Pearl Lam: Hello, everyone. May I introduce today Sydney Picasso. I’ve known Sydney for many years, and let me give a brief about who Sydney is. Sydney is a writer. Art critics, actually. She’s been writing. She has been writing essays for my artists, and also, she’s an archaeologist. If I miss out anything, Sydney, please let me. You know, you can elaborate.

Sydney Picasso: Okay, I’ll put that hat on, you know, my hard hat.

Pearl Lam: One question I always wanted to ask. Yeah, you are, you know, you’re a writer critics and archaeologists. I mean, how does this whole thing gel together?

Sydney Picasso: Okay, well, I can say that archeology is a science, and that’s the first field I studied after French. And when you arrive in an archaeological field or site or so forth, your idea is to identify what, where, why, how, and by whom. So, in contemporary art, when you come up against the Damien Hurst or something really odd, you do the same process. You question.

Pearl Lam: But then when you look at art, because there’s a lot of people is, oh, you have to read the concept. You have to look at art and identify which is good and which. And how do you.

Sydney Picasso: I never read the cartels in the museums. First of all, I don’t like people telling me what’s happening. I just look with my eyes, and then. And sometimes I go to an exhibition, I’ll go in the back first. So I don’t like this idea that I’m being led through something and that I have to be told what’s. It’s really about your eyes and not about your brain at that point.

Pearl Lam: So, as you are the daughter in law of Pablo Picasso. So how much of his work has influenced your work?

Sydney Picasso: Well, I think he, first of all, Picasso influenced everyone in the 20th century, because he was so omnipresent in sort of a negative way with the abstract expressionists, because they all wanted to go against him. Nobody could get around Picasso since he lived so long, from 1881 to 1973. He was a hard act to follow. And his. He also would say, you know, I don’t search. I find, I don’t look. I see. Yeah. That was one of his famous sort of hackneyed statements. The other thing is that the rumor is that his first word was la PIs, which means pencil in Spanish, that he wanted to be. And his father was an artist, as everyone knows, but he wanted. He was drawing when he was a baby and following his father and so forth. So I think that’s very important. And his eye, you know, he wrote a lot of texts calling Elojo the eye. As you know, he made photography also. He made sculpture. But the eye is so leading in what he does, he doesn’t think.

Pearl Lam: So you and you and your ex husband Claude, have been writing books about Picasso, right? And how about this book? As I was.

Sydney Picasso: As if I were a signature. Yes, it’s actually, the title is in French because it comes from a statement by Picasso. Because, you know, traditionally it was David Douglas Duncan, the photographer who photographed. Who was the first photographer really allowed in Picasso’s studio. The first photo you remember is he’s in the bathtub. And Jacqueline takes Picasso’s naked in the bathtub. But after Duncan stopped working there, there was an Italian Spanish photographer named Roberto Otero who I met very late life through one of the Miro children. And he was allowed because I think his wife was related to a Spanish poet, something like that. But anyway, so Picasso had this great nostalgia of Spain because he did not go back after Franco was in power. But he loved anyone who spoke Spanish. So, you know, Dorma, etcetera. But he. So Otero was allowed in. He’s actually the last photographer that was allowed to photograph Picasso. And he did some amazing things. So at one point, there was a big sort of a photograph of the. I think it was a photograph of the Tapestry of Guernica or something like that. And he said to Picasso, could you stand in front of this photograph? And Picasso said, I’m going on the left as if I were a signature. So that’s what.

Pearl Lam: So he’s the signature to us, the name, as.

Sydney Picasso: That’s the title of my book.

Pearl Lam: Yeah. So. So now, has this book been translated in English?

Sydney Picasso: Not yet, no. It was translated into. It’s in a collection from Ashet, which was more poetic writings and so forth. So. And the person who asked me to write the book first, he wanted me to write something about Picasso and his poetry. And I said, look, Picasso did a lot of things that we don’t know. We didn’t know until he died. I mean, we knew about his sculpture, his painting, his ceramics, but we didn’t know so much about his writing. And there were volumes of writing, both in sketchbooks, but also just in manuscript. And very famously in 1930, when he was sort of at odds with his first wife, Olga, he said, I will never paint again. I will become a writer. And as you know, he was friends with all, you know, and so forth. He was obsessed with writing. And some of his writing is amazing. So the sketchbooks that had writing in them and were unpublished were published by, I think it was the Pace gallery, Arne Glimpscher, that got ahold of most of the sketchbooks. So there’s a book which is called je suis le caillet. So it’s the same kind of thing as if I wore a signature. It’s on the title of one of Picasso’s sketchbooks. It says, I am the notebook or, I am the sketchbook. Because he was so indissociable from his work. I mean, he did nothing but work.

Pearl Lam: Well, let’s talk about drawings, for you have really, you are an expert in drawing. So let’s talk about Picasso when he was 14 years old, when he was studying in the Barcelona art school, and he was known to be talented in drawings. Do you think that his drawings opened the way for you to understand Picasso’s work, or was it really an important thing?

Sydney Picasso: I think it’s difficult to understand his work without his drawing, because the drawing is. Every drawing is dated, and sometimes it’s dated Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. He was very, very scientific about everything he did. And he didn’t sign a picture till it came out of the studio. But sometimes you see on the back of the paintings, even Sunday, the 10 August 19th, this and this and this. So it was really. He was very specific. He wasn’t just running around, you know, doing what he felt like doing. And then in the sketchbooks, what you see is one day he’ll be doing something very geometric with lines and dots. And you’ve seen these sketchbooks. Some of them are points and lines and points, and then the next hilt, you’ll have a very academic drawing, completely beautiful, of either Olga or Jacqueline or Francoise, which you see on the COVID of this pompidou show. And at the show that’s presently at the centre, Georges Pompidou is basically sketchbooks, drawings, pages from sheets of drawings, projects for sculpture and so forth. And there was also an issue of whether sometimes a sculptor or an artist will draw a project on paper, and then he’ll make the sculpture. Picasso made the sculpture, then he made the drawing.

Pearl Lam: Really scoofers. And then draws.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah, he would draw the sculpture. Yeah, it’s really interesting. But he was always working. I mean, as you know, he woke up around eleven or twelve, read the newspapers, went to the studio around eleven or 1213, you know, 01:00 and then he worked until all night, as you remember. You see pictures of him working with lights and so forth. But he, I mean, he was. He did nothing but really work. And I don’t think that the women in his life, I think he loved them all, but I don’t think they were. They kind of substituted his drawings. They were subjects. It was as if he were looking at the lamp and then he’d draw the faces and he found. I mean, it’s always been said that he loved Francoise’s face because it was like a grecian sculpture. Or Jacqueline also had this very classical face, you know, and Doraement always had two faces, in a way. So it’s interesting, there are a lot of composite drawings and paintings where it’s partly Marie Therese Walter and partly Doramar when he was going between both of them.

Pearl Lam: And you are with the Royal Drawing School.

Sydney Picasso: Right.

Pearl Lam: And you’re doing the external assessment.

Sydney Picasso: Exactly.

Pearl Lam: You know, technology, the whole world is involving. What do you think about art? I mean, drawings, I mean, in relationship to the next generation of artists, is drawing still important?

Sydney Picasso: Well, I think it is. And I. So, you know, I’ve told this story about the present King Charles, who is. Prince Charles is obsessed with drawing. He draws himself, Clarence House, you see his own drawings. But he founded the school because here in France, we still teach life drawing with models in the Ecole beaux arts and in a couple of studios that are around, or you can hire a model. You know, in England, they don’t. In the Slade school, in the goldsmiths, they don’t teach life drawing anymore. So he started the drawing school almost more than 20 years ago with life models. Yeah, yeah, it’s been, it’s been. We celebrated the, the 20th anniversary about three years ago, but it was. He renamed the school to the royal Drawing school because instead of the prince’s drawing school, because it became fairly apparent, he would be king. So they’re not going to call it prince.

Pearl Lam: Yeah.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah. So. And as you know, Queen Elizabeth and the royal family has an amazing collection of drawings at Windsor Castle that if you know what you want to see, they’ll take out.

Pearl Lam: So and so when you say the external assessment board, what are you assessing?

Sydney Picasso: So we’re assessing the work of the drawing year, which is a postgraduate program. You have to be accepted to be in it. Most of the kids, they’re from the age of probably 19 to. We’ve even had 30 and 40 year olds, but most of them are quite young, but they’ve already graduated from a drawing school, central St Martin’s. You know, all the schools in London and. But they did not learn drawing, and so they have this need to draw.

Pearl Lam: But today’s art world, you look at a contemporary art world, drawings is nearly extinguished.

Sydney Picasso: Well, you have some artists that you only know their drawings and not their. I mean, there are some, there’s some really great de Kooning drawings that you, that he did before. There are a couple of artists that only do drawing, but we haven’t, you know, since the nineties, the young British artists, we don’t really pay attention with categories.

Pearl Lam: Absolutely. Because nowadays you saw more installations than drawings, more performance than drawings. So do you think that the next generation of artists would still do drawings? And how does drawings play and play into, I mean, the school curriculum?

Sydney Picasso: Well, most of the, I think most of the artists and these, so these kids came to the drawing school for two reasons. One is that in Hollywood, in spite of all the technology, there’s still a storyboard and it’s still done by hand.

Pearl Lam: Wow, really?

Sydney Picasso: Yeah, yeah, still done by, you can’t do a storyboard without, you know, with filming instructions without that. So they’ve had to come back and draw. And then there are a lot of other things, like when people are making decorative art. Look at the fashion world.

Pearl Lam: Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Sydney Picasso: Most of the great designers have to draw, you know, they can’t just take a photograph of a dress that’s not made, you know.

Pearl Lam: So what do you think about art itself in the school curriculum? Is it in and important?

Sydney Picasso: Oh, I think so. I think so. And they stopped teaching art classes and stopped in the eighties when there were a bunch of social problems in Paris, including bombs, and they wouldn’t take the kids out to the Louvre and so forth anymore, but they’ve started doing it again. But I think it’s really important to take kids. And you see in London, in the National Gallery, you see these groups of kids sitting in front of one painting. I think it’s absolutely fantastic. The kids have to look at real, they have to look at the past, the present and the future.

Pearl Lam: I grew up without museum, without seeing things, because Hong Kong, we did not anything.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah, but you had great calligraphers.

Pearl Lam: Now, at the time when we said we have a, we have a, we have a, we have one museum, which is calligraphy. You’re absolutely right.

Sydney Picasso: You do go, you have fantastic, I mean, in that I think is, I’ve seen through different cultures to learn to do calligraphy, you have to really practice. You can’t just, you know, it’s something that my son took a class with Hassan Massoudi, who’s Iranian, but he learned calligraphy when he was twelve, you know? And so when you write, when you write Chinese, don’t you have to really know how to hold the pen?

Pearl Lam: Yeah.

Sydney Picasso: You can’t make it.

Pearl Lam: You can’t have patience. You cannot have your hands shivered. And on this topic, I want to ask, I would like to ask you. And Claude has been collecting Chinese art and Chinese furniture. How does this all happen? You’re American, French, and then Chinese.

Sydney Picasso: It was really our great passion. First of all, my aunt, my second cousin was Brooke Astor, who created the Astor court at the Met. And my father was from a diplomatic family. So my father grew up in Asia, and she grew up in Asia with her father, you know, and they were sometimes posted in the same embassies. But she. She was in Suzhou. She brought the court from Suzhou. That’s in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I saw that my cousin that did this, people don’t know because she was calling.

Pearl Lam: It’s amazing

Sydney Picasso: Yeah.

Pearl Lam: Because it was a courtyard with the pavilion with the Chinese pebble floor. It was.

Sydney Picasso: No, she brought the workers. She paid for the workers because she was a. She was married before. Her maiden name was Russell, as mine is, but she married Vincent Astor, who died quite young, and he said, you’re going to have so much fun spending my money. And she brought the workers from Suzhou to build the court in the Met. And all those big chinese cabinets she donated that are there. And so we started, we were, as french citizens, we were allowed to go to China after 1980. After 79. Right. So then I did have a French passport. So Claude and I went to China with nine other people. You went to China in 1980, 1970, 919, 80, with a group of nine people.

Pearl Lam: Now see Tung Pony.

Sydney Picasso: Exactly. It was raw, it was empty.

Pearl Lam: No food to eat. And all the food was pretty awful.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah. But it was so exciting. I mean, we went Shannan Men Square was. There was, it was quiet. There were no cars.

Pearl Lam: There were mouse clothes, bicycle.

Sydney Picasso: And the grandparents were selling little things on the side of the street. It was incredible. And so we went to Sian to see the warriors because they were just digging them up there. Yes.

Pearl Lam: And there wasn’t any protection at all. No.

Sydney Picasso: And you could see the colors disappearing. So I’ve been there now several times. So we had an amazing trip in China, and we were on the, on the train, you know, from. From Beijing to Siyang. And it was, you know, they have the couch d’Or and the couche mole because it was the French, the Orient Express. So the couche d’Or at the time.

Pearl Lam: In 79, people are taking chickens.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah.

Pearl Lam: I mean, ducks. And into the tray. There is nothing called the Oriental Express.

Sydney Picasso: No, no. But it was a train. And we got on the train and we were all bunked up like this. And we were black because of the soot coming out of the train. But it was so exciting. I mean, I can tell you what an experience. And we went to an archaeological site called Bampo, which is not too far, which you don’t really see when you’re on the sort of usual tourist trip through China. But we love the idea that, you know, the chinese furniture, the joinery, that everything can come apart, how people travel with trunks. And we bought a lot of pieces from the dealers here who had had either postcolonial families or we had some things copied, but we had, you know, all of those chinese trunks are so wonderful. I mean, it’s really.

Pearl Lam: Picasso is also interested in calligraphy, the chinese art of calligraphy. I can’t see any of this influence in this painting.

Sydney Picasso: Well, if you look at his drawings, though, you’ll see, I mean, he had an incredible script, and he would make these if go to the show at the Pompidou. It’s fabulous.

Pearl Lam: I didn’t know that even. I mean, I just realized that he was interested in calligraphy.

Sydney Picasso: No, he had pens and pencils. I can see he. Because most of the drawings he did were in what we call India ink, which is really chinese ink. But he would just take the pen, dip it in the thing, and make the drawing. I mean, he was so talented that he could do that. And he always covered the page. He didn’t, like, leave this empty or do this here. He just. The entire page. It’s incredible. And that’s what my son is the same way. When he was four years old, he was drawing, but he wouldn’t.

Pearl Lam: Your son is a sound artist, right?

Sydney Picasso: Sound and images. He’s called. It’s called.

Pearl Lam: What is it?

Sydney Picasso: It’s called digital. Digital practice. Video digital practice. I mean, he makes. He composes music on a computer. He plays music, but he also creates images. So he studied. You know, he has a couple of doctorates and this and that. He’s. But that’s what kids are doing today. I think it’s called digital media practice or something like that.

Pearl Lam: But he’s an artist as well.

Sydney Picasso: Yes, he’s an artist as well. Yeah.

Pearl Lam: What is interesting is your son doesn’t even carry the Picasso name.

Sydney Picasso: Well, he does officially. On his passport, he’s called Picasso.

Pearl Lam: Yes, but when he’s in practice, he doesn’t want to be linked with the grandfather, which is pretty respectable.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah. I mean, I’ll tell you the story of Picasso. So, in Spanish, Picasso, the father, was called Huiz blasco. And the mother was Picasso Lopez. So Picasso already started by throwing the rules away because Picasso, we would be called Ruiz Lopez, actually. So Jasmine thought this was very funny. And I think Vlasco is probably a variation of Basque, something like that. So he thought Blasco was very funny, but he managed to go through art school without people really questioning him and so forth. Yeah, so, and he also has a very interesting, you know, first name, which is the name of a flower which in the 17th century french artist hyacinth Rigaud pictures that are in the Louvre. Hyacinth Jasmine. So we named him Jasmine like that.

Pearl Lam: Another question I always wanted to ask you is sometimes when I call you, you will say that, oh, I’m going fishing, I’m going to write a book about fish.

Sydney Picasso: First of all, it was, it’s because of the son of George Basilic, Daniel Blau know and for whom you’ve written a text. Also, Daniel is very german. He was born in Berlin when his father, when the wall was up, and he grew up in fairly poor situation. But he then they moved to Dresden. And Basilitz never had very many means until he, I think the German artist came out like in the early eighties. So. And I had met Basilitz then, but I was on a train going to one of the Baslet shows, and I see these two people and I look and who are they? And he married an american woman who’s from Hawaii who went to Punahou with Obama. And so he got drawn into Hawaiian prehistoric art. So he said, ah, you know, it’d be really interesting, you come with us to Hawaii. And I’ve done a lot of sailing in my life, especially growing up in the Atlantic, but also in Greece. He said, come to Hawaii. We’re going to go and see some petroglyphs on the big island of Hawaii. And the petroglyphs are engraved in volcanic lava, sometimes still warm. So there’s a question of danger and so forth. But my specialty. So I was advanced standing in French, but I came to France and I got my degree to teach French. And then I got into the Ecole de hazetude and studied archaeology and went in the field in Brazil. But my specialty was rock art. So art, which is in caves but visible by light. And I spent eight years climbing around in Brazil looking at that, and I photographed that.

Pearl Lam: Again, rock art.

Sydney Picasso: So is rock on rocks? Yeah. Well, you know, the most famous my professor had done, her thesis is Lascaux, the cave of Lascaux in France, which is a masterpiece. Picasso always said, I’m Lascaux. I painted Lascaux, but it’s a cave that’s underground. It was discovered right at the. Right after the first 2nd world war. Excuse me. And it was intact, so people hadn’t gone and pillaged it and so forth. So they. This kid and his dog went into this cave and they saw these incredible images of bulls and horses and figures. Very little human figuration, but it’s a masterpiece of art. So I was able, actually, when I was still working in archaeology, to visit the first Lascaux. But I’ve been in almost every cave in France, so visiting up, you know, up. And you can go in at night or it’s the same temperature all the time, so. But when I worked in Brazil, there are no cultures, you know, there are no temple cultures in Brazil. It’s. Everything is in wood. But the artist would go and create things on lagoons which have these sort of rocks hanging over, and they would just paint things. So that was my specialty. And you just look at something, it’s the same thing with identification. And since I was the photographer, I’ve photographed, you know, hundreds of these things.

Pearl Lam: What is the relationship of looking at a rock and then being fascinated with fish hooks?

Sydney Picasso: Okay, I’ll tell you, there’s a direct link to this, but the. I mean, the. When we say rocks, it’s rock art. So it’s actually figurations either on cave caves lit by day or night, you know, so you’re either in a cave or outside a cave. But people, it’s a bit like, you know, when you go. Somebody goes and tags a building today and says, leroy was here. That’s what they’re doing. They’re saying, we were here. And actually, when the first. Some of the first caves that you visit, the first thing you see in the cave on the outside is the imprint of the hand. That means I’m taking charge with the hand. And then you go in and see these animals and so forth. So Brazil, which is a very specific culture, and no one paid any attention. I mean, archaeologists would be digging for treasure, digging for gold, digging for this, and they’d. They’d sort of say, oh, there are a few little indigenous drawings, but nobody paid any attention. And my professor, who had done her fieldwork on Lascaux, which is a masterpiece, decided that we would record all of these. So in one region of Lagua, Santa Brazil, which is Minas Gerais, which is an area where there’s a lot of mining and so forth, there were a lot of these caves that were being either destroyed by the mining business or preserved. And we were always negotiating with them. You climb up to a certain level, and then you’ve got these amazing things, and the sun goes across and everything. And I think, as I said before, Picasso always said, lascaux, c’est moi. I am Lascaux. You know, because it’s the primal gesture.

Pearl Lam: How do you get from fascination, from rock art to your fish hooks, fish hoax, writing about it.

Sydney Picasso: Okay. Okay. So the real key is Daniel Blau, who’s the son of George Baselitz. So, as I said, he grew up in Germany, but he married a woman from Hawaii. And I had read, you know, Herman Melville’s first four books are set in the Marquises islands. And so we went out there together thinking we were going on a great adventure, and we would discover Melville’s, you know, views and so forth and so forth. And we did. We picked up a lot of things on the beach which are. But he became obsessed with the fish hook, and no one. There are fishhooks in the british museum. It’s a bit, as I mentioned before, people would say, oh, there are a few indian scribbles next door. But all the archaeologists were picking up these fish hooks, but they were. And these are made of dog bone, tortoise shell, abalone shell, stone, sometimes wood. And they’re absolutely beautiful. It’s like a stone axe from, you know, from a prehistoric period. A stone axe is never really. They’re not trying to make it beautiful. It’s a tool, but it’s also beautiful. So. And you learn how to chip Flint when you’re an archaeologist. So Daniel and his wife and I went to the marquesas, and then we went to Hawaii, and we’ve been. He’s obsessed with prehistoric art, and he has one of the largest collections of fish hooks in the world right now. We’ve now done two volumes of a book on them. And he actually, it’s something interesting. You know, tortoise shell is now illegal, right?

Pearl Lam: Yes, of course.

Sydney Picasso: So he did something very brilliant. And I used to wear tortoiseshell combs in my hair. But there was a shop here in Paris called a la tortue near the Madeleine, I’m sure, if you remember this, where they sold objects in tortoise shells. So combs, brushes, accessories, hairpins. Daniel bought the whole lot? No, he bought the vitrines, which are amazing to put his fish hook collection in because he’s living in Austria now. And you see these incredible vitrines, which were for selling at the auction house for nothing because nobody wanted them because they made them close the shop. So. But he hasn’t. One of the biggest collections of all kinds of stone axes, fishhooks, and we’ve been to the British Museum keep looked at all the ones they have in the back because they don’t even know he’s identified a lot of them for him. We went to the museum, and Bishop Museum in Hawaii also has a big collection. We’ve been up to Oxford and a lot of these things. I mean, fishing interests everybody, in a way. We’re trout fishing or we’re this fishing. I’d never held a fishing pole in my hand, but I went, you know, I’ve been now around in the Colorado river trying to learn how to throw a fish hook or something, but it was the only way they had to survive in those days. In the Hawaiian islands, in the Marquesas, as you know, the Pacific is, first of all, it’s much bigger space in the Atlantic. It’s hardly discovered even today. There are islands you’ve never. There’s a triangle that goes basically from New Guinea to Hawaii to, you know, the Easter Island. That’s a triangle. And it’s huge.

Pearl Lam: Never.

Sydney Picasso: No, it’s huge. It’s a huge space. And the people would row out in outrigger canoes. I’ve been in one of those. And they’d actually row out, and then they’d row against the waves so that they could come back with the waves.

Pearl Lam: I never knew that. You’re so sporty.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah, no, I’m a big sailor. I grew up in the Atlantic Ocean.

Pearl Lam: And you. Okay, going back to your ex father in law, whom I think is a general interest in, and in all of us, is. Let’s talk about cubism. Cubism is a collaboration between Brock and Picasso.

Sydney Picasso: Originally. Yeah, originally. How, I mean, he.

Pearl Lam: Do they influence each other? How does it.

Sydney Picasso: Well, they call themselves the Wright brothers, you know, the inventors of flying, so. But he had also been in two villages in Spain. One is Hortadie Beau, which is the middle of nowhere in the mountains, and the other is gosoul. But in Horta, you climb up to the top of this village and there’s still nothing there today. But you look down at the landscape, and I’m sure he was very influenced, because don’t forget that when Picasso was born, until probably after the First World War, there was no commercial flying. So a Gertrude Stein writes amazing text about that when she goes back to the United States, because she probably came on a ship when she first came to France. But she goes back in the sort of mid thirties, and she sees all the fields. And so then she says, well, that’s how Picasso discovered cubism, is because he was in an airplane or he saw the fields, but no one, until what, 1921, had really seen the earth from the sky, if you think of it, except for birds, right? And it’s a real sort of a quantum change in the way we perceive things. So that’s why when he and he and Bach knew each other, but they went to a village which people know called il Sola Sog, and they went to all these around antique dealers, and they were renting houses, but they painted a lot of things together. They were passing canvases back and forth. But I don’t think anyone really invented cubism. I think it was something that you see in earlier paintings. But you just, for instance, if you take a 19th century painting of, right, of Derby or James T. So they were always kind of hatching out things.

Pearl Lam: But I thought that cubism is strongly influenced by Suzanne and african art also, I saw, when I was recently, I’m very interested in african art after I’ve been to Nigeria, and I saw some of the painters of the art. I mean, of the pieces. It’s. It is like cubism. My understanding is cubism has a strong influence from Sazan and african arthem. And what amazes me is recently when I visited Lagos and when I saw some old african art, it makes me think about cubism. So I always thought that this must be the strong influence about cubism. I really need your thoughts on that.

Sydney Picasso: Well, one thing, I mean, everyone knows that basically because of Andre Durand, Picasso did collect african art and oceanic art. But he. The interesting thing about african sculpture is that every detail is there. You may not see it, but there’s always the nose, the eyes. Nothing is missing in an African sculpture. And there was a shop up at the top of boulevard Spail. So Doran went up there, and Picasso bought a lot of things. And in the estate there were huge volumes of African. Of african art and also things from Tonga and from the South Pacific because he was obsessed with this. And Barack also collected Georgia. Barack collected African art.

Pearl Lam: And how about Brancusi? Because I saw a lot of Brancusi sculptures. Has this feel of African Art.

Sydney Picasso: Well, it has a feeling of reducing something to its essential details. Exactly, because you don’t have things missing with Picasso. So take, if you take Picasso and Braque. So there was a show at MoMA, I think it was in the mid eighties, maybe 83 or something. There was one. There was primitivism in 83, but these two shows. But the Picasso and Braque, the invention of cubism. And you look at a bach and you look at a Picasso. Picasso’s paintings are always finished. He would go like this, whereas Bach would be very detailed and so forth. And then in the end, Picasso thought, well, you know, I don’t know. For instance, you see Majoli. This writing is introduced into these paintings. So Majoli is a reference to a person. But when you see Le Jour, it’s not the day, it’s Le Journal. And it means this is this day. So this is all the same scientific ideas of Picasso. I mean, not an idea of Picasso, but his sort of instincts of Picasso to make. Make sure everything is completely correct and finished. So he always finished the cubist paintings, whereas Bach would leave or Matisse would leave a way out. Matisse would be cutting the arms off, but Picasso, the figure is always within the canvas, and it’s always very, very specific. He didn’t need to sign them, but it’s fun to go to either MoMA or to a cubism show and tried to guess which is braque and which is Picasso, because at one period in time, as I said before, they called themselves the Wright brothers, who invented flying.

Pearl Lam: Learning a lot.

Sydney Picasso: Yeah. So. And they did this together. It was kind of a mano a mano. And they were buying old canvases in antique places because there was no. During the war, there weren’t a lot of canvases. So they painted over a lot of things.

Pearl Lam: I mean, 50 years has passed since Picasso died. I mean, he is really celebrated as the great master now with the hash metoo movement, the whole world, the whole society is changing. The women are getting more and more empowered. So the treatment of women today is very different during Picasso era. I mean, how are you seeing this? Because there are talks that maybe Picasso will be cancelled in the next century because of a different treatment, because at that time it was perfectly acceptable. But when we look retrospectively, we will say, oh, it is not up to today’s standard. Or, I mean, it will be very interesting if they look into Chinese dynasty, we have harems of women, concubines and all that. But with Picasso’s love affair, do you think that this will affect him still continue to be celebrated?

Sydney Picasso: I don’t think there’s a problem for me because it’s a visual thing, and it’s actually, I think that canceling is more of a literary tendency. So we have this french writer called Louis Ferdinand Celine, who hated jewish people. And he wrote books which for many years weren’t published in France because it was very both anti semitic and everything. And of course, he was a brilliant, brilliant writer. So it’s now recognized. But I think these sort of intermediate periods where for one time you don’t look, you know, as I said before, for the abstract expressionists, they couldn’t get around Picasso. They wanted to do the opposite, so they reacted. Whereas the eighties artists, and then, so you have the sixties, and then in the seventies, there were all these conceptual artists. So everything was somebody walking around a room or somebody moving objects, you know, all of the Bruce Naumann and all these artists, Joseph Cazuth and this and that. And then in the eighties, artists came back and were painting again because they were all art school students. So that’s where you have Julian Schnabel, Miguel Barcelo, George Kondo, Kenny Scharf, Francesco Clementi. And they were real painters, you know, and most of them were art school trained, which wasn’t the case because it.

Pearl Lam: Seems that today they’re not even looking at whether you’re good artists or bad artists. It, because, you know, it’s a very strong me too movement. And all of a sudden women are asking to be respected. So, of course, you know, all of a sudden people look retrospectively and all, and all artists has great love affairs and they see the negative way of the treatment of women. Do you think this will be important? When you look at, you know, like Picasso contribution to the art world, would it be cancelled because of, because of that?

Sydney Picasso: I mean, you can’t really cancel Rembrandt or Durer or the great artists of the, you know, if you go to any museum and you see these great pictures, you know, they’re still restoring old, you know, pictures which have slaves. The massacre of the sabine women. I mean, we’re still looking at these pictures.

Pearl Lam: And remember, there are talks about taking away the sculpture of these slave traders in America.

Sydney Picasso: No. And also you have a lot of 19th century sculptures where they added fern leaves, you know, on the body parts and so forth, even in the Louvre. Then they took them off. But, you know, I don’t think if you’re interested in art as a passion, nothing can stop you, you know? So it’s, I mean, I think that.

Pearl Lam: But I actually thought that Picasso’s love affair is the way that it also impacted his way of, I mean, his images, his way of painting and all that.

Sydney Picasso: Well, my mother-in-law, Francois Gillot, famously said, who’s the only woman who dared leave. Picasso said women are either goddesses or doormats. And she said it. He didn’t say it. She said it. You know, so people love to quote, these things are, you know, pretty tricky to get around. But I don’t think, I think he was really just, he was really only interested in painting, which doesn’t mean he wasn’t interested in his children because he was always drawing with his children. But I think the only thing he had as a passion, and you read this, when you read his writings, he was really only interested in what he was doing, you know, even in the end. And when. So after 1954, when Matisse dies and Giacometti then dies, all of his friends were dead, that’s when he starts painting 19th century and starts painting like a 19th century painter, where he has painter and model, an artist in his studio and then he does all what we call the late paintings, which are, you know, painted with house paint, but it’s an incredible period. But you see a lot of, because.

Pearl Lam: It’S always ever changing. I must take this opportunity to thank you for being the chair lady for the chairman of my foundation, China Art foundation, for a long time. I’m really, really sad that you’ve resigned, but I want to talk to you about the China Art  Foundation, which is basically a foundation who wants to introduce, and who want to introduce the right perception of chinese art to the west. What do you think about the China foundation and how was your feeling about it?

Sydney Picasso: I think you’ve done a wonderful job. I mean, I remember symposium you organized in Hangzhou, I think, or you had every art historian from the Met practically. Glenn Lowry was there. It was really interesting. And you brought peoples. We had a lot of talks about chinese culture and poetry. And I think that power in China was consecrated. The emperors had to know how to paint, how to draw, how to write poetry as, you know, not teaching you anything, you know, and they had, and they weren’t powerful unless they could do all of those things.

Pearl Lam: Do you think that the foundation didn’t make a little bit differences?

Sydney Picasso: Oh, I think so. No, no, I think so. I just sort of, I’m sort of overwhelmed with, with my time and, you.

Pearl Lam: Know, but today, which is a very essential critical time of the US and China conflict. So how do you think that what you can advise me to build the future of it? Because, you know, among this situation that, I mean, I don’t even see any chinese art, contemporary art or chinese artists being shown in the west properly. I haven’t seen and haven’t seen people really talk about it. Or in China is also. There is a lot of different feelings about USA. So what do you think about this? The foundation. What else foundation can build?

Sydney Picasso: Well, I think some of the. I mean, because you had an intellectual projectnot a social project, right. So your idea was getting people together and to have ideas. And some of. I mean, that the chinese photo book that was published, I mean, it’s amazing piece of work. And some of the things I wrote for you, Su xiao bai, xiao bai sioux and Xu jinxi. These are amazing artists. And you don’t, you know, they’re not as well known in the west. I think Aquavella has chinese artists over at this art fair. And you know that whatever there was that Zeng fan Chi.

Pearl Lam: No, no, no, it’s a Chinese artist. Wong, I forgot the name. He lives in Paris. And a lot of Chinese, actually he’s not known, but on all the Chinese, Berlin has all bought him and they all said that he is like the new jaw Ji, but I don’t know him. She’s a.

Sydney Picasso: We knew Jiaozi because he was friend. He was very good friends with Matisse. Everybody collected him. I’m sure there were some.

Pearl Lam: Oh, Jiao Wuji is a complete different person, but I mean, a different category. He was celebrated in China since when he was in his twenties and he won a lot of awards. But this one I don’t. I don’t know. But I know a lot of the, a lot of collectors in. And all those collectors has. They all know him now.

Sydney Picasso: And there’s. There’s another artist that the, the Rothschilds collected a lot of chinese art, but back in the forties and thirties, and you see them in their houses, you know that they, they have this, you know, this really fascination with China because you can’t. No, China’s never going to disappear. I mean, it’s just such an important culture for all of us. It’s the great culture. Cuisine of the world.

Pearl Lam: Cuisine. I don’t think food would disappear.

Sydney Picasso: No, exactly.

Pearl Lam: That is definite. But I think what is the next step is always what is very. I mean, that’s what I always want to know. What is the next step? What else can we do? Because of course, I mean, there are now more foundations doing what I’m doing. So I. I think how to move on. Next up is very important because books has no longer as influential as social media.

Sydney Picasso: Right? The younger. Yeah, I mean, there is a generation of kids. There’s still a lot of people. Most artists still read, but it’s true that, because what we have to do.

Pearl Lam: Is to embrace the younger generation. And how is the younger generation going to really understand what chinese art is about? And the whole China, most of the chinese younger generation, a generation, they are more interested in american art because they are all educated abroad. I remember when I went returned back as well. What do we know about chinese culture, chinese art?

Sydney Picasso: Well, I think I just was speaking to Anthony Gormley, who’s doing a project in Hong Kong. And he was so interested because, of course, the British had a very sort of off and on relationship with China. But, you know, I think that inviting artists to go, you know, and I remember when Miguel was there also Miguel Barcelona. So having these artists exposed to a real culture, which is nothing like America, I mean, we don’t have that. We have, what, two or 300 years of culture, but you have, what, thousands, thousands of years of a culture that’s very constructive. It’s very controlled in an intellectual way, very sophisticated. No, I’ve read all of these older chinese texts. I mean, I love chinese texts than I do tale of Genji, which is supposed to. It’s actually about China, not about Japan.

Pearl Lam: So, Sydney, among all the students of last 20 years that you have meat, do you think any of those will become the next Picasso? And is drawings. Would you recommend anybody who wants to become an artist, just tell them that drawing is really a fundamental for them to become an artist?

Sydney Picasso: I don’t think it’s fundamental, but I know that you can become an artist by doing only drawings, as we were citing the case of Vijay Salmas or people like that. But it’s. I think that the passion that one has to do anything with their hands, like Picasso would take this glass and break it and turn it into something. I mean, it’s making art out of nothing, really. It’s what it is. So we all doodle at restaurants. I’m sure our kids drew. They drew with other artists and so forth. And this whole. I mean, I like the idea of doodling. And Picasso, they. You know, he was accused by Douglas Cooper of doodling when he did his late paintings. He was. They said he was doodling himself off into obscurity, which is not really true. Some of those late paintings are absolutely.

Pearl Lam: Fabulous because, like my artist, Mister Doodle, his doodling is very different than a conceptual artist because he built these younger generation, especially with him, with that group of artists, they built a narrative. It’s not about a concept. They built.

Sydney Picasso: Oh, it’s a narrative. Absolutely.

Pearl Lam: And then they doodle in accordance to a narrative. About them, about how they see things, about the life. Life is completely off what we are talking about, you know, Picasso or the conceptual art or whatever. I don’t, you know, the next generation. What are you going to see?

Sydney Picasso: What I always say about, you know, art is, and I’ve been to see the art schools in Pakistan. I’ve been in Libby, I’ve been in Syria. I’ve been in these places. Anything goes now. So today you’re either going to stand up and, you know, toot your horn or record, you know, the grass or something. I know you.

Pearl Lam: Are you going to ask encourage the Royal School of Drawing students to use an iPad to draw?

Sydney Picasso: They do. They do.

Pearl Lam: Because they were slides.

Sydney Picasso: It’s all drawing on the iPad. No, a lot of them are painting on the iPad. No, they draw on the iPad. And we show them, if you come to shortage, they show some of their work on iPads.

Pearl Lam: So it’s not just limited to pencils?

Sydney Picasso: No, no, no. I mean, they, and at the end of year shows, which are twice a year, but the main one, I think if you can come, and I think it’s December 5, you see, they have their little sketchbooks and their drawings and they have big drawings, small drawings, but they also paint. And we have studios where they can paint. A lot of them make films, you know, and they can show a film they’re allowed to show. He, I mean, it’s not, and I think that the president King is not going to be as involved. I mean, he’ll still draw because he draws all the time. But I don’t think, I just think it’s important to show that drawing is not a necessity, but it is an integral part of all the other things we can do.

Pearl Lam: Do you know any artist who’s a great name, who’s a big artist, but who doesn’t draw?

Sydney Picasso: I know artists who don’t say they draw, but I don’t, you know, that’s what I was saying. When Picasso, sometimes he makes a sculpture and then he draws it. But I did a project with Richard Serra, as you may know, who’s not known for his drawing or his sculpture, his lithography. And we asked him, do you ever sketch? Well, not really, but then we went to his studio and he does actually draw and sketch. And he did this project in Iceland with the standing stones and he made sketchbooks. And now there’s a film of him drawing. And you’d never think of Richard Serran sketching your drawing. He has amazing drawings.

Pearl Lam: I see crystal, you know, sketch and draw.

Sydney Picasso: But Richard.

Pearl Lam: Sarah?

Sydney Picasso: Yep.

Pearl Lam: Wow. Fascinating. Surprising. Surprising.

Sydney Picasso: Oh, he’s an amazing artist, but he’s really. It’s his hand that’s important to him.

Pearl Lam: Sydney, you enlighten me all the time.

Sydney Picasso: And you always amaze me. You are amazing.