"If I knew Picasso, I would buy myself a gray guitar and play" - Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

Oh, Picasso. This is my favorite Picasso painting. It's pimp. When I was in college, we had to choose a painting for a Creative Writing course that I was in (taught by this tiny little gay man named 'drew... yes, 'drew... who I knew from Tori Amos concerts. He was odd.). We wrote a poem about the painting. Anyway, I found Les Demoiselles d'Avignon online and it inspired me. I wrote a really cool poem inspired by it, too. I'll have to try to find it.
Anyway, that led me on to Picasso. I wanted to find out everything I could about him. I went to a really cool traveling exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art that featured his work - amazing. Picasso was a child prodigy, and as such, I think he was a pretty weird man. He was a rebel, and he tried lots and lots of different styles of painting. He went through different periods of work - his blue period, his rose period, early Cubism (this also includes Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which was the very first Cubist painting. He stole the African mask thing from Cezanne, who was his rival, and then took all the credit for himself.), Analytical Cubism , Synthetic Cubism... then he painted some stuff with awesome colors between the two World Wars.... and then he painted Guernica of course... and then he painted his Late Works... his final self-portrait is haunting.

Now... Picasso the man was kind of an ass. He was born in Spain (Malaga!) and his baptized name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso. Heck yeah... holla! His dad was an art professor and Picasso started painting when he was tiny. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs (I got this off wikipedia, which is bad, but I am getting lazy... and it's right). He was a Communist. He died in 1973 and his last words were “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more". He was linked to lots of women throughout his life and there were rumors that he was a violent man, but I'm not one to deny his artistic brilliance because I don't agree with his actions. Some more Picasso stuff if you are interested. Mas. And, of course, Create Your Own Picassohead. Do it to it!

Pretty pretty paintings. I'm going to go see some in Chicago in November, and then some more in New York next June. Yay. But I will not touch them like C-Sue did in Washington DC. Muahahaha. That guard almost tackled you. Priceless.

I love my life, btw :)