Bravery beyond the call of duty: the men who dared to say boo to Picasso

FRANK JOHNSON

Amajority of art critics plus received Opinion — two not entirely separate groups — have declared Picasso the winner in the Tate Modern match against Matisse. No wonder; bad things have happened to people who have questioned the greatness of Picasso, such as the neo-romantic painter, sculptor and champion of English art Michael Ayrton (1921-75), once this magazine's art critic.

In the mid-1940s, he indulged in just such a questioning: first in a radio talk, later in Penguin New Writing in an article called 'A Master of Pastiche (a personal reaction to Picasso)'. It began:

To write anything hut praise, or to attempt anything but a favourable analysis of the present value and future significance of the art of Picasso. is to be attacked at once. I have taken this risk on several occasions and have been variously accused of personal jealousy, fifth-column activity and high treason. I have also been taken to task for changing my spots in midstream, to coin a mixed metaphor in the manner of the master's own painting....

A deft touch, that last phrase — considering the assorted newspaper cuttings, etc. to be found mixed together in some of the master's great works. With sublime courage, Ayrton pressed on towards almost certain annihilation. He positioned a defence on his flank: 'I have never denied his genius.' But then he plunged to his doom:

I suggest, however, that changing the course of European art does not ipso facto improve that course, ... Such men as Hitler have changed the course of human history to the disadvantage of mankind, and I believe that Picasso, taking all into account, has been of very negative service to art in his changing of its course.

But the one accusation 1 find hard to take is that of not understanding Picasso. Heavens alive, his work is not difficult to understand. If it was really obscure, if it really required long and concentrated study, Picasso would not be the richest and most famous artist alive.

That did it! To compare Picasso to Hitler was one thing. But to suggest that Picasso was not difficult, did not require long and concentrated study! Ayrton was now a marked man. The reader of his brilliant article senses that, by this stage, there can be no turning back, and the author might as well abandon all concern for his personal safety.

He suggests that 'nothing could be simpler' than Picasso's process:

He is not concerned with nature, nor with a single tradition, and in this he differs from artists of the past, as Woolworth's differs from the craftsman's shop. What he does is to engulf an existing formula, choosing, it seems, at random from the history of his art. It may be negro sculpture, Greek vase painting, or the drawings of Ingres. This formula, once digested, he regurgitates, like the albatross feeding her young, accentuating certain characteristics and obliterating others. Having exhausted one formula he turns to another, possibly maintaining part of the first . . . the classic Graeco-Roman head, for instance, establishes a comfortable association of ideas which prepares him the viewer] for whatever apparently outrageous exaggeration Picasso may see fit to use to enliven his picture.

Later, Ayrton observes:

The dilettanti of today who are so foolishly quick to despise a legitimate influence present in a young artist's work are prepared to swallow with delight the painting of Picasso whose derivations have been so blatant for 40 years. Originality is in itself an exceedingly

unimportant aspect of art . it has only achieved a spurious importance during the 20th century, the very times which have been dominated by Picasso himself.

Ayrton's biographer, Justine Hopkins, writes of the 'storm' that the original broadcast produced. Ayrton had often dined with 'the great patron and connoisseur of the London art world, Peter Watson', who found it 'not merely unacceptable but offensive'. Ayrton's diaries contained no more than the entry: `PW — dinner.' Graham Sutherland wrote a 'stinging letter' against Ayrton to the Listener.

Ayrton had long worried that he might be remembered more as a critic than as a painter. Miss Hopkins says that the Picasso affair was 'the conclusive factor' in his resignation in 1946 as The Spectator's art reviewer. Ayrton was 'distressed by the damage undoubtedly caused by the Picasso incident, writing ruefully to a friend in April that "as you know I am not exactly popular with the established reputations among writers on art and am indeed on terms of abuse with most of them". . . '

A few pockets of British resistance to Picasso remained. Unfortunately, one of them was Sir John Rothenstein, the Tate's director; nowhere near as brilliant a figure as Ayrton — actually, not brilliant at all. He was the central figure of the 'Tate Affair' of the early 1950s. Even at that late date, the brave but undistinguished Rothenstein held out against more modernists — which meant more Picassos — in the collection. Or so his enemies claimed. Picasso's friend and biographer John Richardson — companion of the brilliantly malicious connoisseur Douglas Cooper — tells the story in his wonderfully readable memoir: The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence and Douglas Cooper.

Cooper was part of a modernist plot to have Rothenstein sacked. Mr Richardson rather implies that the plotters were in the minority against the fuddy-duddies. But students of the avant-garde v. the Establishment would doubt that.

In 1954 a drunken Cooper spotted Rothenstein at an exhibition. He shouted at Rothenstein, 'That's the little man who is going to lose his job.' Rothenstein physically attacked him, telling reporters that his right hook left Cooper crawling on the floor.

To that claim, Richardson reacts, all these years later, in his book of 1999, as a Manchester United supporter would to the suggestion that his mate succumbed to a Liverpudlian blow. 'Bunkum. All Rothenstein managed to do was knock off his opponent's glasses. Since Douglas was taller and heavier, he had no problem holding off his attacker, laughing as Rothenstein's little arms flailed ineffectively. . . . Both contestants claimed to have behaved heroically.'

Rothenstein claimed to have received a letter of congratulation from a painter he greatly admired. The painter's identity was one of the reasons why the sophisticated questioned his taste. It was the then Prime Minister, Churchill. Cooper told the press that he had received a congratulatory telephone call from Picasso.

Despite that complete ascendancy these last 50 years and more, I suspect that it is still brave to dissent. Readers will go to Picasso–Matisse and judge for themselves the former's minor genius — which phrase is quite brave enough for me.