"Anyway, Picasso's ugly, and he paints a hideously deformed world because his soul is hideous, and that's all you can say about Picasso. There's no reason anymore to support the exhibition of his works. He has nothing to contribute, and with him there's no light, no innovation in the organization of colors or forms. I mean, in Picasso's work there's absolutely nothing that deserves attention, just an extreme stupidity and a priapic daubing that might attract a few sixtysomethings with big bank accounts."

—Michel Houellenbecq, The Map and the Territory

In the mid-1950s, when Picasso embarked on a series of his own versions of Eugène Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger, he would take [Françoise Gilot] on average once a month to the Louvre to study the original. "I asked how he felt about the Delacroix," she relates. "His eyes narrowed and he said, 'That bastard. He's really good.'"

—Michael Findlay, The Value of Art

The collector Tony Ganz, whose parents owned a legendary collection of twentieth-century art, tells of having a playdate with a school friend at the age of six. On entering the house he said innocently, "Where are your Picassos?"

—Michael Findlay, The Value of Art

Paintings are not made to decorate apartments. They are instruments of offensive and defensive war against the enemy.

---Pablo Picasso, quoted in Sarah Whitfield, Fauvism