Exhibitions
Picasso: Sculptor/Painter (Tate Gallery, till 8 May)
In better humour
Giles Auty
To write that Picasso's sculpture is gen- erally happier and more relaxed in mood than his painting is to over-simplify. Since the artist was so prolific and worked in such a diversity of ways in both forms this is a thesis which would be hard to demon- strate conclusively. Nonetheless I feel the present excellent exhibition benefits greatly in mood by its emphasis on sculpture. On the day of my attendance, hordes of visitors of all ages seemed animated and in high good humour, conditions encouraged all too seldom by the art of the latter half of this century. I can think of very few sculp- tors or ceramicists whose productions have ever moved me to laugh out loud. Picasso has caused me to do so many times, usually by the impudence of his insight into the form, personality and movement of human beings as well as of birds and animals. Picasso's sculptural short-hand strips away pretension. His is a racing imagination and he is also a supreme parodist. The element of the morose or misogynistic which infused his painting at times became dissi- pated generally by the more manual and perhaps less intensely cerebral activity of making sculpture. Acerbity gave way some-
times to the absurd; the third dimension brought with it a fresh dimension of wit but also occasional incongruities. Throughout his working life it is significant that Picasso parted with his paintings much more readi- ly than with his sculpture. It is as though the physicality of his family of sculptural children provided him with a barrier against loneliness. Possibly, their continu- ing presence at places where he lived gave him a feeling of reassurance or even stabili- ty in a personal life that was always short on domestic permanence.
This is a thoroughly interesting and attractive show organised by Elizabeth Cowling and John Golding who also con- tribute handsomely to a memorable cata- logue. Picasso is a monument to the most vital aspect of modernism: a restless search not just for novel, but for more telling means of expression. Too much which has come after him ignores this last, vital provi- so. With Picasso, meaning resides still in the work itself rather than separately in some tome written by an apologist. As a sculptor, Picasso transforms often mun- dane materials through his qualities of invention, intuition and intelligence. He does not merely flop them in front of us as culturally inert objects and then rely on public cowardice or insider snobbery to bring about some miraculous, but purely supposed transformation. This last is the way all too often of recent, soi-disant fol- lowers of Duchamp and makers of 'concep- tual' installations. Significantly, the Tate employs a Curator of Interpretations these days whose task may often lie in providing `meaning' where none inherently exists. Thus 'meanings' attributed officially to Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread's `House' — though not necessarily from this particular source — were either almost entirely personal — 'it reminds me of this or that' — or at least as true of all the inhabited houses of the area. Picasso died 21 years ago and so was fortunate to have
The Crane, 1951-52, painted bronze, by Picasso, from the Betggruen Collection on loan to the National Gallery
missed this debilitating development in the history of avant-garde art.
Picasso: Sculptor/Painter features 168 works which trace the artist's extensive wanderings in each medium. Picasso made his first sculpture when in his early twen- ties. Thereafter the activity interwove closely with his painting, drawing and etch- ing, sometimes preceding and sometimes mirroring developments in other media. Almost from the beginning, Picasso showed a delight in picking up and using found objects in sculpture, a habit paralleling a similar propensity in collage. The most unlikely objects could be grist to the mill: nuts, bolts, keys, cotton-reels, corrugated paper, feet from furniture, cutlery. When a particular trophy caught his eye — bicycle saddle and handlebars or his son's toy cars — our magical magpie was off on a flight of rapid or more prolonged transformation, a bull's head and the face of a baboon becoming the unforgettable results. Picasso was extremely fond of animals and they of him and I find it almost impossible to believe that the close company for a week of the artist's 'White Owl', 'Crane' and `Bird Breaking Out of an Egg' might not unbend some of the artist's more unyield- ing critics — even Paul Johnson.
Unlike so many modernists of recent stamp, Picasso had a profound knowledge and love of much of the art of the past. His reworkings of themes by artists such as Velazquez and Manet shows his respect for their authors even though the results of his hommage may look irreverent at times. Picasso looked deeply into form and struc- ture — another break with much contem- porary practice — but used them intuitively. Similarly he was deeply aware of symbolism and symbolic meaning. Con- versely, light was rarely a factor of com- pelling importance in his painting but it is difficult if not impossible to eliminate the importance of light in sculpture. Picasso's modelled sculpture — the famous 'Goat' for example — and cut and folded figures in metal thrived on the fall of light. The apparent casualness of the latter is decep- tive. Although they are not carved or obvi- ously iconic in nature — as was so much of the so-called primitive sculpture which influenced the artist profoundly almost at the outset of his career — they aspire nev- ertheless to that condition of primordial rightness so typical of the best West African carvings. By responding utterly to intuition, Picasso aspired to the condition of an original maker, rather than a maker of derived or over-considered objects. Pos- sibly this is as near as the non-mystic can get to the illusion of being God.
In his protean energy and invention, Picasso was the antithesis of the humble craftsman. Humility has seldom been a characteristic of this century's artists and in this respect, at least, Picasso is the archety- pal modern. But it is his desire to engage with and transform materials which distin- guishes him so clearly from today's breed of solemn, so-called sculptors who seem sometimes never to have put the art-school project entirely behind them. Picasso's restless engagement with paint and the often informal materials of his sculpture gave him that satisfaction of making which is the artist's traditional birthright. For to jettison that satisfaction is to lose the basic point of being an artist — as so many of today's misled young artists are discovering to their cost.
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