MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON HAVE been encouraged by Mr. Michael Ayrton's robust and j
honourable article in last week's Spectator to indulge in certain atfer-thoughts regarding the Picasso controversy. Those who con- sider Picasso to be the greatest of contemporary artists and those who see in him " the most destructive force which painting has yet had to face " will at least be united in a common regret: they will regard it as unfortunate that the British public should have made fools of themselves in front of foreigners. It is not so much that the outcry which has arisen and the correspondence which has appeared indicate a lack of knowledge and discrimination : stupid or insensitive things have been said or written about new forms of art in every country and in every age. It is rather that the controversy, in the form it has assumed, will suggest to foreign observers that there exists in this country no general standard of comparison, no common level of taste, no continuity of awareness or knowledge, against the background of which informed criticism can be differentiated from unimformed criticism. The startled surprise with which this exhibi- tion has been greeted implies that the majority of the British public had never known of Picasso before ; the readiness with which people who admittedly " dislike " modern art have rushed into print upon this subject will give the impression abroad that in artistic matters the British public are sadly irresponsible. Nearly thirty-five years ago the first Post-Impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries was greeted with hoots of derision. Since then the Cezannes, the Van Goghs, the Gauguins, which in 19to aroused our English Laughter have become quite ordinary pictures ; coloured repro- ductions of them hang in the sitting-rooms of undergraduates and in service canteens ; it seems incredible to the younger generation that they could ever have aroused in us feelings either of anger or amuse- ment. Yet the lesson of the Grafton Gallery has remained unlearnt: we have been indulging in the same sort of foolishness all over again.
Let me explain my present distress by an analogy. I am myself totally ignorant of, and uninterested in, the game of cricket. It is to me a matter of complete indifference whether eleven Englishmen are able to strike, to hurl or to catch a little ball with greater force, celerity or precision than eleven Australians. It may well be that my disregard for test matches deprives me of a whole area of living interest and vicarious excitement. I am conscious even of a slight pang of envy when I observe elderly gentlemen bolting their luncheon in order not to be late for Lords: I am aware that here is a range of experience and enjoyment from which I am myself debarred. Yet it would never occur to me to comment, even privately, upon the merits or defects of any given cricketer ; and were I to voice such comments in public I should rightly be exposing myself to ridicule and contempt. And why? Because in the realm of sport and games there exists in this country a general level of knowledge and awareness which would render any such intrusion on my part an act of vain presumption and one which would be recog- nised as such. Yet the very people who would regard it as an impertinence were I to voice my opinion • of a cricketer will them- selves, without even the stirrings of a blush, speak with assurance on the works of a painter of whose previous productions and de- velopment they know almost nothing at all. And why is this? Surely because they take games seriously and art only as incidental. And surely also this distressing falsification of values is not one which we should wish to be publicly proclaimed.
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This Picasso controversy suggests certain other curious malforma- tions of the English critical sense. In regard to music the British Public are on the whole commendably sensible, nor do people suggest, when a musician plays some composition which is beyond their understanding, that he is either making fun of his audience or showing off. In literature again the ordinary reader is quite tolerant of experiments. Ulysses has. been increasingly accepted as a master- piece of innovation, and the fact that James Joyce's subsequent writings are almost unintelligible does not lead people to write angry letters to the newspapers. I have sought three times to acquire some understanding or appreciation of Haveth Childers Everywhere and have been obliged to confess myself defeated. But it has never occurred to me, or to anyone else, that in composing this experiment Joyce was guilty of insincerity ; it is merely that his passionate interest in literary experiment carried him to a point where communication was severed between himself and his readers. We may regret that English poetry of the post-Eliot period should have become so private as to be egocentric, or even egoistic ; but this does not lead us to expostulation ; it leads us only to welcome recent indications that this period of the internal soliloquy is drawing to its end. Why, there- fore, should the British public, who acquiesce quite mildly in the incomprehensible in music and literature, become vociferous when confronted with paintings which they are unable to understand? The British Council and the authorities of the Victoria and Albert have been upbraided even for allowing any such exhibition to take place ; yet assuredly they were fulfilling their proper functions in allowing us to see the work produced by Picasso and Matisse during the war years. Why therefore this indignation? It is a problem which deserves to be examined.
The explanation, I suggest, is a simple one. For whereas the enjoyment of music and literature is a private enjoyment, in which individual eccentricities of appreciation are condoned, the Picasso exhibition was a public, and indeed almost official, exhibition, and as such it became a challenge to public opinion. The ordinary citizen felt that he had been invited to express his views, and, since we live in a free country and one blessedly immune from intellectual snobbishness, he did so in violent terms. The official sanction given to these pictures (which in fact represent only a momentary phase in Picasso's long artistic evolution) gave the public the impression that these were works of art which they were expected to understand and to admire ; and since the British public prefer pictures to provide them not with the uneasiness of novelty, but with the comforts of recognition, the resultant humiliation and disappointment induced, them to utter wild and often meaningless cries. How can the ordinary visitor have been expected to know that Picasso's blue period came to an end in 1904 ; that his saltimbanque period was of short duration ; and that his Demoiselles d'Avignon, which began his cubist period, dates from as long ago as 1907? How can he have known that the startling works now exhibited in no way repre- sent the total performance of a great artist, but merely illustrate a mood of disgust through which he passed during the atrocious years? All that the public saw was a series of pictures, apparently uniform in manner and intent, which they imagined (quite wrongly) they were supposed to admire and which they did not admire in the very least. One can pardon them for feeling annoyed. What one finds it less easy to forgive is that so many people who ought to have known better shared their indignation.
I have for many years had three Picassos on the walls of my sitting-room—a neo-classic drawing, an abstract painting in bright colours, and a cubist portrait. They have for long afforded me delight. From the recent collection I derived no pleasure at all, but only pain ; these pictures seemed to me ugly in form and ugly in colour. But I was preserved from disappointment by three con- siderations. I knew, in the first place, that they represented only a phase in Picasso's evolution. I knew that that phase coincided with a period of acute and indignant suffering during which Picasso had sought to express all the ugliness which he saw, and rightly saw, in a world at war. And I also knew that Picasso understood far more about painting , than I did myself. Such considerations impose, if not a certain modesty, then at least a certain " suspension of disbelief." I enjoy pretty patterns and I enjoy pretty ; but I also respect artistic power: it wculd never have occurred to me to be angry with Picasso because the war aroused in him a burst of Andalusian rage.
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