Category: Anecdotes / Artist History / Modern Art
Reading Time: 5 Min
The Encounter on the Train to Osnabrück
I had just finished a long day of work, the last texts on Walker Evans and Oleksandr Bohomazov were online, and I was sitting on the train from Cologne to Osnabrück. I was tired but satisfied; the deadlines had been met.
An elderly gentleman across from me suddenly fixed his gaze on my attire. I was wearing my bright red quilted jacket, which probably attracted a little too much attention on this dreary December day.
The gentleman, who later introduced himself as Klaus, a retired painter from Osnabrück, smiled and said:
“Pardon me, sir. That jacket… you look like you just ran away from a bullfight. The perfect Torero coming home.”
I laughed, and the ice was broken. We started talking about art, about Evans’s Dignity of the Document and the need for raw energy in painting.
The Crisis and the Bull
Klaus leaned back, took a sip of his coffee, and quietly said, “You know, that brings me to a story about someone who needed blood in his art. It was Picasso, on the Côte d’Azur in 1957. He was having a crisis. He was convinced that art had become too sterile, too removed from real life—he said it was too far from the kitchen!”
I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Well, that evening, the kitchen promptly delivered. Right in the middle of his philosophical rant, the chef wheeled in a table laden with half the carcass of a freshly slaughtered calf—for the evening’s dinner. To others, it was shocking. To Picasso? That was his Toro, his bull.”
The Art of the Knife
Klaus paused dramatically before continuing:
“Do you know what he did? He grabbed a butcher’s knife, dipped it into the blood and fat collected on the table, and started drawing directly onto the wooden tabletop. Not painting, but etching the contours of the calf with blood—no canvas, no brushes! It was a wild, primal, minute-long performance of the rawest art. He created an unforgettable ‘blood painting.’”
I was fascinated. “And what was the reaction from the guests?”
Klaus (smiling):
“After the shock wore off, someone asked him what that insane artwork was worth. And Picasso, with a smirk, replied simply: ‘A good lunch.’ He had freed himself, satisfied his creative urge, and turned chaos in the kitchen into pure art.”
Conclusion: The Kitchen Metaphor
By the end of the story, I understood that Picasso was reminding us that true art happens when theory (the head) collides with the instinctive act (the gut). Sometimes you just have to grab an axe… or a bloody butcher’s knife. And my red jacket, the Torero Moment, was the perfect key to hearing that wild story on the train home.
Leave a Comment