A tour round the estate
Harold Acton
Picasso's Mask Andre Malraux, translated and annotated by June Guicharnaud with Jacques Guicharnaud (Macdonald and Jane's £6,50) A man of genius on the subject of another contemporary genius in a book dedicated to Gaston Palewski, the distinguished friend of both—what could be more stimulating in a season of prevalent mediocrity? And when we consider the tragedies of his private life, the suicide of his father, the death of his two sons in a motor accident, and his several narrow escapes, we must admire the courage of Andi4 Malraux who achieved so much positive good under General de Gaulle's administration. Readers who enjoyed his Anli-nujmoires and his Psychology of Art will welcome this characteristic sequel, for although it is entitled Picasso's Mask it is a continuation of those massive and provocative volumes. Picasso provides the tarmac, as it were, from which the dynamic novelist, statesman and art critic takes off in his super-jet, crammed to capacity with artefacts from the four quarters of the globe, to soar into a stratosphere of rhetorical ruminations.
A vivid etching of the Ramblas in Barcelona during the Spanish civil war (when Malraux, always a man of action, had organised the republican air force) is followed by a telephone call from Picasso's widow in Mougins inviting him to inspect the 'personal collection of old paintings' which her husband had wished the Louvre to inherit. As de Gaulle's Minister of Culture Malraux had organised the largest exhibition of Picasso's work in 1966. Now he flew to Nice, where Mme Picasso met him, her widow's weeds 'like a veil of crape drawn over the memory of her multicoloured portraits,' and they were driven to the converted farmhouse near Cannes where Picasso had settled in 1961. A leisurely tour of the collection conjured a shifting kaleidoscope of memories, discursions, fragments of Picasso's talk while examining this and that picture by the Douanier Rousseau, Derain, Matisse, Le Nain, Cezanne, Corot, Van Dongen, Braque, a Chardin 'which might have been a Goya,' and monotypes by Degas, with Mme Picasso coming and going and interjecting remarks—ha disconsolate past permeated everything she said,' such as, 'You couldn't leave a piece of string lying about without his making something out of it !'
Some of Picasso's ohiter dicta, as reported by Malraux, develop into monologues too long to quote. Some are farcical :'Obviously, nature has to exist so that we may rape it.' Others have an air of profundity: 'A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day.' One of the most interesting compares his vision of Negro sculptures with Braque's, who loved them 'because they were good sculptures. He was never at all afraid of them. Exorcism didn't interest him.' Whereas they inspired Picasso to paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, his 'first exorcism painting—yes absolutely!' Moreover Braque reflected when he worked on his paintings: 'he never felt like doing everything with everything,' and Picasso needed 'things, people.'
Few tours of any art collection have given rise to so strange a collage or accumulation of metaphorical images. Aphorisms whizz past like shooting stars. The reader dare not pause to question for fear of interrupting so dazzling a pyrotechnical display, yet questions do arise. Among the diverse periods of Picasso's metamorphosis, the blue, the rose, the Cubistic, the neoclassical, the sculptures, the engravings, the ceramics, which did Malraux prefer? Here a numinous atmosphere seems to cling to all Picasso's productions, and we conclude that the artist is a heaven-sent gift to the romantic writer. Should such a writer feel impotent, he need only contemplate a Picasso to recover his fertility.
To borrow Roger Fry's analogy from the wireless, Malraux was the perfect receiver, more in tune than others with Picasso the transmitter. 'You have to wake people up,' Picasso told him. To revolutionise their way of identifying things. You've got to create images they won't accept. Make them foam at the mouth. Force them to understand that they're living in a pretty queer world . . .' And Malraux infers that his strangeness 'derives from the fact that his figures are always doing battle with Creation.'
According to Malraux, the meaning of the word 'art' is distorted by aestheticism. Again he harps on the theme of art as the means whereby man affirms his power to transcend destiny; again death is the leitmotiv of his criticism. As might be expected, the subject of hashish is introduced en passant. When he spoke to Picasso about the spiritual effects provoked by this drug, which he had experienced in Cambo dia and in Siam, the painter said he had tried it once--"Disgusting! For hours I was convinced that I would always paint the same way.'
Certain passages in this book read as if they had been written under the influence of hashish, such statements for instance as: 'All of Picasso's works would be a thunderous howl if his paintings didn't elude that howl by the very fact of their creation.' Maybe a dose of the drug is required in order to understand it thoroughly. We may agree that Picasso rejected the world of outward appearance and replaced it with that of his creations, but what are we to make of his maxim: 'The painter takes whatever it is and destroys it. At the same time he gives it another life. For himself. Later on, for other people. But he must pierce through what the others see—to the reality of it. He must destroy. He must demolish the framework itself.'
After 144 pages or so Malraux conducts us to that 'Museum Without Walls' which gave his name to the fantastically mixed exhibition at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, winding up with the speech he delivered at the opening banquet, a recapitulation of his beliefs about art as the revolt against man's fate. It is a brilliant example of his oratory which must have thrilled the privileged audience. But in the present reviewer's opinion he has excelled in interpreting the art of the Far East.
The book ends appropriately with an account of his visit to Picasso's tomb in the neighbouring Château de Vauvenargues which he had intended to fill with his paintings. 'Once given over to paintings,' he observes, 'Vauvenargues will probably be the noblest mausoleum any painter ever had.' A discursion about the Taj and other tombs blends with further reminiscences and ruminations on various wave-lengths, back to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palmyra, Greece, a small corner of Rome, and the pre-Columbian obsidian skull in the National Museum of Mexico. At best this is prose-poetry, as when Pater composed his famous pieceabout the Mona Lisa.
Picasso's Mask goes further to prove that Malraux never lost his youthful capacity for aesthetic wonder. But his impressionistic style does not lend itself easily to translation. While chronology and analysis may safely be left to Sir Roland Penrose, Mr Douglas Cooper, and similar pundits, we feel that Malraux, as an intuitive writer, approximates most to Picasso's creative temperament. His book should be savoured slowly, lest you miss the volatile asides and revealing anecdotes which might pass unnoticed upon a hasty perusal.
'I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in Heaven,' Corot sighed on his death-bed. We may be sure that both Malraux and Picasso cherished the same hope. It was art, above all, that helped Malraux to overcome his private misfortunes. For Picasso it was an endless source of amazement and amusement. He never ceased joyfully to astonish himself.
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