this blue period,
literally making precedence to the term, the blues.
He had left Barcelona and Gaudi behind,
to go to Paris.
Decades later after this blue painting
period of Picasso, Josephine Baker and Sydney Bechet brought the
afro-american music called Jazz with them. Was it called the blues
then?
Where did the term, the blues first
enter the modern vocabulary, and why?
Did Picasso discover that blue for
cold. Was blue for death.
The ancient Greeks in mythology related
blue to rain and the tears of the God Zeus, who would make rain when
he was sad and he cried.
James Audubon the the 19th
century author in 1827 wrote in his journal, that he “had the
blues.”
Did Picasso know this and relate the
colour to the cold flesh he saw, or was he relating it to a term to
describe how he felt. Speculation has gone before me.
He was in a state of self deprivation,
he had the blues.
Two years later he would cap it off and
start again, with a painting called life.
His mourning was over. He no longer
had the blues. His blue period was finished.
At 22 he moved into the 'laundry boat'
named by his poet friend Max Jacob Le Bateau Lavior.
This was the time of Madeleine and the
Medrano circus.
He met acrobats and he painted himself
as Harlequin and by doing so, announcing he had finished mourning.
Fernande Olivier was his next love who
walked in during a thunderstorm.
He then began to paint, in competition
with Matisse, as if he was primitive or copying primitive form.
African masks and shapes from that great continent.
Learning his way as he went.
Did his search for feeling find him
when he got the blues over the death of his best friend?
Edmund Portier had brought back photos
of Africa to Paris.
Photography was tried and this led him
into a different perspective.
He said “What was the point in
painting now”. So he worked harder.
His photographs were cut and distorted
in geometrical forms. The deconstruction.
Breaking up heads with sculpture he
would feel his different experiences. Was it that simple?
Musical scales had been broken up and
re-invented in New Orleans (named after the French city of Orlean) by
the mixed race Creole. The Blues were born out of a re-invention of
musical scales and the invention of The Blues Scale with its
flattened third and its semi-tones.
So art would be remade and remodelled
in Paris.
Then there was Eva.
Ma Jolie and the cubist musical
instruments.
Braque enters the frame.
Picasso kept the portrait of Eva he did
until his death. She died of Tuberculosis.
Jean Cocteau he met. In the village
that was Montmartre.
Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe and Eric
Satie and Olga, he followed on a tour.
He designed the curtain to, that, opera
that did not go down too well.
Apollinaire said the new spirit was
surrealism, a new spirit.
They would be inseparable. Olga
Khokhlova.
Spanish flu took Apollonaire. Rozenburg
financed his new glamorous life.
Ivor Stravinsky. High Society.
Bodies get bigger and giants appear in
his work at this point, he is a father.
His work is his biography.
The roaring twenties. Dance Macabre is
a change. Love is fatale his fears show anguish.
Paul Colin paints Jesephine Baker
dancing in Le Revue Negre.
Marie-Therese Walter was 17. He
disguises her even though she is seventeen.
He is 47 and takes photos and makes a
flip book of images of her.
Obsessive repetition and the Minotaur.
The monster leaves Olga his wife, for
Marie Therese.
Olga remained Madame Picasso because as
a Spaniard he could not divorce.
A golden cage for Olga to live, and he
wrote poetry to her.
Dora Maar spoke Spanish. Surrealism and
Man Ray.
Hitler and Mussolini. Come into his
life and play a part.
Andre Breton published his poems.
Popular Front victory is Spain and Franco's civil war.
Spanish Pavilion asked for a painting.
27th April 1937.
Guernica.
It went on tour to Manchester as a
fundraiser.
Françoise Gilot.
1947 and a new child. He lived in La
Galliose.
Madoura ceramic workshops. He had moved
south and worked there.
The dove of Peace. Dove, or Paloma in
Spanish, was born.
Bullfights at Arles and Nimes.
1951 another girlfriend sees a break up
with Franciose.
Jacqueline Roque 1954.
Olga died and Jacqueline became Madame
Picasso. Marie Therese
Creation day, after day, after day.
Canvases piled up.
He died in his bed drawing.
Marie Therese ended her life. Wouldn't you if you had this portrait painted of you?
Jacqueline in 1986 spilled a revolver
in her head on the date of his inaugural exhibition. (in Madrid).
She definatly had the blues. Picasso
seemed to give his lovers depression. Was he blue.
Quite a lot of Picasso's work depresses
me.
His pottery at Madoura is all but a
joke in my opinion.
If it was not by he, some of it would
be laughable.
So where did the term the blues come
from?
There are references that could be
linked to feeling blue. A coldness of spirit.
Picasso maybe picked up on these blue
thoughts.
Maybe it goes back a bit further than
the great man to an age gone by.
There was a tradition amongst deep
water sailing ships in America.
That when they had lost their Captain
or officers, during the voyage to return to port, they would fly blue
flags and also they would paint a blue band along the entire hull as
it came into port.
Thus signifying that all was not right.
The blue paint was a warning to those
ashore to expect the worst, prepare for some bad news.
Coleridge wrote and felt it in, The
Ancient Mariner picking up the spirit of the sea, as he infused his
blood with opium.
Death of a sailor could mean poverty
for his wife and family.
But for Picasso it gave him inspiration
to paint.
Feeling blue made you famous.
Just how blue can you be.
