On Art
RAYNOR, VIVIEN
On Art ANOTHER HOMAGE TO THE MASTER BY VIVIEN RAYNOR The. he Master's birthday is becoming a bit of an albatross for critics, celebrated as it is with mounting frequency. Small wonder there is...
...For Picasso the turn to Cubism appears a quite natural reaction, purging him of blue and pink senti-mentalism and taking him as close to total abstraction as he would ever come...
...Picasso is, of course, the prototypical artist of the 20th century, for what he is no less than for what he has done...
...Marking his 90th birthday, Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art is a must for at least two conventional reasons...
...It remains possible, I found, though not without effort...
...mouths are open, bodies writhe, and so on...
...As with movie stars and royalty, famous masterpieces invariably turn out to be smaller, somehow, and more modest when viewed in person...
...Moreover, the show will not be traveling to other parts of the country due, doubtless, to collectors' reluctance to subject their treasures to the attrition of long journeys...
...First, this "most complete and important public collection" will not be on view again for many years, since a number of the pieces, though promised to the museum, are still with their owners...
...Today he is seen as the embodiment of an increasingly prevalent fantasy: robust, creative and omnipotent Man...
...In this catalogue, their generosity has been so minutely itemized as to make the entire exhibit look at times like a "producer's movie...
...Vtvien Raynor, formerly on the staff of Arts magazine and herself an artist, will be filling in for James R. Mellow while he completes his biography of Gertrude Stein...
...A few typos notwithstanding, it is the definitive explication of this small segment of Picasso's ouevre, besides being very well designed...
...Still, his accomplishment and that of his two associate curators is both valuable and unprecedented...
...It is rhythmical but not agonized??a display of virtuosity rather than the indictment of war it is said to be...
...While William Rubin's text is passably free from unctuousness, it shows great anxiety to prove that Picasso's supremacy was evident, foreordained, in the first stroke laid on the first canvas...
...Picasso so obviously enjoys observing nature, translating it and playing with it as he did in the bronze "She-Goat" (1950...
...Gone are the empurpled academicians and self-styled average men who regarded him as a metaphor for all radical excess, and any lingering controversy has certainly been quenched by more recent outrages...
...The pivotal "Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), for instance, is always slightly surprising for showing a sparkling performance of flesh tones and blue as well as intimations of Cubism...
...Indeed, it is a pity so little sculpture is here considering the vital part it has played in Picasso's creative restlessness...
...No discussion of Picasso can omit mention of "Guernica," on long loan from the artist...
...Those who were proof against Picasso's combination of genius, productivity and longevity have long ago succumbed to his photogenic lifestyle and public personality...
...Inevitably, such personalities magnetize sycophants: He has been infested with them most of his life...
...Even down to the charming frailties that include a weakness for young girls and practical jokes, he is the Olympian-Biblical archetype we have been taught to admire...
...Picasso's pictures in a linear style that grew out of Cubism in the late '20s are also worth examining because of their icy colors, reminiscent of Leger...
...Accordingly, it is quite embarrassing when Rubin interprets, say, a careless piece of drawing in an early work as "willingness to sacrifice verisimilitude in favor of pictorial structure...
...The phenomenon would be merely irritating if it did not pollute estimations of his art...
...Given the fact that the book costs $15.00 clothbound and $7.95 in paperback, it is worth noting that tapes based on its contents can be rented for a relatively nominal sum...
...Yet a Surrealist atmosphere detracts from the tragedy, leaving just a grand arrangement of tumbling shapes in black, white and gray...
...Generations of artists have since gorged themselves upon it??not always with full comprehension??and it was a crucial strut in the development of modern American art, both positively and as a thing to rebel against...
...His protean versatility in style and medium, too, emerges as a manifestation of some very personal war...
...A good many of the books on him (by now the bibliography must be enormous) seem to have been written by the same man??a toady of Shakespearian proportions...
...smooth jugs for the udder...
...For those who are neither students nor scholarly competitors, there is a challenging question that may be answered by a visit: Is it still possible to see Picasso's painting or must it now be "read"??to use Rubin's term??for significance alone...
...In addition, he indulges in the very "over-reading" of pictures he chides other critics for when he deduces that two sleeping peasants have just made love that was "more procreative than erotic...
...Picasso's message can be discerned in the twisted forms and the symbols...
...At the same time, hitherto unnoticed characteristics emerge...
...There is no way to describe the fragility of that work's contours, cut from sheet metal, nor is it possible to convey the satisfaction to be had from seeing light play on the simple forms of the relief...
...That such a god is also so rich from the work of his own hands is an achievement that can barely be dreamed of nowadays, let alone realized...
...To see it means going to the Modern's third floor and passing a large Matisse collage of colored paper...
...It is truly a shame Alfred Barr has not chosen to update further his matchless Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (1946...
...Scholarship is competing more and more with its subject, and we must learn to accept this as part of the overpopulation problem...
...For in the beginning of the century was modern art and modern art was Picasso...
...Under its discipline he produced some magnificent pieces, especially "Guitar" (1912...
...Perhaps Picasso's greatest triumph is the reconciliation of painting and sculpture: The incredible facility of his drawing is sculptural in its knowledge, while the spontaneity of his sculpture is painterly, as is his uninhibited choice of subject matter...
...Too seldom explored by cool apolitical heads, it was completed in just over a month for the Republican Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair (1937...
...The universities have, until very recently, been disgorging tens of thousands of art majors annually, and joblessness is not confined to the underprivileged...
...Small wonder there is more than a touch of "What can I tell you...
...In case anyone still doesn't know, "Guernica" is a tumultuous statement of outrage at the bombing of the Basque city of the same name during the Civil War...
...In any case, time, as they say, heals...
...Apparently there is growing pressure even at the top: Collectors have their little egos, too...
...In fact, Picasso has had his off-moments and is none the less for it...
...to coverage of the current homage at the Museum of Modern Art (closing April 2...
...Second, the Modern's Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, William Rubin, has prepared the exhibit and accompanied it with an impressive catalogue, in which each of the 84 paintings and sculptures??plus drawings and prints??is combed for meaning and provenance...
...Besides reminding us that there have been other innovative geniuses in our century, this sublime composition of leafy shapes and rectangles is a tough act to follow, especially for Picasso's mural...
...The problem, however, is not confined to the lunatic fringe: Even the comparatively authoritative text by Jaime Sabartes, a long-time companion of Picasso, and Roland Penrose, also a friend, can be fairly sickening...
...now he waits out the century as if to see whether more can happen...
...His skill at combining color, line and form??both flat and modeled??into a perfect whole was never more apparent...
...Yet despite the sport, the result is a heavy-bellied animal standing foursquare, monumental and very real...
...The treatment of the buckled horns and scrawny neck bespeaks a tender interest in revealing beauty where most would see ungainliness...
...metal bars for scapula ridges...
...Among other outstanding canvases are two from the late period??which dates from the '50s and is usually considered less exciting because it is more accessible...
...I know of a child's history of Picasso, written, naturally, by a total stranger, that consists of warm suppositions about his birth and early family life and is not unlike accounts of the young Christ...
...This portrait of his present wife and a small picture of his studio that recalls Matisse share a gentle mood more commonly found in the sculpture...
...The exhibition reminds us in general of the academic stress laid on the system Picasso and Braque came up with in 1908-09...
...Woman by a Window" is a serene, handsome composition and we find it easy to follow the artist's characteristic method of rebuilding the figure...
...Her skeleton-armature, composed of found objects, is visible: palm leaf for spine...
...One might have guessed it from some of his obsessions, particularly the artist-as-monster whose gloating over plump nubility has been the subject of so many drawings...
...According to the book on him by Francois Gilot, who bore him two children, Picasso is a fairly neurotic personality...
Vol. 55 • March 1972 • No. 5
