This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Adriana Williams, dated 17 July 2020.
Mr. C.: May I tell you, Mr. Picasso, why there is no sale for your stuff in America; why I make ten times as much there as you do?
Mr. P: Please do, I am agog with interest.
Mr. C.: It is because you don’t paint girls; young girls, cute girls. You paint too many men; funny-looking men. The public doesn’t like men. They like girls—girls with smiles, and golden curls, and puppies, and tennis racquets, and—
Mr. P.: And, very possibly, bathing suits?
Mr. C.: Right! The public likes sex—When you paint girls you put square legs on them, cubes, geometrical forms—and the pictures never sell. When I paint them I always make a sale. Why? Because I put round legs on them.
Mr. P.: Then the public likes round girls?
Mr. C.: Very round.
Mr. P.: But I simply can’t see girls that way.
Mr. C.: That’s because you see the wrong kind of girls. Now, I think I can be of very great help to you. When you come to New York I’ll be delighted to lend you my little red address book.*
*"Howard Chandler Christie vs. Pablo Picasso" from the Vanity Fair Series, Impossible Interviews, no. 3, February 1932, p. 56.