Picasso’s excesses have been presented as those of a “man of his time”, as if physical and psychological violence were acceptable in the past (remember that domestic violence has been criminally recognized since… the French Revolution). We have also discredited the words of the victims, refusing to believe the allegations of Françoise Gilot or the testimony of Marina Picasso. And certainly, as very often in cases of violence against women, it is very difficult to prove these allegations. Some don’t believe it, like Emmanuel Guigon, director of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.
That Picasso was violent with women, I don’t believe. That he was a man of his time, of the 19th century, Andalusian, no doubt very seductive, goes without saying.
He told AFP.
Should we stop exhibiting Picasso? Everyone will have their own opinion. It is in any case very unlikely that museums will one day decide to this extreme. And so far, no one is asking. What is needed is to talk about this dark side of the picture. As Emilie Bouvard points out to AFP, “Beyond his machismo, Picasso is someone who appropriated things, beings, possessed them with paroxysmal feelings of suffering, of pain. He took an interest in the archaic questions of the self and the related violence with a certain courage, but he made those around him drool. Addressing this question is to speak differently but accurately of Picasso.“
Amidst the many tributes that elude the question, certain initiatives will have or have had the courage to tackle the subject head-on, during a series of conferences in Paris, or soon at the Brooklyn Museum in New York which will set up, in June , an exhibition on Picasso and feminism. The commissioner will be the Australian humorist Hannah Gadsby, who denounced the behavior of the painter in one of his shows.