Page 56 Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020
femail IntervIew
EvEryday agEism
It’s the last tolerated prejudice.
But Femail’s had enough. It’s time
we called out those day-to-day
moments when we’re patronised
for no longer being young...I happeneD upon a call-in on the
radio last week. Listeners were
being asked how long they had
kept up their 2020 resolutions.
One lady triumphantly explained
she hadn’t needed to make
any new ones because she’d kept
to the one she had made in
December 2018 — from January 1,
2019, to March 2020 she had not
spent a penny on herself. not on
going to the hairdresser, not on having her
nails done, not on any new item of clothing;
nothing if it was just for herself.
‘Well,’ she explained, ‘I’m 60, aren’t I? Who
is looking at me anymore but myself?’ Whatstopped me from calling in and
giving her a piece of my mind, I
don’t know, but please God, I
hope none of you were listening
in and thinking what a very good
idea, more money for the grand-
kids. It is precisely this attitude
that keeps everyday ageism alive
and kicking. precisely what keeps
the Invisible after 50 myth germane.
Lady, if you don’t go out immediately and
splurge on something utterly frivolous for
yourself, I’ve a mind to track you down and
get something for you myself.by Christa
D’Souza
P
A B L O P i cA s sO
was many things —
an artistic genius,
o n e o f t h e m o s t
important, talented
and prolific painters of the
20th century and, according to
reviewers of the latest exhibi-
tion of his work, Picasso And
Paper, at the Royal Academy,
‘corruscatingly brilliant’.
But he was also a violent bully who
changed his sexual partners as often
as his painting style, beat up lovers,
drove two of them to suicide and
declared that women ‘were machines
made for suffering’.
Even his own gra ndda ughter
described him as a misogynist who
‘submitted women to his animal
sexuality, tamed them, ingested them
and crushed them onto his canvas’.
But 85-year-old Lydia corbett will
not hear a single word against him.
‘i am the only one who says good
things about him,’ she says. ‘He was
always gentle with me — he put me
at ease, like a proper father figure.’
Theirs was an unusual pairing that
spanned just a few sun-drenched
weeks in the pottery town of Vallauris
on the cote d’Azur back in 1954.
‘He was so kind and funny and did
everything to give me my confidence
back,’ she says. ‘He gave me so much.
i will always love him.’
Today, she lives in a cosy house in
D e v o n a w a s h w i t h p a i n t i n g s ,
sculptures and pottery.
Back then, she was sylvette David
— aka, Picasso’s Girl With The
Ponytail, the study of more than 60
portraits — a 19-year-old blonde
bombshell engaged to a furniture
designer called Toby Jellinek.
With her high ponytail and slender,
freckled neck, she was ethereally
beautiful, but also cripplingly shy,
naive and emotionally damaged.
‘i was shut in, very shut in — young,
innocent and full of fear,’ she says in
her accented English. ‘i had been
given too much freedom as a child
and abused by my mother’s husband
— it shook me for life. i think he
could feel that i was broken.’
Picasso, meanwhile, was 73 and
mired in his own crisis.H
E HAD been dumped
by his long-term partner
Francoise Gilot, whom
he’d been dating since
he was 61 and she 21 and who had
likened him to Bluebeard, the
folktale serial killer.
she was the first of all his women to
leave him and he was bruised,
vulnerable and felt close to death.
Then, in April, he spotted the
beautiful sylvette chatting in the sun
with friends, felt invigorated by her
youth and knew he had to paint her.
so he sketched a large charcoal
likeness and dangled it over a wall
behind which she was chatting.
‘i could not believe he wanted to
paint me,’ she says. ‘i could not
believe he had noticed me!’
Frankly, it’s hard to believe anyone
not noticing her — particularly not a
painter with a penchant for much
younger partners. But she insists her
self-confidence was at rock bottom.
‘i had bad legs and thick ankles!’
she says. ‘i was always covered in
long skirts and long sleeves.’
Over the following weeks, sylvette
sat for six hours a day as he created
a series of portraits in various media
— drawings, sculptures and paintings
— and the result, known as his ‘grey
period’ because most of the works
were in greys, blacks and whites, was
the most intense series of portraits
he ever did with one model.
it wasn’t easy for her.
‘i was afraid of old men. i ran away
from them — so he was a real test.’
But despite his bullying reputation,she insists Picasso was different. ‘He
was young-looking and brown and
clean as a fiddle. He didn’t smell of
garlic or wine like most old men — i
never saw him drinking, or drunk. He
smelled of roses.’
Each day, she’d sit for hours in the
studio, gazing out of the window as
Picasso painted in utter silence.
When he was creating, he was(^) prolific and focused. He’d work
quietly and steadily — confident,
never tutting or swearing — at the
end of each day showing her the
finished work and the next, starting
a new piece.
‘He used to say that when he went
into the studio he left his body
outside,’ she says.
she meanwhile, would empty her
mind. ‘i didn’t think much. i was
really quite simple. i’d just sit.’
she loved the peace among the
mess of frames, metal, stones and
bits of old timber. When he wasn’t
painting, Picasso was extraordinarily
energetic. He’d dress up and put on
funny glasses, don a moustache or a
cowboy hat and prance about. He’d
paint spiders so lifelike on the studio
floor, he would scare himself silly.
‘He was always trying to make me
laugh,’ she says. Very occasionally, he
succeeded. But she insists their rela-
tionship was never more than that.
‘No, no, no,’ she says with a stern
look. ‘i t was never that. i was hope-
less at the sex. sex never crossed my
mind and i never talked about it. i
wouldn’t take any money in case he
wanted me to pose nude for him.’
Though the old goat did once paint
her from his imagination.
‘i think maybe he was hoping i’d
say: “Oh alright then.” But i was
such a prude. i’d been brought up on
a nudist colony but i’d never been
comfortable taking my clothes off.’
There was one moment when things
could have turned. When he took her
by the hand and led her up the stairs
to a tiny bedroom with a chair and a
bed, on which he started leaping
about and beckoning to her.
‘i thought: “Well i’m not going to
jump on the bed, too!” if you’re 19
and he’s 73, he’s like a granddad — or
‘Grey period’: a nude from picasso’s
The Girl With The ponytail series
by Jane
Fryer
INTERVIEW