Painting: Picasso's Theater Period

Spring, 1917. World War I ground grimly on. All the same, the famed impresario of the Ballet Russe, Sergei Diaghilev, commissioned a young poet, Jean Cocteau, to conceive a new ballet. At the time Cocteau was obsessed by visual images, especially the Harlequins, Pierrots and musical instruments in Picasso's paintings. As Cocteau recalled later, "My dream was to hear the music of Picasso's guitars," and he set about building his ballet around them, hoping to cajole the Spanish painter into designing sets and costumes. Picasso, a friend of Cocteau's, was cajoled.

A few months later an audience of war-strained Parisians, prepared to be outraged by the horrors of "modern art," sighed with relief when Picasso's great curtain for the ballet Parade rolled down portraying a delightful procession of circus folk. But when 10-ft. figures decked out in wild cubist costumes strolled onstage, oranges started flying into the orchestra. At the ballet's conclusion, Composer Erik Satie was slapped in the face; next day the press cried "Scandal!" Diaghilev dropped Parade.

But for Picasso, the taste of theater was seductive. He stayed on with the Ballet Russe for eight years. He married Diaghilev Ballerina Olga Koklova, sketched the troupe as it rehearsed, painted dancers' portraits, and designed theater curtains, scenery and costumes for five more ballets—often appearing in the wings on opening night with paint and brushes to add his final touch.

"C'est Amusant!" This summer, nearly half a century later, Parade's great curtain, 33 ft. by 55 ft., dropped again, and again was greeted with delight. The occasion: a special festival performance of three ballets on which Picasso had worked, put on by the French provincial city of Toulouse to open an accompanying, summer-long exhibition in the Musée des Augustins of his costume designs, decors, sketches, curtains, and related paintings.

This first, full-fledged exhibition of Picasso's theater period was organized by the Musée's new curator, Denis Milhau, 32. Casting about for a splashy debut, it occurred to him that nobody, nowhere, had yet focused exclusively on this aspect of Picasso's prodigious career. Mindful that "the biggest collector of Picassos is Picasso," Milhau sought an interview. Four months later he got in to see the painter—who turned out to be delighted with the idea: "Bon. D'accord. C'est amusant!" ("Good. All right. It's fun!"). The maestro scoured his scattered villas and selected 71 works, 63 of them never before exhibited. They ranged from a postage-stamp-sized cartoon to the 35 ft. by 55 ft. July 14th (Bastille Day) curtain commissioned by Paris' People's Theater, portraying a dead minotaur, a great human eagle carrying his victim, and an old man bearing a young boy.