Artist photographer
Quinn encountered artists such as Picasso, Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dalí, Georges Simenon, Françoise Sagan, Somerset Maugham and Francis Bacon.
By Edward Quinn
When I started working as a reporter on the Côte d'Azur in the early 1950s, I was not yet familiar with the names of contemporary artists. Of course, I had heard of Picasso and soon found out that he lived somewhere nearby. His name exerted a magical attraction on editors of newspapers and magazines, and I was made aware very early on that a report on Picasso would be very welcome.
My first encounter with Picasso on 21 July 1951 was no coincidence. I learned from a local newspaper that he was expected to be the guest of honour at the opening of a ceramics exhibition in Vallauris. Despite my inexperience as a photojournalist, I recognised my opportunity. During the exhibition, Picasso was surrounded by photographers and local dignitaries, so getting a good shot was impossible and I waited until the press had left. This was all the better as shortly before Picasso said goodbye, the housekeeper turned up with his children Claude and Paloma. I took my chance and photographed Picasso with Paloma in his arms and little Claude next to him. That one picture was the beginning of my friendship with Picasso. He liked the photo, and shortly afterwards he allowed me to photograph him at work in his ceramics workshop in Vallauris. It was a formative experience for me to watch Picasso at work. I had never witnessed the creation of a work of art before. It was with great relief that I heard Picasso say to Madame Ramié, the owner of the Madoura ceramics workshop, at the end of the working day: "Lui, il ne me dérange pas" ("He doesn't bother me"). This meant that I was allowed to visit him again, and in fact I was able to visit and photograph him regularly over the next 20 years.
In 1964, I was commissioned by the New York Times to photograph Max Ernst, and I was able to make a reportage about him in his house in Seillans, a small town in Provence. Ten years later, after studying his work intensively, I had the idea of making a book about him that would combine his pictures and his autobiographical "Notes for a Biography" in the style of a collage. I hadn't seen him again since the meeting I mentioned. I hoped to meet him again in Seillans, where I had photographed him for the first time. Max Ernst received me, but was very irritated because I had disturbed him while he was working. I explained my book project to him, but he flatly refused any co-operation. It was months before I got another appointment, so I travelled to Seillans with the first drafts. Max Ernst looked at them carefully and finally said: "Mr Quinn, I like your work very much". Afterwards, he invited me to dinner with his wife Dorothea Tanning, to which he brought an excellent wine from the cellar.
From then on, I paid frequent visits to Max Ernst. The book was published in 1976, the year Max Ernst died. He made one of his last works, a lithograph, especially for this book. I was very touched when I learnt that he, now seriously ill, had signed the sheets on his sickbed.
Jean Cocteau was one of the most prominent figures on the art scene on the Côte d'Azur. He was known as a novelist, lyricist, playwright, film-maker and painter. Cocteau was only too happy to receive journalists and always made his guests feel at home. He always had something to tell or something new to show, and the journalists left him with new information and good pictures. As a filmmaker, Cocteau knew exactly how to put himself in the limelight.
He lived at Cap Ferrat at the invitation of Francine Weisweiller, a well-known lady from Parisian café society. She owned the enchanting Villa Santo Sospir. To return the favour of Madame Weisweiller's generous hospitality, Cocteau decorated the white walls of the villa with paintings, drawing inspiration from mythological stories and heroes. In 1956, he worked on the immense task of renovating the old, almost abandoned Saint Pierre fisherman's chapel in Villefranche. When choosing his motifs, he was inspired by the Bible and depicted three episodes from the life of Jesus. He used local fishermen as models for the murals.
In 1953, I photographed Marc Chagall and his second wife Valentine Brodsky in their house in Saint Paul de Vence. As Chagall tended to concentrate on his work, he was reluctant to be disturbed. He preferred to withdraw into his fantasy world of peasants, animals and flowers. His garden was full of flowers, and he once declared that painting must always try to compete with the beauty of flowers, but must always settle for second place.
In 1964, the Fondation Maeght was founded in Saint Paul de Vence by art dealer and collector Aimé Maeght. He wanted to create a meeting place for art lovers. Through the collaboration of Miró, Chagall, Giacometti, Tal Coat, Ubac and others, the Fondation became a collective work of art. Joan Miró created sculptures such as L'Oiseau lunaire and the large Oeuf cosmique as the centrepiece of a small pond, where I photographed him together with Aimée Maeght.
On the day of the opening of the Fondation Maeght, Alberto Giacometti visited the room containing his sculptures alone. I happened to be there too and had the opportunity to observe the artist as he looked at his work, while his figures in turn seemed to be watching him.
I met Alexander Calder when he visited Aimé Maeght in Saint Paul. When I photographed him, he proudly showed me his little mobiles. He was in a very good mood and was happy every time a gust of wind blew the mobile around while he tried to keep the centre of rotation steady.
When I visited Salvador Dalí in Portlligat on the Costa Brava in 1957, he showed me his latest discovery. For this occasion, he wore a special costume consisting of a richly decorated jacket with a matching cap. He introduced me to a sea urchin called Sputnik and demonstrated how it painted a picture. First, he inserted an extremely light swan feather into the mouth of the urchin, which functioned like a hand with its five teeth and held the keel in place. He then placed the sea urchin and feather in front of a sheet of blackened paper, and with movements that Dalí described as controlled by the cosmos, the sea urchin drew decorative lines on the paper. Dalí insisted that some urchins were more talented than others. It was a remarkable day, and I was delighted with the images, which the English newspaper Sunday Graphic published in an article entitled A COSMIC SENSATION.
In the 1950s, Georges Simenon lived in his Golden Gate villa in Cannes. As I enjoyed doing reportages sur le vif, I asked him if I could accompany him on a typical day. I was surprised that he started work at 6 o'clock in the morning. He began his morning ritual by pacing back and forth on the terrace, hands clasped behind his back, nervously fiddling with a rosary of Turkish amber beads. Before going to work, Simenon also did a few simple gymnastic exercises on a board he had had specially made. While he made a pot of coffee, he told me that he writes about five books a year and that it takes him about 11 days for one. He couldn't stand the effort any longer than that. After the coffee, he wrote with one of his countless finely sharpened pencils until around 10 o'clock, read through the manuscript and typed it into the machine. Then his working day was over and he went shopping at the market, followed by an aperitif in a small bar that looked like one of his Maigret novels.
When I first met Françoise Sagan, she had just driven from Paris to Cannes in her Jaguar. She was writing her second novel Un Certain Sourire in a room overlooking the sea at the Hotel Carlton. Françoise said that she could only work for two hours a day, that was all she had energy for. To write, she preferred to lie on the floor or balance her typewriter on her lap while sitting in an armchair. Un Certain Sourire became a bestseller. The book is about a love affair between a young girl and a man twice her age. Sagan's fictional story came true when she later married her wealthy publisher Guy Schoeller, who was about 20 years older than her. However, the marriage did not last long.
Somerset Maugham owned the Villa Mauresque in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. With the sale of more than 40 million books, he had become a very rich man. Maugham began his day by smoking a pipe in bed and reading the daily newspapers. Almost until the end of his life, he kept to a strict work routine. Every day he went to his writing room on the roof. He once said to me "I always thought life was too short to do something you could pay someone else to do. And now I've become rich and can afford the luxury of only doing what nobody else can do."
I photographed artists not only on the Côte d'Azur, but above all in their studios in England and Ireland: David Hockney, Sam Francis and Louis le Brocquy. I was particularly close to Francis Bacon, who, like me, was born in Dublin. I remember well one of my first meetings with him in 1978 in London at 7 Reece Mews. He took me into the tiny kitchen of his studio flat and we were joined by his cleaning lady – or 'cleaner-upper' as Francis would say when he used his cockney slang. She made us both a cup of strong English tea and we stood there chatting and sipping it. I couldn't help but wonder what she thought about the paintings that filled the rather untidy studio.
I found it hard to imagine how the elderly lady managed to climb the narrow staircase, which looked more like a ladder and led to the top floor. Just as I wondered how Francis managed the stairs after one of his legendary nights in London restaurants, where he drank more alcohol than two big men could normally handle. But Francis could stay very sober, at least after a bottle of champagne or a few glasses of whisky.
I remember that I had to undergo a kind of test before Francis accepted me. After our first real meeting, he invited me to his favourite restaurant in Soho. A four-course meal awaited us there, during which I drank at least four times as much alcohol as I was used to. Nevertheless, I managed to have a more or less intelligent conversation about art, especially about Picasso, whom Francis Bacon admired and respected enormously. I can no longer say exactly how that evening ended, but whatever happened, I must have behaved decently, because I had passed the entrance exam for Francis Bacon's circle of friends, his exclusive club.
Much later, I was able to get to know the creative side of the artist. Francis allowed me to photograph him in his studio: an impressive experience. From then on, I met him several times in London, and each time we supplemented the work sessions in his studio with conversations in the cosy atmosphere of a restaurant in Chelsea or Soho. Francis enjoyed just talking. Our photo sessions were limited to photographing him in his flat or at the Marlborough Gallery - and occasionally in his Paris studio. Francis didn't like talking about his art, and I didn't press him on the subject.