[smygo] Picasso--Anarchist & Enemy of the State
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
The Times [UK]
World News
May 17, 2003
French saw Picasso as an enemy of the state
From Charles Bremner in Paris
PICASSO was refused French nationality because the
intelligence police deemed the Spanish painter to be an
anarchist and a threat to society.
The details of Picassos unsuccessful 1940 request for
citizenship emerged from an enthralling dossier disclosed
this week covering four decades of the artists life in
Paris through the eyes of the police.
The request was turned down because the Renseignements
Giniraux, the police intelligence arm, said "the
self-described modern painter . . . has kept his extremist
ideas" despite 39 years in France.
The episode raises the intriguing question of whether French
citizenship, which Picasso sought because of the imminent
German invasion, would have changed the artist. In the
event, Picasso remained a Catalan patriot while a fixture of
the art scene in France, where he spent most of his adult
life and died in 1973.
The Picasso files were returned in 2000 from Moscow to the
Paris police headquarters after a journey that began with
their seizure by the occupying Nazis and then an interlude
of 55 years in the archives of the former Soviet KGB
security agency.
They are to be published by Pierre Daix and Armand Israel as
Dossier de la Prifecture de Police (1901-1940). The files,
written in dry policemans language, show that the
intelligence service took an interest in "a certain Picasso,
Pablo Ruiz", from the day that the 20-year-old painter
arrived in Montmartre in 1901. He was lodged on the
Boulevard de Clichy by Pierre Manach, a Catalan anarchist
who was already under surveillance. "In consequence, there
is reason to consider Picasso an anarchist," says the
report, typed on the fading pink paper of the Prifecture de
Police.
The officer watching the obscure painter recounted his
habits, passing on gossip from concierges and tradesmen,
according to extracts that appeared in this weeks LExpress
magazine. "The times of his comings and goings are very
irregular . . . He goes out every evening, coming back at an
advanced hour in the night . . . Sometimes he even stays out
all night," wrote the case officer. The scrupulous
Commissaire filed a press cutting, one of the earliest on
the artist and unknown until now.
"Tomorrow we will be invited to chez Vollard to admire a
group of paintings and drawings of Pablo Ruiz Picasso," the
1901 report in Le Journal said. "This very young Spanish
painter, newly arrived among us, is a frenetic lover of
modern life."
Picasso came under close attention when he applied for a
licence to marry Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the Diaghilev
ballet, whom he had met in Rome. "He works as a painter
artist, earning about 25 francs a day . . . We have good
reports from his neighbours. He is known for his francophile
ideas," said the investigating officer. There was a problem,
however.
Picasso had been questioned by police in 1911 about
statuettes stolen from the Louvre that had been found in his
possession. Lent to him by the poet Guillaume Appollinaire,
he had used them as models for his Demoiselles dAvignon
painting. The episode, well known at the time, was
overlooked and the marriage was celebrated in July 1918,
with Jean Cocteau, Appollinaire and Max Jacob as witnesses.
The police reported on the painter as he grew wealthy in the
1920s, travelled widely and bought a chbteau in Normandy,
and aided the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in
the 1930s. Picasso typed a letter to the Justice Minister
asking for naturalisation in April 1940, two months before
the Nazis occupied Paris.
He apparently feared internment as a national of a country
allied to the Germans.
A police officer concluded after a formal interview that he
deserved citizenship because, among other things, "through
his professional skills, he would be a useful addition to
the community". However, police intelligence opposed the
approval with a damaging report that raked up his supposed
anarchist credentials.
"Picasso has kept his extremist ideas while evolving towards
communism," it said, citing an incident in May 1940 in the
Cafi de Flore on the Boulevard Saint Germain. "He attacked a
Polish officer, in civilian clothes, while openly
criticising our institutions and praising the Soviets."
The report added: "It appears that there are drawings
representing the hammer and sickle in his flat at no 23 rue
de la Boitie."
It also reported gossip that he sent abroad the "millions"
that he earned in France and concluded: "As a result of all
the information which has been gathered, this foreigner has
no qualification for being naturalised . . . he must be
considered as a suspect from the states point of view."
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
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"It's a political statement -- or, rather, an
*anti*-political statement. The symbol for *anarchy*!"
-- Batman, explaining the circle-A graffiti, in
_Detective Comics_ #608
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