“But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown—a mountebank. “I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.
Pablo Picasso, 1952
And who can forget when Picasso declared a painting he did to be a forgery. “I can paint a fake Picasso as well as anybody!”
I had a print of an early Picasso painting of a dove. Beautiful
He had the talent, but most of what he is noted for is grotesque IMO.
Goya’s depressing. Saw an exhibit at the Boston MFA a couple of decades ago.