Girl Before a Mirror

Pablo Picasso, 1932 · Gallery 517 · Floor 5

Okay, so listen to this. Marie-Thérèse Walter is seventeen years old. She's out shopping near Galeries Lafayette when this guy walks up to her. Takes her by the arm. Tells her she has an interesting face. Then says, "I'm Picasso. We're going to do great things together." She has no idea who Picasso is. None. So he shows her a book about himself. Which is, you know, a move. He's forty-five. Married. Kid at home. And the thing Marie-Thérèse remembers years later? His tie. Red and black. She kept it. Anyway. Five years go by. Now she's twenty-two. And Picasso paints this. Two faces. The one on the left, that's her. Lilac down one side. Hot yellow down the other. Then the mirror. And the reflection? Darker. Heavier. Maybe older. That's one reading. Picasso never said. And here's another strange thing. Picasso had been hiding Marie-Thérèse in his paintings for years. At first, literally. M and T. Her initials. Worked into paintings of guitars. Where his jealous wife wouldn't spot them. Then suddenly, here she is. Huge. Right in front of everybody. And she's still a secret. People see the paintings. They just don't know who the woman is. He stops hiding what she looks like before he stops hiding who she is. And then, you know, life keeps going. Picasso moves on. Then moves on again. He dies in 1973. Marie-Thérèse kills herself four years later. Half a century after that guy stopped her on the street. None of that is in the painting. But now you know it. So look at the mirror again. Two faces. And Picasso gets both.

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