Paloma Picasso: Calling my father sexist is absurd – he’s uncancellable

Paloma Picasso has been the administrator of her father's estate since the death of her older brother Claude last year
Paloma Picasso has been the administrator of her father’s estate since the death of her older brother Claude last year - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

When Paloma Picasso was nine years old, she witnessed an extraordinary scene. “A man had come to see my father in Cannes,” says the jewellery designer, businesswoman and new administrator of the Picasso estate, “and when he left the room, the man walked out backwards.” All these years on, her eyes still widen at the memory. “Now my father was very relaxed, so in no way would he have elicited that kind of behaviour, but it was obvious that this man felt he couldn’t turn his back on Picasso. And I thought: ‘Wow. This is the way people behave with kings and queens.’”

The incident may have given her a new understanding of what her father meant to the outside world, but it was hardly the first time Paloma – the last surviving of Pablo Picasso’s four children, Paulo Picasso, Maya Widmaier-Picasso and Claude Picasso – had realised her father was famous. “Because of course I’d always known that,” says the 75-year-old.

How could she not? On the day she was born in 1949, her mother – the French artist Françoise Gilot – describes in her autobiography how hordes of journalists in the hospital corridor were “trying to force their way in”; how they were offering the nurse “a hundred thousand francs to bring Paloma out”. And throughout her childhood in Paris and the south of France, “whenever we went out,” Paloma remembers, “there would be throngs of people in front of us asking him for autographs.”

She pauses, and frowns. “What’s funny is that it could have felt very threatening for a child: these crowds of people jumping on my father. But somehow it never did. Maybe because he was so giving, so easy-going about it all.”

The artist with Claude and Paloma, his two children by Françoise Gilot
The artist with Claude and Paloma, his two children by Françoise Gilot - Rex Features

It’s taken me months to get Paloma to agree to an interview (she doesn’t do many) and weeks to sort out the logistics (she divides her time between Lausanne, Paris, Marrakesh and New York). Recently, much of that time has been taken up with her new duties, as administrator of the estate. Paloma took on the role after the death of her older brother Claude last year, and describes one of the first exhibitions she has co-curated since then – “The Joy of Life” at the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna in Crete – as “a homage to Claude.”

We settle, eventually, on Marrakesh, where – too private to invite journalists into her home – Paloma suggests meeting at the sumptuous interiors boutique Maison Blaoui, owned by her old friend Carole Blaoui, and when she finally walks in, I’m struck by how easy-going she is.

I’d thought perhaps that she might be grand. Or fashion-world-frosty. After all, this is a woman who started designing her bold, eclectic jewellery in her teenage years, a Vogue cover girl and one-time Studio 54 fixture who became a muse to Andy Warhol and Yves Saint Laurent in her 20s (enjoying a long friendship with his great rival Karl Lagerfeld at the same time). She launched a perfume in her 30s that is still sold around the world today, a bestselling signature red lipstick, Mon Rouge, for L’Oréal, and has been creating jewellery for Tiffany & Co for almost 45 years.

Paloma was a muse to Andy Warhol in her 20s
Paloma was a muse to Andy Warhol in her 20s - Images Press/Archive Photos

Regardless of how much they have accomplished, there’s also always a risk that the children of icons can be tetchy and defensive. Not Paloma.

Crisp, despite the 95F (35C) heat, in raw silk lime green pencil trousers and a loose fuchsia shirt – both made by a local tailor – she immediately asks if I’m hungry. Should we have lunch during or after our chat? She’s got strong features – immortalised in her father’s famous paintings Paloma with an Orange and Paloma in Blue – and a throaty laugh. She’s dynamic, opinionated – and very cross about recent, renewed attempts to “cancel” her father.

Feminists have been trying to tarnish the genial genius’s legacy for more than a decade, even if Picasso’s personal failings in the women department are hardly new. Fernande Olivier, his model and lover in the early 1900s, claimed that his “morbid jealousy” had forced her to live as a recluse. Dora Maar, the weeping woman in many of his late-1930s paintings, was said to be shattered by his cruelty. And in her bestselling memoir Life with Picasso, Paloma’s mother explained how, when she left him, he whipped up a campaign against her in France persuading galleries to boycott her works.

One thing Paloma's father always loathed was snobbery in art
One thing Paloma’s father always loathed was snobbery in art - Pierre Vauthey/Sygma via Getty Images

Over the past five years, however, there has been a more concerted attempt to brand this collective behaviour “toxic”. Add “cultural appropriator” and “thief of African tribal masks” to the mix and the most influential artist of the 20th century becomes imminently cancellable. Indeed, last year, on the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s deathThe Guardian asked: “Is it time to mothball the master?”

“Putting the blame of all the bad things men can do on him seems a bit…” Paloma’s head lolls wearily to one side: “Well, a bit tough.” These were different times, she points out – we are talking about a man born in 1881 – and besides, her father adored women. “They were at the centre of his creation. Of course, I was his daughter, so it was a very different type of relationship, but...” But if we tried to cancel every artist who had behaved badly in their private lives, we’d be faced with a bleak cultural landscape? “Yes! Marie-Thérèse [Walter] was 17, it’s true, but she was an exception,” she says of the French model who was Picasso’s lover from 1927 to 1935, and gave him his second-eldest child, the late Maya Widmaier-Picasso. “It’s not that he was only with women who were under age. And 17 is not that under age.”

While growing up, Paloma realised that being resentful of her surname would only make her miserable
While growing up, Paloma realised that being resentful of her surname would only make her miserable

Paloma’s not a fan of generalisations – “they tend to be negative” – and there is currently a whole lot about men and misogyny doing the rounds. When I bring up the new “misogyny alert” labels some museums have introduced beneath artworks (in 2022, the Courtauld Gallery suggested Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère had an “unsettling” quality because of the male figure in the mirror), she groans: “Give us a break!” Because perhaps, occasionally, the male gaze isn’t creepy but adoring? “Or pleasurable, even? Growing up in Europe, in Latin countries,” says Paloma, “the men wolf-whistled – and that’s OK! Why should it be negative? Of course [certain kinds of male behaviour] can be negative, but there’s an in-between area, and it can also be nice when a man looks at you. It’s not necessarily threatening; men are not necessarily our opposition.”

Despite Picasso’s womanising and their stormy 10-year relationship, Paloma’s own mother insisted she bore no rancour towards the artist. Famously “the only woman who walked out”, Gilot – who died last year, at 101 – even dedicated her memoir to him. “Before she passed away, she said to me: ‘You have to understand that I have never met anyone as exceptional as your father,’” Paloma tells me. “And yes, he had some flaws, but we all have flaws. Who is perfect enough to judge another? Because my father is famous, people believe they have a right to have a view, a right to interfere, but here’s the thing: it’s too late!”

Paloma with her mother, Françoise Gilot, who insisted she bore no rancour towards the artist over his womanising
Paloma with her mother, Françoise Gilot, who insisted she bore no rancour towards the artist over his womanising - Jean Tesseyre/Paris Match via Getty Images

Sipping tea from a hand-painted Moroccan glass, she tells me about an article about Virginia Woolf she was reading just this morning. “It seems that even though she was married to a Jew, she also made some negative comments about Jews. But what are you going to do?” she asks, holding out hands encased in matching webbed gold cuffs from her Tiffany & Co collection. “Maybe if I’d been her friend I would have said, ‘Don’t say that,’ but at this point, what can we say?”

She’s smiling as she says this last part because it is, on a surface level, self-evidently absurd to try to cancel people posthumously. On a deeper level, however (one she’ll be more keenly aware of than most), people’s legacies are fragile, and in more desperate need of protecting today than ever.

“It is a weight,” she admits when I ask how heavily the responsibility weighs on her. “But only in the same way that it’s a weight to bear this name. I’m very lucky because I have such a beautiful first name, so in a funny way the name Picasso feels a little lighter alongside it. When I was younger, I did dream for a while of just being Paloma – that I could sign ‘Paloma’ and maybe that would be enough.” As she grew up, however, she realised that being resentful of her surname would only “make me miserable”. “And it’s true that it can open doors. It’s also true that the door can slam back in your face harder. But in the end, I feel like I have to try and be a better person because of that name.”

Paloma in 1970; she realised growing up that being resentful of her surname would only make her miserable
Paloma grew up surrounded by artists, writers and poets – and went on to become a very successful jewellery designer - Bertrand LAFORET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Every day, Paloma now deals with issues of copyright, reproduction and authentication. Then there are the forgeries. “An enormous amount of the works we see are fakes. Over 95 per cent of them. And of course, the digital world is only [helping to] make them better.” She’s learnt to recognise the most prolific forgers, she says with a chuckle. “Because they sort of have their own style. At one point, we’d even decided that one of them was left-handed – you could tell!”

Picasso isn’t just her dad and a mind-blowing artist, I’m reminded as she switches between calling him “father” and “Picasso” throughout our interview, but a global brand it’s now up to her – and her extended family – to safeguard. And when we move on to accusations of “cultural appropriation”, her tone becomes still more resolute.

“Sorry, but the idea that this is wrong – is wrong!” She says of her father’s obsession with African tribal art. “That he was inspired by African masks should be viewed as a plus. That he saw how fascinating it all was and absorbed it, and then reworked it in his own way and shared it with the rest of the world – that wasn’t him ‘stealing’ from their culture. That was him showing people how important it was.”

For Paloma, woke censorship doesn’t just threaten her own heritage but every art form there is. This is a woman who has spent a lifetime immersed in creative worlds, after all: getting a job as a costume designer for avant-garde theatre productions the moment she left Paris Nanterre University, and gaining such a reputation for her imaginative jewellery designs that Yves Saint Laurent invited her to create pieces to accompany his collections.

Paloma with Yves Saint Laurent and the actress Catherine Deneuve
Paloma with Yves Saint Laurent and the actress Catherine Deneuve - Pierre VAUTHEY/Sygma via Getty Images

As a child, Paloma not only grew up surrounded by artists, writers and poets, but “spent hours, days”, watching her mother and father create. “Because I was a very quiet little girl, my father would let me sit on the floor and watch him paint,” she tells me – adding that he was always in the process of creating something, even if only out of a cigarette packet. “He would smoke Gitanes,” she says with a smile, “and then cut up the cardboard packaging and make funny little animals out of it.” She never felt that art was “stealing either one of my parents away from me”, she assures me when I ask, “because I found the process so fascinating.”

Even after her mother left Picasso, in 1953 – when Paloma was four and Claude six – the two of them continued to “have a great relationship with him” for years. “When we came from Paris to visit him [in the south of France], he would feel for the first hour or two that he had to play the role of the father, and ask us how we were doing at school, even though he couldn’t have cared less. Then, maybe an hour later, he’d say: ‘Look, I never liked school, and look where I am today!’ We’d have to say: ‘Yes, but we’re not Pablo Picasso, Daddy, so we do have to go to school.’”

It was only after Picasso married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, in 1961 that they ceased to see him, and after his death in 1973, Paloma and Claude were forced to endure a lengthy legal battle to be recognised as heirs. Eventually, in 1989, Claude was put in charge of the estimated 45,000 works Picasso left behind, as well as all authentications, rights and licensing deals (although the estate was initially appraised at $250 million [£190 million], experts have said the true value was in the billions), but it will have been a painful period for them both.

Ask Paloma what she might say to the father she never got to reconnect with at the end of his life, and she shakes her head: “It’s complicated. I’d rather not get into it.”

When I come back, later, to whether she feels he was a good father, however, she looks surprised I should even ask. “He was a fabulous father. Because he was creative and fascinating to be around, and not only enjoyed children but had a real respect for them – for their innocence, for being open to everything, just like he was.”

The artist in 1954 with Claude and Paloma, who both enjoyed a 'great relationship' with their father after their mother left him
The artist in 1954 with Claude and Paloma, who both enjoyed a ‘great relationship’ with their father after their mother left him - JEAN MEUNIER/AFP

For that reason, can one not help but feel that he would be confounded by the closed minds of young people today? “We are in a strange moment where everything is so restrictive,” she sighs, “where we are really closing in on ourselves instead of opening up. My father opened many doors. And that’s not, by the way, to say that colonialism was good – if he were alive, he would say that now.” He “cared very much about other people”, she goes on, and wanted so badly “for the world to be a better place” that he even called his daughter after “the Dove of Peace” – a leitmotif in his art. So ironically her father was very “woke”? “Absolutely! He was.”

Because Picasso would have wanted people, above all, to open their minds to art, being in charge of his estate means more than just “keeping a consistency there”, Paloma explains. “The world evolves, and you cannot keep doing the same things that were done in the 1950s and 1960s.” With a drop-off in museum attendees of under 30 across the world, she believes that it’s about finding new ways to persuade young people that these buildings supposedly filled with “dead, problematic white guys” are still relevant.

Ways such as the “selfie-taking” in front of great artworks that some museums have promoted in the hope it brings in Gen Zers? “I think to fight that would be ridiculous. You have to open a door. And if that’s the door that makes them look at art, then fine – let it be the door. Remember that in many buildings you never used to be allowed to take pictures, and I do think people have to find ways to make art their own now.”

One thing her father always loathed, she tells me, was snobbery in art. “He objected to the idea that museums should be like churches, or that you had to read a book to understand the works on display – and let me tell you, ‘selfies’ would not have bothered him at all.”

For Paloma, woke censorship doesn't just threaten her own heritage but every art form there is
For Paloma, woke censorship doesn’t just threaten her own heritage but every art form there is - Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

In terms of making sure our children grow up with an interest in art, she learnt a valuable lesson from her own mother. “She would take us to museums, but not too much, and not for too long.” Paloma, in turn, used to enjoy taking the young with her to galleries, and swears by the “20-minute rule”. “Whenever I took a child to a museum, I would always promise that we wouldn’t stay longer than 20 minutes. Children will always say, ‘OK, fine.’” And then it never becomes a chore? “Exactly. Everyone should look at art as fun. Of course it’s serious too, but it should be playful, not painful. Let’s put that across the front of every museum! ‘Now please come in.’”

Our time is up, but before Paloma goes off to reapply her trademark red lipstick for the photographer, I want to ask her whether she has ever genuinely feared that her father might be “cancelled”. Because in my mind, he’s uncancellable. “I think that’s true of him.” Nodding, she breaks out into a broad smile. “I do. And it’s partly because of his empathy, and because he was always fighting to be the best, which means he was never sure he was the best. But mostly because he was so very human.”

Picasso on Crete: Joy of Life runs until Oct 20 at the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna in Crete