a Picasso point building on the previous post

Another incident from Gilot’s book that I forgot to quote in this blog.

At one point Picasso received a telegram from some people in New York (some Americans, some Europeans who had left due to Hitler and stayed there after the war). They were pretty much begging him to make a statement in favor of modern art against some philistine American politicians who were beginning to complain about how bad and stupid modern art is, etc.

Picasso’s response after reading the telegram was fascinating. He said to Gilot that art is threatening, and to pretend that it should gain official recognition from politicians was completely wrongheaded. He also said that freedom of expression is something you seize; it’s not something for which you ask the permission of others. He said a few more eloquent things. Then he thought a little while longer, said that these artists had wasted their money on him, and crumpled up the telegram and threw it into the garbage.

The connection with the previous post is that the things we “get away with” are generally the things we simply seize for ourselves without asking permission. But you can’t just do it indiscriminately, because none of us can do it all the time.

A trivial example… I remember seeing a news show special about a complete non-celebrity who made a career out of sneaking into celebrity parties in Los Angeles and New York. He was never caught. He knew what suits to wear, how to smile, what sort of limousine to rent, how to have just the right look on his face so that people were afraid to ask who he was, etc.

If I tried this, I’d get beaten up by a bouncer for sure. It’s something I could never pull off in ten lifetimes.