Bisected Man

Just had to show you the "artifact" Picasso provided to the Art Institute. After all, it is the equivalent of reading a great writer's rough draft, so it is right not to display it under normal circumstances.

For me it was not just the interest of a favorite painting that might have been very different from the way I have always known it. More than that I can best say in a different format.

A POEM:

IN THE CLOSET 47 YEARS

To begin,

When Picasso painted his pink masterpiece
Mother and Child it was 1921, and the young
Family actually had the father included, squat-seated
Along the left margin, solid, bearded, curly,
Masculine, stolid; forming a cup-shape composition
Alongside the familiar Madonna-like mother and child.
However,

When Picasso completed his pink masterpiece
He had removed the man and restretched the canvas
Without him, with only traces of the bearded face
Visible on the new tacking margin.
The remainder was cut off for storage
By the artist himself in some symbolic closet:
Hair, beard, one leg, one thigh,
One buttock -- like half of a broasted chicken
Pulled off the spit and stacked in the corner.

Meanwhile,
She and the child were loved and admired for 47 years husbandless
Until Picasso located and donated the fragment to Chicago
During the tumultuous bloody year of 1968.
After nearly a half-century in the closet, but
Now on occasional display coupled with the
Ex-wife, the half-man is on separated display,
Still faceless and nearly-still-forgotten.

To conclude,

The feminine side of Picasso clearly must have
Moved the artist to lop off the masculine side of the masterpiece
So bluntly: No visible blood was shed during the amputation.