Georges Braque once described his artistic collaboration with Pablo Picasso as: “like mountain-climbers roped together.” The image is striking, not only because it gracefully evokes the excitement of inventing Cubism, a revolution in art and philosophy, but also because it places companionship at the heart of that discovery. We usually think of Picasso not as a collaborator, but as someone who scaled the heights of genius and fame alone, from his prodigious childhood to his much-photographed old age. In 1939, Time suggested his name was synonymous with the idea of modern art, and 80 years on the observation is no less true. Picasso’s genius spawned a dizzying industry and much personal mayhem. The people who knew him, worked for him or slept with him often gave their lives over to him too. Many of them wrote fawning or furious memoirs. Several killed themselves. His granddaughter Marina said it took 15 years of therapy to get over being related to him.
The British art historian John Richardson got to know Picasso in the early 1950s, when he and his partner, the art collector Douglas Cooper, lived nearby in the south of France. Cooper had a collection of Cubist art and Picasso often visited to look at it, or invited the men for lunch and to tour his studio. Sometimes he brought them a piece he’d been working on as a present— a drawing, ceramic or print. A token gift from Picasso could change your life.