毕加索的秘密

“人们迫切地想知道兰波的脑子在想什么

在他写下《醉舟》这首诗的时候

莫扎特在想什么

在他写下交响乐《朱庇特》的时候

我们想要了解那个神秘的过程

引导着创作者穿越危机丛生的冒险历程

幸运的是

这些对于诗歌和音乐不可能的事

对绘画来讲却是可能的

要知道一个画家的头脑里在经历什么

你只要看看他的手

这就是一个画家在经历的

他行走在绷紧的绳索上

他跟随者右一个曲线 左一个点

如果他失误 失去了平衡

那一切都玩了

画家像一个盲人

蹒跚地走在白色画布的黑暗中

慢慢显现出的光

仿佛是画家创造出的

他画出了一个又一个黑色的曲线

第一次

这位绘画天才隐秘的戏剧般的日常生活将被公众所体验

帕布罗·毕加索答应

今天就体验

在你面前

和你一起”

这是写在篇首的创作意图解密。莫名还蛮喜欢这段文字就记录下来。（有意思的事情是本来想试试今天刚刚到的外接键盘，才发现买成了接线的而我想要的是蓝牙的。但是颜色好好看舍不得退就留下了。我这个人就这样，沉溺于外表的美丽不去思考意义。

最近醉心于实验性强的片子。生活里也做着一些实验性强的事情。比如社交social。今天和现在的同班同学小聊了一下，发现还蛮喜欢别人眼中的自己，大概就是有个性爱艺术。

叛逆期来的太晚又太长，16岁后，我的思想开始停止成长。

小时候是大众意义上的优秀。从来没有体验过大家说的被父母拿去跟别人家的小孩比较这种事情，可能因为小时候是“别人家的小孩”。成绩上游没有偏科认真学习，不用要努力就看上去蛮优秀。

现在才明白，我们这一代人就是应试教育下被牺牲的一代人。大学里跟家人说过最悲哀的一句话就是，我的人生到现在，最擅长的事就是考试。

我从三岁开始学画画，十八岁时候迫于高考的压力放下。这算是人生里重要的遗憾瞬间。

于是，荒诞，奇怪，异类，不凡，特别，成为了余后一生都将最吸引我的词语。

幸运的是，归于艺术。

回到片子，不禁感慨毕加索创作生命如此活跃不竭。

保佑吧，不竭的源泉。

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is such a larger-than-life and unique personage who is bound to get numerous cinematic treatments, here is a brace of them, one centers on his tumultuous private life, another offers an innovative, direct look on his creativity and genius on the canvas.

James Ivory's SURVIVING PICASSO is a hallmark Ivory-Merchant production (which entails a script from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and not the usual hagiographic kind. The story is lensed through one of his lovers, Françoise Gilot (1921-2023), who, literally, succeeds in "surviving Picasso". Picasso (Hopkins), the pick-up artist, first meets Françoise in Nazi-occupied Paris, she is 21 and he is 61. An aspiring artist herself, Françoise cannot resist being the "apple of the eye" of one of the major artists in the world and takes the plunge of shacking up with him, bearing 2 children for him in the following years.

How much has Françoise gained from Picasso, career-wise, is left untapped in SURVIVING PICASSO, there is mentioning of promoting her works in passing, but the toil of unconditionally subsuming herself into his life raises a red flag for all comers. Picasso is unqualifiedly self-centered, his needs and whims are of utmost primacy. Perpetually, Françoise's life must be orbited around his and she should always be at the beck and call of his dictates, and that doesn't mean she is enough for him. Picasso is always on the lookout for new muses in the name of inspiration, that could leave those women with a permanent scar, like his first wife Olga Khokhlova (Lapotaire), a member of the looney tunes, or an embittered Dora Maar (Moore, sporting an Eastern European accent standoffishly and fiddling with mumblety-peg manically); then there is Marie-Thérèse Walter (Harker), who is able to keep her marbles, yet still pointedly proprietorial when she sees a newcomer getting his favor.

Compared to them, Françoise is the lucky one because she is brave enough to implement a stop-loss severance, which ensures that she can maintain an amicable, yet independent relation with Picasso after their breakup, they can still be friends, chew the fat, under the alertness of Picasso's new flame and later second wife Jacqueline Roque (Venora). More than a ribald affair of exploiting Picasso's satyriasis, SURVIVING PICASSO is unconventionally modern in exhorting youngsters to heed the pitfalls of surrendering themselves to someone's genius. Hopkins is uncharacteristically flippant, even mischievous as Picasso, the hellion of an old man, but the film's real strength lies in McElhone's feminine resilience, her doe-eyed desire and internal disenchantment, it is her liberation we are rooting for, although the drama in question never culminates in a white-heat spectacle as in some best Ivory-Merchant productions, nor any colorful peripheral characters can be rightfully called "scene-stealing".

Now let's turn back time to 40 years earlier, in 1956, Picasso himself headlines Clouzot's documentary to reveal his artistry and THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO vouchsafes audience the privilege to witness the maestro's painterly techniques first-hand.

The whole process is fascinating, Picasso starts drawing with ink on a piece of white paper, meantime Clouzot sets the camera angling at the backside of the paper, with the ink bleeding through the paper, thus audience can watch the whole process with nearly real-time veracity in its mirror image. Gradually, he adds oil paint and collages onto the canvas, and his works become more and more variegated and elaborate. To save time (one painting takes Picasso several hours to finish), Clouzot effects a stop-motion-like technique to demonstrate how a Picasso's painting evolves and transmogrifies with his quirky brushstrokes to a transcendent end result, and how the same painting can morph into another with a multifaceted truly, seeing is believing.

That said, THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO is a one-trick pony, an inventive documentary serving as an irrefutable testimony of Picasso's genius, that and that only. Advisedly, the film should be obligatorily watched by all the art students around the globe, even for common viewers (like Yours Truly), to see Picasso's creative juice flowing in front of your face is something no less of a revelation.

referential entries: Ivory's THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993, 7.5/10), QUARTET (1981, 6.2/10); Orson Welles's F FOR FAKE (1973, 7.5/10).

Title: Surviving Picasso

Year: 1996

Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: James Ivory

Screenwriter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

based on the book by Arianna Huffington

Music: Richard Robbins

Cinematography: Tony Pierce-Roberts

Editor: Andrew Marcus

Cast:

Anthony Hopkins

Natascha McElhone

Julianne Moore

Dominic West

Peter Eyre

Susannah Harker

Diane Venora

Joseph Maher

Bob Peck

Joan Plowright

Allegra Di Carpegna

Jane Lapotaire

Joss Ackland

Dennis Boutsikaris

Peter Gerety

Laura Aikman

Nigel Whitmey

Vernon Dobtcheff

Rating: 7.2/10

English Title: The Mystery of Picasso

Original Title: Le mystère Picasso

Year: 1956

Genre: Documentary, History

Country: France

Language: French

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Music: Georges Auric

Cinematography: Claude Renoir

Editor: Henri Colpi

Cast:

Pablo Picasso

Rating: 7.4/10

像片头就揭晓的那样 当诗人和作曲家创作时怎样思考 我们无从知晓 但绘画却不同 若想瞥见作者的秘密 你便看他的手，电影的介质使得这个过程永存 作为一种叙事也让漫长的创作浓缩 而绘画则是本片最基本的内容 90%的时间都由纯粹的画面构成，图形、色彩的变化形成一种独特的节奏 并配合以音乐形成一种隐秘的叙事 从中我们得以窥见毕加索的“秘密”，那是创作过程中的云诡波谲 也是克鲁佐所说的“冒险” 有时诙谐 有时焦虑 有时恐怖。

这种惊心动魄在毕加索创作最后一幅画时被推上高潮 反反复复地修改、整饰、覆盖、填补 最后竟整个推翻重来 但肉眼可见作品的境界已大不相同 这种对于艺术的赤诚让我这个艺术的门外汉也感动了 也突然理解毕加索的一生是怎样不断突破自己的创作界限。

还有一个有趣的点是当客观镜头切进来 我们才知道原来观众的视角不是毕加索的视角 而是画布的背面 不由感叹不愧是大师 作品的结构从背面看也依然维持着平衡的美感 只可惜在影片结束后 他将所有作品皆毁 世人再无亲眼见证的机会 不过我好像也能理解 毕竟这些画作是电影与绘画合谋生下的孩子 脱离了电影就根本不可能存在 同时又是将他的魔法昭然于天下的告密者 就像刘谦回避好事者时所用的借口：一个魔术师袒露他的秘密是会折寿的