Picasso Castle

A 17th Century castle had become, last week, a 20th Century shrine. Castle Grimaldi, in the Riviera town of Antibes, had long been used as a museum, but hardly anyone bothered now to look at its ancient coins, copies of Michelangelo and terra-cotta statuettes. For Pablo Picasso had hung his latest paintings in its tiled galleries. The regular habitues were bustled aside by a throng of up-to-the-minute pilgrims, who had come to see for themselves the newest chapter in the protean history of Picasso's art.

All agreed that the master was a new man again--even if some didn't like the new Picasso any more than they liked the last one. His mangled women and monsters of the war years had vanished like a nightmare. The nine new paintings were bright still lifes done with a comic strip's economy of line and color, and airy pastoral scenes with pipe-playing centaurs, a goddess and dancing goats. Picasso had painted his new pictures on the scene, behind locked doors (TIME, Jan. 13). The castle's old guide, Pierre, used to tell tourists that there was "a crazy artist" in the studio, but now Pierre spends his evenings reading up on Picasso.

Antibes' money-minded Mayor Jean Pastour, who despised Picasso's work but recognized its market value, had raised the admission price to the castle from five to 30 francs. Last week's visitors got their 30 francs' worth: they found 65-year-old Picasso himself pacing before his pictures, looking for all the world like an aging lifeguard.

Among the admiring callers at the castle was Chitchatter Elsa Maxwell. "My old and affectionate friendship for Pablo Picasso," she burbled in next day's column, "is too well known to dwell upon. Our friendship during 27 years has always been full of surprises. ... I have always thought Picasso's blue period to be his best until yesterday, when I went to the Grimaldi Museum. ... I had seen quite a bit of Picasso in Paris this winter. When I asked him to come to America and told him about the money he would make there, he shrugged his expressive Latin shoulders, saying, 'Elsa, I hate the sea and I hate money, and I have been working in the Museum at Antibes on what I believe is my best work.' "

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