Гений Picasso: Chapter One (2017– ) Online

Simply awful. The producer/director even used actress Samantha Colley as the love interest in both biographical series of Einstein AND in Picasso and her voice and dialect were identical in both series. I think my painting a public washroom would have garnered a larger audience than listening to Samantha Colley attempting to play the love interest of both Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso.

Surely the production's budget was sufficient enough such that they did not have to double down on the supporting cast like the irritating Samantha Colley whose voice just shrieked every time she said anything.

With actors Geoffrey Rush (Einstein) and Antonio Banderas (Pablo Picasso) playing the leads they were entitled (at minimum) to have their own leading ladies as their love interest, and not have Samantha Colley playing both ends of a double-header. This is not baseball folks!

The genius of Picasso was his art not his sex life. Anybody coming to this series hoping to learn about his progress as an artist will be sadly disappointed, as I was. The series jumps back and forth between his older years and his youth so many times and so erratically that all sense of continuity is lost. His painting is lost in the morass, in fact only a small number of key works make any appearance. Occasionally someone else's picture makes an appearance, Matisse for example. Gilot's work is almost never shown maybe due to copyright . Sometimes the year is posted at the foot of the screen but not always so one is not even sure at what year the action takes place, unless one spots the fashions or the hair style. It is flashback hell. I suppose those interested in Picasso's actual genius can buy an art book, this series is mostly about how scandalous he was with women. Maybe that is the kind of audience it is aimed at. A great disappointment I am sure for many art aficionados

The date is October 25, 1881. The place is Málaga, Spain. A difficult childbirth results in what appears to be a stillborn baby boy. But after the father blows cigar smoke into the infant's face, a genius is born! That genius would become one of the greatest artists of the modern age, Pablo Picasso.

This opening program in this superb miniseries toggles back and forth between the feisty young painter growing up in Spain and the famous mature artist conceiving his most famous painting, "Guernica" in Paris in 1937.

One of the themes of this episode and indeed one of the secrets of artistic genius is the degree to which the young Picasso was independently minded and dedicated to a personal vision in artistic expression. The program makes clear that Picasso was a rebel against the rules and the norms of academy painting. From the outset, he was a free spirit.

One of the strengths of the program is to present Picasso in all of his complexity. While not an overtly religious artist, Picasso nonetheless was haunted by the death of his young sister Conchita. He felt guilt at her death by diphtheria, when he made a promise to God to give up painting if she survived. But he knew in his heart that he could never give up his art.

Fiesty, headstrong, and committed to the integrity of his art, Picasso's genius was apparent to nearly everyone who came into contact with him. His instincts led him to the capital of the art world in the early twentieth century: Paris. Working in the environment of other geniuses, the expatriate Picasso was able to thrive in this creative world, which also provided the context for the creation of "Guernica" for the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 Exposition. For this work of art and for this artist, the one rule that dominated all others was, quite simply, that the rules do not apply.

La intención es buena. Pero Picasso debe ser mejor. Banderas suena a.... Banderas. No logra ser Pablo Picasso.

I just watched Episode 5 of Genius: Picasso and finally came to the conclusion that he was no genius, he was just what we would call today a "predator", a user of all the vulnerable women in his life. In fact, the painting of his latest girlfriend, Francoise, could just have easily been done by my eight year old grandson. It is nothing but an exaggerated stick figure drawing. It is only her unbridled infatuation for him that compels her to exclaim, "It's beautiful". I can't help thinking he was laughing inside all the way to the bedroom.