When I was 12, I wrote a list of things to do before I died. Own a Picasso was one of those things.
I remember one day when Juan Gris told me about a bunch of grapes he had seen in a painting by Picasso. The next day these grapes appeared in a painting by Gris, this time in a bowl; and the day after, the bowl appeared in a painting by Picasso.
I look at people like Picasso and Da Vinci and Escher and Miles Davis, and they'll write or paint that one definitive masterpiece of maybe 50 that they have that's really trying to go outside the box, trying to do something that's tough. And then when you accomplish it, you look back and go, 'Yeeaaaah - masterpiece. '
I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.
We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)
Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody - Paris for me was a Mecca.
If we had never met Picasso, would Cubism have been what it is? I think not. The meeting with Picasso was a circumstance in our lives.
I'm lucky enough and wealthy enough to be able to buy photographs and buy art that inspires me from day to day. I don't want a Picasso on my wall; it's great art, but it's dead art to me. I'd rather have a photograph by someone I've never heard of that really inspires me.
Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art.
Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.
You couldn't forget [Pablo] Picasso, [Henri] Matisse and [Joan] Miro either. And it had to be, you know, at least as good or better.
What a genius, that Picasso. It is a pity he doesn't paint.
[Pablo] Picasso really changed my life. It's strange to say so, but I started to see some Picasso paintings very early. I was very young, and he was not so much known.
Fashion went from being much more rarefied to being more accessible. Now everything is changing in the art world, too: even the highest level of institutions are becoming more aware of the general public, like the McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan or the Tim Burton at the MoMA or how the Gagosian does historic Picasso shows, bringing museum quality into a gallery. Galleries are becoming more like museums, and museums are becoming more accessible. In the next decade, I think it'll be blown open: there will be a lot of shifting around in terms of how artists approach their work.
My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into pieces.
Who is able to paint the existence of a dog as Picasso paints the existence of a cubic shape?
If Picasso walked into Disney looking for a job, they would throw him out on the street. Couldn't draw good enough.
High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.
DRS is like giving Picasso Photoshop.
It evoked Picasso and Miles Davis for me — two great artists who totally indulged themselves in their work and who they were, but they certainly didn't give a damn what other people thought.
