#art, «Drink to Me, Drink to My Health…

In Macca’s song, “Picasso’s Last Words” it says that the grand old painter died at three o’clock in the morning and that his last words were “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.” This song, recorded in Nigeria in 1973, was included in Macca’s best album (my opinion), Band on the Run.

This April marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Picasso and of the song. Good grief, time does fly! Picasso continues to be a major reference to art. His paintings still sell for millions of euros or dollars* and the influence that he exerted on the art world is still palpable, alive, well felt. And although we can say that Picasso was a man of the XIXth Century who conquered the XXth, his philosophy, aesthetics and artistry have seeped easily and clearly into the XXIst Century.

There is no other artist in art history that has as many museums with his name and dedicated to his art. There are six, some I have visited, there is the Picasso museum in Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Paris, Antibes and the Kunstmuseum of Munster and a new one coming to Aix-en-provence. Picasso said once that if they gave him a museum he would fill it. He has filled six, and soon a seventh.

Frankly I am not surprised as I knew that Picasso was a very hard working artist. We don’t really know, to be exact, the amount of work he produced. And if we include his ceramics and sculptures, his book illustrations, theatre designs, ballet designs, et al, we would reach incredible numbers. Books, (oh books!), say that he created 13,500 paintings and designs, 100,000 engravings or lithographs, 34,000 illustrations for books, 300 sculptures or ceramics, but there may be more, or less…

Now, when the art world began to go in different directions, say around the time of Pollock’s Action Painting and other vanguards, Picasso was introduced to all of them but he rejected them all. He became an “outsider” and was left behind as a major player in the new emerging art world. So he re-created himself as the “buffoon.” He appeared several times on the cover of TIME and LOOK magazines, sometimes with flowers in his ears, disguised as a bullfighter or even in his underwear. He became a media sensation, showing his body at the age of seventy five.

I think that no matter how they tried, no one could contain the grand old master. Only death could and would hold him back. A death he had seen, accepted and painted. With that in mind it is no wonder he closed his “final curtain” with this most precise and nostalgic phrase: “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.” And I truly thank Paul McCartney for turning it into a great song.

Cheers…