Re: Pictures & Picasso

Nicholas Gessler (gessler@UCLA.EDU)
Fri, 4 Oct 1996 18:55:29 -0700

John McCreery wrote:

>There's a lovely anecdote about Picasso (I'll have to search for
>it; probably in a book on the history of photography), which relates how
>someone showed the master a photograph of his wife and said, "It looks just
>like her." To which Picasso replied, "She's two inches tall and her skin is
>grey?" (Details are probably off, but the force of the tale is obvious.)

I just came across another version of the same story which goes something
like this: A man came to visit Picasso's studio and after puzzling at his
paintings asked him why he liked to distort the beautiful women he painted.
Picasso asked him if he was married, whereupon the man took out his wallet
and showed him a photograph. "She's very lovely," Picasso said. "But she's
very very small."

Nick Gessler
gessler@ucla.edu