MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to Picasso in 2023

(Picture: Studio Harcourt – RMN)

(Picture: Argentina)

(30.12.2022) For French writer Jean Cocteau as well as for Pablo Picasso, in 1956, it might have been unimaginable that, in 2023, and as far as the state of the arts as such may be concerned, not necessarily Pablo Picasso might appear as still being the towering, the most influencial figure, but rather Marcel Duchamps (and for some, perhaps not even few, even Cocteau might appear as being more important than Picasso, in representing the more dilettante, but inventive, transdisciplinary cross-media artist, who seems to have been a hero for Andy Warhol, for example). In 1956 the faith cultured people had in painting might still have been quite solid. And the tradition could be seen as represented and continued by Picasso. The writers Louis Aragon and Jean Cocteau, in that same year, recorded a conversation on the Dresden picture gallery, and could do so – the conversation was published in the next year as a book – confident in believing that Picasso, to whom the two referred to, more than a few times, represented that tradition at their time. Today such faith might seem rather exotic, the skilled artist – and perhaps Picasso might be referred to as one of the most skilled generalists ever – has, in tendency, be replaced by the ingenious dilettante, and painting has, largely, lost its importance as a guiding medium. Still three observations may be named here that seem also to appear as reasons to still come back to Picasso, in 2023, as well as reasons to raise a few further questions as to the status of painting, in 2023.

One) Three Political Gestures

While preparing my two books on Picasso in 1956 (The Difficulty of Seeing as well as Picasso’s Chinese Summer) I have learned that of the three important political gestures Pablo Picasso made in the decisive year of 1956, a crucial year in the history of the Cold War, two seem to be completely unknown, even to specialists, and one is not rarely misunderstood or misrepresented. Is it true again that the seemingly best known figures are, in fact, the least known ones, since everybody only seems to know them (while in fact everybody only knows the myth, which is a transfiguration of the actual historical figure)?
The three gestures Pablo Picasso made in 1956 are these:
1) While remaining a member of the French Communist Party Picasso publicly distanced himself from Stalin in an interview conducted by Carlton Lake at the end of the year of 1956. But due to a lack of historical knowledge, as far as the dynamic of the year of 1956 is concerned, nobody in Picasso studies ever seems to have realized that this public statement on Stalin by Picasso was of any relevance.
2) Picasso did not protest against the Soviet invasion of Hungary on occasion of the so-called Hungarian Uprising (as an important popular book on Picasso has it), but only signed an open letter asking the leadership of the French Communist Party to help communists to solve problems of conscience, regarding the matter. And this is fundamentally something else than protesting against the invasion. The French communists around Picasso framed the invasion as a legitimate act to fight counterrevolution in Hungary.
3) The perhaps most important political gesture Picasso made in 1956 was not a public one. After the Soviet leadership had agreed to allow a Picasso exhibition in Moscow and Leningrad – thinking that it was only about a small one – Picasso simply sent a large number of pictures to the Soviet embassy in Paris. Who did not refuse these paintings (as well as other works of art), so that the 1956 Picasso exhibition in the Soviet Union actually displayed a large number of works by Picasso, who could be seen, and also in the Soviet Union, as an embodiment of subjective freedom, since the paintings that could be seen do represent an aesthetic that is built on the subjective creative freedom (of the artist) – in painting. And such freedom, such aesthetic, can be seen as being incompatible with the Soviet regime as such.

At a time the visual artist is, not rarely, staged as, or stages him/herself as an activist, it seems worthwhile to look at the nature as well as at the effect political gestures of artists might have had in the past, and for example in Picasso.

Two) Guernica in 2022/23

While Guernica might be one of the most famous paintings in the world, few people seem to know the early biography of that painting. Which involves, in contrast to the general belief that Guernica is transmitting a pacifist message (this has become an interpretative convention in the postwar era), a tour to the UK, aiming at mobilizing people to support the fight against Franco. And this is, obviously, not a pacifist cause, but one of resistance.
During the year of 2022, in the context of the War against Ukraine, the diarist Sergei Gerasimov has referred to Guernica, comparing sceneries seen at Charkiv with what the painting Guernica is displaying.
The interpretation of Guernica as a pacifist one might be a legitimate one, but not necessarily the only legitimate one, and in various contexts (in a postwar context, for example) changing context may seem to demand to see a painting in a different light (and also Picasso may have seen Guernica in a different light). Be it as it may, but also the history of one of the most famous paintings in the world might not be as all-known as many people seem to think.

Three) The Picasso of Françoise Gilot – Inscribing a Critical Perspective into the Picasso Myth

The aforementioned aesthetic of subjective freedom, a freedom that takes the liberty of also representing the human figure in whatever deconstructed way the artist might think as being relevant or truthful should not be mythologized. And thanks to Françoise Gilot a critical perspective on that aesthetic has been inscribed also into the Picasso myth:
When Picasso, in 1954, painted a series of pictures inspired by Sylvette David, Picasso, according to Gilot, seems to have expected that Gilot would become jealous, not seeing her face in Picasso’s art, but that of Sylvette David. But Gilot seems to have replied to Picasso: ›it is not my face that I am interested in, but yours‹, and I am interpreting this statement as taking the aesthetic of subjective freedom seriously. It says, in other words: let’s look at what you are providing us with, let’s question the implication that such aesthetic is praiseworthy as such (and not its specific merits or results in individual piantings, that, indeed, may seem as more true than common realist representation, but not necessarily are so, just because a certain aesthetic is being perceived as being ›modern‹).

While, in 2023, we may probably encounter exaggerations of the critical perspective on Picasso Françoise Gilot has to be thanked for (because Picasso has become an embodiment also of toxic masculinity), it is to be hoped that a) a substantially critical perspective on Picasso as an artist, taking his aesthetic seriously, might still be seen as relevant; and b) that simplifications (due to exaggeration) might be countered with substantial, multi-faceted biographical writing, which is aware of the ugly scenes as well as of the Françoise Gilot of later years, being on record stating also that, on the whole, living with Picasso had been more positive than negative.

(Picture: Papamanila; Guernica reproduction at Guernica)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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