Charles Saatchi's Great Masterpieces: the painting that enraged critics and revolutionised art

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-painting-enraged-critics/

 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 (oil on canvas) by Picasso, Pablo Credit: Museum of Modern Art, New York/DACS 

Picasso was never alone. He lived among wives, casual lovers, favourite muses and long-term mistresses. His many passionate relationships made for a turbulent life, both for himself and for his women. So turbulent, in fact, that two of the women committed suicide, and another two suffered mental breakdowns.
His 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon depicts none of Picasso’s lovers; the five naked women were all prostitutes. The picture was originally titled The Brothel of Avignon and included two men, clients of the young ladies. Picasso painted over the male figures, and had the five women gaze boldly, even menacingly, at the viewer. The figures on the left were inspired by prehistoric art, and the two on the right by African carved wooden masks.
Breaking with the traditions of European painting, Picasso abandoned perspective in favour of a splintered, direct picture plane. That, and its raw, slashing  paint-strokes made the picture  not merely controversial, but downright inflammatory. 
Demoiselles also marked the first signs of cubism, the fragmented style Picasso invented alongside Georges Braque. It is clearly seen in the hundreds of sketches Picasso created to prepare for the picture. Now regarded as the seminal painting of the 20th century, for many it marks the dawn of modern art. The painting wasn’t exhibited until 1916, when it received a ferocious response from art critics. Afterward, it remained rolled up in Picasso’s studio until 1924, when his artist friends finally persuaded a somewhat reluctant collector to buy it.

Picasso created at least 50,000 pieces of art in his lifetime, which, understandably may have required a fierce degree of commitment (as the critic Charles McGrath stated: “The cruel thing about art – of great art anyway – is that it requires its practitioners to be wrapped up in themselves in a way that’s a little inhuman”). But among those pieces are more acknowledged masterpieces than any other artist in history has even come close to achieving. So, though many consider Picasso a bullying misogynist, he is also revered as one of the most significant artists to have ever lived. 

 Pablo Picasso...Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) in front of one of his paintings at home in Cannes, in 1955 Credit: Getty 

Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy. By the age of 15, he had created the extraordinary painting Science and Charity (1897), in the realist style. After that, though, his work would take a radical turn, leaving traditional painting behind. Picasso was both loved and reviled by women. Like a Spanish bull in a corrida, he attracted female matadors to enter the spectacle in an attempt to tame the wild beast. Time and again women would be broken by Picasso’s infidelity.
He spent the years between 1904 and 1912 with his first love, Fernande Olivier, an artist’s model and aspiring painter. She met Picasso under storm-threatening skies and as she rushed to find shelter, he stood in front of her and held out a kitten. Picasso and Olivier began living together and experimented with smoking opium. They were frequently unfaithful. Occasionally Olivier’s infidelity made Picasso so overwrought with jealousy that he would lock her in his studio when he left. Years later, Picasso confessed that one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was based on her.

In 1918 he married the Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, but by 1927 Picasso was having a secret affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter. In 1935, Walter gave birth to their daughter, Maya, but by this time Picasso’s affections had already drifted towards Dora Maar. Picasso first spotted her in the Café Les Deux Magots in Paris, frenetically stabbing a knife between her fingers as fast as possible, until blood dotted her gloved hands. Picasso requested to keep her bloodstained gloves as a souvenir of their first encounter.
“For me,” Picasso said, “she’s the weeping woman. For years I’ve painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one.”
Following her relationship with Picasso, Maar underwent treatment in a psychiatric hospital. After a nervous breakdown, she sank into depression and lived in isolation for many years.
In 1943, Picasso told his then lover Françoise Gilot: “Women are machines for suffering.” In the early days of their nine-year affair, the artist, who was 61 at the time, warned the 21-year-old Gilot: “For me there are only two kinds of women, goddesses and doormats.” 

At first, she refused to succumb to Picasso’s game of cat and mouse, making no pretence of resisting his advances. Picasso was taken aback. “How do you expect me to seduce anyone under conditions like that? If you’re not going to resist – well, then, it’s out of the question. I’ll have to think it over.” He quickly succumbed to her charms, though, and she became his mistress.
Even so, due to his uncontrollable infidelity, Gilot eventually left Picasso and went on to publish her book Life With Picasso, which sold over a million copies. The publication of Gilot’s memoirs enraged Picasso and he quickly severed all ties with her. He also revoked their children’s inheritance.

Pablo Picasso and his wife Jacqueline in their house in Mougins, south of France Credit: Getty 

Picasso lived out his final days with Jacqueline Roque. They met when she was 27 and he was 70. Picasso pursued Roque by bringing her a single red rose every day, composing love poems for her, and by drawing a giant dove in white chalk on the wall of her house. She became his second wife in 1961, and during the last 17 years of his life, she was the only woman he painted. When Picasso was buried, Roque lay over his grave and slept there all night in the snow. She, like Walter, eventually committed suicide. 

Although these tempestuous relationships shared by Picasso and his many women were at times disturbing, the experiences they shared are inextricably linked to the masterpieces he created.
As he said, “one must act in painting as in life, directly.” His last words, at 91, were: “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.”
© Charles Saatchi 2018