Allen had a magazine reproduction of this (Picasso‘s late self-portrait) taped to his refrigerator in his old East 12th Street apartment. He also had this (Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert) but that’s a whole other story. Recognitions of self? Glimpses of (im)mortality? Today we celebrate Picasso’s birth, October 25 1881 in Malaga, Spain.
There’s the older, and then there’s the younger, Picasso – This, (from “At Apollinaire’s Grave”) – “…the absent hand of Max Jacob/ Picasso in youth bearing me a tube of Mediterranean..” and (similarly from Paris, writing to Jack Kerouac) – “I sat weeping in Cafe Select, once haunted by Gide and Picasso and well-drest Jacob last week writing first lines of great formal elegy for my mother.”
1949 – here’s Picasso painting
a dream
unforgettable
surprising