The Game of Art SUPPLEMENT: The Cult of Picasso

Pablo Picasso is, unless I have badly missed something, the man most widely considered to have been the greatest painter in the Western World during the twentieth century. It also seems to be widely considered that no one comparable to him in stature has emerged since his death, which, though not that long ago yet, still with every passing year nourishes the idea that perhaps no one so great ever will emerge again. As I have noted in an earlier post, he seems since my childhood to have replaced Rembrandt as the demonstrative model for serious art writers when they are trying to explain to the philistines in mass market publications why the likes of Andrew Wyeth are mediocrities. I cannot contest Picasso's greatness, though for the most part I must admit it remains elusive to me. I think I am not completely in the dark regarding what he was doing; I have read Freud, and seen vividly the connection in his writings to Joyce, and have discerned the definite Cubist sensibility, whether intentional or not, in Hemingway, as well as, I think, being reasonably sensible to the general movements in history and the arts at the time. When it comes to Picasso however I have clearly failed to put together the various parts and impressions and feel the awe. That the awe is there to be felt however, it is futile to dispute, since it was widespread among his contemporaries and immediate followers in his own field, as well as the wider artistic community, which was a few hundred times more educationally and socially interconnected in the France and Spain of 75 years ago than anything we know of here. In addition it was of a level and intensity that is truly rare in any human endeavor, such that I must take it on faith that there were legitimate reasons for the respect.

Picasso's fans, especially in the United States, are another matter however. They are the most obnoxious of any of the artists in the Game. They are not the snootiest, though I don't know that I've met one who wouldn't like to be; but for this one would have to exclusively build up artists and genres as the only ones that are worthwhile which he is certain the people he intends to intimidate have never heard of, and he has to be impeccably correct that the person concerned has never heard of them in each individual case. Caravaggio fans are nearly as obnoxious on a number of levels, first in their assumption that because they did not discover their man until they were already adults, neither has anyone else, but mostly because they affect to identity with and revel in the raw sensuality and violence depicted in the art while being the kind of people who would frantically call the police if anybody remotely similar to the painter or his models ever came within thirty feet of them. Unironic Impressionist fans have been universal objects of ridicule for some time. Generally few people want to sleep with hardcore Dutch Master fans either. Michelangelo/DaVinci/ Raphael are too universally admired to contribute much to a distinct social or intellectual identity unless one has written a well-regarded book on the subject. Klimt fans are pretentious but often adorable. Modigliani fans are too cool and good-looking to ever encounter losers on a frequent basis anyway (case in point: I have never actually met one. I have only read about them in books and articles that are beyond the reach of middlebrow criticism). Middle class Picasso fans and hagiographers tend to be wannabes with mean streaks, which is not an attractive combination.

It is said of Picasso that if he got an inclination to work during dinner or a social visit, he would simply leave his company abruptly and go to it. This is reported not infrequently and with approval of great artists and other successful egomaniacs, and we are accustomed to acknowledge that great results justify any amount of mere rudeness, though with Picasso my impression always suggests to me that this had no small share of gamesmanship in it and served to make a specific point of insulting his company, who were presumably his friends and supporters. Though perhaps much of this is simply the nature of emphasis in modern biography and memoir, which is obsessed with the details of who dominated and more importantly, who was dominated. At any rate, perhaps because he did not linger over dinner, Picasso was an incredibly prolific painter, so that besides every museum worth its name in the Western world having enough original works to have its own Picasso room, besides there being numerous entire museums dedicated exclusively to the work of the great man, it is not uncommon in the United States even among people of relatively modest wealth to possess an original Picasso of one's own. I have even been in a couple of such houses myself, though in one I did not bear enough status to be allowed into the gallery. In the other the owner had hung it in his bathroom on the wall beside the toilet. It was a framed cocktail napkin sized piece of cardboard or paper with a couple of broad black strokes like eyebrows encasing on three sides a few other shorter black marks and streaks. The owner had hung it in his bathroom on the wall beside the toilet. I don't have the slightest idea what its subject was supposed to be, and if the owner did he kept it to himself, besides which that was secondary to its being a PICASSO of course. He had not bought the thing to instruct or entertain as an object of art in itself, and having it had brought him some local notoriety. This all strikes me as quite bizarre. Perhaps it is not really as I see it, perhaps there was some communication of joy or insight which this man received from the painted figure and not just from the signature beneath it but if so this was a joy that stifled itself quickly upon turning again to engage the world.

Another trait of Picasso lovers is that they become very quickly defensive if they feel their position is being questioned or trivialized. I remember in school once an irreverent but very sharp fellow declared that Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was a more meaningful work of art than anything by Picasso but that he would be glad to be set right if people would undertake to explain to him how it was not so. The response was interesting. The pro-Picasso faction was mostly indignant that somebody who could pose such a question in a class had been admitted to the college in the first place, though several were so stunned, or sickened, or enraged at the insinuations which had been proposed, that I observed several heads to redden, veins to throb, and fists to clench. It was evident to me that these people had acquired some idea that to be the sort of person and to live among the sort of society they aspired to, the greatness of Picasso was accepted as a given, and appreciation of the master one of the tests and qualifications for acceptance therein. Even at eighteen they were ferociously defensive of their claim to this position, and did not care for any reminder that they might not have attained to it.

But why Picasso? Why for that matter all these modernists who arouse such contempt in their adherents towards those who criticize or attack or simply don't get them? Charles Dickens fans I daresay do not get so ruffled when their man is ridiculed, and there is certainly a case to be made that many modern intellectuals don't get him. The excessive cleverness of the modernists, the strict refusal to give sentiment or the consolations of religion or tradition or public experience (i.e. school) an inch of ground, their ruthless exclusivity where even the consumers of their productions are concerned (intellectually speaking) all contribute to a cultural worldview where to misstep, or be led or tricked into a misstep by a representative of the masses becomes akin to the death of one's intellectual pretensions, in instances where money and other types of status are absent to one's very self-identity. To which I can only ask, is this what art (or life) is really supposed to be about?

I can never think of Picasso without recurrence to an experience I had once at the Philadelphia art museum, which was for many years my "home" art museum and in which I had therefore a greater proclivity to wander about without maps and so forth. It happened that after passing through the regular 19th century European galleries, pleasant seaside and garden pictures and so forth, I wandered wholly unconsciously into the Picasso room and thought "these pictures have nothing beautiful about them," amending my thought when I realized what I was looking at to "though I sense they are the work of someone exceedingly clever, doubtless infinitely moreso than I am." This is not a pleasing sensation to have, and I can see why a person attuned to these sorts of goings-on would rather be able to say "I perceive the brilliance of these pictures and my intelligence is of a rather similar cast to that of the artist." To appear in a position where others can gleefully declare you to be intellectually intimidated is one of the supreme social calamities of the age, though this can never be but a secondary or tertiary purpose of any succesful artwork, if it be one at all. But of course the Game of Art has very little to do with the consideration or understanding of artworks in isolation (which actually only become cause for intimidation the greater one's understanding of the processes and mind of the artist), otherwise hardly anyone in the bourgeoisie would have the interest or the capacity to play it.

P.S. We are almost to the end of the Game as far as I am involved in it.

P.P.S. No one has visited my profile in 2 months now. I expected to have a limited readership but 4 people?