Ready for the Fight : Everything About Her Seems Right Out of the Etiquette Book. So Why Has Arianna Huffington Caused Such a Stir With a Book on Picasso?

Her book wasn’t even available in stores when it started causing a furor. And those who know her aren’t surprised that “Picasso, Creator and Destroyer” has the unflappable Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington back in the spotlight of controversy again.

She calls it a revisionist view of the man more than of his art. But this new portrait isn’t very appealing. Huffington describes a mean-spirited womanizer and wife beater whose creative output was one vast exhibition of his own tragic life.

Nobody can say the Greek-born author cut short her research. She spent five years reading unpublished theses and scholarly reports in foreign language journals, interviewing Picasso’s ex-mistresses and his children, and she includes an extensive bibliography in her book.

Huffington tells stories of what she says were Picasso’s early experiences in homosexuality. She reports that Picasso once stamped out a cigarette on a mistress’ cheek, and that one of his wives and one of his mistresses committed suicide. And she reproduces painting after painting that reveals his ever-shifting love life. An ugly characterization of a live-in lover was often painted at the same time as a beautiful representation of a new, secret mistress.

Francoise Gilot, mother of Picasso’s children, Paloma and Claude, and now married to Dr. Jonas Salk, was a key source for Huffington. “At first she said, ‘I am not prepared to open the Picasso chapter of my life again,’ ” Huffington recalls. “She all but warned me against it. But she does pour out her stories now.”

Huffington says she is only daring to say what has always been obvious--Picasso was a genius, not a saint. “You don’t need a degree in art to express your opinions,” she coolly contends. “But if you challenge a cult figure it’s inevitable there’ll be a reaction. Those who represent the established point of view don’t want to have it challenged.”

In fact, the book has been loudly condemned as lopsided and amateurish by most book reviewers.

According to New York-based art critic John Richardson, who knew Picasso personally and is putting out the first of his own four-volume study next spring, “Arianna construed his life as bad, evil, sadistic.

“If only she had written some nice stories about Picasso. It would make the nasty ones more credible.”

In her review in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani suggested that “Huffington writes about Picasso’s life as though she were breathlessly narrating a trashy novel,” and Newsweek’s Cathleen McGuigan wrote that “Huffington’s portrait . . . is one-sided and hate-filled.”

Little about Huffington’s demeanor suggests there is any controversy at all. She is serene, statuesque and striking, with drawing-room manners. She has a habit of sliding her fingers through her thick hair and removing loose strays, like a self-grooming cat. Everything else about her seems straight from the etiquette book.

While her social graces are apparent, she isn’t gracious enough to walk away from a good fight. She’s got her reputation as a keen intellect, and her degree from Cambridge University to fall back on. Although critics dismiss her book, she contends it could actually change the market value of Picasso’s art. She even named two collectors whom she says sold off some of their holdings after reading her biography.

But they both deny it. One, Morton B. Zuckerman, chairman of Atlantic magazine and a friend of the author’s, demanded a retraction when he read her claim about him in the New York Times. The other, Hollywood producer David Wolper, says he has sold almost half his large Picasso collection over the past several years, but only one work because of anything he read in Huffington’s book. He declines further explanation except to say, “People don’t buy and sell art based on the personality of the artist. Or there wouldn’t be much art bought and sold.”

Another of her claims doesn’t seem to be holding up either. After her Picasso book was already in print, Huffington says she learned the French government had refused to accept Picasso paintings as payment for the death duties on his last wife’s (the late Jacqueline’s) estate. Huffington says she heard this from Francoise Gilot, who now lives in Southern California.

The way Huffington tells the story suggests that the French government is reconsidering the value of Picasso’s art, in part at least because of her re-evaluation of the man.

French museum directors flatly reject such reports. Press attaches to the directors of both the French National Museum and the Picasso Museum explain that the process of substituting art for francs--a slow one--is already under way but could take several years to complete.

Credibility gaps of this sort and others have dogged Huffington across continents. In her professional and even in her personal life, someone always seems to be contesting her claims. It started in London when she published her first book, “The Female Woman.” She wasn’t yet 25 when it became a best seller in the early 1970s. She recalls it was the height of the women’s liberation movement, when many women were less interested in relationships and more interested in developing their careers. “It was very controversial, my view was that women should not bury their desire for intimacy,” she says.

A More Serious Turn

The controversy took a far more serious turn with her book, “Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend.” Shortly after it was published in 1981, Gerald Fitzgerald accused Huffington (then Stassinopoulos) of plagiarizing from “Callas,” a book he co-wrote with John Ardoin. The case was settled out of court and Huffington’s publisher, George Weidenfeld, who maintains that he offered her the assignment because she looks like Callas, refers to the incident as a tempest in a teapot. He still considers Huffington a personal friend. “She is very warmhearted,” he says.

As if her literary career wasn’t conflict-ridden enough, Huffington’s social and even her spiritual pursuits are also subjects of debate. In fact, if she had never written a word about Picasso, Huffington would still have stories of near mythic proportion surrounding her name.

Some have to do with her involvement in a new-age spiritual group. Those stories got started in London where she met John-Roger Hinkins in the early 1970s. A self-described philosopher associated with a foundation that offers Insight seminars, and the founder of a church called Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, or MSIA, John-Roger is based in Santa Monica. Huffington became a minister of his church, and acquaintances said she tried persuading them to join her.

“That is one of the major misconceptions about me,” she now insists. “No friend of mine has ever said I proselytized.” She claims to be less actively involved with the group than she once was. She attends workshops “every now and them,” and went on a retreat just before her wedding, two years ago to oil and gas heir Michael Huffington. She describes John-Roger as a close friend, but denies he is her guru.

Friends still maintain that, in fact, she did talk up John-Roger and his program. But they were not impressed. Years ago in London when she first brought the subject up to Lord Weidenfeld, the outspoken publisher says, “I made it clear I’m profoundly uninterested in the spiritual world. The way some people are not interested in bird watching.”

Mort Janklow, Huffington’s agent, who has known her since she moved from London to New York in the early 1980s, and who negotiated her Picasso book advance--she says it was $550,000-- refers to John-Roger as “what’s his name.”

At a private Bel-Air party, Huffington stood near the door. As guests arrived she inscribed a book to each of them--Barbara Walters, Armand Deutsch, Wallace Annenberg--then held the open page up for their approval. Her younger sister, Agapi, was there too. Arianna was warm and charming to everyone, as her friends--and even her worst critics--say she never ceases to be.

David Murdoch, the financier and real estate developer and the evening’s host, supplied the books. He also supplied the guest house where Arianna and Michael Huffington stayed during their visit.

People marvel at the way Huffington, who was not born to great wealth, has always managed to move in powerful circles.

Richardson, for one, sees her as “a relentless social climber,” who cultivates people who can get her invited to lunch with First Lady Nancy Reagan, dinner with CBS founder Bill Paley, and the opera or theater with the most eligible of escorts. For awhile it was reported in the New York gossip columns that she would marry her then-steady beau, former California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Social Climber

But Ann Getty, granddaughter of John Paul Getty, introduced her to her husband-to-be, Michael, the heir to the Huffco oil and gas company fortune. Getty also paid for the wedding.

For every person who sees Huffington as a social climber, at least twice as many don’t see her that way at all. “Jealousy and rage, I think that’s what it is,” says Cosmopolitan Magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown about Huffington’s reputation. “We’re supposed to have goals.” Super-agent Janklow says, “If she cut a swatch in London and quickly found herself among the movers and shakers in New York, it’s because she herself is that kind of person.”

“Look, everybody has a little some thing,” longtime pal Wendy Goldberg reasons. “With Arianna it’s that she likes to be around powerful people.” Goldberg’s husband, Leonard, is a well-known movie producer.

She’s about to get closer, geographically at least, to the best and brightest in Los Angeles. The Huffingtons recently bought an estate in Santa Barbara that Arianna is redecorating. He will continue working in the Houston-based family business. But, says the tall, fair-haired Huffington, he plans to run for office here in the future. He was a fund-raiser for George Bush in Houston, and served in Washington as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy.

Arianna is planning another book, and watching for the movie version of her Picasso biography, to be produced by Wolper. And there is talk of a TV miniseries version of her Callas biography.

Beyond that, she says, she will continue her public speaking engagements, which she has been doing at museums and in town halls for several years. Her subject: the art of living.