Conffesions from the Old Picasso.

[Ian Miles]

Discuss this little piece of text from picasso that i´ve found. At the time he was 83 and wrote this in a letter as a confession for nobody in particular.
I like to have a discussion around this. :geekg:

said:
“When I was young, just as all the young people, I had the religion of art, the great art;
but as the years passed, I have realized that art, as it was conceived until the end of 1800, is already finished, dying, condemned(...)

We no longer felt art like a vital necessity, a spiritual necessity, as it were the case of the past centuries.
Many among us, continue being artists and taking care of the art as it was, but by spirit of imitation, nostalgia on the tradition, by inertia, by the taste of the ostentation, the luxury, the intellectual curiosity, by fashion.
But the great majority of us, in all means, haven´t a sincere passion for art already, They consider art just a funny thing, a leisure.

The new generations, lovers of the mechanics and sports, more sincere, more cynical and brutal, they will be leaving the relegated art little by little to museums and libraries, like an incomprehensible and useless relic of the past.
The moment when art are no longer food for the best ones, the artist can express their talent in all kind of attempts and new formulas, in all the whims and fantasies, in any sorts of intellectual rants.

People no longer looks for neither consolation nor glorification in arts. And the rich ones, the idle ones, the refined ones, look for the new thing, the extraordinary thing, the original thing, the outlandish thing, the scandalous thing.

As for me, from “cubism” and beyond, I have pleased those gentlemen and those critics with the multiple extravaganzas that I came across, and the less they understood them, the more had admired them.
By all those games, those arabesque puzzles and riddles, I gained celebrity pretty quickly.
Celebrity means for a painter: sales, gains, fortune, wealth. At the present as you may know, I am famous and a very wealthy man. But when I am all alone with the very me, I do not have the guts to consider me "artist" in the great and old sense of the word.

There have been great painters in history like Leonardo, Tiziano, Rembrandt, Velazquez. I´am no more than a joker. One public who has understood his time. This is a bitter confession, painful, but have the merit of being sincere."

:mod:

I translated the thing, sorry for incoherences.

[Randis]

thats was a freaking huge humble pie he ate that day

[squidmonk3j]

Difficult to comment upon without verification of authorship.

( Not saying you're a liar, dude:) )

[KarylGilbertson]

thats was a freaking huge humble pie he ate that day

Quoted for truth.

[Ian Miles]

Difficult to comment upon without verification of authorship.

( Not saying you're a liar, dude:) )

Googleing, I´ve found this, so the authority is confirmed. But in my point of view, after a long dead of the traditional arts, day by day, all the people are most interested in traditional art than the more modern arts like conceptualism and that sorts, is good to have those tho, but the people Do really look for art as it always was.

>>Sorolla – A Vision of Spain, is now the temporary exhibition that has received most visitors in the history of the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao and has contributed to the total number of visitors of 223,000 people during this Centenary year of the Museum, a record for the last decade.
This success is preceded by the extraordinary acceptance the exhibition has had in other cities such as Valencia, Seville and Malaga where it received over 800,000 visitors. After the exhibition in Bilbao, Bancaja will take the paintings to Barcelona, Madrid and once again to Valencia.

Painting from sorolla (awesome):
http://www.absolutmadrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/actividades-sorolla.jpg

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Picasso's Confession

"When I was young, like all the young, art, great art, was my religion; but with the years, I came to see that art, as it was understood until 1800; was henceforth finished, on its last legs, doomed, and that so called artistic activity with all its abundance is only the many formed manifestation of its agony. Men are detached from and more and more disinterested in painting, sculpture and poetry; appearances to the contrary, men today have put their hearts into everything else; the machine, scientific discoveries, wealth, the domination of natural forces and immense territories. We no longer feel art as a vital need, as a spiritual necessity, as was the case in centuries past.

Many of us continue to be artists and to be occupied with art for reasons which have little in common with true art, but rather through a spirit of imitation, through nostalgia for tradition, through mere inertia, through love of ostentation, of prodigality, of intellectual curiosity, through fashion or through calculation. They live still through force of habit and snobbery in a recent past, but the great majority in all places no longer have any sincere passion for art, which they consider at most as a diversion, a hobby and a decoration. Little by little, new generations with a predilection for mechanics and sports, more sincere, more cynical and brutal, will leave art to the museums and libraries as an incomprehensible and useless relic of the past.

From the moment that art is no longer the sustenance that nourishes the best, the artist may exteriorize his talent in all sorts of experiments with new formulas, in endless caprices and fancy, in all the expedients of intellectual charlatanism. In the arts, people no longer seek consolation, nor exaltation. But the refined, the rich, the indolent, distillers of quintessence seek the new, the unusual, the original, the extravagant, the shocking. And I, since cubism and beyond, I have satisfied these gentlemen and these critics with all the various whims which have entered my head, and the less they understood them, the more they admired. By amusing myself at these games, at all these tomfooleries, at all these brain-busters, riddles and arabesques, I became famous quite rapidly. And celebrity means for a painter: sales increment, money, wealth.

Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when completely alone with myself, I haven't the nerve to consider myself an artist in the great and ancient sense of the word. There have been great painters like Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Goya. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time. This is a bitter confession, mine, more painful indeed than it may seem, but it has the merit of being sincere."

PABLO PICASSO (FROM: ORIGIN 12, January 1964 Cid Corman, Editor Kyoto, Japan.; cited by Artcompasas Amsterdam: GOTOBUTTON BM_1_ http://www.euronet.nl/users/artcompas/index.html )

[jcpahl]

Picasso was a very insightful dude. I don't like his paintings, but any artist could learn from his example of being "a public entertainer who has understood his time."

[DeadlyFreeze]

Mighty google says its fake...



Thursday, 24 March 1994


PICASSO was a fraud. He admitted so in an interview published in Italy in 1951 which was recently resurrected in this newspaper. 'Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters,' he said. 'I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, vanity and cupidity of his contemporaries.' He confessed he had duped the public. The truth, though, alluded to in recent letters to the Independent, is that it was not the artist that was the fake, but the interview.

Picasso's 'confession' had been made to the Italian writer Giovanni Papini in an invented 'interview' for his journal L'Acerba; it was later included in a book published to mark his 70th birthday. It was through this compilation, Il Libro Nero, published in 1951, that the 'confession' became ammunition for a worldwide conspiracy against modern art. But a second glance at the book reveals that the Picasso 'interview' is merely one of a number of such spoofs, alongside Kafka, Freud and Stendhal.

The Papini interview was a gift to Picasso's detractors who, for the past 40 years, have used it to discredit both his achievement and modern art as a whole. John Richardson, Picasso's current biographer, believes that the time has finally come for the 'confession' to be conclusively discredited. 'This story should be squashed once and for all. It keeps rearing its ugly head,' he says. 'It still takes in serious people. Papini was no farceur. He was a serious Futurist.'

It was an earlier Picasso authority Pierre Daix who first exposed the true nature of the Papini 'interview' in his 1977 book La Vie de Peintre de Pablo Picasso. While the origins of the interview were an intellectual joke, their diffusion, Daix revealed, was politically motivated and was aided and abetted by Franco's police. 'This nonsensical mystification,' wrote Daix, 'was taken as gospel by various easily-gulled simpletons and so-called experts.'

Picasso's 'confession' is now such a part of popular myth that it is frequently taken as genuine in otherwise learned journals. Last year, it appeared as such in the Spectator. Perhaps its most dangerous appearance, however, is in a key passage of Robertson Davies' 1985 novel What's Bred in the Bone: 'Picasso made a statement: . . . 'Mine is a bitter confession . . .but it has the merit of being sincere'.' As Picasso would have recognised, a fiction presented as truth within a fiction becomes twice as real.

[Flake]

Yeah, pretty sure that's not real.

Edit: too slow :(

[Irishdrunk]

You'll say crazy things when you turn 83, too.

[dashinvaine]

He still took the money though...

I do have some admiration for Picasso, who had a spark of greatness at least as a designer and a liver of life. This statement does rather confirm what I've long suspected, though, that modernist 'artists' knew in their hearts that they are not worthy of the name compared to the old masters, and that their avid admirers were ignorant poseurs. That said, lots of artists had doubts about their worth, measuring themselves against their imagined ideals. I've read that Burne Jones, for example, felt himself a fraud in his more insecure moments.

[Randis]

to be honest, me does not give a shit.

[GriNGo]

Suspiciously fake! (and proved). Good read though.

[Elwell]

Googleing, I´ve found this, so the authority is confirmed.
Your google-fu is weak.:nohope:

[kev ferrara]

Art is a Lie that Tells the Truth ~ Picasso

[Ian Miles]

Your google-fu is weak.:nohope:

Sad true. :sungod: