The Popes

Picasso called Apollinaire The Pope, as a tease for his Tuesday gatherings. During one such Tuesday gathering in 1907, The Pope introduced Picasso and Braque to one another, and sparked art history to be forever changed. Their friendship became deeply tied; they would speak in near code to each other and had the other approve each painting in order to consider it finished. From 1907-1913, the two worked so closely that their paintings reveal similar objects, topics, interests, and of course style–what we now call cubism.

Braque, Man with a Guitar, 1911

Picasso, The Poet, 1911

One presumes that Apollinaire did not mind the nomiker, whereas André Breton was not overly fond of the jest of his detractors when they called him the Pope of Surrealism. Some saw Breton as being adamant and limiting of surrealism and imposing strictures that were unnecessarily confining, much the way that Catholicism was viewed (see L'Age D'Or for the degree to which their disdain could go to this religion).

Nicknames are quite personal, and not always well received, so what works for one may most certainly not work for another.