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[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by the Spartan
Ah oui, I can confirm this Hank, boc.

As a child prodigy I was a huge Picasso fan. Énorme! So the year was 1972. Summersummersummertime. I was accompanying my still-hippyfied parents on a backpacking holiday on the continent. We were in Antibes on the French Riviera staying in a petite chateau on the water when I read in one of the local newspapers, the Daily Cannes-Tribune, that Picasso lived just a stone’s throw away in Mougin. Just up the freakin’ coast from where we were staying. I told my ‘rents that it was a chance of a lifetime to meet this genius of the artworld. A living legend. So my mom did a major six degrees of separation search and after talking to many of the unwashed natives found a connection and rang the artiste up. My mom was very good at that, no shame, otoh, as I detailed in my stories, my embarrassment at suggestive conversation tends to run on the high side.

Anyway, the Picassos were more than happy to entertain us and invited us round to their Villa for supper the next evening. I still remember the moment he greeted us, he was wearing a pair of mustard yellow linen slacks and a beautiful lavender silk shirt with a burgundy scarf thrown around his neck and a pair of stone coloured canvas-style espadrills, boc. The wine flowed (there was no drinking age in France back then) and we all got tres friendly and chatted the night away. We had been talking about art for hours, boc, and inevitably the topic turned to Guernica. I had seen it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the year before (and little did I know at present he had it at his villa, where we then were). Actually, it was I who brought it up querying him as to whether the reason it was so renowned had more to do with the importance of the subject and his emotional investment in the same than the actual aesthetics of the work.

Picasso looked at me with a deadpan glare and said, “Monsieur, allow me an anecdote., ‘Since the end of the great war, lots of the Spanish freedom fighters who fought in the war which Guernica portrays have sought me out. Many of them in the course of conversations, much like this, would pull out pictures for me of their loved ones who had inspired them to rise up against the forces of fascism. One such homme who talked on and on about his mother who dreamt of the day when the Spanish would be liberated showed me her a very small picture of her with him where from the looks of it she appeared to be about meter in height and I told him that I had not understood that she was midget and at that moment the man gazed me as if I was a small child and said, she is not a midget, this is just a tiny photo.’”

Later on he wheeled out Guernica and I remarked, WOW, that looks just like the real Guernica I saw in New York and he said, “Oui, il est”.

"Do something, Encyclopedia!" Sally wailed. "That phony Penske is definitely up to something!"

"Oh, he is, Sally," Encyclopedia said. "But Penske sure slipped up this time. His story is as transparent as a Matisse stained glass."

HOW DID ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN KNOW?

Turn to post 24 on the Big Board for the solution to The Case of the Artful Art Lover, and to find out whether Encyclopedia and Sally will ever get. it. on.