APPRECIATION OF ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 375, 30 August 1946, Page 28

APPRECIATION OF ART

Sir,-"Artist-Spectator" asks me what authority I have for suggesting that Picasso is probably one of the first six draughtsmen of all time. It is, if you like, a personal judgment. But if your correspondent will read the chapter on Picasso in Thomas Craven’s Modern Art (1935), and Gertrude Stein’s biography of him, I think he will find sufficient evidence to justify the statement. Craven (a hostile critic) refers to "his great technical ability, his unrivalled inventiveness,’ and admits that "he is the master of every instrument known .to painting." I looked up the back files of that organ of enlightened conservatism, The Spectator, to see what its. art critic, Michaél Ayrton, had t say during the public brawl over the Picasso exhibition in London six months ago. His article is a monumental piece of ‘criticism, which says nearly all that needs to be said. Here are one or two extracts from it: "I have repeatedly voiced my admiration for his superb powers. ... He has produced a greater body of work than any artist who has ever lived, of which a small proportion is simply bad, (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) a vast proportion brilliantly performed, and the remainder so impressive as to be, in one sénse, great. . ." He rebukes the philistines who imagine that Picasso is pulling the leg of the public. Here he says, is no hoax, but "only the terrible power of a man who has sucked the history of painting dry and built himself a monument with its bones." After pointing out that Picasso is, in the proper sense, 4 traditionalist, he goes on: "To those who wish, to understand the art of Picasso I say let them study the history of painting, for then they will be able to observe in his work the most brilliant, the most perverse, and the most deadly parody ever created by man or devil. And let others reconsider their allegiance to the most destructive force which painting has ever had to face; but let no-one suggest that these pictures should not be seen, for not to see and recognise a master, whether of good or evil, is to bury one’s head in philistine sands." The significance of Picasso in the world of art today (and in a much wider context) is, I believe, immense. In a subsequent number of The Spectator, by the way, Harold Nicholson says: "Those who consider Picasso to be the greatest of contemporary artists and those who see in him ‘the most destructive force which painting has yet to face’ will at least be united in a common regret; they

will regard it as unfortunate that the ‘British public should have made such fools of themselves in front of foreigners." re

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

(Auckland )