What I can remember about Picasso inspires me

Lights dimmed. Projector on. Dim glow. Expectant faces. I never let anyone into my lectures late, so the room was always full. I resigned my post to build a life in London.

I miss teaching. I miss lecturing about what I love. What I miss most though is art history.

Art history is a dark room illuminated by an artwork, literally and figuratively. We share in the dark and it is as if the art becomes more precious and more powerful.

I have not lectured on art history in over a year and a half. I began to study cultural studies (philosophy, economics, sociology. . .) and I disconnected myself from the topic that made my heart sing because I falsely came to believe it was irrelevant - that my work was not contemporary, informed on the conceptual, the technological. I believed this lie and it took me a year of studying contemporary subjectivity at Goldsmiths to realise history is never irrelevant. We live history in the contemporary - we are the result of our history.

I feel sometimes so disconnected from art history that I don't know where to begin to reconnect. I pray that it is like 'riding a bike' but I fear that the stories, the analysis, the passion I had have been simplified into the superficial things one might remember from any survey course: that what was my knowledge is no different than any other abstract memory I think I feel I experienced.

Picasso moved to Paris in 1900. He was a young artist (19) trying to prove himself in the avant garde capital of the world. He had come from his home in progressive Barcelona just after perfecting his study at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, graduating with the equivalent of a BA by the time he was 16. He had mastered the technical skill of the academy, now it was time to un-learn all of it so that he could push art forward.

Picasso, First Communion, 1896 via Pictify

Picasso's first years in Paris were marked by poverty, loss, fear, depression and the suicide of his best friend (Carlos Casagemas). He continually fled the city back to the comforts of Barcelona where he would gather courage and artistic capital (i.e. knowledge of Iberian sculpture) to come back and conquer The City of Art.

Picasso, Death of Casagemas, 1901

To move forward Picasso studied history. He imitated Monet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin - the previous generation of modernists that had forged the path away from academia into individual expression. From the study of history he made style of his own; he found his voice.

Picasso, Desmoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 

I recall this all without consulting notes or other sources. This is from memory. Has my memory distorted the 'truth'? Has my memory made something seriously nuanced simple and superficial?

What I can remember about Picasso (here) inspires me. Persistence, study, work, regroup, belief that in time it will come. Pushing past doubt and building upon strength is what made Picasso. I am not Picasso, but I can gain from his history.

To regain what I have resigned I have to cast aside the fear and doubt - the distorted thought that I will never assimilate into my tough city, London. To make my memory present and factual I must regroup, re-study and re-immerse into the consciousness of art. I have to return to (mine and art) history to move forward.

So, who wants to hire me as an art history lecturer?