PICASSO

In the years after the Second World War, for instance, Picasso was so wealthy that he used to haul around a red-leather Hermès trunk stuffed full of millions of francs so that he would never be short of the cash to “buy a packet of cigarettes”.
He was frequently photographed leading a sun-soaked, playboy lifestyle on the white-sandy beaches of the Riviera (a part of the world which, incidentally, had never been a summertime holiday destination until Picasso and his smart friends started staying there during the hottest months of the year during the Twenties).In other words: by the final decades of his life, Picasso had become a brand. His name had developed into shorthand for ceaselessly inventive artistic genius, understood by people who would not recognise a Picasso in a gallery.

The Telegraph
April 27 2010