Photographer David Douglas Duncan first met artist Pablo Picasso in 1957 in the South of France. The first photo he took was of Picasso as he was bathing. Years later one of his books about Picasso was published and a then seven-year-old Herbert Sigüenza sees the book in a dentist’s office and a life-long passion for Picasso was born.
Sigüenza, best known as a member of Culture Clash, would take that passion and turn it into a one-man play called A Weekend with Pablo Picasso. His play fittingly opens with Sigüenza, as Picasso, taking a bath in the South of France in 1957.
“I was doing Culture Club for years. I was acting, painting, but in the back of my mind I always knew when I turned 50 I was going to write that play,” he told me earlier this week by phone. “And sure enough that’s what happened. It was something I had to do. I love the quote where a lady says to him, ‘That drawing only took you three minutes.’ Picasso responds, ‘No, it took my whole life.’ This film took me my whole life to do.”
After debuting his show at San Diego Rep, Sigüenza has performed A Weekend with Pablo Picasso hundreds of times leaving satisfied audiences and critics in his wake. In conjunction with San Diego Rep a film of the play is making its way around the world. Beginning on Saturday, CaltechLive! will be streaming the play for one month. (You can get the details in our preview here.)
The film was created ten years after the play’s debut. And Sigüenza thinks that’s all for the best.
“I just feel as one ages, one gets wiser and understands the philosophies that he’s talking about,” he said. “To be an artist you have to be an artist 24/7. It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. As I’ve aged I’ve gotten better as an actor, as a painter and a lot of it has to do with this play. This play has reaffirmed for me that I am an artist. So one has to create every day. That is our job. That is our life – to create. I’ve aged into the play in a good way.”
His role as a painter is crucial to the success of this film. While the work seen resembles Picasso, it was all done by Sigüenza. He creates several new works on screen and he does it quickly. Just as Picasso is forced to do when asked to deliver six paintings and three vases over one weekend in the play.
“I’m approaching the canvases a lot like how he taught me – to do it fearlessly and freely and to accept mistakes and not to worry about the outcome. I’ve always been a fast painter, as was he. I don’t labor a lot on a painting. I create it and I move on.”
Sigüenza says that 80% of A Weekend with Pablo Picasso is “direct quotes from Picasso or things people said he said.” Knowing that, I wanted to get his response, as a writer, as a painter, as an artist, to some of the most provocative things Picasso said:
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction: “That’s a good quote. I think you have to approach the art with no mind. In other words, you go in with no preconceptions, no predetermined ideas. You go in with a vague idea and then you start creating. You destroy it if you don’t like where it’s going. You destroy it, change your mind and take another road. What I love is the process is not precious.”
Inspiration does not exist: “He didn’t believe in inspiration. He believed in the act of doing it. As a playwright I can’t create a play unless I sit my butt down on a chair and type on my laptop. In other words, there’s no magic to creating art of a play. It’s the action of doing it. Action creates energy. The inspiration is caused by you doing it.”
Art is a lie that makes us recognize the truth: “It comes down to what is real? What is the truth? Is the truth the model in front of you or is the truth the image on the canvas? When you think of yesterday, think of what you ate. It’s an image in your mind, isn’t it? If someone drew that lunch for you and you had it framed, what is more real? The framed image of your lunch or the memory of your lunch? I would say the image is more real. It has more permanence than the so-called reality of your memory.”
One memory that came up in our conversation was about Culture Clash’s first play, The Mission. Sigüenza brought it up in relation to the Golden Globe Awards that had taken place the night before we spoke and the lack of Latinos amongst the nominees.
“Our first play in 1988 was about the lack of Latinos in Hollywood,” he began. “I forget who examined it, but we’re between 1.3 and 3 percent of the total representation on tv and film. Yet we’re 18% of the population. The underrepresentation is amazing. We are seen as the other, as a foreigner usually. We’re not seen as Americans. Millions of people like me where English is the first language. I don’t see myself on TV hardly ever. I don’t see it changing. I think it’s something we’re really going to have to figure out or boycott or something. It’s going to have to change from the top down, not the bottom up.”
Which makes the realization of A Weekend With Pablo Picasso as a film that much sweeter for Sigüenza.
“I’m really happy with that permanent record. I think it captured the best performance, the best interpretation of that play for right now. In ten years I’m sure it would be different, not drastically different, but the spirit would be. It had to be written. It had to be done by me. It was just my fate. I wrote it ten years ago, but I would probably have to write it now, too.”
Photo: Herbert Sigüenza as Pablo Picasso side-by-side with Picasso