Picasso Trips Onto A Woman

At the peak of his career, Pablo probably—or rather definitely—did trip over many female fans; little did he know that after his death women would fall not for his brushstrokes but rather for his work’s obtrusiveness.

Some people are born clumsy or accident-prone but to fall over a rare and priceless work of art—a Picasso, for instance—is pure American genius.

An unidentified woman, after losing her balance, fell squarely over Picasso’s 100-years old masterpiece, called The Actor (1904), and caused a six-inch vertical slash in the lower right hand corner. This close encounter of the worst kind with art took place at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art where the experts are now busy recovering from the shock of the damage.

Major collisions have taken place in this city.

First in 1945, when an Air Force B-25 bomber attempted to land into the famous Empire State Building; structural integrity of the building was NOT compromised, fourteen people died (three crewmen and eleven in the building) and one million US dollars' worth of damage was done.

Second, the Twin Towers being used as parallel runways in 2000 (2,750 deaths and complete destruction of the towers through successful implosions using carefully placed explosives).

And finally, the art-loving woman attempting to destroy cultural heritage.

The museum said ‘the slash did not affect the focal point of the composition and the repair—which will take place in the next few weeks—will be unobtrusive’.

Pablo Picasso created the painting, which depicts an acrobat posed against an abstracted backdrop, during his so-called Pink or Rose Period in the winter of 1904-5. The museum received the work as a donation in 1952. Officials say they expect the repair to be completed in time for a new exhibition—Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The woman in question was—hallelujah—attending an adult education class on Friday afternoon when she ran into the masterpiece measuring about 6 feet by 4 feet that hung on the wall of a second-floor gallery with other early Picassos. The museum did not reveal her identity and the accident caused no injury to her.

So far, they have not accused her—just as they have Dr Afia Siddiqui to make an example out of her in the land of the free and dumbstruck—of being ‘Lady Al-CIAda’, ‘The Grey Lady of Bagram’ or ‘The Most Dangerous Woman Of The World’.