Le Désir attrapé par la queue

by Pablo Picasso

"il est beau comme un astre c'est un rêve repeint en couleurs d'aquarelle sur une perle - ses cheveux ont l'art des arabesques compliquées des salles du palais de l'Alhambra et son teint a le son argentin de la cloche qui sonne le tango du soir à mes oreilles pleines d'amour - tout son corps est rempli de la lumière de mille ampoules électriques allumées - son pantalon est gonflé de tous les parfums d'Arabie - ses mains sont de transparentes glaces aux pêches et aux pistaches - les huîtres de ses yeux renferment les jardins suspendus bouche ouverte aux paroles de ses regards et la couleur d'aïoli qui l'encercle répand une si douce lumière sur sa poitrine que le chant des oiseaux qu'on entend s'y colle comme un poulpe au mât du brigantin qui dans les remous de mon sang navigue à son image"

Genres: Drama, Plays

66 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.
Picasso's output, especially in his early career, is often periodized. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.
Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

surrealist drama, "ubu roi"-esque... here is an example of one of picasso's stage directions, just to give you an idea:
"the transparent doors light up and the dancing shadows of five monkeys eating carrots appear..."

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had an absolute blast reading this - the fantastic introduction notes how Picasso writes exactly as he paints, by "the animation of objects combined with the process in which thoughts and abstract ideas take shape or become live personalities". The result is a play that feels almost unstageable, in that the ridiculous stage directions are hinged entirely upon the sensuous imagery of the words themselves, rather than in what any dramatisation could achieve. The narrative is endlessly recursive, more ballet than play, beginning in farce and ending in bathos-laden tragedy and destruction ("in come some undertakers with coffins, into which they dump everybody, nail them down and carry them off").

[Sylvia Kaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

They knew how to have fun! The legendary surrealist drama by Pablo Picasso. (Search the internet about more information about the first theatre production: a pure gem.) I've got the German translation by Paul Celan, Arche Verlag 1983; this edition contains valuable additional information.

[Salomé · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is fun! Literature is not always about serious introspection and large sweeps of heroic actions. Sometimes it is about pissing on stage!

[Miranda · Rating 1 out of 5]

the only thing i understood in this entire play was when they talked about an orgy

[Amanda Lemes · Rating 1 out of 5]

??????????????

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the given title and the right poster, I bet this could be convincingly marketed as a dinner theatre piece. I'm tempted to try it as a sort of artistic ambush.

[Eric Weisheit · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love his art ... But this was just ... Well I don't really know exactly WHAT this was!