The Italian shock and its popular cultures
Between February and April 1917, Picasso travelled to Rome with Jean Cocteau, and the trip had a profound and lasting effect on his life. He visited Rome, Florence and Milan, and went to Naples twice, first in March and again in April. This Italian journey had an undeniable impact on his future works. Cocteau and Picasso were working together on the Parade project for the Ballets Russes directed by Sergei Diaghilev, with choreography by Léonide Massine based on a musical score by Erik Satie. Picasso wrote to Apollinaire regularly telling him about his travels and discoveries. Like Apollinaire, he was interested in popular culture (the circus, puppet shows) and art forms that were forgotten, poorly considered or even scorned. They must have had a lot to discuss when the painter returned to Paris. Picasso had found immense pleasure in discovering Naples, with its merchants, costumes, and traditions. Both artists also shared an evident interest in history, be it cultural, artistic, or literary, combined with a powerful urge to belong to the avant-garde circle. "Apollinaire was interested in the margins of art in order to integrate them into modernity, whose extraordinarily varied expressions were placed under the common umbrella of originality: if his criticism aimed to be eclectic, it was because the art forms he advocated were so too."[1]
In 1918, they both married, and were each other's best man. The war, with its horrors and endless separation, brought them closer than ever.
On November 9, Guillaume Apollinaire died of the Spanish flu. Picasso lost his dearest friend. Nobody among the painter's friendships would ever replace the poet.
[1] Apollinaire, le regard du poète. Exhibition catalogue, Musée d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, April 6 - July 18, 2016. Essay by Claire Bernardi, "Apollinaire, le regard en liberté", p. 57.
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Summary