The legend Picasso and his museum, the grand staircase

Jean Cassou and Gorges Salles, the anticipation of a museum

"Each new object, each new combination of forms that he presents to us is a new organ that we take on, a new instrument that enables us to place ourselves more humanly within nature, to become more specific, denser, more alive. It would take unparalleled idiocy to love these works with the mystical pretext that they help us to shed our human trappings as if they were superhuman." By the time Leiris was writing these words, Picasso was already present in the national collections.

In 1945, when Jean Cassou was appointed as the chief curator of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, he opened the museum up to the artists of his century, whose independence, impertinence, and "heroic and extreme" behavior–as he defined Picasso's–he loved. Thanks to the privileged relationships he managed to develop with the artists of his time and to the perseverance of Georges Salles, the director of the Musées de France, Cassou obtained exceptional donations.

Hence the museum was able to receive added works by Picasso: the donation included ten paintings chosen by Cassou and Picasso from the artist's collection. Picasso loved to see his works hung and contrasted against those of the grand masters. He came back time and time again to look at his paintings in the museum. The artist would go and see where Cassou was hanging them: "He would show up for the installation. The paintings would be lying on the ground, and he would move them around. He discovered new connections between them. He would discuss them with me as well as with the museum guard. And each time, he discovered new ways of talking about them. Picasso loved to talk. He needed someone else to chat with. And the following day, it was no longer the same thing facing the same painting. His hands were as active as his tongue. He was always fiddling with something. A little piece of modeling. He would put a little sculpture he had just finished on the table and then pick it up and turn it into something else. He was constantly drawing. On a menu in a restaurant. He talked, laughed, and moved on to the next thing.

His comments about his works would never have done for a guided tour. His statements were sheer ambiguity. What I mean is that the things he said implied something different from what you were hearing. And that something became something else. He would cast a spell, but not one of those spells that keeps you trapped."[1] Cassou's description gives us a sense of how difficult it is to come up with a "true and definitive" interpretation of the artist's production.

Picasso had an almost physical relationship with the museum. He loved the idea of showing his work to the public, and deeply respected the principle of conserving a work.

[1] Jean Cassou, interview with Pascal Bonafoux, Le Monde, September 26, 1985

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait blue, 1901.

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