Picasso

GJON MILI

January 30, 1950

0n his way to the Riviera to photograph the painter Pablo Picasso, Gjon Mili talked in Paris with Picasso's nephew, the young painter Javier Vilato, who quoted his uncle: "If you want to draw, you must shut your eyes and sing."
"I deliberated," Mili has written. "Why not have him draw in the dark, with a light instead of a pencil?" Later Mili met Picasso on the beach.
"I am a photographer, and I would like to do your portrait."
"Oh? Go ahead," Picasso answered, making a face.
"No, serious. Serious," replied Mili.
"At that point," as Mili tells it, "I confronted him with a photograph, taken in darkness but showing a skater's leap traced with lights attached to the skates. Picasso reacted instantly. Intrigued, he began drawing with his finger in the thin air." They arranged to meet at a pottery in Vallauris. In the dark, after Mili fired his flash, Picasso sketched a centaur in the air. Even though he neglected to put his signature on the drawing, there can be scant suspicion of a forgery.

LIFE Classic Photographs
John Loengard, 1988, Little, Brown and Company