Picasso’s work habits

Though I finished Gilot’s memoir some days ago, I did find one other passage worth quoting here. It’s about the intensity of Picasso’s work habits and his views about them.

“One of the qualities I… admired about [Picasso] was his intense power of self-concentration to unite and direct his creative energies. He attached no importance to the façade of living. Any roof would have suited him, so long as he could work under it. He spent no time on ‘entertainment’: we almost never went to the theater or the movies. Even our friends were kept within well-defined limits. His great strength had always been that in proportion to his expenditure for his creative work, he wasted little of himself on the assorted routines of day-to-day living. That was one of his guiding principles.

He had told me once, ‘Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my painting, and everything is sacrificed to it– you and everyone else, myself included.'”