Picasso (Not) Travelling to Moscow 1 (1947)

(Picture: Mil.ru; 30th anniversary parade)

(29.1.2023) An exercise in biographical writing: we know that in 1947 Pablo Picasso had the chance to attend the 30th anniversary festivities of the October Revolution in Moscow on November 7, 1947 (AdP, 302). The Association France-URSS had offered him the chance to be part of their delegation; Laurent Casanova, who on part of the French Communist Party was the one to deal with the intellectuals of the Party, had passed this offer to him (and Casanova himself, as well as Party leader Maurice Thorez, with Jeannette Vermeersch, did attend these festivities (see Bulaitis 2018); Thorez was to meet Stalin for more than two hours on November 18) but Picasso did not travel, in 1947, to Moscow, nor when he was invited officially (in 1954). Why not? Do Picasso biographies tell us? If yes, what do they tell us, and if not – what mot make of all this?

Selected Literature:
John Bulaitis, Maurice Thorez. A Biography, London etc. 2018;
Gertje R. Utley, Picasso. The Communist Years, New Haven/London 2000;
Alessandro Brogi, Confronting America. The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy, Chapel Hill 2011;
Pierre Daix, Pablo Picasso, Paris 2007

(Picture: Argentina)

The year 1947 is (as 1956) another pivotal year of the Cold War. It is the year when the Truman doctrine was defined and the Marshall Plan proposed (opposed by the French Communists, who, because of that, had to leave the French Government in May); it was the year when the Cominform was founded, it was the year in which a logic of polarization established itself (to use a neutral word), brief: the Cold War had, with Cold War structures, imposed itself on the world. But virtually nothing of all that we get to know from Picasso biographies (with one exception). It is as nothing of all that, despite of Pablo Picasso already being a member of the French Communist Party (since 1944), had anything to do with Picasso, who, however, already was one of three walking advertisements of the Party (with writer Louis Aragon and scientist Frédéric Joliot-Curie), and who, even if he was to do nothing at all, represented Communism with everything he did. Well, not with everything, but we will come to that. If Pablo Picasso was unpolitical by nature, his role was not. And this is the basic paradox we have to deal with here. Nothing really fits together in this story (of Picasso being a member of the Communist Party), and this is exactly what makes this story interesting and worthy to be looked at. Because it highlights any kind of tension within the communist sphere, as well as any tension in the world of the Cold War, any problem of being an artist as well as an activist, and any question of artist’s responsibility and credibility in a highly polarized world. And the problem shapes here, in the fall of 1947, in the year 1947, and I would dare to say that it shaped without Picasso actually being aware that it did so.

Thorez is seen in the front row, third from right, as being part of the Ramadier government
which he was to leave in May 1947, because the French Communists did oppose the Marshall Plan

The Artist Stalked

The fall of 1947, as well as the summer, Picasso spent, with Françoise Gilot and newborn son Claude (and with a maid), in Golfe-Juan. And what most biographers tell us is that he had just discovered pottery. Okay, these are the basic facts, these basic facts are undisputed, and a biographer can develop a narrative from that. This can go in the direction of showing toxic masculinity as well as the personal mess that this masculinity had created and was creating, showing Picasso rightfully stalked by his wife Olga, and trying to impose his dictatorship on Françoise and so on.
Or it can go in the direction of ignoring all the personal things by focussing on the art that was created in 1947 (very little painting, few drawings, a play being written (or begun), poetry illustrated (or continued to be illustrated) etc.). Picasso returned to Paris in December, and this is it. But such accounts remain rather one-dimensional, and, obviously, a political dimension would be completely lacking, not only a reference to an invitation to go to Moscow declined or ignored. But it is necessary to leave everything out?
I would say that at least raising the question if the whole political context of 1947 in any way affected Picasso is necessary at any rate. Because at least raising the question would avoid to repeat what Picasso perhaps did: taking his role as a walking advertisement of the French Communist Party and of World Communism far too easy, and this exactly at the time it might have been of the highest importance to be alert, just because it was the time when structures established themselves (and the French Communist Party was more rigidly guided, from now on, by Stalin).
And apart of avoiding biographical reductionism, such strategy does allow to enrich a narrative that, of course, has to encompass the private as well as the creative dimension, with several layers. Pottery, for example, was seen as something that brought the artist Picasso closer to the artisan and the worker. And even if Picasso would not have cared – this was a way his doing of ceramics was seen in the coming years. And the propaganda for the Marshall Plan, which encompassed posters with peace-dove like birds (see Brogi 2011, 140), actually preceded Picasso joining the Peace Movement in the next year, in 1948, and Picasso accepting one of his dove-images being chosen as an emblem of the Peace Movement (the choice was that of Louis Aragon). What happened later, in 1948, in 1949, had much to do with what had happened in 1947, only we are not told so in Picasso biographies, probably because art history oriented biographers do care too little for general history, but, in doing so, also miss relevant dimentions of the art (or artistic creation).

With the Exception of Pierre Daix

The Picasso biography by Pierre Daix (Daix 2007) is the one exception that does not ignore the political context as for the year 1947. But Daix became only closer to Picasso in the next year, in 1948, and not in 1947. And what Daix does is to stress that Picasso, in his view, was standing above all the political mess generally, including above all doctrines, in complete freedom, which, in my view, is rather ignorant as to the political role that Picasso had at the time, even if he might have more or less ignored the implications of that role, at least in the beginning, because later he did become aware of all the ambiguities.
And this narrative, apart from Daix blurring the chronicle of these years with suggesting that things that happened actually in 1948 were already relevant for 1947, also is avoiding to ask the question if Picasso was actually aware of what was happening in 1947. It would be only natural that he was not, that he could not see what, for example, historians can see in hindsight (which would mean that, generally, the important things would happen without ourselves being aware of them happening, which is unsettling, but probably true), but this is not completely true either: Picasso did make decisions, also in 1947, decisions also of, probably, not reacting to certain things, and deliberately taking certain things easy. For example the attack on him by Soviet painter Alexandr Gerassimov in the Pravda in August (something that Daix does mention, while most Picasso biographers do not even know Gerassimov and his role). Or perhaps Picasso did also deliberately not react to the aforementioned invitation to attend festivities at Moscow. Did he get the invitation at all?
It is likely that he knew of the invitation in time, because post was sent to him from Paris to Golfe-Juan as well as newspaper clippings. But as a matter of fact, this invitation seems also to have been completely unknown to Daix. Might it be that Picasso travelled, despite his general dislike for travelling, to Poland in 1948, just because he had not travelled to Moscow in 1947, as a sort of concession to his friends asking him to join the communist activities more actively?

Contributing to the Cult of Personality

At this time Picasso had already contributed to the cult around the leader of the French communists, Maurice Thorez. By contributing a Thorez portrait drawing to the autobiography of Thorez (which was actually written by a ghostwriter). Because this book was part of the cult of personality as far as Thorez was concerned. And one may ask, if Picasso was aware of what he did. Just as one may ask, why, if he was to complain repeatedly, in later years, that the Communist leaders were not taking him seriously, by not telling him anything about political interna or strategies, – why did he himself not take the culture of the French Communist Party seriously soon enough, that there was also a culture of security and secrecy that simply did not allow that someone like Thorez or Casanova actually would have revealed to party intellectuals what was going on on a level of party leadership.
Would this have been different if, in the fall of 1947, Picasso would have travelled to Moscow, as Casanova and Thorez, or even with them? Probably not. In 1947 Picasso was not yet the designer of the internationally popularized Peace Dove emblem, and his aesthetic was, as mentioned, the target of Soviet criticism. Yet Laurent Casanova had been among the personalities that had probably inspired Picasso to enter the Party, but it is highly unlikely that, after the festivities, Picasso would have gotten to know that Thorez had conversed, for more than two hours, with Stalin personally, or that he would have gotten to know about what (the transcript of that audience is published). But perhaps Picasso would have gotten to know earlier or more precisely, by what context, also by what organizational context, his role as a Party Intellectual was defined from now on. And if he was seen to stand above all this (which is a hindsight perspective, and probably to some degree also a projection by Daix, who needed Picasso as such guiding figure, towering above everything), this is at best a part of the truth. He might have cared little about doctrines, yes, but he did clash with them, and his credibility as an artist was to be challenged dramatically by the Stalinist era, the Stalinist-Cominform-era, that had just begun. In the fall of 1947 (with the first of the Eastern European show trials just taking place in Bulgaria), and with Picasso rather paying little attention to everything political, also due to his role as a father perhaps – than standing above everything knowingly, as Pierre Daix tended to suggest.

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