another weird incident chez Picasso

Dora Maar is having a mental breakdown over the course of several weeks, claiming to be the victim of attacks and robberies on the streets of Paris that, all evidence suggests, are complete delusions. This is to a large degree connected with her separation from Picasso, who treated her with his usual mental cruelty at the end.

In the middle of this period, Maar shows up at Picasso’s home one evening and begins raving. He feels unequipped to handle it alone, so he phones Paul Eluard, a very close friend of Maar’s from their days together in the surrealist movement. But Eluard’s arrival only makes things worse. Maar begins denouncing both of them, tells them they are going to burn in hell, etc.

Picasso leaves the room and phones Jacques Lacan (I kid you not). Lacan arrives at Picasso’s studio/home, succeeds in calming Maar, and takes her away to his clinic for what would ultimately be a three-week stay.

As soon as he leaves, Eluard shouts at Picasso and blames him for Maar’s mental state. Picasso counters that if Maar is now mentally deluded, it is the fault of early surrealist influence on her. Eluard becomes so angry that he picks up a chair and smashes it on the floor.

Picasso then tells the story to Gilot, who tells Picasso she agrees with Eluard that it’s Picasso’s own fault that Maar is in such a state. Picasso responds with a cold quasi-Darwinian speech about how people who are too weak must fall by the wayside, and that Maar must be weak by nature anyway. Gilot responds that people can have temporary weakness without being fundamentally weak, but Picasso remains unmoved.

This is one of my favorite reads of 2011. I wish Fernande Olivier had written something similar about the early Picasso, though it’s unlikely Olivier was as sharp as Gilot, who is really very interesting and insightful.

The story about Eluard, Maar, Picasso, and Lacan together in the studio also gives some taste of how insular and incestuous these Paris cultural circles could be. They really did all know each other.