BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I have thought about inherent value for many years-- especially when it concerns art. There is a story, which I believe to be true, about a dinner party in the South of France, attended by Picasso. While at dinner, he needed to use the rest room and was told that it was on the second floor. He went to the guest bathroom and notice one of his drawings on the wall.

When he returned to dinner he remarked to the hostess that he had noticed his drawing upstairs in the bathroom. She contradicted him, and said that she had been told that it was only a reproduction that she had inherited from her late husband.

"Oh, no!" Picasso replied, "it is definitely an original drawing and my signature on the bottom is real."

The hostess jumped from the table, and ran upstairs. Moments later she carried the framed drawing downstairs, took a painting down from the mantle piece, and replaced it with the original Picasso drawing.

Picasso asked whether the picture had changed since she learned that it was the original and not a reproduction.

"What," he asked, "made it deserving of the place of honor in the hostess' home?" He wanted to know "why it shouldn't remain in the bathroom," and whether, "it was a different piece of art."


mek