30 June 2022

John Berger—The Success and Failure of Picasso


John Berger
The Success and Failure of Picasso
(1965)

My note says:
p. 6—"the man, the personality, has put his art in the shade"
p. 9—"For Picasso, what he is is far more important than what he does."
p. 13—"Picasso's historical ambiguity...his fame rests upon his modernity... And yet in his attitude to art...there is a bias which is not in the least modern..."
It could not have been obvious in 1965 just how post-modern this outlook is, though in drawing a connection between the "what he is" outlook and Picasso's great fame JB clearly grasps the underlying mechanism. It is but a short step from the focus on self and the hostility to learning and reason and experimentation to the phenomenon of Famous for being Famous. The Picasso herein described would have made a near ideal instagram user...and instagram (the company and the user community) would have loved having him. The nineteenth- and twenty-first-century provenance of this ethos suggests a cyclical rather than linear history.

Now:
Fleshing out these passages:

[5] His name is known to those who could not name their own Prime Minister. ...
[6]
...certainly no painter has ever been known to so many people.

The mass media are the technical explanation of this. When a man has, for some reason or other, been selected, it is they who transform his public from thousands into millions. In the case of Picasso this transformation has also changed the emphasis of his fame. Picasso is not famous as Millet in France or Millais in England were famous eighty years ago. They were famous because two or three of their paintings were made popular and reproductions of these pictures hung in millions of homes. The titles of the paintings...were far better known than the name of the painter. Today, if you take a world view, not more than one out of every hundred who know the name of Picasso would be able to recognize a single picture by him.

The only other artist the extent of whose fame is comparable with Picasso's is Charlie Chaplin. But Chaplin, like the nineteenth-century painter, became famous because of the popularity of his work. Indeed there are many stories of how his public were disappointed when they saw the real Chaplin because they expected to see Charlie, complete with moustache and walking stick. In Chaplin's case, the artist — or rather his art — has counted for more than the man. In Picasso's case the man, the personality, has put his art in the shade.

In other words, as long as reproductions traveled more easily and widely than men, the titles of the paintings could be far better known than the name of the painter; whereas now, with all of the above reduced to the same flickering images and available anytime forever, the people unwittingly reveal over and over again their deepest desire that no artwork dare count for more than the man. The man is the medium, therefore also the message.

Those naive-but-archetypal postmodernists the Cultural Entrepreneurs and the Digital Rights Manage-ers, who would happily send Pinkertons to millions of homes if the licensing fees thus collected could so much as break even with the cost of enforcement, these parasites wrap themselves in every righteous cliche available to them, yet they are every bit as instrumental in the above-outlined changes as are the mass media. Paintings cannot levy, extract, or remit statutory tithes; only men can.





[8] I, more than most, appreciate the difficulty of writing about painting in words and the need for images and metaphors. But the images which Picasso's friends use all tend
[9]
to disparage the mere art of painting. ... [e.g.] ‘For Picasso, you see, painting is a side-issue.’

This would make better sense if Picasso had many other interests, and divided his energies between painting and other activities. It would even make sense if Picasso was an excessively social man who primarily expressed himself in his relationships with other people. But none of this is the case. He is single-minded; he works like a man possessed; and all his relationships are more or less subservient to the needs of his art.

What then is the explanation? Picasso is fascinated by and devoted to his own creativity. What he creates — the finished product — is almost incidental. To some degree this is of course true of all artists: their interest in a work diminishes when it is finished. But in Picasso's case it is very much more pronounced. It even affects the way he works. He denies that there is such a thing as progress in the creation of a painting: each change, each step, each metamorphosis — as he calls it — is merely a reflection of a new state in him. For Picasso, what he is is far more important than what he does.

...

[13] The important artists of Picasso's generation shared the attitude of their predecessors. Indeed part of their admiration for Van Gogh or Cézanne was due to their sense of having inherited their work, which it was now their duty to continue and develop further. All the emphasis was on what had been and had to be done. As they became highly successful...they may have needed to believe in their justification by working less urgently. But one has only to read those who...died before such success came, to realize how fundamental to this generation was their conviction that it is what the artist does that counts. ...

... Picasso is the exception. ‘It's not what the artist does that counts but what he is.’

We have here the first indication of Picasso's historical ambiguity. He is the most famous painter in the world and his fame rests upon his modernity. ... And yet in his attitude to art and to his own destiny as an artist there is a bias which is not in the least modern and which belongs more properly to the beginning of the nineteenth century.






Note, p. 30:

"to search means nothing in painting, to find is the thing"
This remark "has perplexed people ever since he made it." Clearly Galenson thought he understood and made this central to his theory of the two artistic life cycles. So, when Picasso also says "I have never made trials or experiments," he is specifically referring to the macro-conceptual scale, for this statement is, per Arnheim's study of the preparatory work for Guernica, patently untrue. (The statement here is not dated; things could have changed.) The remark is, furthermore, quite in synchrony with the unsightly but compelling case JB makes for the imprint of Spain on Picasso. It commits the same gross evasion-by-oversimplification as do so many Rugged Individualist political commentators, who would have the underclasses "find" what they lack via force of will, without considering whether it is out there to be found at all.





[88] As for the social content of Gris's paintings, at the time they had almost none. Gris was extremely poor during the war, and had the greatest difficulty in selling or exhibitng any of his pictures. In the long-term sense, their function was to express and preserve a way of seeing, based upon an order which accepted all the positive possibilities of modern knowledge. In other words Gris painted these pictures as if the war had not happened. You can say: he chose to fiddle whilst rome burned. But, unlike Nero, he was not ultimately responsible for the fire and he was not in public. It was Gris's loneliness that made it possible for him to ignore the war without a loss of integrity. Even today there are still liable to be pockets of exemption anywhere and if an artist finds himself in one of these, the result can, paradoxically and in the fullness of time, be of considerable social value. ... But one must always remember that success, by qualifying the loneliness, also destroys the genuineness of the exemption. Success turns an artist who continues to claim exemption into an escapist...




note, pp. 83 & 89:
"The age of essential politics had begun.
Perhaps the realization that Everything Is Political stands as the (most) rational defense of what Bryman and others call Dedifferentiation.

p. 89:
"Stupid people often accuse marxists of welcoming the intrusion of politics into art. On the contrary, we protest against the intrustion."

p. 114:
"An attitude, once consciously held, has become a cast of mind. Thus...[in] Massacre in Korea, the effect is almost the opposite of what he intended."
Indeed, perhaps political art is possible when it is genuine, spontaneous, necessary; whereas gainful, self-conscious, "cast of mind" thinking is what dooms it.





[133]

2

THE PAINTER


is now free to paint anything he chooses. There are scarcely any forbidden subjects, and today everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of some fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying.

If only.

I mean, if only anybody (not to say Everybody, which is actually scary) was prepared to admit this today.

The impressionists did as much as anybody to win this previously unheard-of freedom for the artist.

Yet, by the next generation, painters began to abandon the subject altogether, and to paint abstract pictures. Today the majority of pictures are painted in the abstract.

Really?

Is there a connection between these two developments? Has art gone abstract because the artist is embarrassed by his freedom?

Maybe he is just exercising his freedom? Otherwise what's the sense in having it?

Is it that, because he is free to paint anything, he doesn't know what to paint?

Well, if the majority of pictures exhibit the same tendency, then it would seem that people know exactly what to paint.

Apologists for abstract art often talk of it as the art of maximum freedom.

I suppose this rhetoric comes in handy when an apology urgently needs to be issued. The statement isn't true at all, though.

But could this be the freedom of the desert island?

Point taken. But don't come crying to us tomorrow when mass media becomes social media.

It would take too long to answer these questions properly.
Shit.
I believe there is a connection. Many things have encouraged the development of abstract art. Among them has been the artists' wish to avoid the difficulties of finding subjects when all subjects are equally possible.

Sure, because painting abstracts is easy. Similarly, choosing subjects is hard but avoiding them is easy. Anyone could do it.

Seriously, like the painters are all sitting around thinking, "Gee, what should I paint? There are too many choices! How I wish my society would issue stronger prescriptions on this matter. As it is, the range of choice is so dauntingly broad that I had better not make a choice at all. Instead I will paint abstracts. These have no subject and therefore permit me to avoid the difficulties of choosing what I would like to paint."

I raise the matter now because I want to draw attention to the fact that the painter's choice of a subject is a far more complicated question than it would at first seem.

After what has just been said, I would sure hope so.

A subject does not start with what is put in front of the easel or with something which the painter happens to remember. A subject starts with the painter deciding he would like to paint such-and-such because for some reason
[134]
or other he finds it meaningful. A subject begins when the artist selects something for special mention. (What makes it special or meaningful may seem to the artist to be purely visual — its colours or its form.) When the subject has been selected, the function of the painting itself is to communicate and justify the significance of that selection.

Okay, so if the purely visual qualities of colours and/or form, after all this, can indeed be special or meaningful to the artist even if what the subject is is not too important, then why dicker with the more circuitous reasoning of the wish to avoid and the the freedom of the desert island?

I would agree, actually, that it is quite difficult to justify the significance of the purely perceptual or contemplative, as against the representational; no less from the artist to themselves as to their audience. But this is as it should be. I think this is precisely the point, or one of them, of the abstract orientation. The failure to justify spells total failure for an artwork only when justification is its total mandate. Subject art is more susceptible to this kind of "total failure" than is abstract art.

It is often said today that subject matter is unimportant. But this is only a reaction against the excessively literary and moralistic interpretation of subject matter in the nineteenth century.

Right on.

In truth the subject is literally the beginning and end of a painting. The painting begins with a selection (I will paint this and not everything else in the world); it is finished when that selection is justified (now you can see all that I saw and felt in this and how it is more than merely itself).

Thus, for a painting to succeed it is essential that the painter and his public can agree about what is significant.

Well, if success means agreeing with the public at large about what is significant, and also Success turns the artist who continues to claim exemption into an escapist, then it seems this success business isn't all its cracked up to be. It would seem, actually, that Success is merely the hard way to Fail.

The subject may have a personal meaning for the painter or individual spectator; but there must also be the possibility of their agreement on its general meaning. It is at this point that the culture of the society and period in question precedes the artist and his art. Renaissance art would have meant nothing to the Aztecs — and vice versa. ...

When a culture is secure and certain of its values, it presents its artists with subjects. The general agreement about what is significant is so well established that the significance of a particular subject accrues and becomes traditional. This is true, for instance, of reeds and water in China, of the nude body during the Renaissance, of the animal head in Africa. Furthermore, in such cultures the artist is unlikely to be a free agent: he will be employed for the sake of particular subjects, and the problem, as we have just described it, will not occur to him.

When a culture is in a state of disintegration or transition the freedom of the artist increases — but the question of subject matter becomes problematic for him: he, himself, has to choose for society. This was at the basis of all the
[135]
increasing crises in European art during the nineteenth century. It is too often forgotten how many of the art scandals of that time were provoked by the choice of subject...

By the end of the nineteenth century there were, roughly speaking, two ways in which the painter could meet this challenge of deciding what to paint and so choosing for society. Either he identified himself with the people and so allowed their lives to dictate his subjects to him; or he had to find his subjects within himself as a painter. By people I mean everybody except the bourgeoisie. Many painters did of course work for the bourgeoisie according to their copy-book of approved subjects, but all of them, filling the Salon and the Royal Academy year after year, are now forgotten, buried under the hypocrisy of those they served too sincerely.

Those who identified themselves with the people...found new subjects and renewed, in the light of the lives of those for whom they saw, old subjects. A landscape by Van Gogh has a totally different meaning (and reason for being selected) from a landscape by Poussin.

Those who found their subjects within themselves as painters...strove to make their method of seeing the new subject of their pictures. In so far as they succeeded in doing this, as we saw in the case of Cézanne, they changed the whole relationship between art and nature, and made it possible for every spectator to identify himself with the vision of the painter.

Those who took the first solution were mostly driven on by the terrible pressures of loneliness. Because they wanted to ‘belong’ they became socially conscious. Having become socially conscious, they wanted to change society. It is in this sense only that one can say that they were political, and that they chose their subjects by the standards of a future society.

Cool idealism everybody. But if you only became socially conscious because you wanted to ‘belong’ then I don't trust you or your idealism. (See also Lasch on the 1960s.)

Those who took this first solution were more reconciled to being isolated. Their devotion was to the logic of their vocation. Their aim was not to submit their imagination to the demands of the lives of others, but on the contrary to use their imagination to gain ever-increasing control
[136]
of their art. They chose their recurring subject — which was their method of seeing — to create the standards of a future art.

No artist will fit neatly into either of these categories. I am deliberately being diagrammatic so as to shed some light on a very complex problem. The important artists of this century can also be approximately divided into the same categories: those whose method of seeing transcends their subjects..., and those whose choice of subject insists upon the existence of another (tragic or glorious) way of life, distinct from that of the bourgeoisie...

To which does Picasso belong? He has answered for himself:
I see for others. That is to say I put down on the canvas the sudden visions which force themselves on me. I don't know beforehand what I shall put on the canvas, even less can I decide what colours to use. Whilst I'm working I'm not aware of what I'm painting on the canvas. Each time I begin a picture, I have the feeling of throwing myself into space. I never know whether I'll land on my feet. It's only later that I begin to assess the effect of what I've done.




[177] It was as though Picasso could do no wrong, because whatever he did was never examined. Because he was the most famous artist in the world and a communist, he was exempt. Exemption is very like exile. One faction called this exemption ‘decadence’: the other ‘eternal hope’. As we have seen, Picasso needed subjects. Yet what the communist movement offered him back was only the exhausted subject of himself. Picasso as Picasso as Picasso.

Could it have been otherwise? It is usually a waste of time to play historical ‘if onlys’. But in this case the alternative is perhaps relevant because similar mistakes are still being made. Official Soviet art policy is so dangerously wrong-headed not because it has enshrined within the Soviet Union a style of naturalism which originated with the bourgeois nouveaux riches of the nineteenth century

...Though there is that!...

(its only appeal is the desire for owning the subject) — this could right itself; the disastrous part is to believe that such a style is exclusively and universally the style of socialist art, for this allows provincial predjudice to oust reason and forces the very special limitations of Russian art history on art everywhere. It shrinks the whole vast subject, and with half an answer begs every question.

The French attitude to art would seem to be very different from the Russian. Yet today there is one characteristic in common: a provincial complacency. Because Paris was for so long the art centre of the world and because the art trade in Paris has grown until it is now one of the ‘industries’ of the city, it has become an accepted idea amongst nearly all French intellectuals, including communists, that art is the natural blessing of France.
[178]
They are not so naïve as to believe that all good art is French, but they do believe that all good art finds its way to Paris and there receives its honours. ... In France it is believed that there are no questions about art which have not already been fully answered here.

Thus Picasso found himself confined within the prejudices of his new comrades — in France in one way, and in the socialist countries in another. Endless debates were carried on about how art could serve the needs of the workers of the world, and with each debate the range of the argument became narrower, the diversity of the world more forgotten.




note, p. 180:
Picasso in the 1950s as (child-)king at court
This is funny and sad yet totally unsurprising, really. Without denying the trenchance of JB's psychohistory, it is hard to see this child-king episode as exceptional, either for Picasso's role in it or that of his courtiers and courtesans. This is what happens when people get rich, fat and happy. The rich who remain driven are the exceptions.


No comments: