Unplanned Digression from Johnson: Picasso Worshipping Alert

There is a exhibit currently at the Guggenheim on Spanish painting in which you-know-who is, at least in the New York Times article on the exhibit, being promoted as the star attraction:

'When he was 85, Picasso painted 'Musketeer', a brazenly humorous depiction of a nobleman in the foppish fashion of late-16th-century Spain.'

The picture is reproduced in the paper, along with portraits by El Greco and Velazquez that are also part of the exhibit. I can't quite get around the idea that Picasso's picture would have made those painters split their sides with laughter, unless it were at his expense, but obviously he knew them, and they would have known him, better than I will ever know any of them, so this is to be expected

Now believe me, I would love to be able to pass away a weekday afternoon at an exhibit like this in New York City, even if Picasso is prominently featured in it and it promises to be crowded with his overbearing fans. I can't quite bring myself to despise them after all. though I think, based on what is reported in the paper, that I would try to avoid reading or listening to any of the guides produced specifically for this show. The gushing over 'Musketeer', which did not affect me as particularly brazen or humorous or exciting, and the apparent subordination of the two seriously imposing painters to roles as precursors of the great modern that seems to be hinted at, does not inspire me with a lot of confidence in the curators' vision. I have accepted that at this point of my life at least I am not connecting on a human level with Picasso, as so many apparently do, and that I have consequently been cut off from many potential friends and lovers in the community of art admirers that I might have liked to have had. This is because Picasso is really such a symbol of a particular worldview that people who don't get him really incompatible with those who do. When I think of 'humorous painters' I'm think of Hogarth, Phiz (illustrator of Dickens's novels), some of the more pathetic efforts of Van Gogh, maybe some of the over the top historical painters like David (I love those paintings, like the 'Tennis Court Oath', but the drama does make me laugh) ,the Venetian who slipped in some dwarves and monkeys in his rendering of the Last Supper. When I look at Picasso's work, even where the talent is obvious and the skill and conception of a high order I just see a chilling, cruel, clever, unscrupulous, mocking soul on the canvas. It mesmerizes me that so many people admire and write about him in such breathless, absolute terms of approbation.

The curator of the show, one Carmen Gimenez, displays in the course of the article a number of the traits which make Picasso's modern devotees so frequently repulsive that one comes to the conclusion the man must be radiating evil. To begin with this particularly unilluminating, obnoxious and, well, asinine quote:

'Black is a traditional color for Spanish clothing. But it's a simple black, not the kind we wear in New York.'

Saying something like this serves no purpose but to establish the speaker's persona as a with-it insider New Yorker who does not take any crap but service people. Manhattan is apparently entirely given over to such people now. A friend of mine tells me it is not uncommon even for men to get a $100 consult on their hair before and separate from the actual cut, and this type of ludicrous expense is considered essential to differentiate oneself from the common scum. While I may be a petty and envious provincial, I have always been a New York lover from way back. One of the three or four real regrets of my life is that I never took a shot at living there when I was just out of school (my excuse was that I had no identifiable purpose I could convey to people there). My bookshelves are full of New York-based writers from the 1880s to the 1950s, not just literature, but baseball and children's books and books about tunnels and bridges and the subway and the parks. I read E.B. White's essay "This is New York" the other night and a lot of the old impressions I had formed came back to me, and I wanted to go even now, though I still have no identifiable purpose there. I have several art books published by the Metropolitan Museum and other NYC cultural institutions in the 40s and 50s, and however arrogant that generation of elite New Yorkers may have been in private they generally had the good taste to suppress it in their writing and maintain the ability to address intelligent if unhip readers as human beings having something in common with themselves, which is a skill that sadly seems to be on the wane today.

Other annoyances in the piece addressed briefly: We are told that an inscription 'using the less familiar names of El Greco, Rembrandt and Velasquez...illustrates Picasso's wish to be identified with these artists and his self-proclamation as the last great master of classical painting.' Have you ever noticed that Picasso's devotees seem to affect an especial confidence when speaking about or for him? Why? If the era of classical painting is over--which regrettably seems probable--and if Picasso is the last great master of it, and no one presently is alive is capable of approaching even his feats--does that not leave us in a bit of a forlorn state as people who identify themselves as nourished by the arts? A culture in which there is no realistic hope of anything great being produced in the foreseeable future--and I fear we have very much reached that state with regard to the arts among the most deeply learned in them--cannot expect to thrive solely dependant on the genius of the past without meaningful application to actual life in the present. If Picasso really believed he was the last of a long line of brilliant, civilization-defining figures, and that after him, there was to be nothing further, and especially if, as seemingly happened, he was able to persuade many to come around to his opinion, then anyone alive now has comparatively nothing to do with that entire epoch, and certainly any claim they have to understanding it must be viewed with skepticism. It seems, and has always seemed to me, that if even if his opinion of the direction of art is correct, there is no credit and little value to be gained by agreeing with him so enthusiastically, for he could not possibly have been painting with such a person as you in mind.

I don't want to spend my whole life combating with this silly article so I will let it go.

In a related item did you catch the special Picasso print (a drawing of a naked woman on a sofa) that was offered to Times readers a few weeks back? Of course in the classic fashion of this sort of thing we don't just order the picture but get the whole titillating backstory of who the woman is...Met Picasso in Paris while an undergraduate to do an interview for the college paper...He was 64 at the time...Five years later they became lovers...Moved to the Riviera...He drew her naked...Captured her soul with his pencil...We can infer that many G-spot orgasms were produced...Yes I want the whole package, my friends will ask about the picture, I'll deliver the story, maybe they'll think I have something of the same spirit in me. At the very worst they'll know that I am aware these kinds of things happen to actual people. My reputation for innocence will be a little lightened.

While on the subject of my deepest regrets, I never understood why if artists could entice strange women to pose naked for them while they painted them, why a poet could not do the same thing as a regular course of study. "Will you pose in the nude for me while I compose a sonnet on you? It will be very satisfying, just like with painters." I guess I don't regret asking this of anybody so much I regret never bringing things to any point where such a request would have seemed a natural conclusion.