Its such a weird story and Picasso was such a cowardly figure. The myth of the great resistor is bunk. How di he get to paint so prodigiously during the war with the finest materials available? Max Jacob knew the truth. For sure. Picasso could provide information to the gestapo on who owned almost every painting he sold, and importantly, where the paintings were stored. These Nazi looted Picasso’s seemed like an inordinate number. Hilton Kramer even claimed that Picasso sold a painting to the Gestapo responsible for hauling Jacob away. Who knows, Picasso may have give him the artwork to get rid of an ocular and volubile piece of evidence.Jacob probably slept with him. its a wild speculation, but Picasso through the likes of Gertrude Stein knew all the Jewish art collectors in Paris and how deep their pockets were. A little wanker like Picasso wouldn’t need much arm twisting to spit out names.
“All of his friends were collaborators of sorts. They could have saved him, but they didn’t. They spent the war drinking Champagne.”…Upon viewing the film, it becomes clear that Aghion holds Jacob’s friends responsible for his death. First and foremost, Aghion points his finger at Picasso: “He treated Jacob like he treated his women and children. He was a man whose genius was as vast as his ego. He used Jacob and dropped him like a dirty sock.” The gap between art’s humanistic approach and the basic inhumanness and egotism of these intellectuals is very obvious Read More:http://www.glbtjews.org/article.php3?id_article=527
Gertrude Stein: …Max Jacob read my horoscope. It was a great honour because he wrote it down. I did not realise it then but I have since and most of all very lately, as all the young gentlemen who nowadays so much admire Max are so astonished and impressed that he wrote mine down as he has always been supposed never to write them but just to say them off hand. Well anyway I have mine and it is written. … I am afraid if she says it she means it. They did not see each other for another year and in the meantime Picasso’s little boy was born and Max Jacob was complaining that he had not been named god-father….Read More:http://www.archive.org/stream/selectedwritings030280mbp/selectedwritings030280mbp_djvu.txt
According to Ward Houser, Jacob was sent to concentration camp at Drancy in spite of Cocteau’s intervention on his behalf. Jacob’s fate in the cattle car was sealed by Picasso’s refusal to use his leverage to save him.
Colin Vernon:It seems unlikely that poor Max Jacob, Jewish, homosexual, (and apparently ashamed of both) posed any serious threat to the German war effort. All the same, in accordance with the official policy of the occupying authority in Paris, he was detained early in 1944 and removed to a transit camp, his ultimate destination being, it seems, a labour camp in the East where his positive contribution to that war effort would be assured. At once, the poet’s small band of admirers, led by Jean Cocteau, petitioned for his release. But the signature of a very old acquaintance was requested and refused. That signature might have carried some weight because the Germans, while not perhaps over-awed by Picasso the man, found it necessary to pay some regard to his international following and reputation. But, once again, the self-styled rebel found it convenient to keep on the right side of authority when the chips were down. Here was a pathetic creature dominated by his own fears, fancies and superstitions; a man who needed to trust his hairdresser because he feared that an enemy might work some detrimental spell if he got hold of the master’s clippings. Read More:http://www.spearhead.com/0011-cv.html
Apparently, the made of the brothel in Picasso’s Filles D’Avignon was Max Jacob’s grandmother; represented as the older looking grotesque figure. Max Jacob: ” my life is a tango, my heart- a melodrama.”
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