The Picasso Summer (1969)

Luis Miguel Dominguín: Dominguin

Quotes 

• Luis Miguel Dominguín : There, you see. And, there. And there. Always the horses, the man, the bulls. One way or another, with oils or watercolors or etchings and now in clay. Picasso comes back to the arena. Because he is Spanish and because he cannot come back to Spain, he must come back in his own way. And so again and again, Picasso returns to the center of life in Spain, which is the bull-ring. You wish to see Picasso? Then you must enter that arena yourself - and fight a bull.

  George Smith : Do you think, eh, its absolutely necessary, in order to met Picasso, that I actually have to fight a bull?

  Luis Miguel Dominguín : Absolutely necessary!

  George Smith : Fine. Well, okay. I'll fight a bull.

• George Smith : But, do you not feel that in the 20th century, bullfighting is rather archaic way of life? After all, we send men up in rockets who circle the earth.

  Luis Miguel Dominguín : It's a very curious statement. The first time I thought of retiring, it was a day when I was dressing as a bullfighter. I saw myself a man ready to kill a beast and I thought that people must, in one way or another, help to tell us about death. Sometimes they do it with poetry or novels. Sometimes by a direct confrontation - as in the bull-ring where people, like myself, act out our feelings. In the bullfight, instead of waiting for death, we make an appointment to meet it at four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. And ultimately struck blind by the sun or shadowed by the bull, we think, so that was death and walk out of the arena more alive into the late day. Picasso likes to walk with me at such times, like a child, as with all children, he runs curious after the mystery. He shakes hands with death as it passes and with that hand, which has shaken the hand of the skeleton, he snatches the mystery and drafts it in oil on canvas.