Picasso – An artist placed on a pedestal

A towering figure above any other artist in modern art is Pablo Picasso and this elevated position becomes very clear with an etching by David Hockney entitled ‘The Student: Homage to Picasso’ made in 1973. For Hockney, Picasso has been an inspiration, a role model for what an artist can be and what a painter can achieve in exploring the different facets of artistic representation. However, Hockney is not alone in his reverence for Picasso as I found in the exhibition ‘Picasso and Modern British Art’ I recently visited at Tate Britain.

Picasso’s influence on British art is made fairly comprehensible by the Tate’s show, considering how idiosyncratic Picasso’s work can be. By weaving an account of how both British artists and collectors responded to the modernist master ’s artistic inventions and innovations, I came away not only understanding a lot more about the great Picasso but with an insight into what it was like to be an artist in the shadow of his prolific aesthetic bravado. 

My Sketch Book Picasso
Based upon photograph taken by Jacqueline Picasso in 1957

Picasso’s creative energy is awe inspiring and of the seven British artists the exhibition features, I feel Ben Nicolson, Henry Moore and Hockney all emerged as better artists for their encounter with Picasso, taking the inspiration and turning it into something which was uniquely their own.

The inclusion of Francis Bacon was a surprise as I had always thought his works were more in the realms of abstraction but apparently Picasso made him aware of  ‘the possibilities of painting’. Wyndham Lewis appears from my view to have jumped upon avant-garde band wagon with an ego, seeing himself on the modernist pedestal rather than Picasso. Duncan Grant and Graham Sutherland were both befriended by Picasso and their art seems to reflect their involvement with the artist, totally submerged you could say in Picasso’s aesthetic styles. That was the genius of Picasso, he was a ‘stylistic shifting’ creative, what you take from him depends on the style that Picasso was working in at the time you discovered his paintings.  

It was a revelation for me that Picasso knew of British art long before Britain or British artists had heard of him. By all accounts, Picasso’s reputation was slow to make inroads upon the British art market, only a few progressive collectors snapped up his works. Very few galleries showed Picasso’s revolutionary art as it was deemed a ‘foreign intrusion of highly disputable merit’ with the Tate making its first purchase of a cubist Picasso only in 1949. British tastes it would appear were not accepting of modern art let alone a Picasso but finally the Tate mounted a Picasso retrospective in 1960, only then did Picasso start to climb onto the modernist pedestal!

Hockney recalls frequently visiting the exhibition and seeing the carefree attitude with which Picasso changed styles, questioning every angle of representation and translating it into painterly insurrection. It offered Hockney a way forward with his art and has driven Hockney’s own reflection on the problems of depiction, the student following up the master’s methodology but very much following his own instincts.

There is no doubt that Picasso is a giant in terms of modern art and it true “no artist can afford to ignore him” , deserving to be placed upon a pedestal but I should imagine that it is a lonely place. Picasso to me needed to butt heads with art and artists, it sparked his work and his inspiration came from working. Let’s not forget that cubism came to us not just from Picasso’s creativity but also that of the artist Georges Braque. The works of Matisse spurred Picasso in a prolific artistic rivalry and then there is the modern take on many of the grand masters of art!

Duncan Grant noted “In admiring Picasso a sense of contest is nearly always to be taken into account”.  

Yes Picasso’s shadow is very long and hard to shake. So who is ready to take on Picasso?

 

Well there is a fascinating book that reveals Picasso paying homage to an unusual friend,

a little dachshund called Lump. 

He featured in many of Picasso’s reinterpretations of Velazquez’s masterpiece “Las Meninas” and played a significant role in the history of modern art, he ate a Picasso! and stole the artist’s heart.

"Lump, the Dog who ate a Picasso" David Douglas Duncan

Thames & Hudson, 2006

"A great insight into Picasso at work from an unusual perspective"

Also worth a peek............ 
'David Hockney's Dog Days' Thames & Hudson, 2006


Picasso & Modern British Art - Tate Britain, London. 
Exhibition open until 15 July 2012  "Well worth a visit"