Jarry was a card carrying Anarchist and his life as Art gave him credentials of revolutionary freedom to the other Artists. Jarry had concentrated his Anarchism on his own consciousness and this was more important work, he believed, for a selected few Artists so that they were not required to do the work of social anarchism. Jarry was the living representative of this chosen few and as he knew his time was short he chose to educate Picasso in this pursuit after he met him at the bateau lavoir. Ubu went to great lengths to reveal the secrets of the revolutionary freedom of Art to Picasso and after the lessons he gave Picasso were finished Ubu gifted his favorite Remington revolver, as a rite of passage to his secrets, to Picasso and told him to use it to advance the Moderne or at least when he needed to express his Art or maybe just to light someone’s cigarette.
Picasso was fascinated with Ubu Pere during his entire adult life and he eagerly became Ubu’s progeny during the last years of Jarry’s life. As the flame of Pere Ubu diminished he transferred his magic to Picasso and gave him the right to concentrate on being a revolutionary artist and to leave the social work to other artists.
You can trace this transformation in Picasso’s Art in the years from 1904 to 1907 the year of Jarry’s death.
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Jarry saw the greatness in Picasso and framed that greatness with the transfer of his favorite weapon to the new warrior of
Art. Picasso became Pere Ubu’s crown prince. Forty years later even the critics can link the savagery of the Ubu legend with the disturbing forms and figures they found in the bodies and animals and just life itself in Guernica.
You can even imagine Picasso staring out the window of his studio, smoking a cheap Spanish cigarette, as he listened to the reports of the bombing of Guernica on the radio and turning around and facing the middle of the studio filled with enormous and primed but empty painting surfaces there before him and yelling out to the stage before him, “Merde, Shite.”
-- Charles Grimes
