For now, another book.

I just bought my 4th Picasso biography. To most people this seems excessive ("No, I'm not working on a dissertation"). To the people I know and who know art it also appears to be grounds for other judgments, the majority of which call my intelligence into question. For these people there are only two possible explanations for my current fascination: a) I must not realize how very un-PC it is for a woman to admire someone who had several and simultaneous affairs with much younger women, or b) no one has ever set me down and properly explained to me in so many ways how "overrated" Picasso's oeurve is. A colleague of mine summed up these two views quite succinctly, "Jen, Picasso was an asshole who was basically better at marketing than art." Hmm, yes.

Unfortunately, these observations have done little to dissuade me from my preoccupation even though they're rife with "you should know better" inuendo. I can't help myself. One look at a picture of him when he was young, broke and living in Montmartre and I want to know everything I can about the brain behind this mirada fuerte, incubating a piece like Les Desmoiselles d' Avingnon. What would it have been to be his model, his lover, his friend, his canvas, his child?

For now, another book.