The Pull of Picasso

A work of art can lead you by invisible rein. I first saw Boy Leading a Horse by Pablo Picasso (oil on canvas, 1906) at the Albright Knox art gallery, in Buffalo NY. It was part of the traveling William S. Paley exhibit that opened on my birthday in 1995. While Paley was building the Columbia Broadcasting System, he amassed an art collection so intriguing and substantive that it warranted a good showing before being splintered off into the world’s foster homes for art.

I got lucky. The whole exhibition dripped with monumental works of art, including works by Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, and Renoir, but turning a corner and seeing this thing - Boy. I can still see it more than 25 years later.

Paley acquired Boy in 1936 and never sold it. He must have liked it, too. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Mendlessohn-Bartholdy family, the relatives of composure Felix Mendelssohn also liked it very much and only sold it at the insistence of the Nazi party. The painting’s first owners (after the gallery that briefly held it) were Leo Stein and his sister, Gertrud – writer, art lover and matron of the Lost Generation. I don’t know why they parted with it, but they kept it for nearly 20 years.

So a long tether connects my book Untouchable with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lewis, Pound and Wilder. A continuance of inspiration.

I knew none of this when I first saw the piece. Didn’t know its name, nor its famous painter. All I knew was stature and color and power. It pulled me and held me; it led me through my last novel. Like I was a horse.