Normally, I write up most posts about Seth Godin in Webmetricsguru.com, but this one relates more to art and I’m interested in what Seth means.

“….The second day, a different dealer came by. Picasso hardly looked up. “Fake!” he bellowed.

After the dealer left, I couldn’t help myself. “Picasso, why did you say that painting was a fake? I was here, in this studio, last year when I saw you paint it.”

Picasso didn’t hesitate. He turned to me and said, “I often paint fakes.”

Often Picasso painted fakes…..hmm.  Doesn’t sound quite right …something is missing or distorted  - no artist in their right mind would do such a thing but we’re not getting the whole story.

Before offering my interpretation, I decided to search Google to see what I could come up with and query that gave me the best results was “fake Picasso“. I found 2 possible interpretations. Here’s the first from Robert Anton Wilson’s Ishtar Rising:

“…..An art dealer once went to Pablo Picasso and said, “I have a bunch of ‘Picasso’ canvasses that I was thinking of buying. Would you look them over and tell me which are real and which are forgeries?” Picasso obligingly began sorting the paintings into two piles. Then, as the Great Man added one particular picture to the fake pile, the dealer cried, “Wait a minute, Pablo. That’s no forgery. I was visiting you the weekend you painted it.” Picasso replied imperturbably, “No matter. I can fake a Picasso as well as any thief in Europe.”

Wilson went on to say he was both amused and disturbed by this story:

“….Personally, I find this story not only amusing but profoundly disturbing. It has caused me to think, every time I finish a piece of writing, “Is this a real Robert Anton Wilson, or did I just fake a Robert Anton Wilson?” Sometimes, especially with a long novel, I find it impossible to convince myself that I know the answer. After all, as Nietzche said, “there are no facts, only interpretations”

Another Interpretation of this story comes from Brassai’s Conversations with Picasso.

“…..Shortly thereafter, a woman enters with a package carefully tied up with string under her arm. She would like to see Picasso “in person.” She has something to show him that will undoubtedly interest him. She can wait for him all morning if necessary.  When Picasso returns two hours later, she undoes the package and takes out a little picture: “M. Picasso,” she says, “allow me to present you with one of your old paintings.” And he, always rather moved to see again a work long lost from sight, looks tenderly at this little canvas.

Picasso: Yes, it’s a Picasso. It’s authentic. I painted it in Hyères where I spent the summer in 1922.

The Visitor: May I ask you to sign it, then? Owning a real Picasso without his signature is very distressing, after all! People who see it in our home may assume it’s a fake.

Picasso: People are always asking me to sign my old canvases. It’s ridiculous! In one way or another, I always marked my pictures. But there were times when I put my signature on the back of the canvas. All my works from the cubist period, until about 1914, have my name and the date on the back side of the stretcher. I know someone spread the story that in Céret, Braque and I decided not to sign our pictures anymore. But that’s just a legend! We didn’t want to sign the painting itself, that would have interfered with the composition. And even later, for that reason or for another, I sometimes marked my canvases on the back. If you don’t see my signature and the date, madam, it’s because the frame is hiding it.

The Visitor: But since the picture is by you, M. Picasso, couldn’t you do me the favor of signing it?

Picasso: No, ma’am! If I were to sign it now, I’d be committing forgery. I’d be putting my 1943 signature on a canvas painted in 1922. No, I cannot sign it, madam, I’m sorry.”

Ok, on the one hand we can wonder if our own work, and what makes us unique - is itself a fake - that’s what I get out of Robert Anton Wilson.  In the second story, Picasso knows the paintings he is looking at are his, but they were created at another time when he was signing his work differently - he did not want to falsify his earlier work by signing it.

Both stories sound a little different than the way it comes of on Seth’s blog post, that’s why I was curious, as an artist, to investigate the “Fake Picasso’s”.

I’m betting Picasso did too….he did not sign those paintings - not so much because they were fakes (some may have really been fakes though); he refused to sign because it would falsify the work he did in the past (if he had wanted to sign a work in the obvious way..he’d have done it).

It’s just another example, in my opinion of Painting fakes  - the story got distorted.