July 22, 2019 Issue

Alexandra Schwartz, in her absorbing “Painted Love,” in this week’s issue, argues against the view that Picasso’s art justified the rotten way he treated the women in his life. She writes, 

Now the popular view is at the opposite pole. Last year, the Australian feminist comedian Hannah Gadsby, in her Netflix special “Nanette,” performed an incendiary bit about Picasso’s treatment of women, quoting some damning lines from Gilot’s memoir and lamenting in particular the case of Marie-Thérèse. (“Picasso fucked an underage girl. That’s it for me, not interested.”) Next to these trampled lives, Gadsby couldn’t care less about the art.

The life or the work? I side with the work. Yes, Picasso trampled women’s lives. He was a monster of ego and appetite, with one redeeming quality: he could paint.