Pablo Picasso - An Enneagram Profile

Pablo Picasso; An Enneagram Profile

The following was first published in the International Enneagram Association's bulletin, "Nine Points", September 2011


“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”.


Born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, 25th of October 1881, Picasso is considered one of the figureheads of Modern Art and perhaps the towering Artistic personalities of the 20th century. His ferocious creative energy, single- minded determination and all- encompassing passion bear the hallmarks of the Enneagram type Eight (The Boss, The Dominator, The Powerhouse), as indeed does his impulsiveness and occasional cruelty and destructiveness.


“My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso”.



From an early age, Picasso exhibited a notable combination of talent and self- belief and, throughout his life, was to leave an indelible impression upon all that he encountered. His Art teacher father recognised that, barely out of boyhood, his son was already a greater artist than he himself could ever hope to be, and thus devoted his attention to the tutoring and encouragement of Pablo’s nascent genius. At the behest of his father, the thirteen-year-old Picasso was allowed to take the entrance exam for the advanced class in Barcelona’s School of Fine Arts. The examination process usually lasted a month but Picasso was admitted after just one week and, whilst some of the staff had misgivings about the youth’s lack of discipline, they recognized that his exceptional talent demanded that exceptions be made in his favour.
This seeming ability to bend the world in accordance with his own purpose tallies with the Eight- like dictum that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”, and this was perhaps the first of many instances of Picasso’s being assured of his authority and special ness, of being governed only by his talent, vision and willpower, and being exempt from the standards and limitations of ordinary men.

Another early example of Picasso’s sense of omnipotence is illustrated by his response to his little sister Conchita’s illness and subsequent death; On Conchita’s falling sick with diphtheria, Picasso made “a deal with God”, promising to forsake his great passion, painting, if his little sister was spared (the Eight’s autonomy lending this son of Catholic Spain the belief in his ability to bare- facedly bargain with the Deity). After her apparent recovery, Picasso resumed painting, only for Conchita to suffer a relapse and die. Thereafter Picasso felt himself somewhat cursed by God and, to a degree, culpable for Conchita’s death. However, rather than seeking divine forgiveness for this transgression, any potential remorse quickly modulated into righteous wrath, with Picasso displaying the Eight’s customary combativeness and sense of defiance, taking up the gauntlet with an ever stronger determination to play purely by his own rules and a refusal to recognize any authority other than his own. It may have also fostered in Picasso a dread of human vulnerability that, in later life, often manifested as cruel disdain for what he perceived as “weakness”, as well as a conviction that all human relations were touched by tragedy and loss, and from which he would have to protect himself, even if at the expense of others.


“I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition”


The death of his sister, and its attendant suffering was expressed, often with remarkable tenderness, in Picasso’s first great paintings. The former is observable in “The First Communion”, a technical tour de force that exhibited both Picasso’s remarkable draughtsmanship and mastery of “academic” oil painting (at the enviable age of fifteen), but also a natural gift for symbolism (with an extinguished candle commemorating the late Conchita). Likewise, much of the work of the “Blue” and “Rose” periods (notably 1901’s “la Vie” and 1905’s “La Famille de Saltimbanques” respectively) is infused with humanity, sadness and sympathy for the dispossessed (represented, in the latter, by nomadic Circus performers) and the transience and fragility of life. This stands in stark contrast to the bustling confidence and verve of much of Picasso’s work, and illustrates the Eight’s immense capacity for compassion. Though often concealed, healthy Eights are amongst the most heroic individuals, their solidity, strength and courage making them formidable champions of the defenceless and powerless. Like fellow Eight Martin Luther King Jnr (though markedly without the consistency, selflessness and religiously- ordained conviction), Picasso was deeply moved by injustice and suffering, and sought redress, albeit through the medium of Art.

 “What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has nothing but eyes if he is a painter….? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly aware of what goes on in the world, whether it be harrowing, bitter, or sweet, and he cannot help being shaped by it. How would it be possible not to take an interest in other people, and to withdraw into an ivory tower from participation in their existence? No, painting is not interior decoration. It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy”.
This sentiment informs 1937’s “Guernica”, painted as a response to the carpet- bombing of the Basque village by Spanish National and Nazi German forces. “Guernica” is one of the most viscerally terrifying works of art, resplendent with agonized images of fear and violence, demonstrating, in a complex and demanding composition, (reminiscent of Monet’s massive curved canvases which encompass and overwhelm the viewer) the technical virtuosity and aesthetic grandeur of Picasso’s vision. Here, the suffering of anonymous innocents is elevated to the majestic tragedy of religious iconography, such as The Crucifixion or Pieta, a connection that is suggested by the stigmata shown on the hands of the fallen soldier. Picasso’s imaginative vitality and gifts for cultural synthesis (famously exhibited in 1907’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, which utilized African- style masks) are here exercised on a grand scale, with the use of newsprint and a light bulb (as the sun) contemporizing the work, a hint of the Corrida in the Bull’s goring of a horse, and the bold frieze format suggestive of the partisan, political murals found in war torn, divided communities.


“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things”.


If, as an artist, Picasso is distinguished by any particular trait, it is arguably his tireless inventiveness and experimentation. Whereas most of his predecessors and contemporaries tended towards a process of apprenticeship, exploration and, on finding their natural metier, consolidation within a particular style, Picasso, as an unfettered Eight, took a less restricted approach, often venturing beyond the aesthetic, formal and material confines of what was generally considered to be Art, and generating seismic shock waves that can still be felt today. 1907’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” did for the art of painting what Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre Du Printemps” (1915) did for that of music; both revolutionary works were greeted with as much disgust and dismay as they were with enthusiasm and favour and created massive schisms (between the “traditional” and the “innovative”) that remain unresolved. Indeed, like his fellow diminutive firebrand, Picasso delighted in baffling his supporters as much as his critics, many of whom were perturbed by his seeming unfaithfulness to any aesthetic school. No sooner had Picasso, along with Georges Braque, devised Cubism, than the former started producing work of a neo- Classical nature (as, indeed, did Stravinsky, following the highly complex “primitivisms” of “Le Sacre”). Neo- Classicism was generally considered a sort of “return to order” following the myriad upheavals of the early 20th Century, but for Picasso was simply a stop on a path of perpetual revolution and creation. The driven impulsiveness of the Eight is evident in Picasso’s “impatience” and hunger for new artistic outlets (collage, sculpture, printmaking), as well as his voracious consumption of any available objects and free surfaces to the end of artistic creation; in a fascinatingly imaginative display of the Eight’s desire to co-opt and posses their environment, Picasso would sculpturally convert a discarded bicycle seat into a Steer’s head and an upended toy Volkswagen into that of a Gorilla, scribble on napkins and table cloths and, charmingly, assemble a ladder for a visiting frog.
Such relentless adventurousness and creation reflect both the Eight’s God- like dominance of their surroundings, and their occasional inconsistency and sense of unassailability. To maintain impeccable standards throughout such impetuous experimentation would test the talent of any artist, even one as gifted as Picasso, who occasionally appeared to be issuing a challenge in presenting work that appeared substandard, exhibiting not so much technical mastery as the masterful strut of the assured tyrant. Such mischief undoubtedly reflects a Harlequinesque aspect of Picasso’s personality (he famously had a playful, even clownish, quality), but more credibly indicate the confrontational side of the Eight, daring anyone to criticize his work and bullishly spoiling for a fight.



“If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur”.


Picasso often likened himself to (and portrayed himself as) the Minotaur, a figure from Greek mythology endowed with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who is imprisoned in the Cretan Labyrinth and appears in Dante’s “Inferno”, dwelling amongst “men of blood”, those condemned for violent natures. The marriage of mythology, the bestial and superhuman, provide an interesting insight into Picasso’s self- appraisal, that of being an elemental force of (super) nature, given to intense and even savage appetites, a God- like sense of limitless potency, remarkable willpower, and disregard for conventional morality, all of which are recognisable, if extreme, manifestations of the type Eights’ personal power, dominance, fearlessness and limitless determination; indeed, Eights are oft likely to regard any attempted dissent or curbing of their appetites as the proverbial “red rag to a bull”, inviting brutal counterattack and an unforgiving hostility. The creative and destructive fervour of Picasso’s work was reflected in his personal relationships, with his contemptuously discarding (after goring) those who refused to stand up to him, and leaving countless “casualties” in his wake.



“There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats”.


“After Picasso, God”. Thus spoke Dora Maar, the beautiful, gifted and much admired muse who Picasso had reduced to “The Weeping Woman”, both in Art and life. Why would an intelligent and talented woman remain so infatuatedly devoted to someone who had treated her with such wanton cruelty and contempt? At least two of his lovers (Marie-Thérèse Walter and Jacqueline Roque) committed suicide and his children, especially his alcoholic eldest son Paul, had traumatic relations with him, all of which are harrowing manifestations of the unhealthy Eight. Devoid of compassion and utterly destructive, Eights at this point will trample upon anyone in their path and can only respond favourably to a show of strength. That so few of Picasso’s friends, family and lovers were willing to stand their ground and face him down, proved to be as tragic for him as it was for them, with the artist destined to die an angry, embittered old man, raging against waning potency and power, apparently once telling his son Paul that, as he was young and Picasso himself old, he hated him.

Picasso’s descent, from energized creator to enervated destroyer warns of the pitfalls that await the unhealthy Eight, destined to repeat the fate of the God Cronus who, having overpowered his father Uranus, devoured his children in a fruitless attempt to maintain power.  Nobody welcomes obsolescence, especially not a potent powerhouse like Picasso, but old age and the attendant ascent of new kings make withdrawal from the arena inevitable. It is wretched that, for Picasso, this was done under duress and with little dignified acceptance, and that he ended his life a broken, if still brutal, old bull, beset with resentment and unquenchable fury, rather than with the fulfilment and grace that such an immense talent deserved.