Editors: Could you tell us a little bit about the work of artists in their last period?
John Richardson: Titian comes to mind. He lived to be almost as old as Picasso and in his last years sacrificed a painterly finish and loosened up his brushwork in order to invoke emotional intensity and depth. To hell with bravura representationalism.
ED: Is there a parallel between Titian and Shakespeare?
JR: There certainly is. Shakespeare's great late works-Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest-have a metamorphic mystery to them. For all their tragicomic appeal, Picasso's late works likewise lend themselves to deep, dark interpretations.
ED: Did Picasso know Shakespeare's work?
JR: Well, he did a series of brilliant, perceptive drawings of him, probably because he felt a kinship with him. There is a very theatrical side to Picasso's work. He saw the picture frame as a sort of proscenium arch and the objects in his still lifes as characters amorously involved with each other. See how the ithyphallic guitar-a surrogate for the artist-lusts after the bowl of peaches.
ED: You mean metamorphosis?
JR: Yes. Like Shakespeare, Picasso's obsession with metamorphosis stemmed from the classics. Even before he illustrated an edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses in 1930, he had turned to Ovid for inspiration. One of his greatest sculptures depicts Daphne being saved from rape at the hands of Jupiter by being turned into a bush.
ED: Is there any other artist you can think of, like a Titian or Shakespeare, who had this same sort of last period?
JR: Yes. Turner, Monet, Cézanne, and Braque come to mind. So do some other modern artists-among them De Chirico, Dalí and Derain-whose late periods were a disaster. By contrast, Picasso made a gigantic leap forward in his last period. Its complexity is still misunderstood.
ED: Did Picasso take pleasure from this?
JR: Yes, he did. In his old age, Picasso wanted to free himself completely from traditional concerns of painterliness and bravura effects. Until the 1950s, he continued to keep in touch with the world because that's where he got his inspiration. In the 1960s, however, he shut himself away in his studio; besides his memories, he was very dependent on his wife and his television set. He loved to watch Le Catch (All-in Wrestling), which was a huge thing on French television in the fifties and sixties. Picasso thought it funny, violent, and formally fascinating. He also liked watching old movies, such as the Bengal Lancers, Beau Geste-action movies with Clark Gable or-
ED: Gary Cooper.
JR: Yes, Picasso knew and liked Gary Cooper, despite his disappointment that Cooper had no idea how to shoot.
ED: Didn't Picasso eventually become something of a hermit?
JR: Yes, and his work became a kind of teatro mundi. But his studio became his world. And he could introduce anybody he wanted into it. People from his past mingle with great artists of the past, such as Raphael and Rembrandt. Rosita del Oro, a circus equestrienne with whom he had a wild affair at the age of thirteen, comes back again and again in his last works. And he sort of relives his past all over again in his studio. In old age Picasso's work becomes very erotic; he sees the procreative act and the creative act in terms of each other. He no longer gives a damn about propriety. No longer intent on a beautiful finish, he uses ugliness as a positive element. In his race against death, he wants to slosh the paint on as quickly as possible. The immediacy brings the canvas to life. Although he continued working until his death at the age of ninety-one, Picasso never faltered.
ED: Were these paintings shown in his lifetime?
JR: Most of them were shown in the Papal Palace in Avignon, but they were shown squashed together, three or four deep. They were dismissed by the public, as well as by people who should have known better, as the daubs of a burnt-out genius.
ED: Was Picasso disturbed by that?
JR: Horrified. Especially because, at the end, precious few people understood what he was trying to do.
ED: Do you think there is a connection between the fairy-tale quality of Cymbeline and Picasso's use of his imagery to resurrect the past or change reality?
JR: Yes, Picasso was a great believer in magic-the most extraordinary things happen in his paintings.
ED: That's interesting. In the last play, The Tempest, Shakespeare finally says, "No more amazement."
JR: Picasso saw art as having a magic function. For instance, if he was tired of a mistress, this will become apparent by a sudden change in the color of the girl's hair or some other physiognomic change-cruel hints! Picasso once told me "how awful it must be for a woman to see from my work that she's being replaced." This was said with a certain satisfaction.

I once saw this process in action. Picasso showed me a portrait of Jacque-line, his second wife. The background consisted of fever-chart zigzags in colored crayons. On top of this he painted a sick-looking Jacqueline. "You see, I'm a prophet," he said. Three days after this was painted, Jacqueline had a very high temperature. Poor Jacqueline was very susceptible. On seeing the painting, she saw what was expected of her and went ahead and got a fever.

Picasso used magic in endless different ways. He could play God; he could paint people in and out of life, transform them into animals, change their sex-hybridize them. He was, after all, a shaman.

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