Via Tyler Green I heard about Newsweek’s Peter Plagen’s thoughts about the most influential work of art of the last 100 years - Peter thinks its Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

This is a lot to do about nothing since we can not know what was truly the most influential painting in the last century.  I’d suggest that if Peter Plagen really wants to know the answer to his own question, he could ask every well known living artist what single painting influenced them the most.  Add to that, all the dead artists over the last 100 years who you can historically read about and find out which painting(s) were most important.

Then you would rate the influence of each artist based on what was known about them, both the influence of the artist on contemporaries and the current influence of the artist after their death.

Then.. with all that information, create a numerical score by multiplying the score of the painting by the score of the artist(s) who admired it, adding up scores for the same painting from different artists.  Also do the same thing with influential dealers and art critics and find out what paintings they felt were most influential, if you can.

Finally, you’d have a score for each painting and then you could sort them from higher score down to lowest and have a much better idea of what paintings were the most influential over the last 100 years.

“…And of course Les Dems is too. Jack Flam also wrote about Les Dems as springing from Blue Nude, pointing out that while Picasso certainly took something from African sculpture (as Picasso oft claimed), he was only able to do it after Matisse showed him how.

Flam also notes that Picasso remained obsessed with Blue Nude for many decades. Flam points to 1934’s Nude in a Garden. And there are Blue Nude-type figures in Picasso all the way through his Women of Algiers series: In this 1955 example Picasso makes his reference to Matisse as clear as possible.

Sure, Les Dems is more famous. But Picasso needed Blue Nude to make it, and for decades thereafter.

Or, you can just ask Picasso and Matisse (as quoted above), get their favorite paintings - declare those paintings the most influential (since you might assume Picasso and Matisse were the two most influential painters in the last 100 years) and be done with it!

I loved the Barcelona and Modernity - Gaudi to Dali show at the Metropolitan that is running through June 3rd, 2007 - if your in town you really have to see this show - it’s one more of the series of FANTASTIC shows that have been put on by the Metropolitan Museum over the last year.  No Photography was allowed - but I can talk about it and the pictures and feelings are etched in my mind.

Coming into this show from the Roman Wing that I had seen just before - I felt every bit as happy with what I saw in Barcelona and Modernity.   I hope to go back two or three times by the time the show closes.

Here’s some of the images that Met has online that I liked the most in this show:

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Interior of Els Quatre Gats Piccaso - 1899

La Vie (Life) Piccaso - 1903

Port de Barcelona Lluis Bracons - 1925

There’s a lot more that is not reproduced online.  I was looking at Picasso’s early work and comparing it to the other artists he befriended from Barcelona or nearby parts of Spain - and trying to figure out what works for me in his work vs. the others.

I came up with an idea that works for me - it’s not a new idea, that artists who appeal to me are the one’s that are using paint, or the art form, whatever it is, to capture feeling and transform it via painting.  Painters that are describing light, or redoing what a photograph does, more or less, might seem to have a lot of technical skill, but the work is boring.

Enough for tonight.

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.