THAT MIGHTY old artificer Pablo Picasso is celebrating his seventy-fifth
birthday. He has by no means pleased all of the people all of the time; but few who care anything for painting can wish him anything but well. He reminds me more and more of the poet Yeats, who also in early days had his 'blue' period and 'pink' period—but who also grew in toughness and versatility, retaining into wild old age the remarkable ability to survive as the contemporary of successive generations. But it was naturally more difficult for the painter than it was for the poet (who could go deeper) to establish himself as an 'old master.' What a pity that such a genius should appear in an age of fragmentation, when,he could not, with honesty, collect his images into a single style of classical wholeness. His birthday is agreeably marked by the publication (by Thames and Hudson, at 25s.) of a splendidly illustrated study of his life and
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