They are all lining up, well-heeled, under umbrellas in the rain for Picasso and « the masters » here.
Tickets reserved, coats checked, headsets ready. Everyone is as they should be. And the genius of 20th-century art is, too, and all the masters are, too.
A parentheses of erotic drawings makes sparks, and Yo, Picasso from 1901 and La Pisseuse from 1965.
But I’m waiting for the end.
I’m waiting for the genius not to be as he should be.
I find that I’m waiting for the genius to hover, to reveal the raw imperfection of the moment, unbound. I’m waiting for him to shed his brilliant disguise.
I’m waiting to see conventions defied, not as a convention of defying convention with knowing panache, but because to be truly alive, to truly respond to a face, a flower, a hand, a pear, a bowl, a foot, a breast, is to not know it, it is to defy its convention.
They are all still lining up when I descend the slippery, wet stairs and move on in a drizzle.